[Bug] Memory leak. Confirmed FPS issue for many players. (Updated with tips!)

zerosingularity

So there is an issue plaguing the community. Many members are affected by it, and many are not. I am talking of course about the issues we face when gaming for an extended amount of time. When gaming on ESO for a while, your FPS will start to drop, or the screen will become buggy. Sometimes a reloadUI fixes this, but in other cases it does not. The issue seems to accelerate when there are a lot of affects being generated by the player or the environment.

I am wondering how many suffer from this affliction, so please chime in with possible solutions or if this is a problem for you as well.

FYI, please no comments about add-ons or lowering settings, these do nothing. And I also have a machine far more powerful than what is recommended for this game. (Core i5 3570k 4.4GHZ, Samsung SSD, 16Gigs Ram, GTX 670 in SLI[Was prevalent with and without SLI, so that's not the problem] and lots of fancy stickers.)

Edit: So it seems that this is an issue that affects several players. I myself have been experiencing this almost every day for a while now. The only cure seems to be either a reload UI, or in more extreme cases re-logging. There is definitely something going on with the current ESO and it can make things unplayable at times. Keep posting if you are having these experiences, your voice will be heard.

Edit 2: A few small things that may help some frame drops people are having.

Disable all combat logs and dps meters when in pvp/intensive combat, these can contribute somewhat. (Dependent on person to person/machine to machine.)

Use Nvidia settings in Geforce experience, including DSR, if your GPU is balls to the walls powerful, it helps stabilize some of the frames by making the GPU actually work.

Set view distance to ~50, anything higher is poorly optimized and you won't notice the drop in the slightest. (Can give up to 10 FPS increase, especially in towns.)

Disable in-game vSync, and use your graphics card's, especially for SLI. (I noticed that the second card was not being used until I did this, so throwing the info out there for others.)

Unpark all of your CPU cores. This can make a difference for those with 4 cores or less, as those cores will always be ready to run additional threads. I noticed the frame drops in pvp were less crippling once I did this (still there obviously, but more bearable). Give it a shot! https://youtube.com/watch?v=4fKxZ1mq9KA

Of course, these are only helping to treat the symptoms, the doctor appears to be out and can't get rid of the problem. Lets do the best we can!

Xeven

My FPS goes to s*** the moment I launch the game.

GTX980 & 4790K Core I7 lol.

Theodorus

Maybe the game is optimized for AMD processors?

Kidding.

Xendyn

Haven't really seen a huge memory increase while playing. All I know is since IC my fps has been way worse with drops to 1-2 fps in intense fights in Cyro.

Certainly didn't use to happen like that for me.

Nebthet78

Yeah there is definitely an issue.

Since the last patch I have noticed that any time I am do any of the WBs in Wrothgar, my FPS is going from 44-60fps down to 12-23 fps an the only thing that will fix it is a restart of the game.

I didn't have this issue previous to Mondays patch.

4GB GTX 960 & 4790 Core i7 3.4ghz, 12 GB ram, 1TB HDD. Win 8.1
- No Add-Ons

*edited to add more info

ssewallb14_ESO

Happens about half way through vet Maelstrom. Relogging usually fixes it, reloadui does not.

i7 860, gtx 660ti, 8gb ram, windows 8.

Kronuxx

Yes I have this issue as well, and I've been asking ZOS when they plan on fixing it. I have an ati 390 and i'm sure that doesn't help since this game is clearly not optimized for my hardware, but regardless I know there is a memory leak involved with this game. It will crash my computer without fail almost every time I exit, causing a reboot of my system. It's damn annoying, and I hate to say it but really shows the incompetence of the software engineers at ZOS. In addition, in the event that my computer doesn't crash when I exit the game, if I open up the the task manager to review the amount of memory used, it's always higher after exiting ESO than when I started. This leads me to believe that there might be memory allocated to the game when it opens but never releases this memory back, which could go in line with a memory leak.

Dear ZOS, please fix your horribly optimized game.

ContraTempo

I have the issue you describe but I use a number of addons so I can't be sure of the cause. However, my FPS has generally been lower since Orsinium though I have not changed my mix of addons.

I don't know if it matters, but I run an i7 at 2.8ghz (boosted to 3.5) with 16GB ram and a Crucial 512 GB SSD. Nvidia GTX 870M overclocked (stable). Wired gigbit network, fast cable connection. I use a "redlined" version of Windows 8.1 from XOTICPC that has much of the bloatware removed and many useless background processes disabled. It's very stable and gives me a time from on-button (starting from OFF, not standby) to logged in (via fingerprint) and ready of about 30 seconds. I don't like to wait. :-)

SirAndy

It's not a memory leak though. I did some digging on the subject (intermittent FPS drop to 10fps) and there was no indication of a memory leak when and while it happens.

NovaShadow

Since the new DLC mine's been really bad. I get normal stuff cause I live in Australia but this is worse, constant pings over 500 and fps dropping to 15 and 20. Makes it unplayable, crashing out randomly I've done more of that since the new DLC than I had done in a few months.

Something's gone a little wonky somewhere.

silky_soft

There is a problem with eso and DSR (dynamic super resolution). Pretty much when all those flashy particles start flying everywhere you game gets even more ***.

DSR is automatically turned on if you are using the ESO profile in NV experience. Turn that *** off

nine9six

zerosingularity wrote: »

and lots of fancy stickers.)

There's your problem, right there.

zerosingularity

I turn DSR off because I find it is still buggy. Disregarding the crappy Comcast internet that can get me from perfect internet down to dial-up, I find the issue is not ping related. I know my GPU can sometimes run upwards of near full capacity (2 gigs memory almost filled.) It is worth noting that the Operating system has no effect on this problem, Windows 7-10 all show it.

Paulington

May I suggest checking my post in the Technical Support forum and seeing if your symptoms are similar? Never did get a response on this issue so more posts hopefully mean a ZOS response!

zerosingularity

My CPU usage never exceeds 60% and it is pretty balanced across all 4 cores. Unfortunately my symptoms are not quite the same, but nevertheless they could be related. On a side note, I want your PC. *Yum*

Nazruk

I experienced something similar when i was trying (and dying) in VetMaelstrom on the last boss. when i died a lot there, or my fps dropped down to 20-30 all the time. sometimes it was fixed after a /reloadui, but most of the time it wasnt.

relogging was the only way to bring back fps to a normal level and actually be able to finish the dungeon.

uso245

Someone else noted above regarding it starting around IC for them, same issue for me. I went through a ton of necro-threads to find possible solutions and have reduced several different things along with getting rid of unneeded addons but again never had this issue prior to IC and my system is robust enough for it.

Sabertooth 990fx mobo
amd zambezi 6200 fx processor
16 gb of RAM
GTX 970

Looking at all my statistics when running this game and others I'm never in the red and I used to run full maxed out settings. After going through numberous older threads I've gone through and reduced or even turned off several features in-game and on my Nvidia Control Panel which helped a little bit but the issue itself is still far from gone. I don't have any issue with any other game max settings and this one only started when IC released.

MrDerrikk

Mine has always worked brilliantly (>100FPS, 500ping though) until the most recent patch that fixed "performance issues". Now it works perfectly fine until I do something that requires server interaction (e.g. when I engage combat, gain XP from killing a mob, leaving combat etc) where I have a good 2-3 secs of the FPS dropping to 0 and the ping skyrocketing to >1000....

My specs are:
-i5 4670K
-24GB RAM
-GTX 970 in SLI


Any news on what's causing this? It's pretty much unplayable.

danno8

Yes, grinding materials in Wrothgar for a couple hours yesterday, had to relog 'cause my fps dropped lower than 20. After coming back in they were back at the usual 50-60.

This happens all the time since Wrothgar. Something got broke.

zerosingularity

Yeah I did notice this was worse in vet Maelstrom Arena, but it is not limited to just there. Hopefully we can hear from someone in power about this issue, because it is clearly not an isolated incident.

zerosingularity

Shameless Self-bump.

Anyone else having these issues? It seems tied solely to ESO, everyone here seems to have powerful machines and no issues in other games.

danno8

Just a side note I noticed today. After getting the normal drop to 20fps, after 10 minutes I went inside a delve to finish the Wrothgar daily and noticed the fps went back to normal.

After finishing the daily and heading back out the fps were also normal outside (back up to ~50fps). So zoning seems to fix the issue also.

danno8

SirAndy wrote: »

It's not a memory leak though. I did some digging on the subject (intermittent FPS drop to 10fps) and there was no indication of a memory leak when and while it happens.

Today I fully monitored both CPU and GPU and I agree it does not seem to be a memory leak.

Upon onset of symptoms system memory was at 8gb/16gb, CPU was never past around 50% on all cores, GPU never went past 75%, although GPU memory was always at 1900-2000/2048. This was always at that number though even at play start, so I think the game just uses a lot of video memory all the time.

OGLezard

still waiting for that 64 bit client......

altemriel

zerosingularity wrote: »

So there is an issue plaguing the community. Many members are affected by it, and many are not. I am talking of course about the issues we face when gaming for an extended amount of time. When gaming on ESO for a while, your FPS will start to drop, or the screen will become buggy. Sometimes a reloadUI fixes this, but in other cases it does not. The issue seems to accelerate when there are a lot of affects being generated by the player or the environment.

I am wondering how many suffer from this affliction, so please chime in with possible solutions or if this is a problem for you as well.

FYI, please no comments about add-ons or lowering settings, these do nothing. And I also have a machine far more powerful than what is recommended for this game. (Core i5 3570k 4.4GHZ, Samsung SSD, 16Gigs Ram, GTX 670 in SLI[Was prevalent with and without SLI, so that's not the problem] and lots of fancy stickers.)

I usually do PVE, so not much in Cyrodil, but my FPS is usually around 60 all the time

zerosingularity

danno8 wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

It's not a memory leak though. I did some digging on the subject (intermittent FPS drop to 10fps) and there was no indication of a memory leak when and while it happens.

Today I fully monitored both CPU and GPU and I agree it does not seem to be a memory leak.

Upon onset of symptoms system memory was at 8gb/16gb, CPU was never past around 50% on all cores, GPU never went past 75%, although GPU memory was always at 1900-2000/2048. This was always at that number though even at play start, so I think the game just uses a lot of video memory all the time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't ESO allocate a certain amount of memory(for the CPU) upon initializing and never increase beyond this amount? If this is the case, then when the memory is filled from all kinds of particles and effects, it would need to flush, but is having trouble doing so. Since the allocated memory is full, the CPU has trouble getting the data needed for processing and sending to the GPU, thus causing the FPS to crash. Zoning would force the memory to empty in order to load in a new zone, which is why things magically get better when people zone or re-log.

This is my speculation, but wouldn't surprise me if some of it is spot on or flat out wrong.

zerosingularity

altemriel wrote: »

zerosingularity wrote: »

So there is an issue plaguing the community. Many members are affected by it, and many are not. I am talking of course about the issues we face when gaming for an extended amount of time. When gaming on ESO for a while, your FPS will start to drop, or the screen will become buggy. Sometimes a reloadUI fixes this, but in other cases it does not. The issue seems to accelerate when there are a lot of affects being generated by the player or the environment.

I am wondering how many suffer from this affliction, so please chime in with possible solutions or if this is a problem for you as well.

FYI, please no comments about add-ons or lowering settings, these do nothing. And I also have a machine far more powerful than what is recommended for this game. (Core i5 3570k 4.4GHZ, Samsung SSD, 16Gigs Ram, GTX 670 in SLI[Was prevalent with and without SLI, so that's not the problem] and lots of fancy stickers.)

I usually do PVE, so not much in Cyrodil, but my FPS is usually around 60 all the time

This issue is mostly a PvE problem, that not everyone experiences. PvP has its own slew of issues that are best left to a whole different topic. I can see this becoming a problem in Cyrodiil, but since people are zoning from keep to keep, it likely doesn't rear it's ugly head as often.

I find it occurs more often in Maelstrom Arena, like has been mentioned before. While it does occur anywhere if one does not zone or re-log for an extended time, this can cause a major issue in the vet arena. It is phenomenally harder to complete the arenas at 20-30 FPS choppy as opposed to 60+ FPS smooth.

gibous

@zerosingularity Yes I'm experiencing the same – I first noticed it in vMA – halfway through FPS goes to very low numbers and makes it hard to play. Only thing that fixes it is a client restart.

danno8

zerosingularity wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

It's not a memory leak though. I did some digging on the subject (intermittent FPS drop to 10fps) and there was no indication of a memory leak when and while it happens.

Today I fully monitored both CPU and GPU and I agree it does not seem to be a memory leak.

Upon onset of symptoms system memory was at 8gb/16gb, CPU was never past around 50% on all cores, GPU never went past 75%, although GPU memory was always at 1900-2000/2048. This was always at that number though even at play start, so I think the game just uses a lot of video memory all the time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't ESO allocate a certain amount of memory(for the CPU) upon initializing and never increase beyond this amount? If this is the case, then when the memory is filled from all kinds of particles and effects, it would need to flush, but is having trouble doing so. Since the allocated memory is full, the CPU has trouble getting the data needed for processing and sending to the GPU, thus causing the FPS to crash. Zoning would force the memory to empty in order to load in a new zone, which is why things magically get better when people zone or re-log.

This is my speculation, but wouldn't surprise me if some of it is spot on or flat out wrong.

Yes you are right. It occurs to me that I looked at total memory usage during the low fps and not the memory usage for ESO.exe specifically. Thinking I still had 8gb left so it wasn't a problem.

Of course ESO being a 32-bit process can only use a maximum of 4gb for the process. Right now at idle I sit at around 2.5 GB being used. At maximum I was at 8.5GB, so that is 6 GB extra.

At most 2 GB of the 6 GB would be the system mapped video memory (your system actually uses the same amount of memory from your regular RAM as you use in your video RAM- like a mirror) and that would leave 4 GB being used presumably from eso.exe. If that is the case then yes the process may have been getting memory starved and a memory leak may be to blame.

zerosingularity

Edit main post and bump. If you are experiencing any FPS drop from extended play, please post here.

RoyJade

I don't know if the problem is the same, but it seem that I have some memory problem. I don't loose any fps, but I crash very, very often (each 3 minutes inside Orsinium, 10 minutes in Whroghar and Maelstrom arena, after a teleportation in pvp), and every time I crashed, my computer say that 90% of my memory (all but the system) is dedicated to ESO, even long after the crash. I'm on Mac, though.
And sorry for my english, I know that I'm not good (especially for this message, I think).