FPS drop over time

Martinus72

It is still particle leak.
It appears to hit fps after particle heavy periods of time like world bosses Zerg in Wrothgar, after each of them I have to relog for reloadui won't fix this fps drop.
I'm playing on powerful laptop with 4GHz i76700K, 980M 8gb vram and 16gb of fast ram so expect this game to perform, I've got particle effects with its distance on minimum but this doesn't help.
Please fix this leak, it takes way too long.

zerosingularity

I will also note that I have never done a fresh install from a recent downloaded installer. I am still using the installer that came with the open beta over 2 years ago. (And all the updates to it and to the game starting from the very beginning.)

I wonder if this can be a factor.

reActor1

zerosingularity wrote: »

I will also note that I have never done a fresh install from a recent downloaded installer. [...] I wonder if this can be a factor.

I've already fresh installed a couple of times since my early access and couldn't notice any improvements.

ZOS_AlexTardif

Martinus72 wrote: »

It is still particle leak.
It appears to hit fps after particle heavy periods of time like world bosses Zerg in Wrothgar, after each of them I have to relog for reloadui won't fix this fps drop.
I'm playing on powerful laptop with 4GHz i76700K, 980M 8gb vram and 16gb of fast ram so expect this game to perform, I've got particle effects with its distance on minimum but this doesn't help.
Please fix this leak, it takes way too long.

To be clear, there is no longer a particle leak. We can provide technical details as to why:

Prior the game world even loading, we create a block of memory of "X" size that particles can live in, based on your settings for how many particle systems you allow. When we run out of that memory, we stop creating new particles until other particles are freed up (it has no capability to create particles otherwise). This is how the particle system has always existed. Prior to Thieves Guild, which brought in the overhauled particle system, particles would leak. Many of you know this, because during Trials, heavy PvP, or long dungeons, you would eventually stop seeing new particle effects spawn. That was because it was hitting the particle memory limit and never freeing up the old particles. The fact that this doesn't happen anymore is clear evidence that the particle leak no longer occurs.

On the flip side, because particles no longer leak, most (or all) of you are likely seeing many more particles than before in your heavy fight situations. For some of you, it may be helpful to reduce that setting, as @Taonnor pointed out, in order to maintain the frame rates you had before, or to reduce the particle distance setting in the menus.

A number of you (like @GeertKarel) have mentioned that /reloadui fixes the issue for you. In your cases, we would strongly recommend you uninstall your add-ons, as /reloadui does exactly what it sounds like it does - it reloads your UI, which includes add-ons. From there, you can try reinstalling add-ons one at a time and see which one is causing issues. If you have completely uninstalled all your add-ons, and you're still having the frame-rate issue that is fixed with /reloadui, or you are still receiving the memory warnings from LUA, then please let us know either here, or through a support ticket, and we can have the UI team investigate that as a bug.

For everyone else, do keep an eye on upcoming patches, as we'll have some additional performance improvements on the way. Thanks all for your feedback!

Bfish22090

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote: »

Martinus72 wrote: »

It is still particle leak.
It appears to hit fps after particle heavy periods of time like world bosses Zerg in Wrothgar, after each of them I have to relog for reloadui won't fix this fps drop.
I'm playing on powerful laptop with 4GHz i76700K, 980M 8gb vram and 16gb of fast ram so expect this game to perform, I've got particle effects with its distance on minimum but this doesn't help.
Please fix this leak, it takes way too long.

To be clear, there is no longer a particle leak. We can provide technical details as to why:

Prior the game world even loading, we create a block of memory of "X" size that particles can live in, based on your settings for how many particle systems you allow. When we run out of that memory, we stop creating new particles until other particles are freed up (it has no capability to create particles otherwise). This is how the particle system has always existed. Prior to Thieves Guild, which brought in the overhauled particle system, particles would leak. Many of you know this, because during Trials, heavy PvP, or long dungeons, you would eventually stop seeing new particle effects spawn. That was because it was hitting the particle memory limit and never freeing up the old particles. The fact that this doesn't happen anymore is clear evidence that the particle leak no longer occurs.

On the flip side, because particles no longer leak, most (or all) of you are likely seeing many more particles than before in your heavy fight situations. For some of you, it may be helpful to reduce that setting, as @Taonnor pointed out, in order to maintain the frame rates you had before, or to reduce the particle distance setting in the menus.

A number of you (like @GeertKarel) have mentioned that /reloadui fixes the issue for you. In your cases, we would strongly recommend you uninstall your add-ons, as /reloadui does exactly what it sounds like it does - it reloads your UI, which includes add-ons. From there, you can try reinstalling add-ons one at a time and see which one is causing issues. If you have completely uninstalled all your add-ons, and you're still having the frame-rate issue that is fixed with /reloadui, or you are still receiving the memory warnings from LUA, then please let us know either here, or through a support ticket, and we can have the UI team investigate that as a bug.

For everyone else, do keep an eye on upcoming patches, as we'll have some additional performance improvements on the way. Thanks all for your feedback!

+1 best comment ever

Martinus72

Well I'm glad to hear if particles aren't causing this fps drop but something still is. I can play solo for hours with perfect frames rate but after joining graphically heavy fight with many players involved fps goes down and all of sudden smooth experience becomes choppy, than I have to relog each time to fix it so it definitely looks like leak, doesn't it.

klink012

Martinus72 wrote: »

Well I'm glad to hear if particles aren't causing this fps drop but something still is. I can play solo for hours with perfect frames rate but after joining graphically heavy fight with many players involved fps goes down and all of sudden smooth experience becomes choppy, than I have to relog each time to fix it so it definitely looks like leak, doesn't it.

Yes I agree. Reloading my UI does nothing for me. When I relog it fixes this FPS drop and non responsiveness of gameplay. I log backin and my FPS shoots back up 25+ frames. Definitely a leak somewhere!

Komma

I have to restart the game after leaving cyrodiil after being out there a while. Just too laggy if I dont.

Taonnor

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote: »

A number of you (like @GeertKarel) have mentioned that /reloadui fixes the issue for you. In your cases, we would strongly recommend you uninstall your add-ons, as /reloadui does exactly what it sounds like it does - it reloads your UI, which includes add-ons. From there, you can try reinstalling add-ons one at a time and see which one is causing issues. If you have completely uninstalled all your add-ons, and you're still having the frame-rate issue that is fixed with /reloadui, or you are still receiving the memory warnings from LUA, then please let us know either here, or through a support ticket, and we can have the UI team investigate that as a bug.

As @ZOS_AlexTardif said, often the addons relates in FPS drops. At my gameplay sessions i have always an eye on my LUA memory and several addons have memory leaks. For example FTC. The leaks are very small and this results that the FPS drops starts in long gameplay sessions sonner or later. If you have large fights between the leaks hitting harder and you have much early FPS drops.

At my system the FPS drops related by Addons starts in the 32bit client on around 150MB LUA. In the 64bit client i did not see any problems with higher LUA MB and FPS drops over time. But at 250MB and upside i choice to reloadui or relogg. I hit this at around äh 3hours unstopping playing... So a short pause is not bad hehe

Aektann

@ZOS_AlexTardif This is definitely a memory leak, not addon issues. Because /reloadui does not help, only relog does.

Caroloces

I'm glad I discovered this thread.

I don't PVP much so I haven't had much difficulty with FPS drops; however, last night (6/4) I did the Hel Ra Citadel trial with a group and during the course of the fight with the Warrior, my FPS got so bad (0-2 FPS) that it was like watching a very slow slideshow. I noticed that the problem seemed to worsen over time; and the severity was most extreme when I was in the thick of the battle where the particles were densest. When I drew back a bit, the FPS improved somewhat.

I was using the 32-bit client because I'm uncertain as to whether the 64-bit is in proper working order at this time. I did have a number of add-ons enabled, some of which were out-of-date.

My machine specs are the following:
GPU: Geforce GTX 670
CPU: Intel i5 3570K
RAM: 8 Gigs
OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

I've read about so many different things to try. It's very difficult to experiment with stuff when you're in a trial situation with 11 other players and things are moving quickly. I wanted to relog, but I wasn't sure where that would place me in the Trial setting. What would be helpful at this point is a prioritized list of things to do (from one of the helpful devs on this thread) when you find yourself in this type of situation.

ningauble_7b14_ESO

I'm still experiencing fps drops that persist until I relog or zone. Reloadui does not help. Task manager shows ESO saturating 1 cpu thread while fps bugged when I alt tab out of game. FPS is approximately half what it normally is, so 30ish in cyrodiil then I relog and it bounces back to 60ish. After I zone the cpu usage fluctuates and uses more of 2 threads rather than keeping 1 pegged at 100 percent. It seems to be triggered in cyrodiil by very large fights, but it also happens in pve, especially in vet icp, right after entering the area with the circular spike traps before the second to last boss encounter with the gates. I frequently have to relog there maybe 80 percent of the time.

Machine Specs:
GPU: Geforce GTX 970x2 in SLI, 368.22 drivers
CPU: Intel i7 5960x (OC'ed to 4.3Ghz)
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 10 Pro x64

I primarily have been using the x64 client.

Bashev

I had the issues with FPS drop to 20 in Cyrodiil when I enter a big battle. Usually I have 40 but after the FPS drop it never came back to 40 unless I restart the client. This was with the 32 bit client. With the 64 bit client I crashed every 10 minutes in Cyrodiil.

Last Friday I unistall the game, deleted all the addons and all preferences files. Then I redownloaded the game and reinstall it. Now I play with the 64 bit client in Cyrodiil and I dont crash anymore. The fps had increased to average 40 in big battles. In medium size battles I have 60 FPS and in small scale 80 and running around in Cyro from keep to keep alone almost 100. I also have sound in the big battles with the 64 bit client. It is still buggy sometimes and throw random sounds but the performance increased a lot. Now even when my fps drops to 40 in a big battle, immediately after the battle is over it goes up.

Tinolyn

From today's patch notes:

Miscellaneous
64-bit Client
Fixed an issue that was causing occasional crashing when using the PC version of the 64-bit client.
Fixed an issue that was causing certain textures to be missing or appear black when using the PC version of the 64-bit client.
Graphics & Performance
We have made general framerate improvements both the 32-bit and 64-bit Mac and PC game clients.

I really hope this helps with some of the problems I'm seeing (specifically the crashing). Any ZOS person with more information on what you fixed about the crashing?

Still nothing on the audio though.

Martinus72

Just a heads up for 64bit client after 2.4.6 patch - while sound issues seem to be finally fixed (good job), the memory leak still exists, nothing has changed here and game still needs relogging after every graphic effects heavy fight.

Bashev

Martinus72 wrote: »

Just a heads up for 64bit client after 2.4.6 patch - while sound issues seem to be finally fixed (good job), the memory leak still exists, nothing has changed here and game still needs relogging after every graphic effects heavy fight.

Do you use any addons? If yes back up them, remove them, clear the cache and try again.

Martinus72

Bashev wrote: »

Martinus72 wrote: »

Just a heads up for 64bit client after 2.4.6 patch - while sound issues seem to be finally fixed (good job), the memory leak still exists, nothing has changed here and game still needs relogging after every graphic effects heavy fight.

Do you use any addons? If yes back up them, remove them, clear the cache and try again.

I'm not using any memory eaters like minimap, master merchant or harvesting data base, besides as its been mentioned here before, if it would be an addon just reloadui would reset it but in this case only relog brings fps back up so it indicates memory leak on 64bit client side.

Sarousse

Even without addons, the memory leak still exists, but as the dev stated, they are working on it right now.

Bashev

Martinus72 wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Martinus72 wrote: »

Just a heads up for 64bit client after 2.4.6 patch - while sound issues seem to be finally fixed (good job), the memory leak still exists, nothing has changed here and game still needs relogging after every graphic effects heavy fight.

Do you use any addons? If yes back up them, remove them, clear the cache and try again.

I'm not using any memory eaters like minimap, master merchant or harvesting data base, besides as its been mentioned here before, if it would be an addon just reloadui would reset it but in this case only relog brings fps back up so it indicates memory leak on 64bit client side.

Reloadui doesnt reset anything. Some addons automatically reload the data that they stored immediately after reloadui.

LEGENDARYYY

I have done some testing. I have severe problems with ESO on both my laptop and desktop, though slightly different symptoms. FPS drop over time among them.


Desktop: GTX580 and i7 2600K
Laptop: GTX960M and i7 4720HQ


My symptoms in ESO when playing on the desktop:
- Unstable FPS, random drops
- Insane stutters/freezing, especially in large cities, dungeons, maelstrom arena, pvp, game freeze for about 0.5-1 sec at a time with maybe 4 secs intervals when walking/horsing/fighting.
- I stood still in one spot for 40 secs in Orsinium, game was freezing and lagging as I turned the camera around. But after a while it suddenly stabilized and I could turn without freezes. (seems this game takes forever to load stuff or what?)

What I've tried with my desktop:

- Turned off all addons, no change.

- Changed every single graphics setting in the in-game Settings/Video. Nothing helped, I could run everything on minimum and everything on ultra and the problems were exactly the same. Maybe about 20 fps reduction on ultra settings which is natural, but the freezes and drops still occured.

- Changed every single NVIDIA control panel setting for eso64.exe, nothing worked.

- Edited most of usersettings.txt values for an eternity, nothing helped.

- Reinstalled ESO and put it on a different SSD, no change.


My symptoms in ESO when playing on the laptop:
- Unstable FPS, random drops, + drops over time.
- Slight stuttering/freezing, maybe 0.1 secs at a time, I can barely feel it, but it's there. Much less severe than on my desktop though.
- I stood outside the portal to enter first stage of Maelstrom arena and at the time I had stable 57 fps. Completed the arena, noticing for every arena stage my FPS got worse. The final arena gave me about the same freezes I have on my desktop, with about 0.5 sec durations. When I finished the arena and got back out to where I had a stable 57 fps, I now had 38 fps in the exact same spot.

What I've tried with my laptop:

- The same as with my desktop + clean install of Windows.

NOTHING HELPS.

Something is terribly wrong with ESO. The game has gotten so much better lately, except for the performance, which for me is much much much worse than it was right after launch in 2014.

Astraous

Yeah, this is becoming a very noticeable thing for me. I have a GTX 980Ti with an i5 4690k and when I log in I get ~90 fps. Just questing and running around town and whatnot and I look at my fps again and it's dropped all the way down to 45. I checked my CPU loads and it looks like my fourth core is being pushed to its max while the others are not. I really hope this gets resolved.

Aprillion

I have a HP Envy with GeForce 950M.
After one of the June updates, my graphics settings went from near-ultimate to medium. At this setting, I have about 20 FPS.

I have tried everything I could find, disabling sound drivers, turning on/off vertical sync, update & reinstall graphic driver, downloading customized .ini files, etc. Nothing helps. The only setting that seems to affect the FPS is "subsampling quality".

edit: works fine again after I logged in on another computer and then again on the laptop.. no idea why.

Sledgemoto

I have to chime in here because this has been absolutely driving me nuts. First my system.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU Core Speed: 4693.2 MHz
MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M7
MSI GeForce GTX 980 GAMING 4G
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 running at XMP
SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Windows 10 Pro 64Bit

That's enough. So for me I run at 100 FPS almost everywhere max ultra settings with vsync off obviously, City's it drops down to mid 50's in certain areas. I to drop down to 2-5 FPS only when I run into a zerg in cyrodill or in trials. Not always mind you some times i'm as smooth as glass at 50 FPS running into zergs. What I've noticed watching MSI afterburner is that during this slide show my GPU usage % drops to almost 0 !

Doing some googling you will find this quite common with the 970's and 980's and happened's in other games as well. Some have suggested changing setting in nvidia control panel, mainly Power mangement to Prefer maximum performance and multi display/mixed-gpu acceleration to Single display performance mode.

Sadly neither of these settings has worked for me. Usually logging out of the game and logging back in will fix it for a short time but with the 40-60 people Ques lately this is becoming...frustrating.

Does anybody have a similar experience... and a fix.

I should add I normally reduce my setting in cyro to 1024/60/60 grass off shadows and water off. I've tried everything off and the lowest setting still get the slide shows.

Caroloces

I thought I was doing OK, running the 64-bit client, doing most of the content at FPS of 50 -60. Then just did Aetherian Archive and found my FPS slowly going down over time. When I finally left group after a couple of hours and stepped out into Craglorn I was dead in the water with FPS OF 0!
When I left group, FPS rebounded to normal.

Mulcibur

Taonnor wrote: »

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote: »

A number of you (like @GeertKarel) have mentioned that /reloadui fixes the issue for you. In your cases, we would strongly recommend you uninstall your add-ons, as /reloadui does exactly what it sounds like it does - it reloads your UI, which includes add-ons. From there, you can try reinstalling add-ons one at a time and see which one is causing issues. If you have completely uninstalled all your add-ons, and you're still having the frame-rate issue that is fixed with /reloadui, or you are still receiving the memory warnings from LUA, then please let us know either here, or through a support ticket, and we can have the UI team investigate that as a bug.

As @ZOS_AlexTardif said, often the addons relates in FPS drops. At my gameplay sessions i have always an eye on my LUA memory and several addons have memory leaks. For example FTC. The leaks are very small and this results that the FPS drops starts in long gameplay sessions sonner or later. If you have large fights between the leaks hitting harder and you have much early FPS drops.

At my system the FPS drops related by Addons starts in the 32bit client on around 150MB LUA. In the 64bit client i did not see any problems with higher LUA MB and FPS drops over time. But at 250MB and upside i choice to reloadui or relogg. I hit this at around äh 3hours unstopping playing... So a short pause is not bad hehe

@Taonnor, Is there a specific addon you use to track your addon memory usage?

Taonnor

Mulcibur wrote: »

@Taonnor, Is there a specific addon you use to track your addon memory usage?

I use my own debug addon.

Mulcibur

Taonnor wrote: »

Mulcibur wrote: »

@Taonnor, Is there a specific addon you use to track your addon memory usage?

I use my own debug addon.

Any chance you can share it? I've set my LUA memory limit to 2056. Can having it this high have a negative impact on performance?

Sledgemoto

Well I seemed to have fixed the problem. I uninstalled my GTX 980 and installed my old HD 7970 and walla I can now run threw zergs at a comfortable 30-40 FPS. I now have my GTX 980 for sale.

lmgtfy.com/?q=nvidia+gpu+usage+issue

aurly

ZOS_AlexTardif wrote: »

To be clear, there is no longer a particle leak. We can provide technical details as to why:

Hello,
something is still leaking, though, and I think it's something in the graphics. I'm now having this issue on my new PC. When I just start the game, it's silky smooth but the longer I play, the slower it gets. Then I restart, and it's smooth again.
I have the impression that it's graphics related, possibly player graphics (particles?). It slows down faster if I play at higher detail levels, and faster still if I spend time in busy cities like Daggerfall or Wayrest.
On Ultra detail levels, I can play for about an hour before FPS drops to the point where I want to restart, but on Medium I can play for maybe 4 hours before it's an issue.

It's not an add-on... it happened before I had any add-ons installed. Fullscreen, Windowed, Window-fullscreen also don't matter. Switching to windowed and fullscreen, or /reloadui doesn't fix it for me. Nothing fixes it except restarting the game.

There's one odd thing I've noticed - the game consultant reports 4 GB video memory, but I have 8 GB (it's a GTX1070). Perhaps it's related, the slowdown might be a symptom of video memory mismanagement. Although, GPU utilization is well below 100%. One CPU core is always near 100% while playing, the other cores pretty low. This is probably normal and expected in a CPU-bound game but mentioning it just in case.

If anyone has more info, or if I can help find the cause, please let me know, I'd like to see this fixed

Rayth

Hi here.

I'm back after months, happy to see the new 64 bits client is here. But....

FPS drop problem is always here, always exactly the same.

I upgraded my CPU since my first post, my config is :

Windows 10 Professionnel 64-bit
Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz
8,00 Go Canal-Double DDR3 @ 799 MHz (9-9-9-27)
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z97P-D3 (SOCKET 0)
2047 MoNVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 (Gigabyte) (Drivers 372.70)
931GB Seagate ST1000DM003-1SB10C (SATA)
Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)

I hope the team is still working on this problem.