Hey everyone,
I’ve been a long-time fan of Larian’s work, stretching back to the early Divinity days, and like most of you, I’ve spent way too many hours exploring every nook and cranny of Baldur’s Gate 3. However, I’m currently facing a bit of a hardware "experiment" that I’m hoping some of the more technically-minded folks here might have some insight on.
Usually, I play on a standard gaming rig, but due to some recent changes in my home office setup, I’ve been trying to see if I can consolidate my gaming and my home lab work onto a single machine. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for enterprise-grade hardware—there’s just something about the stability and build quality of servers that appeals to me. To that end, I’ve been tinkering with a refurbished HP ProLiant DL360
https://serverorbit.com/pc-and-servers/proliant-dl360/24-core-2-2ghz-xeon. It’s a bit of a beast for data tasks, sporting a 24-core Xeon setup clocked at 2.2GHz, but as I’m learning, "beast" in the server world doesn't always translate to "beast" in the RPG world.
The specific point I’m curious about—which I’ve seen discussed in various technical threads—is how BG3 actually handles high thread counts versus raw single-core frequency. We all know that Act 3, specifically the Lower City, is a massive CPU hog. The sheer density of NPCs and scripts running in the background seems to bring even modern consumer CPUs to their knees.
On my ProLiant, I have cores for days, but that 2.2GHz base clock is significantly lower than the 4.0GHz+ speeds that most modern titles expect. When I’m wandering around the Elfsong Tavern or the docks, I’ve noticed that while my overall CPU usage across those 24 cores looks relatively low in the task manager, my frame rates are stuttering quite a bit. It’s almost as if the game's engine is getting bottlenecked by the speed of the individual threads rather than the number of threads available.
I’ve tried the usual fixes: switching between Vulkan and DX11, disabling the Steam overlay, and messing with the "Slow HDD" mode (even though I’m running off an NVMe). It’s been a fun personal project to try and make "work gear" play "fantasy games," but I’m starting to wonder if I’ve hit a hard architectural limit. It's a fascinating trade-off; on paper, 24 cores sounds like overkill, but that 2.2GHz Xeon might just be too "slow and steady" for the chaotic, real-time demands of the Baldur's Gate crowds.
Has anyone else here tried running the game on non-standard PC or server hardware? I'm curious if there are any specific BIOS tweaks or affinity settings you’ve found that help the engine better utilize high-core, lower-frequency setups like the DL360.
Or is this simply a case where the density of Act 3 scripts will always favor a fast 6-core chip over a massive but slower 24-core server?
