Optimized usersettings.ini for Next-Gen*ish PC

Ajintse

Dear all,

We know that we can adjust and optimize most advanced settings for ESO by simply editing the .ini file. And we know that ESO loves CPU over GPU. But still, I need some tweaks in order to play this game around 60 FPS or above.

Setup
OS: Windows 10
BOARD: MSI Gaming 5
GPU: GTX1080 at 2.2Ghz (OC: Yes)
CPU: i7-4790k at 4.8 Ghz (OC: Yes)
RAM: 16GB at 3Ghz (XMP) (OC: Yes)
DISK: SSD 500GB + 2 HDD 1 TB (Game is installed on SSD)
NET: Killer Ethernet 1Gbps
INTERNET: 500/500 Mbps

Problem:
With this setup, I have around 30-40 FPS with (Distance and partics at 0). Sometimes I have 100 FPS (Wilderness, Delves). But most of the time I have huge FPS drops / stutters / freezes. It is unplayable at some moments (Dungeons, Raids, Trials, etc).

Question:
Is there anyone out here which uses a customized .ini file which still looks good and has increased performance? I'd really like to have that one.
If I set everything to default, it is like ESO is running on a potato. I have no clue nor idea why this is happening with my setup. I tested this even on all stock settings (No Overclock, etc).

Yes my drivers are up-to-date.
Yes I have reinstalled Windows 10.
Yes other games are stable (GTA V, FFXIV, NFS, Forza Horizon 3, BO3, Titanfall 2, Hitman, Ghost Wildlands, Division) All run around 120-144 FPS.

And, for some weird reason. FPS is also capped at 100 with V-Sync OFF.

IcyDeadPeople

Hmm, seems a bit odd that your frame rate is so low in PVE. If I disable vsync I get around 90fps with GTX 1060 and i7-6700K at stock clocks on max settings in most PVE areas. My display is only 60 Hz, so I usually keep vsync on.

PVP is a bit more demanding at times however, so I reduce the shadows setting in Cyrodiil. Shadow quality seems to be the main setting that impacts frame rate for me.

Nemesis7884

here are a lot of useful information; i applied a lot of these and even with mip loading -3 (even higher graphics than ultra) i basically increased my fps by 50-100%!!! on a gtx 680 and an i5 i get on ultra now 50-100 fps...even in cities...and my view distance is 75 and particles at 1000

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zdbqv/teso_ini_tweaks_muddy_textures_fix_more/

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/26fl0d/performance_tweaks/

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3jjoql/are_you_having_fps_issues_wih_eso_on_a_pc_well/

ps: v sync absolutly kills this game, i don't know why

Ajintse

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Hmm, seems a bit odd that your frame rate is so low in PVE. If I disable vsync I get around 90fps with GTX 1060 and i7-6700K at stock clocks on max settings in most PVE areas. My display is only 60 Hz, so I usually keep vsync on.

PVP is a bit more demanding at times however, so I reduce the shadows setting in Cyrodiil. Shadow quality seems to be the main setting that impacts frame rate for me.

Oh, yeah it it sreally odd! But I use 144Hz display. But ESO doesn't go up 100 FPS so it's okay. Have no tearing at all. But even with V-Sycn ON it is not playable. I reinstalled like everything but no go.

Ajintse

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

here are a lot of useful information; i applied a lot of these and even with mip loading -3 (even higher graphics than ultra) i basically increased my fps by 50-100%!!! on a gtx 680 and an i5 i get on ultra now 50-100 fps...even in cities...and my view distance is 75 and particles at 1000

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zdbqv/teso_ini_tweaks_muddy_textures_fix_more/

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/26fl0d/performance_tweaks/

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3jjoql/are_you_having_fps_issues_wih_eso_on_a_pc_well/

ps: v sync absolutly kills this game, i don't know why

Hey, thank you for the links! I also read on reddit some tweaks with shadow thingy but these settings are new for me. I will use those! Thnx

Sneaky-Snurr

OP, you should know that ESO was developed way back and the game engine isn't able to utilise multiple cores of your CPU.

Your setup is absolutely top notch but this game simply can't even utilise 2 cores properly and I even heard (cannot confirm, read in various eso reddit forum) that the absolute maximum cores the game is able to use are 2 out of how many cores you have.

Ajintse

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

OP, you should know that ESO was developed way back and the game engine isn't able to utilise multiple cores of your CPU.

Your setup is absolutely top notch but this game simply can't even utilise 2 cores properly and I even heard (cannot confirm, read in various eso reddit forum) that the absolute maximum cores the game is able to use are 2 out of how many cores you have.

Hey, thank you for your information! So can it be run better if I just set 2 cores on the .ini file? Or from task manager?
They always told me that ESO Uses a lot of CPU. But that is false. ESO in a dungeon used 23% CPU. While in Vivec City it used 17% CPU. And GPU never reaches 60%. But still 30-40 FPS.

Nestor

Also. Add-ons can have a major impact. Master merchant can bring the game to its knees when doing a scan. Smae with harvest map or other tracking add-ons. View distance is another one, try 40%

HatchetHaro

The CPU is almost always the bottleneck. Your graphics card is fine; the game runs pretty smoothly for me on an i7-4770 & GTX 1050ti.

Try actually completely turning down your graphical settings; if the game is still running at a low framerate, then it's most probably your CPU.

Check your addons; some addons can hinder your CPU performance.

Some CPU cores may be parked and limited. You should also try unparking your CPU cores if that's the case. You can Google for that easily.

Also make sure you're not thermal-throttling. You can check for that in your system's resource monitor while you're in-game.

Hurika

Ekstak21 wrote: »

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

OP, you should know that ESO was developed way back and the game engine isn't able to utilise multiple cores of your CPU.

Your setup is absolutely top notch but this game simply can't even utilise 2 cores properly and I even heard (cannot confirm, read in various eso reddit forum) that the absolute maximum cores the game is able to use are 2 out of how many cores you have.

Hey, thank you for your information! So can it be run better if I just set 2 cores on the .ini file? Or from task manager?
They always told me that ESO Uses a lot of CPU. But that is false. ESO in a dungeon used 23% CPU. While in Vivec City it used 17% CPU. And GPU never reaches 60%. But still 30-40 FPS.

It will use 1-2 cores. You don't need to set that. Let the OS handle context switching and cpu load balancing. It does use a lot of cpu but you have to look at how it's measured to see that. If you have a quad core, each cpu can handle 25% of your total capacity (4*25% = 100% cpu). So an app that is single threaded/single core can only use at most 1 cpu which equates to 25% (or 100% of 1 core). If the game is using 23% total cpu that almost an entire core. You may not see it in task manager though due to the process being dynamically moved between cores. Everything has overhead (network delay, I/O delay to read textures, hardware interrupts for I/O, etc) so it may not say exactly 25%. If I were guessing (and I totally am) anything on a 2nd thread/core would be ancillary non-critical actions. Multi-threading isn't simple and has a lot of complexity (read about threading and race conditions). Some things scale better than others.

Vsync causes issues because the frames being rendered have to align with when the screen refreshes so those getting out of sync causes lower frame rates. Vysnc off allows the frame buffers to be partially drawn during a monitor refresh cycle.

Sneaky-Snurr

Ekstak21 wrote: »

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

OP, you should know that ESO was developed way back and the game engine isn't able to utilise multiple cores of your CPU.

Your setup is absolutely top notch but this game simply can't even utilise 2 cores properly and I even heard (cannot confirm, read in various eso reddit forum) that the absolute maximum cores the game is able to use are 2 out of how many cores you have.

Hey, thank you for your information! So can it be run better if I just set 2 cores on the .ini file? Or from task manager?
They always told me that ESO Uses a lot of CPU. But that is false. ESO in a dungeon used 23% CPU. While in Vivec City it used 17% CPU. And GPU never reaches 60%. But still 30-40 FPS.

@Ekstak21
Altering the .ini file unfortunately doesn't help.

The problem lies within the game engine (it's a little old) itself so we players are helpless to 'force' the application to use multiple cores.
From my experience, tweaking the .ini file is only going to help you gain 5 FPS or so and possibly eliminate stuttering (I only managed to reduce stuttering by a significant degree) and such but in no way will it increase performance significantly via multiple core usage. So far my search for 'forcing' the game to utilise multiple cores has met its end with no result.

However, if you find any solution to this (I doubt it), do share them here! I bet a lot of players would appreciate you for that.
Good luck!

Jimbostein

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

OP, you should know that ESO was developed way back and the game engine isn't able to utilise multiple cores of your CPU.

Your setup is absolutely top notch but this game simply can't even utilise 2 cores properly and I even heard (cannot confirm, read in various eso reddit forum) that the absolute maximum cores the game is able to use are 2 out of how many cores you have.

There's a setting in usersettings.txt that lets you choose how many cores the game uses. Mine was set to 6 by default (I have a 6-core CPU), so perhaps the game does use more than 2 cores now. Thats a new setting I hadn't seen before the morrowind update.

LegacyDM

Ekstak21 wrote: »

Dear all,

We know that we can adjust and optimize most advanced settings for ESO by simply editing the .ini file. And we know that ESO loves CPU over GPU. But still, I need some tweaks in order to play this game around 60 FPS or above.

Setup
OS: Windows 10
BOARD: MSI Gaming 5
GPU: GTX1080 at 2.2Ghz (OC: Yes)
CPU: i7-4790k at 4.8 Ghz (OC: Yes)
RAM: 16GB at 3Ghz (XMP) (OC: Yes)
DISK: SSD 500GB + 2 HDD 1 TB (Game is installed on SSD)
NET: Killer Ethernet 1Gbps
INTERNET: 500/500 Mbps

Problem:
With this setup, I have around 30-40 FPS with (Distance and partics at 0). Sometimes I have 100 FPS (Wilderness, Delves). But most of the time I have huge FPS drops / stutters / freezes. It is unplayable at some moments (Dungeons, Raids, Trials, etc).

Question:
Is there anyone out here which uses a customized .ini file which still looks good and has increased performance? I'd really like to have that one.
If I set everything to default, it is like ESO is running on a potato. I have no clue nor idea why this is happening with my setup. I tested this even on all stock settings (No Overclock, etc).

Yes my drivers are up-to-date.
Yes I have reinstalled Windows 10.
Yes other games are stable (GTA V, FFXIV, NFS, Forza Horizon 3, BO3, Titanfall 2, Hitman, Ghost Wildlands, Division) All run around 120-144 FPS.

And, for some weird reason. FPS is also capped at 100 with V-Sync OFF.

Where do you live your getting 500 Mbps? I live in a major metropolitin area and can only get up to 300 with spectrum/time warner.

abelsgmx

My Specs

• Windows 10 (TCP Optimized for 50mb connection)
• I5-3330 3.0 Mhz
• 8 GB RAM
• GTX 1060 6gb RAM

UserSettings tuned for 4 core usage
SET MaxCoresToUse "4"
SET RequestedNumJobThreads "4"
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads "4"

No FPS problem PVE related, just some times i have a pull (I don't know how to say this in english, game freeze for one milisecond and continue) is like a bottleneck. I think this is due to there is not a multi core optimization, the last 2 options modified come with 1 by default, in general terms I feel a better fluid game after custom changes.

PlagueSD

Ajintse wrote: »

Problem:
With this setup, I have around 30-40 FPS with (Distance and partics at 0). Sometimes I have 100 FPS (Wilderness, Delves). But most of the time I have huge FPS drops / stutters / freezes. It is unplayable at some moments (Dungeons, Raids, Trials, etc).

You don't happen to use Harvest Map and Fyrakin's Minimap, do you? There's currently a compatibility issue between those addons that will "induce" lag/freezing and cause high ping spikes. I moved from Fyrakin's to Voltan's minimap and my problems went away.

NewBlacksmurf

(edit)

Yep I fell for the necro

turn off water reflections and keep everything else as is.

LegendaryMage

Google the .ini changes, there are a few articles & forum threads so read carefully and hopefully some of it will still be in play even to this day.

My .ini still has all those changes but I can't say for sure how much FPS they're netting me nowadays, in the past I remember they made a huge difference, 20+ FPS gained easily and much smoother gameplay.

If you want me to give you my .ini settings with all the changes I've done, and general video settings applied after the .ini changes (screenshot), feel free to message me, I'll be happy to help.

And as someone else said, try to unpark all your CPU cores.

Thogard

Weirdly enough, changing the .ini doesn’t actually do anything. The game now uses the .txt file for adjustments.