Areas with persistent FPS drop.

Nightgard · April 2014

Hi,

the game is running smoothly most of the time between 40 and 50 fps.

But when I visit some caves with fog in it, or when there's lot of smoke (when an anchor goes down) my FPS drops around 10-15 (unplayable)

I don't know what setting I should change, not many choices. I installed the add-on "ESO toolbox" with more options but I don't know what to do.

I mean, don't want to lose too much quality, because 90% of the time I've got a nice FPS.
Would be depressing to play with no shadows or grass at all because of this issue.

Thank you

Laura · April 2014

this happens to me too. there is a cave in the daggerfall area (I think the second zone) that brings me down to around 10. I thought there might be a memory leak there or something because I can pvp fine and none of cold harbor bothers me. I also notice a drop with those really bright beams in caves.

Nightgard · April 2014

I was in one of these area , I tried to turn off several settings one by one, nothing changed...I don't get it.

Nightgard · April 2014

Ok so, explain me this :

Picture 1 : Water reflection to High. 40 Fps in the forest, facing a waterfall, river is close.
Picture 2 : in a cavern just behind , Fps drop to 24 for no reason. Smaller area, should be higher.
Picture 3 : I switch water reflection to low.
Picture 4 : I'm back around 40 Fps.
Last picture : to show that there's no water in that direction or on top of the cavern...

I really, don't get it ! please help !

PS: changing anything else doesn't bring back my FPS, even with subsampling quality to low (which is very ugly) I'm only around 35fps

Belrim · April 2014

Had one massive fps drop in Windhelm, when was doing some quest where a NPC opened a portal, the effect made my computer crawl.

Funny thing is, that all the other dozens of "cast a portal open" effects dont cause this.

Frail_Old_Man · April 2014

Fog/smoke and certain light effects are a major framerate droppers even on good machines.
I run pretty solid 60fps, but near some of the smoke/fog/lights it just tanks to 30-40.

Sihnfahl · April 2014

The mobs are losing, so they yell: Drop a smoke grenade!

Nightgard · April 2014

If I put an elder scrolls between the camera and my character I have a huge FPS drop too.
And this time, no setting is able to bring back my framerate.

I'm around 15 Fps with graphics in medium/high.
If I put everything in low (even subsampling) I'm only at 25Fps. With this setting I'm around 100 Fps everywhere else lol.

If it can helps to find what's causing this...

PS: The add-on "Eso toolbox" has an option to literally stop particles , fire doesn't move anymore etc... Even with this , Framerate is low, I don't get it.

Nightgard · May 2014

Ok , new test.

Image :

1-Good 65Fps with settings a little above medium.(see in image 2)
2-FPS drops at 25 when I look this way. you can see the settings.

So I tried to switch everything to off or low (forgot to screenshot), I had a nice 100 FPS.

3-I keep everything to off or low, except I put the subsampling to High(same results in Medium). I have a low FPS of 34. Should be way higher than that...
4-With the same settings, I've got 100 Fps when I'm not looking at the window.

I did the test with everything, subsampling is the setting giving me a FPS drop in this location.
But playing with subsampling in Low is NOT an option, not with this computer.

So please, look into this.
Because it's not happening only there, it is an issue in pvp sometimes and pve too.

Thank you

Audigy · May 2014

Ya the game is sometimes acting a bit weird, especially if you have those tiny smoke particles like at stonefalls.

You can lower the particle density to get around this, I refuse to do this however as its still above 30 FPS in my case. But also at night, when a lot of lights are on you see a slight drop in FPS especially at Daggerfall.

I don't think this has anything to do with our GPU´s, especially if you consider that lowering the settings doesn't work. I believe its a result of the current lack of multithreading as almost everything happens on one core and our CPU just cant progress the data fast enough.

But this is coming from someone with a 6970 AMD, I would love to have some input of someone with a newer card to compare the results.

Laerian · May 2014

Yes this fps drops happen sometimes in small areas with nothing special.

For example this shack in Auridon-Shattered Grove. When I tested, using different video qualities I managed to down the fps to ~25-30 with all maxed.