Well, this is awkward...

khele23eb17_ESO

Ive recently purchased a laptop with an i7-4720HQ CPU, GTX 960m and a nice 1080p IPS screen. Nothing spectacular just something lightweight for working and casual gaming while traveling. I installed ESO and GW2 and judging by the games' performance on my desktop I was certain Id have to run them at lower, non-native resolution at medium details. GW2 turned out as expected - 720p, ~30fps at med details. ESO however... holy ***! - full HD, full details 50-60fps EVERYWHERE (dunno about Cyrodil, Im not a fan of open world clusterf... I mean PvP). What the hell is going on here?! The laptop basically runs the game better than my desktop which has a gtx 980ti. Granted the desktop goes way over 90fps in empty-ish areas but on the other hand it drops like a rock in cities (sometimes below 40 fps). Can someone explain this to me?

remilafo

omg so much more information needed... like entire system specs.

cpu
gpu, connected how (dvi, hdmi, DP etc. , one screen more?) , what resolution?
ram and speed running?
operating system
background services?
ESO settings?

what is the exact laptop model?
is there a desktop model?

was your testing done in the exact same spot and area in eso?

Many of us here could probably help but with the information we have at the moment the best we can do is guess.
more info please.

BreacaT

That's good to hear as I'm faced with having to buy the wife a gaming laptop after introducing her to the game over christmas...expensive mistake!!

Currently looking at a i7 6700, 960M rig.

khele23eb17_ESO

remilafo wrote: »

omg so much more information needed... like entire system specs.

cpu
gpu, connected how (dvi, hdmi, DP etc. , one screen more?) , what resolution?
ram and speed running?
operating system
background services?
ESO settings?

what is the exact laptop model?
is there a desktop model?

was your testing done in the exact same spot and area in eso?

Many of us here could probably help but with the information we have at the moment the best we can do is guess.
more info please.

Most of it is already in my post. I ran the game in 1080p on both to compare.

desktop: i7 2600k@4.8GHz + GTX980ti + 8GB ram + SSD + w7
vs
laptop: i7 4720HQ@3.6GHz + GTX960m + 8GB ram + 5400rpm HDD + w10.

In all other games theres just no comparison in FPS between the 2. The desktop demolishes the laptop. ESO tho...

Tacadrie

Your cpu is outdated (in the desktop) and it's impossible to exploit the full power of gpu.

khele23eb17_ESO

Tacadrie wrote: »

Your cpu is outdated (in the desktop) and it's impossible to exploit the full power of gpu.

Not really, no. The gaming performance barely improves with new cpus. The difference might be 5-10% at most. A buddy of mine recently exchanged his OCd 2500k for a 4790K. He does a lot of video editing and the change gave him a nice boost but in games (hes running a gtx 970) theres no difference. If there is any its 1-2 fps.

Also, what boggles my mind is... why does ESO perform so well on the laptop @ 1080p when other MMOs struggle @ 720p.

Egonieser

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

remilafo wrote: »

omg so much more information needed... like entire system specs.

cpu
gpu, connected how (dvi, hdmi, DP etc. , one screen more?) , what resolution?
ram and speed running?
operating system
background services?
ESO settings?

what is the exact laptop model?
is there a desktop model?

was your testing done in the exact same spot and area in eso?

Many of us here could probably help but with the information we have at the moment the best we can do is guess.
more info please.

Most of it is already in my post. I ran the game in 1080p on both to compare.

desktop: i7 2600k@4.8GHz + GTX980ti + 8GB ram + SSD + w7
vs
laptop: i7 4720HQ@3.6GHz + GTX960m + 8GB ram + 5400rpm HDD + w10.

In all other games theres just no comparison in FPS between the 2. The desktop demolishes the laptop. ESO tho...

That CPU is ancient mate, probably bottlenecking your GPU. Remember MMOs are very CPU-dependant as objects, players, interactibles are CPU rendered.
If you go for a beastly GPU, you need a equally good CPU.
I run GTX 980 with i7 4790k and it runs fine apart from when FPS dips below 30 in massive PvP zergs.

Gidorick

BreacaT wrote: »

That's good to hear as I'm faced with having to buy the wife a gaming laptop after introducing her to the game over christmas...expensive mistake!!

Currently looking at a i7 6700, 960M rig.

Naw... consider yourself lucky. It's better than having a spouse who has absolutely ZERO interest in any kind of gaming whatsoever. At least you can now share this passion!

Ysne58

Hubby lets me play, even though he isn't interested. Could be lots worse.

khele23eb17_ESO

Egonieser wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

remilafo wrote: »

omg so much more information needed... like entire system specs.

cpu
gpu, connected how (dvi, hdmi, DP etc. , one screen more?) , what resolution?
ram and speed running?
operating system
background services?
ESO settings?

what is the exact laptop model?
is there a desktop model?

was your testing done in the exact same spot and area in eso?

Many of us here could probably help but with the information we have at the moment the best we can do is guess.
more info please.

Most of it is already in my post. I ran the game in 1080p on both to compare.

desktop: i7 2600k@4.8GHz + GTX980ti + 8GB ram + SSD + w7
vs
laptop: i7 4720HQ@3.6GHz + GTX960m + 8GB ram + 5400rpm HDD + w10.

In all other games theres just no comparison in FPS between the 2. The desktop demolishes the laptop. ESO tho...

That CPU is ancient mate, probably bottlenecking your GPU. Remember MMOs are very CPU-dependant as objects, players, interactibles are CPU rendered.
If you go for a beastly GPU, you need a equally good CPU.
I run GTX 980 with i7 4790k and it runs fine apart from when FPS dips below 30 in massive PvP zergs.

That CPU easily runs at 5.2GHz (heres a video of stock vs OC with 980ti... the guy's got another video somewhere comparing 4790k with 2600k both at 4.7GHz.. theres like a 6-7 fps difference between the two... about 1-3fps if the 2600k runs at 5.2) it does not bottleneck a thing.

Also objects and players are not cpu rendered so much as their state must be identified from the incoming network traffic by the cpu before they can be rendered by the GPU. But I see what youre getting at. However I do not experience such fps drops in other MMOs. And the laptop does not perform even half as well in other MMOs either.

HeroOfNone

ESO is processor intensive, not GPU intensive. Here, try out this method to get more out of your GPU downsampling you Aldo won't need CRU in the example, you can do it with the Nvidia control panel or any application you can make custom resolutions.

Here is more on Downsampling

WalkingLegacy

Your CPU is far from outdated nor bottlenecking your 980ti

Chances are your drivers are convulated and your main drive probably could use a wipe and reinstall of windows

Edit: what's your mobo and bios version?

khele23eb17_ESO

HeroOfNone wrote: »

ESO is processor intensive, not GPU intensive.

And yet it rerely goes over 30% CPU usage.

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Your CPU is far from outdated nor bottlenecking your 980ti

Chances are your drivers are convulated and your main drive probably could use a wipe and reinstall of windows

Edit: what's your mobo and bios version?

Asus P8P67 PRO vB3. Bios 3207.

Belidos

Have a look in your graphics options, the laptop is probably running at pure 1080, whereas your desktop is likely to be set by default as 2048, scaled down to 1080, it's a little trick ESO uses to get better looking graphics on lower resolutions with less resource drain. It does use more resources, but a lot less than if it as running pure 2048.

Shogunami

It sounds like i7 2600k could very well bottleneck your GTX 980 ti. The fact that 980 ti rocks 6gb of memory is enough to suspect that the 2600k will have trouble keeping up. In the very least one should try (for optimal performance) to match generation or go +/- 1.

Having said that. ESO is a mess of a game. I have i7 6700, evga GTX 980ti overclocked, 16gb of ram, SSD, really good cooling and air flow and all that jazz. I rarely go over 70 fps in this game, and in big fights in cluster f.. I mean Cyrodiil (heh..) I can go as low as 20 (!!!!!! WTF, MAN) fps. Cities are constant rollercoaster between 30 and 50 fps.

While in BF4, The Witcher 3, Crysis 3 and all of the worlds most demanding video games, I go 60+ FPS constantly. Even in WoW I go around 100 FPS in cities.

twev

BreacaT wrote: »

That's good to hear as I'm faced with having to buy the wife a gaming laptop after introducing her to the game over christmas...expensive mistake!!

Currently looking at a i7 6700, 960M rig.

Showed the game to me sister.
Pointed to the 'free weekend, 1/2 price purchase'....

Ended up having to build her a new 1151 based PC for Christmas.

I got even.
I built myself a better one

Give it a whirl.

khele23eb17_ESO

Shogunami wrote: »

It sounds like i7 2600k could very well bottleneck your GTX 980 ti. The fact that 980 ti rocks 6gb of memory is enough to suspect that the 2600k will have trouble keeping up. In the very least one should try (for optimal performance) to match generation or go +/- 1.

Having said that. ESO is a mess of a game. I have i7 6700, evga GTX 980ti overclocked, 16gb of ram, SSD, really good cooling and air flow and all that jazz. I rarely go over 70 fps in this game, and in big fights in cluster f.. I mean Cyrodiil (heh..) I can go as low as 20 (!!!!!! WTF, MAN) fps. Cities are constant rollercoaster between 30 and 50 fps.

While in BF4, The Witcher 3, Crysis 3 and all of the worlds most demanding video games, I go 60+ FPS constantly. Even in WoW I go around 100 FPS in cities.

Belidos wrote: »

Have a look in your graphics options, the laptop is probably running at pure 1080, whereas your desktop is likely to be set by default as 2048, scaled down to 1080, it's a little trick ESO uses to get better looking graphics on lower resolutions with less resource drain. It does use more resources, but a lot less than if it as running pure 2048.

This is interesting. Mind explaining it a bit? Where do I check it?

As for the CPU: at 5.0GHz the 2600k runs most games pretty much the same as a stock 4790k. Even with 980ti. I had a link to a benchmark (30 games or so) somewhere but cant find it at this very moment. The difference was 2-6fps. Sure, there were 2 or 3 games with a 15-20% difference so I guess it IS an option. But again, Im not so much worried about my desktop's performance as I am surprised by the laptop's results.

BreacaT wrote: »

That's good to hear as I'm faced with having to buy the wife a gaming laptop after introducing her to the game over christmas...expensive mistake!!

Currently looking at a i7 6700, 960M rig.

Well It should run ESO just fine. Not GW2 tho (youll have to go down to 720p for playable framerates). Which is another reason Im so surprised. I guess GW2 uses a lot more posprocessing to make things look good than ESO.

WalkingLegacy

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

HeroOfNone wrote: »

ESO is processor intensive, not GPU intensive.

And yet it rerely goes over 30% CPU usage.

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Your CPU is far from outdated nor bottlenecking your 980ti

Chances are your drivers are convulated and your main drive probably could use a wipe and reinstall of windows

Edit: what's your mobo and bios version?

Asus P8P67 PRO vB3. Bios 3207.

You're quite a few BIOS updates behind. Usually you don't update a bios unless you have problems but ASUS usually has problems with first iterations bios. Would be worth checking into updating that.

If you can do a fresh windows install too that would be worth it. I usually do one every year or two. Complete drive wipe/format and fresh install.

Edit: newer BIOS versions for your mobo have PCIE improvements

WalkingLegacy

Shogunami wrote: »

It sounds like i7 2600k could very well bottleneck your GTX 980 ti. The fact that 980 ti rocks 6gb of memory is enough to suspect that the 2600k will have trouble keeping up. In the very least one should try (for optimal performance) to match generation or go +/- 1.

Having said that. ESO is a mess of a game. I have i7 6700, evga GTX 980ti overclocked, 16gb of ram, SSD, really good cooling and air flow and all that jazz. I rarely go over 70 fps in this game, and in big fights in cluster f.. I mean Cyrodiil (heh..) I can go as low as 20 (!!!!!! WTF, MAN) fps. Cities are constant rollercoaster between 30 and 50 fps.

While in BF4, The Witcher 3, Crysis 3 and all of the worlds most demanding video games, I go 60+ FPS constantly. Even in WoW I go around 100 FPS in cities.

6gb of vram is not going to bottleneck a 2600k

demendred

That's not awkward. Awkward for s walking in on your grandparents making love........

AcTiVe13245

Little advice from me, NEVER update bios if you dont have to, believe me, one error and you have to replace motherboard.
I heard that last update for nvidia gpu were causing crashes and weird stuff, so maybe that's the problem. In fact this isn't possible that your pc have lower fps than laptop, something went wrong
i7 2600k is too good to be the problem here, I think that there is a problem with software itself and mostly the game engine.

Shogunami wrote: »

It sounds like i7 2600k could very well bottleneck your GTX 980 ti. The fact that 980 ti rocks 6gb of memory is enough to suspect that the 2600k will have trouble keeping up. In the very least one should try (for optimal performance) to match generation or go +/- 1.

Having said that. ESO is a mess of a game. I have i7 6700, evga GTX 980ti overclocked, 16gb of ram, SSD, really good cooling and air flow and all that jazz. I rarely go over 70 fps in this game, and in big fights in cluster f.. I mean Cyrodiil (heh..) I can go as low as 20 (!!!!!! WTF, MAN) fps. Cities are constant rollercoaster between 30 and 50 fps.

While in BF4, The Witcher 3, Crysis 3 and all of the worlds most demanding video games, I go 60+ FPS constantly. Even in WoW I go around 100 FPS in cities.

That's true, ESO is realy strange game. Games loads a lot faster on HDD than on my SSD, this should never happen!

CaptainObvious

Remember that the processor architecture defines the memory controller. Newer processors have "better" memory controllers. Speed of the north bridge makes a massive difference as that feeds the CPU. Slow north bridge, slow game.

Tonnopesce

I agree with the ones who tells you that the cpu is outdated and you have to admit that a little bit it is but i don’t believe it is the issue here.

The bad performance can be boosted with the game setting, i run solid 100fps and 60-70 in pvp @ 2560x1600 downscaled, ultra settings all with my i7 3820 (4.3ghz) that is a little bit worst than your 2600k and an nvidia gtx 780ti, so is strange that you cannot obtain the same performances.

I've noticed that even if eso is a lot cpu dependant usually the game uses only one core and a good way to boost your game (i've tried with my wife pc) is to shout down all the cores except one and boost it to the cooling limit; with an i5 processor i've gained 10-20 fps.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Gidorick wrote: »

BreacaT wrote: »

That's good to hear as I'm faced with having to buy the wife a gaming laptop after introducing her to the game over christmas...expensive mistake!!

Currently looking at a i7 6700, 960M rig.

Naw... consider yourself lucky. It's better than having a spouse who has absolutely ZERO interest in any kind of gaming whatsoever. At least you can now share this passion!

+1 this, now your wife won't be mad at you because you skipped on a fancy dinner on Friday night to go rampage through Hel Ra with your guildmates--she'll be right there with you!

AcTiVe13245

CaptainObvious wrote: »

Remember that the processor architecture defines the memory controller. Newer processors have "better" memory controllers. Speed of the north bridge makes a massive difference as that feeds the CPU. Slow north bridge, slow game.

You can have right, I forgot about it.

Still, I think the problem is with software

khele23eb17_ESO

Tonnopesceb16_ESO wrote: »

I agree with the ones who tells you that the cpu is outdated and you have to admit that a little bit it is but i don’t believe it is the issue here.

If we were talking about video encoding or advanced image editing/3d modelling Id agree, but for gaming? I would have upgraded long ago were it not for the fact that benchmarks show Id gain measly 2-5 fps in the vast majority of games. Spending $500 for a 2-5 fps boost isnt really a sensible money investment IMO.

WalkingLegacy

Seems like most people are on the Intel upgrade train. The 980ti does not bottleneck a 2600k.

You normally do not update BIOS if you DONT know what you're doing or if the update was bad. You never update the day a BIOS comes out.

That being said OP mobo has PCI-E enhancements in its updates and been out for a while. Worth looking at forums to make sure its a good update and do it.

I've done it with my ASUS X58 a couple times with no issues just so I can get the memory OC'd more.

Tonnopesce

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Tonnopesceb16_ESO wrote: »

I agree with the ones who tells you that the cpu is outdated and you have to admit that a little bit it is but i don’t believe it is the issue here.

If we were talking about video encoding or advanced image editing/3d modelling Id agree, but for gaming? I would have upgraded long ago were it not for the fact that benchmarks show Id gain measly 2-5 fps in the vast majority of games. Spending $500 for a 2-5 fps boost isnt really a sensible money investment IMO.

That's not the point i've tried to make... i have a similar processor ( 3th gen instead of 2°) and the game runs smooth without issues so the problem is probably somewhere else... maybe a processor this old, that runs on a motherboard with the same age cannot use the full power of the 980 ti that is a pretty new graphics card with 3rd gen pci and other things that i don’t know.

clayandaudrey_ESO

Shogunami wrote: »

It sounds like i7 2600k could very well bottleneck your GTX 980 ti. The fact that 980 ti rocks 6gb of memory is enough to suspect that the 2600k will have trouble keeping up. In the very least one should try (for optimal performance) to match generation or go +/- 1.

Having said that. ESO is a mess of a game. I have i7 6700, evga GTX 980ti overclocked, 16gb of ram, SSD, really good cooling and air flow and all that jazz. I rarely go over 70 fps in this game, and in big fights in cluster f.. I mean Cyrodiil (heh..) I can go as low as 20 (!!!!!! WTF, MAN) fps. Cities are constant rollercoaster between 30 and 50 fps.

While in BF4, The Witcher 3, Crysis 3 and all of the worlds most demanding video games, I go 60+ FPS constantly. Even in WoW I go around 100 FPS in cities.

My rig is way under yours and I run 70 to 80 fps in pve and 40 in pvp. I se these types of posts and wonder what you are doing wrong.

AcTiVe13245

Guys Im telling ya, problem is in the software and the game itslef. You can see how it works on diffrent pc's

SirAndy

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

HeroOfNone wrote: »

ESO is processor intensive, not GPU intensive.

And yet it rerely goes over 30% CPU usage.

You need to look at the usage of each individual core, not the average across all cores.

ESO does utilize one core extensively, usually somewhere in the 60%-80% range and the rest is spread thin around the other cores (if present). The multi-threading doesn't seem to be very optimized in terms of core usage, which really is a shame since most CPUs these days have multiple cores.