PSA: Lowering draw distance fixes low gpu usage and low fps condition

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

So happy about this. I'm currently running draw distance at 40 instead of 100, and my 780ti has 99% usage (at 100 distance it was between 50-75 max) in non crowded areas. What did to set it was go to a out of own wayshrine and find the highest setting where the fps stayed happy above 60. In towns with many players the fps drops but that's expected.

Tempting when you have a decent card to turn it up, but sometimes not! Hope this helps other people.. was a slightly frustrating condition, like an itch, to see my card running low fps and not being used..

Wicked_Wolf

That honestly annoys me though. I have a 980. You have a 780ti. We really shouldn't have to turn it down so much

victormachb14_ESO

Thanks for posting, however, saying this is frustrating is an understatement. I have SLi 980s and this game is running like total crap. My system can handle games twice as demanding at twice the framerate, and my video card utilization is in the gutter. Activating SLi has 0 effect on framerate.

Please, Zenimax, fix this. Please.

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

Glad you guys are doing better also.

I personally don't mind so much, luckily view distance more effects what how much pokes out of the fog rather than what right in front, and when I looked for the differences it was quite alright. Would have been much worse if it was texture detail, grass detail, lighting quality, shadows etc.

Intervein

I have noticed the same thing with my Gtx 760, not nearly as good as you guys--but hey. I changed all other settings and they had little to no effect on the fps. The view distance seemed directly connected to gpu utilization, but I also wonder if it is because of bottlenecked cpus. May I ask your cpu models and cpu utilization, just out of curiosity?

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

Sure, i'm running a very old sandy bridge 2500k (4 cores no ht) clocked at 3.4ghz (it does go higher, but im only running the stock intel cooler).

I have cpu usage also on the riva tuner overlay, and while in the game all 4 cores are definitely not idle like in most games, but never hit 100%. The only time the cpu maxes out seems to be during loading screens for new area's, im guessing its compiling shaders or something. This only happens on first ever load into the zone.

EDIT: Some more data in case it helps, im running at 2560x1600, using the dx9 renderer with sweetfx. I'm not sure if the ingame aa is something other than nvidia fxaa, but at that res i would only run fxaa anyway. While investigating the low fps i did definitely try the dx11 renderer (that set itself to default in update 6), and there was absolutely no difference.. was completely the draw distance.

Intervein

I'm running a Fx-8350 at 4.2ghz, haven't bothered overclocking very much but this game makes me want to. I have been watching my Rivatuner as well. Core 0, the first core, definitely gets the majority of usage, the other cores seem to get tentatively used as if they may just have a bandaid on them for load balancing or something. I've tried OGL(I think it reset it to Dx11 though), Dx9 and Dx11 as my rendering drivers and noticed no real improvements or variations. I used nvidia inspector in an attempt to force Fxaa, the default setting is actually disallowed. The game worked for an entire five minutes with no real appearance changes and then crashed. There is a default setting for multisampling however which is set to 4x AA 4x multisampling. I imagine the newer maxwell chips may be able to force MFAA, use DSR and turn off ingame AA for some tangible improvements.

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

Intervein wrote: »

I'm running a Fx-8350 at 4.2ghz, haven't bothered overclocking very much but this game makes me want to. I have been watching my Rivatuner as well. Core 0, the first core, definitely gets the majority of usage, the other cores seem to get tentatively used as if they may just have a bandaid on them for load balancing or something. I've tried OGL(I think it reset it to Dx11 though), Dx9 and Dx11 as my rendering drivers and noticed no real improvements or variations. I used nvidia inspector in an attempt to force Fxaa, the default setting is actually disallowed. The game worked for an entire five minutes with no real appearance changes and then crashed. There is a default setting for multisampling however which is set to 4x AA 4x multisampling. I imagine the newer maxwell chips may be able to force MFAA, use DSR and turn off ingame AA for some tangible improvements.

Re the cpu given that while the game is running at no point do any of the 4 cpu's hit 100% i'm concluding im not cpu bottlenecked. Its interesting that you see the first core being mainly used.. on mine all 4 cores are significantly active as the game is running. Id have to double check but yeah probably the first core the most.

My 780 is Kepler so i don't have mfaa, but my understanding that fxaa is edge based also? Its not a brute force all pixels expensive (and makes a less blurry image.. subjectively i like that).

On day 2 having eso with my real performance makes me so happy. Once the problem was fixed i turned back on vsync also.. its like butter (apart from when the fps drops in towns.. and even then its fine).

Necrelios

I found that by reducing draw distance you can get a good FPS boost, but also disabling the in-game anti-aliasing and using the AA provided through my graphics driver software I got a better frame rate. This also seemed to fix an issue with random crashing. It didn't happen very often, maybe once a day or so but hasn't happened yet (knock on wood) since disabling the in-game AA.

SapphireThunder

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO wrote: »

Re the cpu given that while the game is running at no point do any of the 4 cpu's hit 100% i'm concluding im not cpu bottlenecked. Its interesting that you see the first core being mainly used.. on mine all 4 cores are significantly active as the game is running. Id have to double check but yeah probably the first core the most.

The utilization doesn't have to hit 100% in order for the bottleneck to happen.

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO

SapphireThunder wrote: »

The utilization doesn't have to hit 100% in order for the bottleneck to happen.

Really? How does that work? From the other thread, sounds like you've tried it yourself.. you can get full gpu usage from eso by changing a game setting. If there was a hardware bottleneck this would be impossible?

SapphireThunder

winterscrolls229prerb18_ESO wrote: »

SapphireThunder wrote: »

The utilization doesn't have to hit 100% in order for the bottleneck to happen.

Really? How does that work? From the other thread, sounds like you've tried it yourself.. you can get full gpu usage from eso by changing a game setting. If there was a hardware bottleneck this would be impossible?

What also matters for bottleneck, is the cpu's architecture, clock speed and the memory bus speeds.
Also, the way cpu is being utilized.

This is why DX12 will improve the games hugely.
DX12 will spread out the usage on cores more evenly.
Where now with DX11, most of the utilization is put on the 1st core, and from there the usage lessens dramatically core by core. So 6 and higher core cpus are weak with it. With in 8 core cpus the 7th and 8th cores not being used almost at all.
This causes bottlenecking easily.

But as long as graphical quality is higher than overall utilization, bottleneck won't happen.
So basically, by putting higher resolution, you can kill the bottleneck, but then you will be restricted by the gpu power. This again can be overridden with SLI or powerful enough gpu.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

i'm having the same issue ...no matter if i put all settings on low or ultra the fps will remain the same only when i lower the draw distance affects it.. so i assume is cuz of the cpu? i have to say i'm using sapphire radeon r9-390 nitro backplate and as a CPU is a i5-3350P which is running at 3.10Ghz never clocked tough its temperature in idle is @ 40-56 celsius and while running the game is going btw 65-73 i guess cuz is having the stock cooler... could be the temperature a factor? i'm rly fed up with the *** performance of eso and drives me crazy when ppl come with specs like using a dual core and a 1gb gpu that works with solid 60 fps towns/large scale cyrodill combat i kinda want to bite the concrete