Help with FPS - 680 SLI

amanfr01

Hey!

So I'm wondering why I'm not at a constant 60 FPS throughout some areas of the game. The main town in Eastmarch, for example (up north), drops to as low as 40 fps sometimes. My current rig is as follows:

GPU: GTX 680 2gb x2 (SLI)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770k @ 3.5ghz
RAM: 8gb (7.94 GB usable)
Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 60hz (22" monitor)

Why would my framerate go below 60 FPS with this setup? Is ESO still not working well with SLI? I have everything as high as it'll go; all ultra settings.

Can anyone help with this, if at all possible?

ZOS_GaryA

Hey there @amanfr01,

We're going to send you a PM to gather a bit more information about this issue. If anyone else is experiencing something similar, please feel free to post. If we reach a resolution, we'll be sure to update this thread for the benefit of other folks with similar issues.

Elf_Boy

I also have a gtx 680. Mine has 4gb of vram. I use the vendor supplied utility to check how much ram the gpu is using. I have gone as high as 3.5 gb from playing ESO.

I do play at an extended resolution. What resolution do you play at? My guess would be you need more vram.

The GTX 970/980 is a really good upgrade path from the 680 and the new card all have 4gb.

amanfr01

I play at 1920 x 1080p, on a 60hz monitor. Take note that I have two 680's running in SLI. Apparently, according to sources, a single 980 isn't much different than 680 SLI, aside from playing games that are incompatible with SLI.

Dizzmalb14_ESO

In terms of single monitors, you have overkill. There are known issues,(wither ZO will admit or not) in towns and areas that has large amounts of players. Watch your GPU usage and clock rate in the areas that you are getting low FPS. I have the same issues with 2 EVGA 780 classified in SLI with a 3770K @ 4.8ghz. Some towns will still only give me 40~50 fps and my GPU clock will go to nearly idle clocks.

Elf_Boy

amanfr01 wrote: »

I play at 1920 x 1080p, on a 60hz monitor. Take note that I have two 680's running in SLI. Apparently, according to sources, a single 980 isn't much different than 680 SLI, aside from playing games that are incompatible with SLI.

Thank you.

I did note that. I was thinking of the upgrade more because of the vram then raw pixel number crunching power.

Tonight -- or since I had a very long day more likely tomorrow, I will set my game to 1920*1080 and play though a few zones, characters to see how how the gpu memory goes.

If - as I suspect - it goes over 2 gb, you may be hitting your vram ceiling, which can cause severe fps/rendering problems.

Elf_Boy

I decided to check before bed. This is what I found:

I checked Vram usage in windows @ .3 GB

I loaded the launcher and game.

At the character screen I set the game to windowed mode and set to the size of 1920*1080.

I loaded my lvl 38 Sorcerer who was at the smithy in Velyn Harbor.

At the smithy, while checking on progress for wood working and light armor crafting I was using 1.9 gb vram

I went inside to the bank and vram dropped to 1.4 gb

Did some business and purchased a few items from the guild store to use to learn new traits.

I switched to my lvl 32 Night Blade also at the same crafting stations in Velyn Harbor got 1.8 gb at the smithy and 1.4 at the bank.

Switched back to my first character.

Mail was now received and went to clothing station and learned the 2 traits I had just purchased items to learn from. Same results 1.4 inside 1.8 outside.

Walked to wayshrine and ported to Khenarthi's Roost.

Looked around and was at 1.4 gb.

Used way shrine to go to Vulkhel Guard.

At the way shrine I was at 1.4 gb. I walked into the bank and went to 2.1 gb. There were some people there. Not crowded also defiantly not empty.

Walked back to wayshrine and ported to Elden Roots.

I landed at 2.0 gb. I stayed there a min to see if it would go down. It went up to 2.2 before stabilizing.

I walked up to the trade area on the second floor and went to the bank. This took me to 2.6 gb vram.

I then walked back down to the wayshrine and ported back to Velyn Harbor.

I landed at 1.8 gb at the way shrine - I walked back the the crafting area and stayed at 1.8 gb.

I then set my resolution to full screen. 5670*1080 and exited the client.

Zotac firestorm then reported me at .3 gb at the desktop with a 'max' of 2.6 bg.

Some things to note. Windowed may well take some more memory then full screen. I dont know. I still had my two other monitors running, though that likely was accounted for in the .3 gb base reading I provided.

I have literally every setting in the game maxed.

Your mileage may vary and I recommend finding a utility that works with your GPU's to check vram usage.

I also am aware that the GPU will cache texture that it has used but is not currently using. I do not know how this game engine deals with texture caching, Your system may be more aggressive about flushing unused textures due to the lower vram cap.

I have, after a very long play session at my full res noted the vram at over 3.5 gb.

You have an awesome pair of video cards. It is apparent you know what you are doing and have a nice system. The current generation of best looking games use a lot of big textures.

From the benchmarks I have looked at over the last couple of years on various hardware sites the cards with more vram tend to be the winners when resolutions and/or settings and/or aa/af are pushed up.

Anyhow I hope this is helpful.

**EB**

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

amanfr01 wrote: »

Hey!

So I'm wondering why I'm not at a constant 60 FPS throughout some areas of the game. The main town in Eastmarch, for example (up north), drops to as low as 40 fps sometimes. My current rig is as follows:

GPU: GTX 680 2gb x2 (SLI)
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770k @ 3.5ghz
RAM: 8gb (7.94 GB usable)
Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 60hz (22" monitor)

Why would my framerate go below 60 FPS with this setup? Is ESO still not working well with SLI? I have everything as high as it'll go; all ultra settings.

Can anyone help with this, if at all possible?

We have similar problems and I have 295X2 and 4820K @ 5Ghz. Even if one GPU core was working actually, still is too slow.

Elf_Boy

How much vram do you have?

p_tsakirisb16_ESO

Elf_Boy wrote: »

How much vram do you have?

4+4 GB VRAM (4 on each GPU core)

Elf_Boy

That is a goodly amount of vram.

Has AMD posted an official Cross-Fire solution for the game?

I have read both SLI and Xfire can in some games lower performance rather then increase it as expected.

What resolution are you playing at?

Have you tried playing with only one GPU do you still get the stuttering?

Have you tried the new FX options that allow you to select less particles and less other characters to be rendered?

Player characters with their shinny armor, spells and effects with all the custom colors hit the rendering engine real hard.

I place some of the blame on both NVidia and AMD. Just about every other big release out there with anywhere as many players gets an optimization added to a release driver by now.

Sadly Amd has a rep for being slow about these things, I hope NVidia gets with it soon.

I wonder if ZOS could give them a push and a shove. Optimized driver code would benefit every player.

Elf_Boy

After posting I saw that new AMD drivers have been released. A very quick looks shows no code optimizations for ESO -- but honestly I only read the short patch notes not the full notes.

amanfr01

It's just a shame

It seems like my FPS only stutters in major cities. Other than that it's 60 fps constantly. I have a feeling it's just poor optimization for SLI, as you noted. You'd think that, SLI being rather standard these days, it'd be standard procedure to optimize the setup for every major release.

Elf_Boy

I did some quick google searches as near as I can tell ESO is under the radar for both AMD and NVidia.

I know the threads are looked over. I hope (if it has not already been done) someone on staff can officially invite NVidia and AMD to help with optimization of the game engine.

It is my understanding both companies have programs for that kind of process. I do not however know if this would involve fees or other roadblocks.

SamWale

I've been having this same problem for months.

Solid 60+ FPS everywhere except in towns and cities, where it starts dropping as low as 40. Graphics become stuttery and the game feels less responsive.

Here's my setup:

GPU: GTX 770 2GB
Processor: Intel Core i5-4690k @ 3.5ghz
RAM: 16GB
Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 60hz (24" monitor)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Elf_Boy

SamWale wrote: »

I've been having this same problem for months.

Solid 60+ FPS everywhere except in towns and cities, where it starts dropping as low as 40. Graphics become stuttery and the game feels less responsive.

Here's my setup:

GPU: GTX 770 2GB
Processor: Intel Core i5-4690k @ 3.5ghz
RAM: 16GB
Resolution: 1920 x 1080, 60hz (24" monitor)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

How many hard drives do you have? Are they SSD or magnetic? If you have more then one drive which one has the pagefile? (control panel -> system -> advanced system settings - advanced - performance -> advanced -> change

But dont actually change anything if you are not familiar with virtual memory settings.

Just curious, May not have anything to do with it -- just thinking about what systems *could* cause a problem like this.

nalimoleb14_ESO

Same problem...GTX 680 SLI gpus, i7-3840QM @ 2.8ghz processor, 1920x1080 120hz 17.3" monitor. I used to get smooth fps, but ever since I renewed my sub and installed the latest patch I went from 80-100 fps down to 40+.

tplink3r1

Elf_Boy wrote: »

I also have a gtx 680. Mine has 4gb of vram. I use the vendor supplied utility to check how much ram the gpu is using. I have gone as high as 3.5 gb from playing ESO.

I do play at an extended resolution. What resolution do you play at? My guess would be you need more vram.

The GTX 970/980 is a really good upgrade path from the 680 and the new card all have 4gb.

3,5gb?
the game uses only 2.2Gb for me, even in PvP.

Elf_Boy

tplink3r1 wrote: »

Elf_Boy wrote: »

I also have a gtx 680. Mine has 4gb of vram. I use the vendor supplied utility to check how much ram the gpu is using. I have gone as high as 3.5 gb from playing ESO.

I do play at an extended resolution. What resolution do you play at? My guess would be you need more vram.

The GTX 970/980 is a really good upgrade path from the 680 and the new card all have 4gb.

3,5gb?
the game uses only 2.2Gb for me, even in PvP.

After very long play sessions, crossing multiple characters and zones, yes.

C3N50R3D

Just found this thread. I have had lots of stutter for a while now. FPS is more uneven than most other games varying between 16 to 60Fps. FPS is capped at 60. I have noticed heavy usage on one CPU core and low usage on the other 3 cores. GPU usage is around 40-60% on both GPUs. Overclocking GPU does not reduce stutter. Stutter has persisted through the last few NVidia driver updates. I remember getting smooth FPS sometime a few months ago but since that time it has been terrible. Not sure if threads need to be better allocated across CPU cores or need better SLI profile or need better precompile shader cache usage. Overclocking CPU does not seem to help as much as it should in a CPU bound game so that may be only part of the problem.

Vsync on, triple buffer, prerendered frames=3, no smoothing seem to give best performance. I have changed many settings with no significant improvement.

All power savings disabled in bios and OS.

Windows 8 64 bit
GTX 680 SLI 4G VRAM on each card
NVidia Surround 5760x1080 triple wide
i7 3770K
16G RAM
Samsung 840 512G SSD
MSI GD65 Z77 mainboard
Liquid cooled dual loop CPU and GPU

Elf_Boy

Have you checked the nv control panel and the games .ini to make sure both are set to allow multi-threading? Do you have vsync on?

I'm using the same GPU and similar specs, though AMD for the CPU.

C3N50R3D

Vsync is on. Multi threading is enabled. Switching between windowed and full screen does not help. Changing graphics settings gives a few more FPS but does not fix the stutter. Might have something to do with SLI and NVidia triple monitor surround.

Elf_Boy

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Vsync is on. Multi threading is enabled. Switching between windowed and full screen does not help. Changing graphics settings gives a few more FPS but does not fix the stutter. Might have something to do with SLI and NVidia triple monitor surround.

SLI - likely.

5760*1080 Surround. I suspect not as that is the resolution I play at with the same GPU.

I've been reading about some problems with SLI where the voltage in one card will go down which lowers the performance in the other card because they have to stay in sync. I dont know if that is just with the 900 series though.

Can you play without SLI? Even if you have monitors connected to both cards you can set the game to full screen windowed and have SLI off and NV surround off and play at full resolution.

What does that do?

C3N50R3D

Yeah. Less stutter and lower fps. Maybe Zen needs to work with NVidia for a better SLI profile?

Elf_Boy

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Yeah. Less stutter and lower fps. Maybe Zen needs to work with NVidia for a better SLI profile?

I keep hoping that Zen and Nvidia will get together and get a formal nvidia optimization.

Many other games get them at launch or shortly after launch.

Getting a proper SLI profile would be nice too.

C3N50R3D

The problem seems to be not using CPU multi threading efficiently. I can see this by monitoring thread affinity to CPU cores.

From a post by NVidia. "Elder Scrolls Online - No SLi Support // SLI supported for some time, scaling is variable depending on the zone/area/gameplay type. Heavily CPU bound. Personally worked with gamers on this board to refine profile."

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/781212/i-am-done-with-sli/?offset=100

C3N50R3D

Yeah. Pretty sure one of the game patches broke the NVidia SLI bits. Need a new profile please.

DeLindsay

I still can't understand how some of you with obviously superior PC's to mine have FPS issues. I also run on Ultra but can sit in Rawl'Kha right by the Guild traders with tons of players around spamming abilities and be well over 60 FPS, I was at 87 FPS when I logged out there just a few minutes ago.

Gen 4 Core i3-4130 @3.4ghz
8GB 1600 mhz RAM
GTX 560 Ti (non-SLi) 1gb RAM
24" dual monitors running 1920x1080
Win7 Premium 64bit
Time Warner Cable 50mb internet in Kansas

C3N50R3D

It's mainly stutter with SLI that is the problem. It also depends how high you run your graphics settings. With highest graphics settings one screen without SLI hits my FPS cap of 60. 3 screens in Surround 5760x1080 without SLI is lower than 60 in many places. 3 screens in Surround with SLI gets stutter and wide variation in FPS. Several months ago SLI was smooth. That's why I think a game patch broke NVidia's SLI profile and Zenimax and NVidia need to work on new SLI bits.

C3N50R3D

Posted here.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/139012/random-fps-drop/p1

Here are two interesting SLI threads if anyone wants to try fixing the SLI.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=379960

http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=509912

Elf_Boy

I recently read that the nvidia physics + sli can cause stuttering on other games.

Anyone have a 3rd card to put in just for dedicated physics and/or willing to turn it off to test?