The ESO engine, just what is causing low FPS in big battles!? (before and AFTER 1.2.3 problem)

Jarnhand

Just want to make a reminder about this.

Yes the 1.2.3 insane lagg is gone, but the fundamental performance problem of the game engine is still there.

In 1.2.5 after hotfix its the same strange problem as in all the time prior to 1.2.3:
In big fights fps drops to about 30 fps, and the weird thing is that the highest used CPU CORE (NOT the whole CPU, I am talking about highest used CORE) is at only 70%, and the GPU is only at about 50% usage.

In short, there is something 'weird' in the engine, NOT using the resources in peoples computers.

And people that do not use monitoring tools, are blissfully ignorant to the matter, that several hundred dollars worth of computer hardware is not fully used...

tomiffseb17_ESO

Jarnhand wrote: »

In 1.2.5 after hotfix its the same strange problem as in all the time prior to 1.2.3:
In big fights fps drops to about 30 fps, and the weird thing is that the highest used CPU CORE (NOT the whole CPU, I am talking about highest used CORE) is at only 70%, and the GPU is only at about 50% usage.

Yep, thats what frustrates me aswell. None of my cores maxed, highest is jumping 50-80% ish and yet the drops comes. Lets not even talk the rest of the cores as they are almost all idleing. I do hope the "ongoing effort" to increase performance will have something to do with this. I am very patient but for me pvp > all

Jarnhand

@ZOS_PierreL‌

Yesterday at Nikel, big fight, would be guessing about 100-150 or so chars in total. A little later at another keep, same results.

Fps about 20, highest CPU core about 70% (total 4 cores with hyperthreading, OCed i7 3770 @ 3,9 ghz), GPU (OCed AMD 7970) usage up to/around 40% only!! the other 3 cores are humming away at about 10-40%.

And I am not the only one seeing this, 'everyone' is. The problem is very few players use monitoring tools so they see just how little of the computer resources that are used. The rest is blissfully ignorant about the problem.

Zenimax come on, what is going on?! We are wasting computer resources. The game could have used at least 30% more of the CPU core, and 60% more of the GPU. Game engine should also have been fully multi-threaded, we are talking 2014 here, and MMOs need CPU power badly!

When there is little action around, the GPU usage is at about 70% (I have it caped to vsync which is at 60 with current setup). If I removed vsync I would guess the GPU would be acting normal e.g. fully used.

Is there a problem with hyperthreading? Is this the problem? It sure looks to be a CPU processing problem. Just what is going on?! Why do you not tell us what was the problem with 1.2.3 patch? Why do you not go further and fix the problem that is pretty obvious you have with the game engine?

People are wasting computer resources big time, and this gives the game a bad rep. Many players could have had a lot higher FPS if the game engine bottleneck had been dealt with.

GTech_1

This needs greater attention from ZOS.
I'm tired of reporting this issue. Tired of telling folks exactly what the issue is (forced, conditional GPU 'wait' calls), all with no response other than "we are working on it"

I love the game, but NO game has my permission to put a "governor" on my rig.

It has been reported that this is due to security measures that have been put in place to combat botting, etc.
This is clearly *not* the way to go about security

Audigy

While I can Play the game on max details, I still want to point out that this is one of the major issues of the game and while a few patches helped, its still an ongoing problem.

We need to get that quad core support as soon as possible, it will only get worse once more people are VR 12 and start to pvp or raid. A FPS drop in a town might be ok for most, but these things will ruin the fun for those participating in large battles a lot.

While I personally only drop to about 30 on ultra in towns, I feel with those who drop to 20 or even lower.

tomiffseb17_ESO

Audigy wrote: »

We need to get that quad core support as soon as possible,

I wish to see this soon, with the 1.2.5 and the hotfix right after the patch day i went to my first pvp battle and i was shocked. Enemy team of 20-30 players, half of them sieged rest just stayed near them. No one moved and i was like wtf ITS FINALLY FIXED I HAVE 40+ fps. Then the wall came down, everyone made a move and boom, dropped to low 20

Still the hotfix itself worked, i had the same performance as before. (Lets just forget the days when it dropped to 2-3)

SlaaMM

wrlifeboil wrote: »

Jarnhand wrote: »

DontBeAfraid wrote: »

http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility

And why should this be the solution? It cannot seriously be so that for a modern game you need to do a hardcore tweak on your computer, that is not even remotely close to normal for 99% of all PC users, for it to work like other normal games!

Eso like many other mmos doesn't fully take advantage of multicore cpus. Video game software tools haven't reached the point where it is simple for video game programmers to do that yet. If you watch the cpu core utilization during really heavy action, most of the activity will be on core 0.

Actually the problem is not the game its Direct X. Direct X was not programmed to run on multiple cores, seeing that the core of Direct X is from 1998 or maybe even 1995.

Tomshardware,
"Both DirectX and OpenGL were created in the previous millennium. It was a time before multi-core CPUs in mainstream devices were possible. Recently, some developers have voiced concerns that they are bloated, prone to instability, and scale poorly (or not at all) on well-threaded platforms."


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-mantle-performance-benchmark,3860.html

Armitas

Same for me. 15fps, cpu/gpu still swimming in the baby pool.

Aeowyn

Armitas wrote: »

Same for me. 15fps, cpu/gpu still swimming in the baby pool.

Same. I don't have the monitoring tools for core usage etc., but FPS drops to 8-10 on a 760 video card. I can't PvP with my guild any more, which is a bummer because this end game content is why I got the game. I don't go to Cyrodiil anymore. I really wish Zenimax would resolve this issue while they continue to collect me subscription.

SamWale

I've had this very same problem on both Mac and PC, both with extremely powerful processors and GPUs.

ESO is not fully utilising the available processing power which leads to massive drops in FPS around busy areas, particularly crafting stations and large battles.

Please fix this Zenimax!!

Moonraker

SlaaMM wrote: »

Actually the problem is not the game its Direct X. Direct X was not programmed to run on multiple cores, seeing that the core of Direct X is from 1998 or maybe even 1995.

Incorrect. One of the principal features of Direct3D 11 was just that, back in 2008;

Multithreaded rendering — to render to the same Direct3D device object from different threads for multi core CPUs

source

Not perfect and has results as we see currently due to a number of reasons including;

DirectX 11 introduced the ability to put together sequences of instructions for the GPU on multiple threads. However, actual dispatch to the GPU was still performed on a single thread, and the design of DirectX 11 means that some of the work must be done on that single thread. Moreover, not all GPU drivers support this capability. DirectX 12 will increase the amount of work that's performed on the different cores, and similarly reduce the burden on the main thread.

source
One reason why the release of DirectX 12 could well make a big difference in itself without any or much developer work on existing computers/ GPU (also OpenGL as it is released) and offer even more opportunity for optimisations too.