iMac Specs

drumbendrum_ESO

These are the specs I am currently running with the game on my iMac. If I set it on Ultra it is by far the best the game looks on any other system that I currently own but will crash frequently. Even if I set it on High or Medium the game still crashes. Cyrodiil regardless of it having a high population or low population is where I crash the most.
Imperial City surprisingly is ran very well and I have very infrequent crashes there.
PvE areas its very infrequent but will crash randomly.


• 3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
• 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
• 1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5

I have tried running the game with Viola to record my game play and even attempted to try and stream on twitch. Both seemed to bog down the system enough that I could play but not very well. I know very little when it comes to Mac but wanted to throw out my systems specs to see what I would need to be able to stream and or record gameplay comfortably.

Any advice on settings or things to look at for the iMac to assist with smoother better gameplay I would love to hear it. I will be testing out a new PC for ESO as well and will be uploading my experience with it as I progress. I do however love playing this game on the iMac as it is truly the best the game looks!

Mojmir

im running a mid 2010 imac with 3.2GHZ, ATI 5670 graphics, 1TB, 8GB RAM
highest I can go right now is medium, I have everything turned off. so sad because I bet this game looks great in at least high settings.
new computer is on the way though.
out of curiosity are you running the game through bootcamp? I found this to be much better than on mac side.

drumbendrum_ESO

I am not running this in bootcamp but will look into it.

Yes high settings the game still looks amazing the textures do not have that glossy finish that Ultra have but it runs well and looks good. Still though the game crashes regardless of setting just more frequent with higher settings.

Are you experiencing any issues with crashes at Medium?

KhajitFurTrader

First off, my specs:

• 2013 iMac 27", 2560x1440
• 3.5 GHz Haswell Core i7 (4c/8t)
• 32 GB RAM
• 500 GB PCIe SSD
• NVIDIA GeForce 780M, 4 GB GDDR5

Please note that the ESO client is a 32-bit process (both on Windows and OS X, for the time being) and thus has a maximum virtual address space of 4 GB, i.e. on a machine with 8 GB or more physical RAM, it'll never use more than 4 GB. The effectively usable space is lower, due to the mapping of dynamic libraries into that virtual address space.

I've found it best to reset the Graphics settings to their defaults (Settings / Video / Defaults [X]) after each and every patch to the game. This will determine the best performance settings according to a decision matrix, which will get updated from time to time, depending on changes to the game's engine. I then go and decrease or increase some individual settings, to find my sweet spot between FPS and eye candy.

That being said, Display Mode should always be Fullscreen, not Windowed (Fullscreen), and Vertical Sync should always be Off (@Moonraker had an excellent explanation about the latter here).

Texture and SubSampling Quality, as well as View Distance, have the largest impact on how much memory is being used. Since the introduction of the Justice System, the minimum requirement for Ultra-high quality graphics is 2 GB of VRAM. Tuning Texture Quality down from its default to the next lower setting might help alleviate the frequency of encountered crashes due to memory allocation gone bad. In areas with a very high player density (PvP, cities), this might make a huge difference, while in the quiet backwaters of the questing hinterlands, not as much. I never set View Distance to more than half (50), because this helps keeping the frame rate up while the world still looks detailed at mid-range.

Shadow Quality, Ambient Occlusion, and Water Reflection all have a larger impact on performance, i.e. FPS. Shadow Quality defaults to High on my system, but I always take it down a peg to Medium, for a noticeable increase in performance without much loss in visual quality. Ambient Occlusion defaults to Off, but with Shadows lowered down, turning it on doesn't have as much of a hit to FPS for me. Water Reflection defaults to Off on my machine, of all things. I tend to leave it alone, since in areas with a lot of water surfaces, this one can be a real performance hog even on the lowest setting.

Tuning the Particle Systems settings down to their lowest possible values might help with PvP. At the time of their introduction, it was said that you'll always see those systems that are relevant to you, no matter how low they are set. I leave them at their default values, since I don't PvP much (i.e. almost never).

As for the rest of the On/Off settings, I leave all of them on their default On setting, as their impact seems minor. This may be different for other systems and graphics cards, of course.

ESO has been in development for at least 6 years prior to its initial release in 2014. The Mac client might not be as old, but it initially supported OS X versions down to 10.6, which, at the time of release, had been 5 years old and was only supporting OpenGL 2.1 to 100% (OGL 3.0 was never implemented feature-complete on 10.6). There will be an upcoming jump to a 64-bit client with support for OpenGL 4.1 in the future, but there is absolutely no ETA yet, so don't hold your breath. Both steps will very likely mean a major improvement to stability and performance, if the Mac in question can support them (i.e. OS X 10.9 as minimum version, together with an OGL 4.1 capable GC).

drumbendrum_ESO

Thank you so much for that detailed explanation that is a very good read.

Is there any software that you would recommend that works well on iMac for recording gameplay?
Also, any advice on settings while recording video of gameplay?

Delsskia

Have you tried your QuickTime Player? Just launch it, go to "File" and select "New Screen Recording".

KhajitFurTrader

I have no experience with capturing or streaming gameplay, but if I were inclined to do so, I certainly wouldn't want the game to run in its native resolution on a 27" iMac (2560x1440). A windowed size of 1920x1080 (full HD, 1080p) would be more than sufficient, even 720p (1280×720) would do it, if consistent frame rates (e.g. 50 or 25 Hz) are of importance.

nbksaske

probably the wrong place to put this, but this is why i didnt get eso my my pc.

currently running core i3 with 6gb ram and i think its a 1gb graphics card

i was going to get it on my pc but after reading a lot of stuff with low/medium/ultra settings, i wimped out and just got it on ps4, slot it in, play, no need to worry lol

drumbendrum_ESO

I have not tried QuickTime player! I will give this a try when I am able to play the game next!
Thanks for the suggestion~

smacx250

drumbendrum_ESO wrote: »

Yes high settings the game still looks amazing the textures do not have that glossy finish that Ultra have but it runs well and looks good.

You can turn on the shiny textures by editing UserSettings.txt to set this line to "1" instead of "0":
SET SPECULAR_MAPS "1"
I did this on my son's macbook air and it enabled the shiny textures, and didn't appear to impact performance or stability.

KhajitFurTrader

smacx250 wrote: »

You can turn on the shiny textures by editing UserSettings.txt to set this line to "1" instead of "0":
SET SPECULAR_MAPS "1"
I did this on my son's macbook air and it enabled the shiny textures, and didn't appear to impact performance or stability.

There are, in fact, a few graphical quality settings in the UserSettings.txt file which do not have a direct representation within the in-game Settings/Video UI. Rather, they are triggered accordingly when selecting one of the general Graphics Quality settings, ranging from Ultra-High down to Low. This method doesn't look for what the hardware is actually capable of doing, it's a one-size-fits-all approach, which can result in sub-optimal (or even poor) settings for the machine in question.

Choosing a lower, more performant Graphics Quality setting in the UI this way, and then manually beefing up individual values in the UserSettings.txt may lead to inadvertently counterproductive effects. Always make a backup copy beforehand and, when in doubt or in trouble, reset the graphics system to it's default setting via [X]. This way, the slate will be cleared and actual hardware capabilities will be considered.

Caveat: some settings in the UserSettings.txt file are used exclusively by the Direct3D engine, and will be happily ignored by the OpenGL engine on OS X and Windows.

smacx250

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

smacx250 wrote: »

You can turn on the shiny textures by editing UserSettings.txt to set this line to "1" instead of "0":
SET SPECULAR_MAPS "1"
I did this on my son's macbook air and it enabled the shiny textures, and didn't appear to impact performance or stability.

There are, in fact, a few graphical quality settings in the UserSettings.txt file which do not have a direct representation within the in-game Settings/Video UI. Rather, they are triggered accordingly when selecting one of the general Graphics Quality settings, ranging from Ultra-High down to Low. This method doesn't look for what the hardware is actually capable of doing, it's a one-size-fits-all approach, which can result in sub-optimal (or even poor) settings for the machine in question.

Choosing a lower, more performant Graphics Quality setting in the UI this way, and then manually beefing up individual values in the UserSettings.txt may lead to inadvertently counterproductive effects. Always make a backup copy beforehand and, when in doubt or in trouble, reset the graphics system to it's default setting via [X]. This way, the slate will be cleared and actual hardware capabilities will be considered.

Caveat: some settings in the UserSettings.txt file are used exclusively by the Direct3D engine, and will be happily ignored by the OpenGL engine on OS X and Windows.

Good advice - my son's beaming smile when he got his shiny armor was worth the risk!

I also have the "live" directory under git so I can revert to any saved snapshot (or get diffs between what was and is) - very easy on a mac if you know git!

KhajitFurTrader

smacx250 wrote: »

I also have the "live" directory under git so I can revert to any saved snapshot (or get diffs between what was and is) - very easy on a mac if you know git!

I know. Isn't the native fronted called "Time Machine" or something like that? Naw, j/k.

I just wish they would've made ZFS happen back in Snow Leopard, at the very least on the OS X Server side. Very few things beat the ease of using ZFS snapshots, and they could've foregone all that sparsebundle jazz in TM.