Issue:
I am experiencing recent performance issues in AoE2 DE. During Skirmish vs AI or Multiplayer with a human player and AI, I encounter FPS drops and micro-freezes when moving the camera by pushing the mouse to the edges of the screen, or when engaging in combat.
I’ve noticed several stability and performance discussions recently on the Steam forums. I’m not sure if my issue is related to them, but I would like to report my case.
My FPS is capped at 275 via RivaTuner, with G‑Sync, V‑Sync, and VRR enabled. In these situations, FPS drops to 150 or even 60, despite all graphical settings being set to Low, no mods installed, a clean game installation, and all drivers up to date (including Windows).
Given my hardware, I consider my specs sufficient to run this 2D game without issues. I get better performance in Age of Empires IV, which is fully 3D and newer. I expect FPS drops in large fights, but not this severe, and not together with micro-freezes.
Repro Steps:
- Start a Skirmish or Multiplayer match.
- Move the camera by pushing the mouse to the edges of the screen.
- Engage in combat in Age 2 or so.
- Observe FPS drops and micro-freezes.
Notes:
I run the game on an i5‑12400F, RTX 3060 12 GB, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe, Gigabyte M27Q3 at 2560×1440 @ 300 Hz, HDR on.
No logs were generated by the client.
I’ve already reported the issue to customer support as suggested on the support page, with the dxdiag file attached.
The benchmark score after running the performance test was 1308.