FPS drop over time

reActor1

aurly wrote: »

OK so earlier today I downloaded and installed the SDK found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812 (only selected the windows 10 SDK, not the tools)

Many thanks for sharing, I followed your instrunctions.
If I run a "dxdiag" I still see "Directx version: Directx 12". Is it ok? Do I have both version installed now? Eventually, how could I change the "active" version?

aurly

HalfSaw wrote: »

Many thanks for sharing, I followed your instrunctions.
If I run a "dxdiag" I still see "Directx version: Directx 12". Is it ok? Do I have both version installed now? Eventually, how could I change the "active" version?

If I understand it correctly, DirectX 12 includes all previous DirectX versions. But the "normal" version emulates them, while the developer version includes the real ones. You don't have to do anything else.

Let us know if it works for you.

b101uk

i have the same problem

after ~2h the FPS will suddenly drop over the period of ~2mins from 60fps down to ~20fps, and it will stay at 20fps regardless of zone, be it the busiest city at peak times or an empty dungeon or inside a house in the middle of nowhere.

now there are no heat problems that would cause thermal throttling of either the GPU or CPU (both are >30C away from the point of throttling), there is no shortage of RAM (windows reports a total RAM use of ~6.3GB of 24GB), the 64bit and 32bit ESO exe both do the same.

now bar the GTX1070 and windows 10 this is the same PC I played ESO in 2014 using windows 7 with no problems often playing for 15+ hours without restarting ESO.

one thing I do note, a couple of times the FPS has dropped there has been an ESO popup window saying:
UI Error:
Lua is reaching its memory limit. You should consider disabling some addons and reloading the UI.

which is odd, as I:
1: don't have any addons, just vanilla ESO.
2: it was the 64bit exe and there was over 17GB of RAM available to use.

now I play many other DX11 games, all must by extension use the same DX11 emulation that DX12 provides within windows 10, yet none of the games suffer from this sudden degradation in FPS after ~2 hours, many of them use far more RAM than ESO, many of them push the CPU and GPU to higher temperatures, and all of them I can play without any performance degradation for >10 hours, so I cant see it being a DX11 emulation problem within DX12, but more a problem with ESO.

Cambion2401

b101uk wrote: »

now I play many other DX11 games, all must by extension use the same DX11 emulation that DX12 provides within windows 10, yet none of the games suffer from this sudden degradation in FPS after ~2 hours, many of them use far more RAM than ESO, many of them push the CPU and GPU to higher temperatures, and all of them I can play without any performance degradation for >10 hours, so I cant see it being a DX11 emulation problem within DX12, but more a problem with ESO.

There are more games with problems, although not as big. And any game in older DX formats will get a boost from installing them. An emulator is pretty heavy compared to the original, so it's deemed to give problems on something as heavy as gaming. It may not always give problems, but performance will always drop, which makes an emulator a rather odd choice for something that's needed to render 3D. I blame Microsoft for making a bad decision here.

When a program needs to make direct calls to DirectX files bigger problems can also arise. ENB will often CTD on loading without installing the developers DirectX because it ask directly for DX files which obviously, an emulator does not have. If the engine tries to load something particular from DirectX that the emulator can't probably send out, huge problems can come to exist. Zenimax Online could theoretically try to avoid doing it, but doing things more indirectly generally means having less optimized code (and games are generally very badly optimized the last few years), which is never a good thing. It would be nice if Zenimax Online could make a notion somewhere to install the developer SDKs when having FPS issues tho.

We can not know for sure if it's extremely bad optimization of problems with direct calls to DirectX as we can't check the engine on those points (well we can but that's kinda illigal), but just know it isn't necessary Zenimax Online having made a bad program on de DirectX part. However, seeing it runs well on W10 with DirectX manually installed, and the difference between problems and not is too big to be from the workload of an emulator, I'm guessing some direct calls to DirectX are giving problems. That's my educated guess as someone who works with coding every day, take it for what you will.

This is why DirectX may be an issue here and not on other games you play. But known that some other game have issues as well, it's not only ESO. There aren't many that have them this big, but they do exist.

b101uk wrote: »

one thing I do note, a couple of times the FPS has dropped there has been an ESO popup window saying:
UI Error:
Lua is reaching its memory limit. You should consider disabling some addons and reloading the UI.

which is odd, as I:
1: don't have any addons, just vanilla ESO.
2: it was the 64bit exe and there was over 17GB of RAM available to use.

I find this a more worrying issue then the question why the DirectX emulator gives problems. Haven't seen this before myself, not have I heard about it yet.

aurly wrote: »

HalfSaw wrote: »

Many thanks for sharing, I followed your instrunctions.
If I run a "dxdiag" I still see "Directx version: Directx 12". Is it ok? Do I have both version installed now? Eventually, how could I change the "active" version?

If I understand it correctly, DirectX 12 includes all previous DirectX versions. But the "normal" version emulates them, while the developer version includes the real ones. You don't have to do anything else.

Indeed you don't need to do anything but installing them. Windows will know to use those instead. Dxdiag always shows the highest DirectX you have, that being DX12 is normal, unless you have a card that isn't DX12 compatible, then it should say your max compatible DirectX version of course. Just do note that Microsoft tends to make the first installer an unpacker, which unpacks all redistributals and the actual installer (ad least it was like that last time I needed to get it).

GoldSabre

My specs: Intel 4690K, GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, SSD, Windows 10 x64, running eso64.exe

aurly wrote: »

OK so earlier today I downloaded and installed the SDK found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812 (only selected the windows 10 SDK, not the tools), and so far I've been playing for 3 hours straight, with no sign of slowdown. This includes spending some time in the cities of Daggerfall and Wayrest, which almost always required me to restart the game before.

Unfortunately, this did not work for me. I installed this SDK (left everything ticked, completed the installer) but my FPS still drops by more than half over the course of an hour.

I've just started ESO, so I was in the starter areas. Being away from the "town" would stay at 100fps, but after an hour it would be dipping to 60fps in the same places. Inside town, I would start at 65-75fps, but end up at 25fps after an hour. Logging out and logging back in would immediately boost my FPS to the original values.

I've done other work relating to changing in-game video options, using NVidia Inspector to ensure maximum performance and the like (see this thread). My CPU never goes above 40% unless loading a new area and I've forced my GPU to stay at max clock, but the temperature stays at only 5ºC hotter than idle and fan speeds are half what they are when playing DOOM. My point: resource usage is quite low.

Have I done something wrong with installing the SDK? I wasn't able to manually install the "Jun2010_d3dx11_43_x64.cab" using command line, so I assumed simply running through the installer was enough.

reActor1

aurly wrote: »

Let us know if it works for you.

It seems like it doesn't.
My issue is the one where you have to relog ore zone after a "sticky" FPS drop.
That DirectX SDK didn't fix it, unfotunately.

Cambion2401

Cambion2401 wrote: »

Cambion2401 wrote: »

I think there are two fps issues running through eachother in one thread now. The DirectX related one and the server/engine related one. Perhaps time to take this one for DirectX and get another one for server/engine related fps? Mainly because DirectX has a solution and this thread is getting pretty long...

You know. Like coding. Keep things separated so they are more easy to understand .

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/321259/fps-drop-over-time-engine-server-related/p1?new=1

New thread for issues after having DirextX installed.

GoldSabre wrote: »

I've just started ESO, so I was in the starter areas. Being away from the "town" would stay at 100fps, but after an hour it would be dipping to 60fps in the same places. Inside town, I would start at 65-75fps, but end up at 25fps after an hour. Logging out and logging back in would immediately boost my FPS to the original values.

I've done other work relating to changing in-game video options, using NVidia Inspector to ensure maximum performance and the like (see this thread). My CPU never goes above 40% unless loading a new area and I've forced my GPU to stay at max clock, but the temperature stays at only 5ºC hotter than idle and fan speeds are half what they are when playing DOOM. My point: resource usage is quite low.

The FPS drops inside cities may be the same as the not directX related thread is about. Certain places indeed give huge drops, I sometimes go from 200 (increased the cap from 100 to 200) to 20. Indeed it's not your hardware or anything. No ones hardware has been running near max. Posted the link to that thread above.

GoldSabre wrote: »

Have I done something wrong with installing the SDK? I wasn't able to manually install the "Jun2010_d3dx11_43_x64.cab" using command line, so I assumed simply running through the installer was enough.

I just went checking, that DirectX installment is not the same I have. I'm not sure but mine may be from the developer part of Microsofts website. I guess the .exe should be enough with this. If not, I can link the developer one I've got. It's the original from Microsoft, but unpacked (it had one .exe to unpack then an .exe to install). I don't know the exact difference, but that version worked better for me than the one linked, and did the trick for me. Here it is. I've saved it in OneDrive, just in case I get a new pc. Uploaded it to dropbox (because OneDrive allows anyone to edit files if I make a link). As it may very well be a developer download, I don't know if you even CAN find it, or download it if I got Microsofts link. This way I'm sure you get it. You only need to run the installer with this one (unpacking and stuff has been done already).

HalfSaw wrote: »

aurly wrote: »

Let us know if it works for you.

It seems like it doesn't.
My issue is the one where you have to relog ore zone after a "sticky" FPS drop.
That DirectX SDK didn't fix it, unfotunately.

I don't quite understand the second sentence. If it's the FPS drop in certain places, it's probably not a DirectX issue but a different one, see my answer to GoldSabre. If it is the issue where you get lower FPS over time, undepended of the place, and relogging or restarting the games help, you could try the link I just send to GoldSabre.

aurly

GoldSabre wrote: »

Have I done something wrong with installing the SDK? I wasn't able to manually install the "Jun2010_d3dx11_43_x64.cab" using command line, so I assumed simply running through the installer was enough.

All I did was run the installer, deselect everything that wasn't the Windows 10 SDK, and after the installation I rebooted my PC. I haven't seen any permanent FPS drops since. I was able to run the game for 12 hours straight (don't judge me) without any problems.

When you say you log out and back in to get the FPS back to normal, do you mean back to character select? Or completely restarting the game? The problem I had required a full restart of the game, simply logging out wouldn't fix it. If it does for you, try /reloadui ? Maybe yours is add-on related.

reActor1

aurly wrote: »

When you say you log out and back in to get the FPS back to normal, do you mean back to character select? Or completely restarting the game? The problem I had required a full restart of the game, simply logging out wouldn't fix it. If it does for you, try /reloadui ? Maybe yours is add-on related.

My issue is one of the two mentioned in this thread: not the gradual fps loss, the other one.
When I loose fps I normally can recover it when I take distance from all those fx and ppl (a desert area), but sometimes I cant recover the majority of the fps in any way. When it happens (quite often) I have to change zone (campaign, entering a delve or IC) or logout (yes, to the character select).
Reloading UI doesn't change anything, unfortunately.

I'll give it another try, by the way.

Forgive my bad english and thanks for the solidarity

Vikt0o0r

Just registered here to say this.

I get fps drops and I guess it happens because the game uses your virtual memory which is based on hdd/ssd. In my case I have hdd so I believe it slows down the game. To test it I turned off virtual memory and my game was fine until it crashed with the following error "low memory". It doesn't matter if I use lowest settings still says not enough memory. So I guess we are dealing with a memory leak.

My specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
I5-3470
GTX-660 2gb
4gb ram (I know it's not enough but the game minimum specs say 4gb ram and I should be fine playing with the lowest settings)
50mbps networks

Horowonnoe

Today I had the privilege to experience how it is to heal vMol with 1-2fps on Rakkhat. It was super scary. I am shocked i didn't die more and somehow could afk heal the group even with game refreshing only every second.

I never had this problem before. And it happened in several runs. Everything was fine and then as i played longer, the frames got slower and slower. And i am on a mac ... rip : |

Cambion2401

Vikt0o0r wrote: »

Just registered here to say this.

I get fps drops and I guess it happens because the game uses your virtual memory which is based on hdd/ssd. In my case I have hdd so I believe it slows down the game. To test it I turned off virtual memory and my game was fine until it crashed with the following error "low memory". It doesn't matter if I use lowest settings still says not enough memory. So I guess we are dealing with a memory leak.

My specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
I5-3470
GTX-660 2gb
4gb ram (I know it's not enough but the game minimum specs say 4gb ram and I should be fine playing with the lowest settings)
50mbps networks

How long did it take to crash? When starting up or later on? How much different places have been loaded? I'm starting to believe that perhaps the DirectX solution happened to be another problem with the same error occurring. Tho I still recommend installing it manually, I think it may have been accident that his problems seemed equal. Too many people have problems even after installing it.

I have a pretty fast HDD (higher rotation speed), so that may be why I don't have the slowly degrading FPS drops, only the FPS drops in certain area's (they're gone when I leave that area, and get back when I walk back into it). It seems there is something that cannot load properly.

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Today I had the privilege to experience how it is to heal vMol with 1-2fps on Rakkhat. It was super scary. I am shocked i didn't die more and somehow could afk heal the group even with game refreshing only every second.

I never had this problem before. And it happened in several runs. Everything was fine and then as i played longer, the frames got slower and slower. And i am on a mac ... rip : |

I don't know that much of macs, but it defiantly rules out DirectX as only problem here (as mac only uses OpenGL) if you have problems too. I have no clue what would cause the low FPS sadly. Could you try again on a later day, to exclude server or internet issues as cause?

GoldSabre

aurly wrote: »

All I did was run the installer, deselect everything that wasn't the Windows 10 SDK, and after the installation I rebooted my PC.

I'm not sure what the Windows 10 SDK is supposed to look like... here's an image of what my installer looks like. I assume this is what you're referring to?

aurly wrote: »

When you say you log out and back in to get the FPS back to normal, do you mean back to character select? Or completely restarting the game?

I mean going back to the character select screen and then choosing my character again. I don't have any addons, since I just started playing.

aurly

GoldSabre wrote: »

aurly wrote: »

All I did was run the installer, deselect everything that wasn't the Windows 10 SDK, and after the installation I rebooted my PC.

I'm not sure what the Windows 10 SDK is supposed to look like... here's an image of what my installer looks like. I assume this is what you're referring to?

aurly wrote: »

When you say you log out and back in to get the FPS back to normal, do you mean back to character select? Or completely restarting the game?

I mean going back to the character select screen and then choosing my character again. I don't have any addons, since I just started playing.

No, it looks different. Although it should also work, if you had the same problem... But if going back to character select fixes it, it's not the DirectX problem. I don't know then I'm afraid.

Fulcrum52

Windows 10, installed directxSDK, didn't help, still have to log out every 40 minutes or the FPS drop becomes unbearable. What i have noticed is that the game's ram usage has never reached 3gb, it's atmost 2.8gb, i have 32gb ram and use the 64bit executable. People on the forums have mentioned that the game for them can take ~5-6gigs of ram.

Looks like this issue has been ongoing for 2 years now so i doubt zenimax cares. Either steal a computer from CERN or leave.

GoldSabre

aurly wrote: »

GoldSabre wrote: »

I'm not sure what the Windows 10 SDK is supposed to look like... here's an image of what my installer looks like. I assume this is what you're referring to?

No, it looks different. Although it should also work, if you had the same problem... But if going back to character select fixes it, it's not the DirectX problem. I don't know then I'm afraid.

I'm worried that I'm not using the correct download, even though I used the one linked (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812). Can you provide the link you used which ends up looking different from the picture I provided?

Preyfar

b101uk wrote: »

after ~2h the FPS will suddenly drop over the period of ~2mins from 60fps down to ~20fps, and it will stay at 20fps regardless of.

It's definitely an issue in -game. When you have these FPS issues you can just run up to a wall, switch to first person, and look at your FPS. It'll still be at 20. And all your doing is looking at a wall in game, nothing else. Not a single other thing visible.

When this happens, I refresh, go back into game, and I'm up to 100+ FPS again.

Between what appears to be a memory leak and the game's lack of multi-core support performance has gotten progressively worse over time. They redid the character models a while ago (a mostly invisible difference) and framerates went up, but the game's overall performance is still hobbled long term.

Cambion2401

Fulcrum52 wrote: »

Looks like this issue has been ongoing for 2 years now so i doubt zenimax cares. Either steal a computer from CERN or leave.

It may also be an problem nested deep in the engine making it hard to fix, or very hard to find. Believe me, wouldn't be the first time someone tried to fix it and after three years he finds it and is like "wait, that code sucks. Why did we write that? How did we miss that?". They may be trying but not finding it. Stereotypes are pretty right on programmers. "Why doesn't it work?" "Why does it work?"

Preyfar wrote: »

Between what appears to be a memory leak and the game's lack of multi-core support performance has gotten progressively worse over time. They redid the character models a while ago (a mostly invisible difference) and framerates went up, but the game's overall performance is still hobbled long term.

This kind of things, and the fact the game itself has become a lot better in terms of gameplay and storytelling, makes me think they try. I might be wrong, I don't know them, but I actually feel like Zenimax tries there best, as one of the few big developers.

But I agree, performance sucks right now, and I really hope Zenimax fixes it soon. It does make me rarely get online. Last month all I did was claiming dailies because of this.

aurly

GoldSabre wrote: »

aurly wrote: »

GoldSabre wrote: »

I'm not sure what the Windows 10 SDK is supposed to look like... here's an image of what my installer looks like. I assume this is what you're referring to?

No, it looks different. Although it should also work, if you had the same problem... But if going back to character select fixes it, it's not the DirectX problem. I don't know then I'm afraid.

I'm worried that I'm not using the correct download, even though I used the one linked (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6812). Can you provide the link you used which ends up looking different from the picture I provided?

I must have pasted the wrong link somehow. Try this one: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk

Updated my previous post with that link too.

Declarius

I've given up on the game because of this. Very depressing.

coldreactive_ESO

Windows 10 x64
AMD R9 390X MSi
AMD FX-8350 stock speeds
Crosshair V Formula-Z Motherboard
32 GB of RAM
512 GB SSD as the only Drive

My FPS gets terrible after a while, forcing me to quit the game for a while. This is using the 64-bit client as well.

Preyfar

Cambion2401 wrote: »

This kind of things, and the fact the game itself has become a lot better in terms of gameplay and storytelling, makes me think they try. I might be wrong, I don't know them, but I actually feel like Zenimax tries there best, as one of the few big developers.

But I agree, performance sucks right now, and I really hope Zenimax fixes it soon. It does make me rarely get online. Last month all I did was claiming dailies because of this.

I definitely think they try, and anyone who doesn't think they do is fooling themselves. But I still get aggravated at them (as a company) because these kinds of issues never get a response, but it's something that the entire player base feels. I have to overclock my PC hardcore just to get reasonable framerates in ESO, and I by no means have a bad PC (5930K, GTX 980). I can handle just about game but ESO without breaking a sweat. Factor in the memory leak, the fact the game is still tied to single core performance, and it adds up quite a bit.

But I'd also be blind to say it hasn't gotten better. It definitely has, but still has a long way to go.

VMOL can take my system down to sub 10 FPS in certain fights. Magicka ultimates and other spells are insanely intensive. Trials should (in theory) be better performance because you're in enclosed locations, thus less to render... but somehow it's always the opposite.

Cambion2401

I don't know how, but it's suddenly fixed for me. Staying strait on 60fps (Vsync) now. Didn't change a thing, only had a game update. Did do something I guess. Anvil is no problem at all anymore, and I haven't found a new problem yet. It all runs perfectly smooth somehow. I'm happy, but I don't know how or why.

Horowonnoe

Cambion2401 wrote: »

Vikt0o0r wrote: »

Just registered here to say this.

I get fps drops and I guess it happens because the game uses your virtual memory which is based on hdd/ssd. In my case I have hdd so I believe it slows down the game. To test it I turned off virtual memory and my game was fine until it crashed with the following error "low memory". It doesn't matter if I use lowest settings still says not enough memory. So I guess we are dealing with a memory leak.

My specs:

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
I5-3470
GTX-660 2gb
4gb ram (I know it's not enough but the game minimum specs say 4gb ram and I should be fine playing with the lowest settings)
50mbps networks

How long did it take to crash? When starting up or later on? How much different places have been loaded? I'm starting to believe that perhaps the DirectX solution happened to be another problem with the same error occurring. Tho I still recommend installing it manually, I think it may have been accident that his problems seemed equal. Too many people have problems even after installing it.

I have a pretty fast HDD (higher rotation speed), so that may be why I don't have the slowly degrading FPS drops, only the FPS drops in certain area's (they're gone when I leave that area, and get back when I walk back into it). It seems there is something that cannot load properly.

Horowonnoe wrote: »

Today I had the privilege to experience how it is to heal vMol with 1-2fps on Rakkhat. It was super scary. I am shocked i didn't die more and somehow could afk heal the group even with game refreshing only every second.

I never had this problem before. And it happened in several runs. Everything was fine and then as i played longer, the frames got slower and slower. And i am on a mac ... rip : |

I don't know that much of macs, but it defiantly rules out DirectX as only problem here (as mac only uses OpenGL) if you have problems too. I have no clue what would cause the low FPS sadly. Could you try again on a later day, to exclude server or internet issues as cause?

Sure thing! Just did vMoL and vHRC last night and all went fine pretty much until Rakhat where i again got 3fps ob the lowest settings. It went from 15fps down to3fps or 1 and was there for a few secs then back to 15... and so on the entire fight.

In hrc i had no problems until we got to the warrior where my frame rate dropped every time he did his cleave and got so slow (1fps) the frames didnt refresh fast enough for me to get out of the red. Rip. i basically died on every special attack because mygame froze whenever he would do that.

Declarius

The subject of the thread isn't generally low fps, or low fps in certain areas. It's very specifically FPS drop over play time, in areas that normally run well.

I post this because one day I hope this issue is fixed, and I don't want the next Bethesda post in here to be tips based on general bad performance, rather than addressing this specific bug.

GoldSabre

Unfortunately, the Windows 10 SDK did not resolve the issue of FPS being more than halved over time. Thanks for all the help though; maybe some day ZOS will be able to implement a fix.

zerosingularity

@ZOS_AlexTardif

You were good to us in the past with timely explanations and help with the frames issue. I was hoping you could spare some time and give an update to the current issues people are having with low frame rates in certain situations.

Some of the things I think people may want answered (myself included) are:

• State of progress on memory leak issue - many experience this still.
• State of progress on full conversion to dx11 - utilizing the dx11 specific features mentioned long ago.
• State of progress on better multi-threaded capabilities - how well is the multi-threaded performance of ESO? How many threads does ESO actually benefit from before severe diminishing returns.

Are there any other interesting bits of performance related things that can be shared, people would love to know.

Fulcrum52

Setting the page file to zero seems to drastically reduce the fps drop.

jasann

Fulcrum52 wrote: »

Setting the page file to zero seems to drastically reduce the fps drop.

How do you set the page file?

Syrani

/lurk

I, too, am having FPS drops, especially in trials. It's darn near unplayable, and has been for the past few months.

PC EU (but I am in the US) 64 bit version
Win 7 64 bit
i7 5820k liquid cooled
X99 Pro motherboard
GTX 980 TI
500 gig SSD
16 gig DDR4

I have recently started over on the US server in hopes that it is better there for me, but it's going to be a long time before I am raid ready in order to check.