FPS, Resolution, and Monitor Size

Mythilas

Hello,

I apologize if this is a stupid question, but I hope someone can help explain an issue I am having. I have a 27"in monitor with a resolution of 2560x1440. While participating in PVE content and dungeons, my fps is generally 85+ on ultra settings. However, when I participate in large scale Cyrodiil battles, I generally need to lower my settings in order to maintain higher frame rates. Sometimes, even with the lowered settings, it is a really miserable experience in terms of fps drops and stutter while playing at 2560x1440 resolution. I have tried switching my resolution to 1920x1080, but honestly, I really do not get much improvement at the lower resolution, which seems strange to me. However, when I connect my old 24" inch monitor with a native 1920x1080 resolution, use the exact same in-game settings, and run the same content, I see considerably better fps and performance.

My question is as follows: why am I getting better fps on the 24" inch monitor at 1920x1080 than on the 27"inch at 1920x1080? I have always understood that monitor size should not affect fps if playing at the same resolution. Am I missing something here? Any suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks much for your time!

ZOS_GaryA

Hey there @Mythilas,

There can be a few things that affect the performance on the larger monitor that you can take into consideration. The first is that you'll want to ensure that you change not only the game's resolution, but the actual desktop resolution as well. While the game will run at 1920x1080, it's still re-scaling your desktop size of 2560x1440, so that can be the cause of the missing performance gains. You can change your desktop resolution by right clicking anywhere on your background and selecting Screen Resolution.

The next thing that comes to mind is the refresh rate of each monitor. If the 27" monitor has a high refresh rate like 85hz or 120hz, you may notice a performance decrease vs. a monitor that has a refresh rate of 60hz. You can check and change the refresh rate of your monitor(s) by heading to the previously mentioned Screen Resolution menu, clicking Advanced Settings, and heading to the Monitor tab.

Mythilas

Doh! I did not realize I needed to change my desktop resolution, also, but that makes sense. Thank you so much for the tips!

Elf_Boy

If the game is running in full screen exclusive mode the desktop resolution should not matter -- I admit it makes entering and exiting the game smoother and alt-tab friendlier.

1920*1080 is 2073600 pixels x 32 bits (24 color 8 gama) = 8,294,400 bytes
2560*1440 is 3686400 pixels x 32 bits (24 color 8 gama) = 14,745,600 bytes

When you add AA the amount of memory needed goes up exponentially.

The point being is each of those pixels needs a lot of work to be rendered and more work to be pre and post processed and made pretty then pushed to your monitor.

The higher resolution is almost twice and many pixels and using the better looking forms of AA will render at 4x the res or more internally and then fit it back down to screen sized.

To be honest I dont know much more about the process beyond this, just be aware as the resolution goes up the 'work' can be squared or cubed and may go beyond the memory available in the vid card in which case it starts to borrow from main memory which is very slow.

How much memory does your vid card have?

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

So what window mode is better for performance?

Mythilas

Elf_Boy wrote: »

If the game is running in full screen exclusive mode the desktop resolution should not matter -- I admit it makes entering and exiting the game smoother and alt-tab friendlier.

1920*1080 is 2073600 pixels x 32 bits (24 color 8 gama) = 8,294,400 bytes
2560*1440 is 3686400 pixels x 32 bits (24 color 8 gama) = 14,745,600 bytes

When you add AA the amount of memory needed goes up exponentially.

The point being is each of those pixels needs a lot of work to be rendered and more work to be pre and post processed and made pretty then pushed to your monitor.

The higher resolution is almost twice and many pixels and using the better looking forms of AA will render at 4x the res or more internally and then fit it back down to screen sized.

To be honest I dont know much more about the process beyond this, just be aware as the resolution goes up the 'work' can be squared or cubed and may go beyond the memory available in the vid card in which case it starts to borrow from main memory which is very slow.

How much memory does your vid card have?

Yes, unfortunately, matching my desktop resolution to my in game resolution did not make any difference. It really is quite strange that I do not get the same performance at 1920x1080 on my 27" monitor that I do at 1920x1080 on my 24". Again, normally, it does not matter, but during really large scale battles it is hard to run at 2560x1440. Though the new particle scaling options my alleviate my issues.

In regard to my memory, I am running a GTX 780ti with 3GB.

Elf_Boy

Three Gg is a decent level of vram.

Can you double check in the game client and at the NV control panel that all the AA/AF and other settings are the same, including the "prefer max performance." I wonder if NV is making changes under the hood in response to the monitor change?

I hear what you are saying about the 24" vs the 27" at the same resolution giving different levels of performance: That is very, very odd!

Do you connect with the same cable? Or same cable type?

In theory the sync rate being off would only cause tearing... but who knows if it is display port vs hdmi vs dvi-a vs dvi-d maybe something else is going on.

Same res, same bit depth should get the same results. Do either of the monitors have a driver based profile that was installed?

Elf_Boy

inspiral1 wrote: »

So what window mode is better for performance?

Full screen should give the best performance -- depending how it is being configured and called up by the game engine.

Could also try full-screen windowed and see what happens.

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

My pc is icore 5

AMD 7850

i think either 6 or 8g mem

i get same issues in large battles although fine everywhere else, but the PFX is a massive improvent, although i don't have to turn down any gfx i do have to turn right down the view distance then Il get about 30-40 fps in large conflicts, i would like to keep the distance at max, but in i asking to much from my pc ? Is this normal?

anyway the PFX system is a god send, and very cleverly done.

Elf_Boy

inspiral1 wrote: »

My pc is icore 5

AMD 7850

i think either 6 or 8g mem

i get same issues in large battles although fine everywhere else, but the PFX is a massive improvent, although i don't have to turn down any gfx i do have to turn right down the view distance then Il get about 30-40 fps in large conflicts, i would like to keep the distance at max, but in i asking to much from my pc ? Is this normal?

anyway the PFX system is a god send, and very cleverly done.

How much memory in your graphics card? As opposed to you motherboard.

I know for non-tech people this is just a lot of numbers, and not something that is obvious.

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

8 gigs ram just checked

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

oh handon i just found out how to check properly and it says

5854 MB Total memory

2048 MB Dedicated

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

is that crappy ?

Elf_Boy

No, probably not.

Is this a laptop?

Some laptops will combine system and video ram.

Saves cash but can lead to slight problems. One: some of the memory that could be being used by programs, games, etc is being instead used for the video card and two: the video card will always access this shared ram much slower then dedicated separate ram just for rendering the screen.

From the original post I got the feeling you have a desktop type system which would very likely have separate memory. It is entirely possible that everything you posted in the first post I just looked at again could have been done on a laptop too.

Out of curiosity which is it?

SirAndy

Elf_Boy wrote: »

If the game is running in full screen exclusive mode the desktop resolution should not matter

In a perfect world that is correct, but ESO didn't even offer exclusive full screen until recently and i wouldn't be surprised if there is still some sort of scaling going on.

That would be easy to test by running it in a lower resolution first *without* changing your desktop resolution.
Then change your desktop resolution to match the lower ESo settings and compare FPS between the two setups.

On a true exclusive full screen game, the FPS should be identical. If they aren't, well ...

Elf_Boy

I have reasons to suspect the full screen mode isnt quite --er-- normal.

I have desktop and game set to the same 5760*1080 @‌60. Despite this alt-tab, enter/exit the game and all 3 monitors de-sync and re-sync.

Not sure what is going on as I dont have another system to compare with or without surround.

When I am at windowed-full screen this doesnt happen. (Not that you would expect it to)

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

it is a desktop yeah

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

i went in a large scale battle yesterday and i mean there were aloooooooot of people defiantly the most ive seen in one spot at one time ever, the fps was bad, but i have no idea if this is normal, but when i bought the pc i was expecting it to be okie to handle it on about atleast 30 fps, i have like 70 + in pve

but there was alooooot going on yesterday on screen i have no idea if this is an issue on my end or if thats all im going to get because its not a boss pc

Elf_Boy

I hear a lot of comments about big PVP battles slowing things down.

The game does too good a job of rendering every player, their armor and all the spells, colors, abilities, etc.

Players are one of the things the game engine works the most to draw. Which in turn asks the most of your graphics card.

The 1.4 patch added some new options RE: Particle effects and for culling other players. I forget the names of those off the top of my head.

When in PVP you may need to drop those and some other settings to keep the frame-rate high(ish) and the game responsive.

I installed the new nvidia 344.11 driver last night and after the game felt a whole lot smoother to play with a slight fps increase for me.

There are also add-ons out there where you can specify PVE, trial, instance and PVP FX settings so they can automatically switch for you. This may help you out quite a bit.

Elf_Boy

I am looking at the .ini for the engine.

I am set -- in game -- to full screen. The .ini reads:

SET PreferExclusiveFullscreen "0"

I do not know if that has to do with windowed full-screen or forcing a better d3d/dx mode? Anyone know? Will it help for pvp or other low fps situations?