Elder Scrolls lag with 690 SLI & 4790K

ChaosWotan

Have tried the latest Nvidia WHQL drivers, and changed to 340.52 (released in July) which worked slightly better, but still get lag when playing Elder Scrolls Online in city areas with many players. And microstuttering occurs in empty forest areas, but less with the 340.52. Can anyone recommend other drivers that might better support two 690 cards in SLI when playing ESO at max settings?

I got i7 4790K (overclocked to 4.6 ghz), 8 GB RAM, Z97 Maximus VII Hero, a 256 GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD. A 100 mb internet connection. A score from 3DMark Fire Strike (paid version) which says that my PC is better than 99 percent of other computers in this test. And still I get stuttering. FPS often down to 55-45 when playing in city areas with other players in Elder Scrolls Online.

Latency between 65-100 with the EU server. Router and firewall checked and okay. Overclock stable according to Intel XTU. Overclocking helped, reduced stuttering by 10 percent perhaps, so CPU is important in this game. Tried Priority set to high in Task Manager, and always turn off launcher after the game is started.

And if anyone can recommend best settings for ESO in Nvidia control panel it would be great too.

In Nvida I now have tripple buffering on, Vsync at adaptive, pre-rendered at 2, high performance of course, anisotropic at 16x, antialiasing at 16CSA.

And don't remember the name but with the latest driver from November I turned off the last setting in the relatively new version of the control panel, just beneath Vsync, which by default is set to 1 by Nvidia.

The above settings work better than the default Nvidia settings which ESO customer support recommended, but have not experimented thoroughly in this regard, since there as so many variables when trying to find the best settings in control panel. Any advice from other SLI users will therefore be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

C3N50R3D

The constant frame skipping when standing still and panning the camera in areas like Wayrest courtyard is due to frame skips due to the game render thread waiting too long before waking up to start building the next frame. Approximately 20ms. GPU and CPU render time is only 12ms even without SLI with GTX680. This is more than enough time for a solid 60FPS. This is more prevalent on SLI and high end PCs for some reason. Significant CPU over clock does not help. I have done profiling with GPUView and XPerf with and without SLI to show this. I don't think Zeni is quite convinced this is their problem yet but something clearly changed with one of the patches a few months ago. Everyone blames the drivers but the drivers seem ok and the OS scheduler swap times are ok too. I hope they will acknowledge this soon and fix it because I don't get this microstutter in most other games.

ChaosWotan

Got the following reply and advice from support team:

First of all, could you tell me if you always had this stuttering issue in ESO or it came suddenly after a patch ?

I will give you several tips. The first ones are really simple and if you already did it, please just confirm me

Did you perform a repair ?
Did you check the updates ?
Did you remove your add-ons (not disabling only, entirely remove folder from Live folder in My Documents\Elder Scrolls Online) ?

If you are using add-ons, it could be possible that it corrupted definitively some files. I would also recommend you to make a backup of the Live folder content (content only) in the desktop, then remove the entire Live folder content ( content only) which is in My Documents and launch the game. Don't worry these files are temporary and should be recreated properly. If it's the case, you can delete the backup.

Did you turn off the vertical synchronization in-game and use the one from Nvidia Control Panel ?
Did you also try to disable the SLI ?
Did you perform a CleanBoot ? If not please find here a link which could help you: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/929135

You can remove the cleanboot by checking the option "normal startup" and then reboot the PC.

Please confirm me each steps you tried and tell me which results it gave you. It's a good think to post it on forum, I hope SLi user will be able to give you some tips !


Here is my answer:

Thanks for reply! Did a clean boot. No internet connection. So did a normal startup, took the repair, and with SLI enabled I got perhaps a 10-15 percent improvement while running around in the market of Riften, with almost no other players. FPS still drops every 1-2 seconds down to 41-55, which makes it playable. Latency is about 75-90.

But would not have played if this was a fast-action online game like BF4. I only tolerate it because I've learned to accept that one can't expect that game manufacturers will create and sell quality products that works well on all computers when people got different hardware, from medium to high-end computers. It's one of the few industries where one can't take it for granted that buying the best hardware will solve issues.

Disabled SLI and that made it slightly worse. Have no add-ons. Vsync disabled in game. Started playing in November, so got stuttering all the time since then.

Update: after having done the above, and got the improvements mentioned, I removed the LiveEU folder, and got perhaps a 5-10 percent further improvement, with FPS mainly between 50-60 now. Lowest was 47 while running around in Riften market with still few other players around.

Here are my specific settings in Nvidia with the 340.52 drivers from July (which work better than the new drivers):

Anisotropic: 16X
Antialiasing Mode: Enhance the application setting
Antialiasing: 16xQ CSAA
Maximum pre.rendered frames: Use global setting
Multi-GPU rendering mode: Force alternate frame rendering 2
Single monitor
Max performance
Texture filtering: off
Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Tripple buffering: On
Vertical sync: Adaptive

---

Here are two more sets of replies and advice received earlier, last week, from support. This one here is the second attempt from support to fix the problem:

Below are a list of steps that will help with possible connection issues:

Step 1: Make an exception/whitelist inside the anti-virus software. To do this follow the steps below -

· Open Microsoft Security Essentials from the Windows Start menu or from the Security Essentials icon in the system tray (in the task bar).
· Select the Settings tab and Excluded Files & Locations.
· Find the Zenimax Online folder and choose to exclude it.
· Default location: C:/ Program Files (x86)/ Zenimax Online.
· Be sure to include any sub-folders if the option is available.
· Click Save Changes at the bottom of the window.
· Be sure to re-enable Real-time Protection scanning at computers where necessary. Select Real-time Protection from the left side of the Settings panel. Check Turn on Real-time Protection again and click Save Changes.
· Close Microsoft Security Essentials.

Step 2: Forward ports in the router to make sure it isn't blocking anything we are trying to send out.

To do this, you will need to access a setup utility for your router. You can try opening a web browser and typing '192.168.1.1' into the address bar. If that does not work, you are going to have to find out what your router's IP address is. To do this, follow the directions below:

For a PC:
Press Windows key + R.
Type cmd as a command, and press OK or Enter to access the command line.
Type ipconfig, and you will get the information.

For a Mac:
Click on "SystemPreferences" from your dock (the Gear icon)
Select "Network"
Select the active connection (Green Dot)
Check the Router section

Please note that your computer IP address is IPv4 and your router IP is under the Default Gateway.

Once there, there should be a prompt for a username and password. The following are four commonly used default combinations that you can try. If you have previously entered the gateway, you may have setup another combination that you should enter here:

Username / Password
admin / password
admin / [blank]
admin / 1234
[blank] / admin

Once you are on the router gateway, navigate to the "Security" or "Firewall" section and set any options to low. These firewalls would be in addition to ones in place on your computer.

While you are in your router, you should forward ports as well that the game uses. On the Port Forwarding screen, there should be a "Add Port Forwarding" or "Add Service" or similar button. Press it and enter the port details. Provided below are the three sets you will want to create.

Set One
Name: ESO Game
Start Port: 24100
End Port: 24131
Protocol: TCP/UDP or "Both"
Server IP: (enter your computer's IP address)
Enable Port Forwarding

Set Two
Name: ESOLobby
Start Port: 24500
End Port: 24507
Protocol: TCP/UDP or "Both"
Server IP: (enter your computer's IP address)
Enable Port Forwarding

Set Three
Name: ESOLobby2
Start Port: 24300
End Port: 24331
Protocol: TCP/UDP or "Both"
Server IP: (enter your computer's IP address)
Enable Port Forwarding

Then, you will want to flush your DNS:

Windows 7:
Click on the Start button
Type cmd in the Start Menu
Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator
Type "ipconfig /flushdns" and hit enter
If it was successful, players will see the message "Windows IP configuration successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache."
Power cycle the router to clear the cache so that it doesn't store the bad route

Finally, to powercycle your home network, please follow these steps:
1) Turn off the router by unplugging it. If players have a modem and router in one device, turn it off then proceed to step 3.
2) Turn off the DSL or cable modem for three minutes.
Note: If the modem has one, please remove the backup battery to completely turn off the modem.
3) Turn off all computers attached to their network.
4) Turn on the DSL or cable modem first and let it boot. Let it complete its connection to the ISP before proceeding to the next step. If players have a modem and router in one device, proceed to step 6 after it connects to their ISP.
5) Once the modem completes the connection to their ISP, plug in the router. Let it complete its power on test before proceeding to the next step
6) Restart the computers.


My reply:

Turning on real-time protection in Security Essentials didn't work any better, and my 100 mb net connection involves no router since I just plug the cable in the wall. My net provider says that all ports are open, and that nothing should interfere with online games.

---

Here is the first set of advice from the support team:

As for your issue with microstuttering I would be happy to assist you further. I am sorry you have ran into this issue, please follow the below resolutions and steps to try fix this problem:

Closing the Launcher while playing. This has helped in some cases.
Making sure your graphics drivers are up to date.
Running in a non-windowed fullscreen mode.
Disable or uninstall any add-ons.

Delete you usersettings.txt file in Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\Live or Liveeu
Check the "usersettings.txt"' file: Access the folder for The Elder Scrolls Online on your Documents (by default it should be C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\My Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\Live) and open the file "usersettings.txt" with the notepad (or your word editor of choice).

Once open find the lines stating "RequestedNumJobThreads" and "RequestedNumWorkerThreads" (you can do this by pressing the keys "Ctrl" and "F")

Change them as below.

SETRequestedNumJobThreads "-1"
SETRequestedNumWorkerThreads "-1"
To:
SETRequestedNumJobThreads "-1"
SETRequestedNumWorkerThreads "0"

If that doen't work, try setting both to "0", changing it to a above should give more performance, so is preferable.

Add the game to high priority: Open your task manager while the game is running and locate the process running named "Eso.exe". Right click on that process and set priority to "High" (please note that changing this while having other programs running might cause them to perform slower).

You can also check the power management. This will usually affect laptops.

Open Power Options by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Security, and then clicking Power Options.
On the Select a power plan page, select a power plan.
If you don't see the power plan that you want to use, click Show additional plans.Setting the priority can also be done via the Nvidia Control Panel, instructions below.

Part 1: Restore NVidia Global Defaults, and create a custom profile for ESO.exe in theNVidia control panel

1)Open the Nvidia Control Panel
2)On the left side, select "Manage 3D settings"
3)Select the "Global Settings" tab
4)On the top right side of this screen, click "Restore Defaults"
5)Click "Apply" at the bottom
6)Select the "Program Settings" tab
7)Use the pulldown to select "Elder Scrolls: Online (eso.exe)"
7a)If "Elder Scrolls: Online (eso.exe)" is not present in the pulldown,un-check the box for "Show only programs found on this computer",then try step 7 again.
8)Once "Elder Scrolls: Online (eso.exe)" is selected, click the"Add" button and select the ESO.exe application.

Part 2:Restore global defaults to this profile, and modify the "Power management mode" setting

1)On the "Program Settings" tab, make sure "Elder Scrolls: Online(eso.exe)" is selected in the pulldown
2)On the top right side of this tab, Click "Restore Defaults"
3)Click "Apply" at the bottom
4)Scroll down through the "Feature" list box and find the "Power management mode" setting
5)Under the "Setting" heading for this feature, select "Prefer maximum performance"
6)Click "Apply" at the bottom, then close this window

You now have a Custom ESO profile for the NVidia control panel to use.
Another edit you can make to the usersettings for high end graphics cards is the below, this will increase the load on the card, but will resolve a stutter with any transitions or loading textures. Particularly demanding for players with high view distance, but it can help in some cases.

From: SET MIP_LOAD_SKIP_LEVELS "0"
To: SET MIP_LOAD_SKIP_LEVELS "-3"

Note: Setting to "-2" or "-1", will get the same results in terms of stuttering and will reduce the load on the graphics card as well.


Here is my reply to the first set of advice:

Thanks for quick reply! Really appreciate it. Unfortunately, changing the usersettings.txt resulted in the message that the game needed a repair, so set everything back to default and took the repair. Prefer not to spend hours on reinstalling the whole game, so can I change the usersettings.txt and do a repair without crashing the game?

After keeping the original usersettings.txt I did the changes you advised regarding Nvidia control panel, and set high priority in the task manager. That made the game more laggy. So returned to setting priority to normal and kept my own customized settings in Nvida control panel, as mentioned above.

[Note to readers: repair works and seemed to improve FPS, as mentioned above in my latest and third reply to support, without having to reinstall the game. Have not tried to change the usersettings.txt, but deleted the LiveEU file, and that seemed to improve FPS.]

Elf_Boy

try turning off physics, or switching it to the cpu, in the nv control panel.

C3N50R3D

Good summary! So do you still have stutter or not? I have tried all this and more. My test case for debug is standing in Wayrest in the courtyard between the bank and castle and slowly panning the camera around while standing still enjoying the frame skips every few vsync intervals with or without Vsync on. SLI is disabled. Using one monitor at 1920x1080. In this test case CPU and GPU render time are together within 12ms and the render thread frame build intervals are around 20ms which causes the frame skips. Your rig should have shorter render times so the impact of the long wait times between frame builds should be less, causing less frequent frame skips.

ChaosWotan

Will try to turn off physics later, but so far the game is much better, if one tolerates a lag or noticeable stutter every 1-2 seconds in city areas with other players. I only accept this lag in ESO because I really like the atmosphere of the game, otherwise it's unacceptable.

In areas without other players it's okay, but still get lag and microstutter if running diagonally using "A" and "D" on the keyboard.

Have played Skyrim with 690 SLI, 3820 and X79 Sabertooth, and that was really smooth. I'm a graphic junkie, so with Skyrim I tried to notice all tiny flaws, but found almost nothing, so then I was a happy camper. But the stutter in crowded ESO markets is like listening to a person who has a constant but light stutter problem.

So I try to focus on enjoying the storyline and gameplay, and not think about having used one thousand dollars to upgrade my machine in order to play ESO...

And I have no other programs or games on my new 256 Samsung 850 Pro SSD, except a few overclocking programs, in addition to GameFirst and AI Suits 3 that came with the motherboard.

BigM

Have you tried to allow Geforce Experience to optimize the game. Works great with me.

ChaosWotan

Have tried GeForce Experience. No luck. You have a 690 SLI?

C3N50R3D

Same. Optimum settings only marginally help without fixing the serious underlying problem.

ChaosWotan

Tried to set physics to cpu in Nvidia control panel. No improvement.

C3N50R3D

Same. Even tried uninstalling it completely. Physx is not the problem in this case.

Elf_Boy

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Same. Even tried uninstalling it completely. Physx is not the problem in this case.

Too bad.

I had read of a case where it did. Obviously not a one size fits all fix.

C3N50R3D

Hehe. I showed them what the issue was. It is up to them now to figure out what is causing the render thread to wait so long between frame builds. The fact that other dx11 games with more demanding graphics are smooth tells me it is probably not the OS or drivers.

Emity

Hey Dude. Many people are having the same issue. Including me. I've been trying to solve this issue with "technical support" couple of days back. They've been trying to help but nothing helped me really. I've tried pretty much everything what you did but with no result.

After reading many post on forum I've found out (probably you also did) that this issue has been in the game from the launch already. I'm not quite sure if they fixed it in the past but the fps issue is certainly back again. Many people claims that the issue has returned back after the patch 1.5. Some of them says that even earlier - after the patch which improved lightening in the game. (few months back).

I'm running on: CPU I5 4690K OC 4.3 Ghz, GPU: GTX 760 OC Version, 8 GB RAM DDR3 and in open world i have about 75-100 fps constantly. After i enter any location with many players like towns for instance, the fps drops from about 80-100 to 50 or even 40 and the game becomes to be not nicely smooth. The issue i'm having also in fights with many spells on the screen. Not to mention the PVP. With only 50 players on the screen my fps drops to 30 or even to 25. In pve -pulic dungeons, group dungeons, dark Anchors...etc the fps jumps like a crazy as well.

But that's not the only fps issue. If you noticed the games also lags for no reason every few seconds for a fraction of a second. During this lag the fps drops by 10 sometimes even by 20-30 fps and then goes back to the normal. It feels like the game loading.

Either way the, the fps issue is very annoying and it completely destroys experience of the game. I have never had this kind of fps issues in any others games before. There is something very wrong going on and it’s not the "pc issue". It's the game issue itself since the issue got so many people.

I'm afraid that there is nothing we can do right now. Only wait till they fix it.

C3N50R3D

Nice rig! Yep. Almost all my other games do not have this issue. If this was an FPS like BF4 I would have quit a long time ago XD. For me this really started a few months ago probably around v1.3 Hard to know exactly without the old executables to test. It's important to distinguish between the hitching/freezing that happens every few seconds and the constant frame skipping like when you are in Wayrest courtyard standing still and panning the camera and frames are skipping. The hitching is all but gone for me except in cyrodiil which has many other issues. What remains is this constant camera stutter which is worse in some places than others. If you run SLI, turn off vsync in game and run "smooth" in NVidia control panel.

C3N50R3D

Some recent slowdown on WoW too. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12989320003?page=5
Some people get no slowdown/stutter in other games only mmo.
Maybe the cause could be similar?

Emity

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Some recent slowdown on WoW too. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/12989320003?page=5
Some people get no slowdown/stutter in other games only mmo.
Maybe the cause could be similar?

Interesting. It seems to be a very similar issue that we're having in ESO. I'm not a expert but it looks like the nvidia drivers doesn't work properly with the games lately. While i've been trying to solve this fps issue with ESO Technical Support. they said that :

Quote: " Our team has had reports of newer Nvidia cards creating unfavorable framerate issues, especially in the GTX 7xx series. "

In the next few days i'm going to upgrade my very old router and power supply which causes me a lot of performance issues not only durring playing the ESO.

I don't think that it will solve the fps issue, but at least i'll absolutely certain that it's not issue of my pc and that there is nothing i can do about it!

I'll keep you updated.

C3N50R3D

Interesting that it happens on both AMD and NVidia. I tried every NVidia driver from 335 to the latest with no significant improvement on my GTX 680s.

Emity

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Interesting that it happens on both AMD and NVidia. I tried every NVidia driver from 335 to the latest with no significant improvement on my GTX 680s.

Yea. Of course it's not only issue of nvidia or AMD. Especially with ESO engine is something very wrong. Basically the game is not well optimized. Which is really shame that so "basic" issue is still in the game after 8 months. I'm very curious what the new update 1.6 will bring. To make the game FINALLY perfectly optimized should be the major priority for them. Not a some champion system for instance. Well we'll see. Maybe they surprise us.

C3N50R3D

Hehe. Yeah. We'll see.

tplink3r1

gtx980 here and no problems with fps so far.

C3N50R3D

Nice! No stutter or frame skips at all when standing in Wayrest courtyard between the castle and bank and slowly panning the camera back and forth? What are your PC specs?

tplink3r1

C3N50R3D wrote: »

Nice! No stutter or frame skips at all when standing in Wayrest courtyard between the castle and bank and slowly panning the camera back and forth? What are your PC specs?

i5 4690k(stock for now)
corsair h100i
z97 sabertooth mark 1
corsair dominator platinum 8gb 2133
EVGA gtx980(reference)
EVGA supernova nex750b
getting a minimum of 45fps while walking at wayrest merchant district/bank, no freezes or anything.
almost the same in rawl-kha.

C3N50R3D

Not talking about hitching or freezing. You have no frame skips standing still moving the camera back and forth in Wayrest courtyard? I get about the same FPS but frame skips every 420ms or so appearing as constant microstutter when moving the camera with or without vsync. You should be getting at least 90FPS consistent with a GTX 980 and your CPU. My CPU and GPU total render time with a single GTX 680 is 12ms in that area meaning I should be getting around 75-80FPS consistently if something else wasn't broken. The thread just waits too long to start building the next frame causing the frames to skip. If you are dropping to 45FPS there it tells me it is also happening and you might not be as sensitive to it.

C3N50R3D

These frame skips could be due to the server player positional data tick rate which appears to be running at about 32ms. If somehow the render thread is waiting for that tick to start building the next frame it could cause frame skips. This could explain why this happens in mmo's like ESO and WoW and not most other non-mmo games. This also causes the small rollbacks if your network starts to lag and the server abruptly corrects your position. This also explains the Cyrodiil slowdowns as this data increases exponentially as the number of players increase potentially causing network congestion and increased server load. I will have to test this further.

C3N50R3D

I just tried ESO on an AMD GPU system with a different Intel CPU running Windows 8.1 with no addons and deleted all the files out of the live folder and let them respawn. The frame skipping due to waiting too long to begin building the next frame is still there. I am convinced this is a game issue and something is blocking the render thread whether server tick or inefficient swap buffer call. CS needs to talk to the game engine devs because the devs that wrote the API calls to the engine probably don't have as great of understanding of the engine thread interaction with the hardware.

One thing I haven't tried is an AMD CPU in the unlikely chance that it is a problem with how the Intel CPUs interact with the game engine.

C3N50R3D

Not fixed yet.

VisceralMonkey

Have my i5 at 4.5 and SLI 780 GTX's. I'll play around with some of these and see if it improves things.

C3N50R3D

Wayrest courtyard between the castle and bank is a good test area. Stand still and pan the camera and look for frame skips. And Grahtwood in the undaunted area. I think they need to make the server tick faster like they finally did for BF4.

VisceralMonkey

Changing the MIP loading levels shot my load times up to almost unusable levels. Nixxed that.

Triple Buffering and Driver level vsynch (smooth) introduced *weird* behavior. Game got stuttery, would suddenly shoot down to 30 fps and stay there before starting to fluctuate between 30-60 as it should be. Switched to normal vsynch and triple buffering and had much smoother, better play without weird behavior.

C3N50R3D

Triple buffering does nothing when using SLI AFR.
Even when not using SLI in AFR mode, the NVidia control panel triple buffer only works for OpenGL not Dx9,10,11. D3DOverrider triple buffer works for Dx9,10,11 but not SLI in AFR mode.

If you enable smooth Vsync in NVidia control panel turn off in game vsync and make sure you are not capping framerate in usersettings file or anywhere else.