Game runs terribly on good(ish) gaming laptop

Belyar

System Information


Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4750HQ CPU @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960M, 4065 MB VRAM
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Page File: 3832MB used, 6669MB available

My problem:

I either experience low FPS all the time ( 40-50 with a lot of random stuttering ) , or my FPS drops from 60 to 20-30, the game starts to stutter for a few/seconds minutes, etc. In Cyrodill it is completely unplayable.

What I tried so far

> changed graphic settings from high to the lowest and it had little to no impact
> drivers up to date
> tried to cap FPS to 60/30, but doesn't seem to work
> tried the game with and without Addons, but nothing changed

I've been playing the game like this for months and found no solution. I think my laptop should be able to run this game pretty smoothly, so what do you guys think the problem is?

NewBlacksmurf

Looks fine 40-50 FPS isn’t bad for this game but for drops what’s your HD type, connection and speed?

Orjix

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Looks fine 40-50 FPS isn’t bad for this game

Maybe not, but in the past when I ran it on my laptop (i7-4720, 960m) I would constantly get 75-100 FPS (exception of spikes) now I have to play on a lower resolution and turn all my graphics options to low to get 40-50 FPS

Belyar

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Looks fine 40-50 FPS isn’t bad for this game but for drops what’s your HD type, connection and speed?

Trust me, with constant stuttering it is REALLY bad.

Don't think there is a problem with my connection, in League of Legends I have 30-35 ping. Here it is somewhat higher though, around 80.

Izaki

On consoles we are capped at 30 FPS. And unless you take off all the stuff on your screen (combat text, collectibles, health %, quest trackers, buff trackers) and put on a polymorph and restart the game once inside the trial instance, the FPS in trials can get very painfully low. You're lucky to have your 50!

Don't even get me started on Cyrodiil.

Don't know what might cause the stuttering. Certain graphic setting too high maybe?

NewBlacksmurf

Suggestion:

Check your processes when this happens and see if it’s something like anti virus or background processes.

For me it was anti virus....forgot about that

badmojo

Windows power setting is set to highest performance?

Belyar

Izaki wrote: »

On consoles we are capped at 30 FPS. And unless you take off all the stuff on your screen (combat text, collectibles, health %, quest trackers, buff trackers) and put on a polymorph and restart the game once inside the trial instance, the FPS in trials can get very painfully low. You're lucky to have your 50!

Don't even get me started on Cyrodiil.

Don't know what might cause the stuttering. Certain graphic setting too high maybe?

Well like I said no matter my graphic settings, the stuttering just won't go away nor will my fps change. ( goes down ~10 on the highest settings, but won't go up on the lowest ) So while I have 40-50 fps, I still can't enjoy the game. It is especially annoying in dungeons and trials.

rhapsodious

I'm fairly certain that the game is bottlenecked by the CPU, or it's at least the chief limiting factor in performance. And in Cyrodiil, when you have 32049823049283409238432 calculations being made due to player abilities and calculations, it makes sense that the game would start to struggle. (Though yeah, that is a problem you shouldn't have to put up with, I completely agree.)

Out of curiosity do you get better performance in non-CP campaigns?

Nestor

I have an Asus Laptop, I think it even has the same CPU, but GPU is a 980M. The game runs great on it.

But, one thing I did on my laptop as as soon as I got it was to uninstall all the shovel-ware before I ever tried to run a game. All those apps loading up with windows are not doing you any favors.

Also, the point above about being in High Performance mode while plugged in is something else to check.

Oh, if you have the issue of very low sound levels in games that I had, I finally found the source, its the Streaming app that loads with Windows that is set to 50% audio output.

Belyar

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Suggestion:

Check your processes when this happens and see if it’s something like anti virus or background processes.

For me it was anti virus....forgot about that

CPU usage is around ~35%.

rhapsodious wrote: »

I'm fairly certain that the game is bottlenecked by the CPU, or it's at least the chief limiting factor in performance. And in Cyrodiil, when you have 32049823049283409238432 calculations being made due to player abilities and calculations, it makes sense that the game would start to struggle. (Though yeah, that is a problem you shouldn't have to put up with, I completely agree.)

Out of curiosity do you get better performance in non-CP campaigns?

I'm getting that performance outside of Cyrodill, duh. There I have 20 fps at best with lowest settings.

badmojo wrote: »

Windows power setting is set to highest performance?

Yep.

Takes-No-Prisoner

Belyar wrote: »

System Information

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4750HQ CPU @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960M, 4065 MB VRAM
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Page File: 3832MB used, 6669MB available

I have a Asus Laptop as well. My Nvidia is a Gefore GTX 950m and I actually had problems with the game looking blurry! Once I fixed the blurryness I had no real issue with mine. While my card is older then yours, I had no studdering issues, FPS drops yes it's normal, but studdering none.

Might want to hop onto the Nividia driver settings and poke around at the settings. I actually poked around on that driver on my PC Tower and Laptop and found the Tower has much more settings to manage then the Laptop just FYI. Both have Nividia Geforce just different cards/models.

Nestor wrote: »

I have an Asus Laptop, I think it even has the same CPU, but GPU is a 980M. The game runs great on it.

But, one thing I did on my laptop as as soon as I got it was to uninstall all the shovel-ware before I ever tried to run a game. All those apps loading up with windows are not doing you any favors.

Also, the point above about being in High Performance mode while plugged in is something else to check.

Oh, if you have the issue of very low sound levels in games that I had, I finally found the source, its the Streaming app that loads with Windows that is set to 50% audio output.

Also what Nestor said, when I opened my PC Tower and Laptop back in the day, the first thing I did was remove any bloat ware I knew I didn't need.

Haggian

Perhaps your laptop a thermal throttling?

Megabear

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

Magdalina

Hm. Well I couldn't give you any real technical advise but I can assure you this game is more than capable of stably running on a laptop with specs far inferior to yours(such as mine which sports Nvidia GeForce 630m videocard that's not even officially supported anymore ). I usually run on medium-low settings at 30-40 fps, dropping down in the 20s in active action though. But no stuttering. So it's not the hardware(unless something is actually breaking down?) I'd assume.

Most likely culprit could be overheating? That'd cause stutter alright. Also for me personally, upgrading to an SSD has improved the performance tremendously, seems my system was being bottlenecked at the harddrive(now it's the videocard ). Something else that could cause stutter would be something else running in the background and suddenly pulling resources off ESO - check the task manager if you have everything closed to make sure it's not some weird Windows system thing acting up or something. Another thing that's probably not the case given you are getting decent overall fps, but you're sure sure ESO's running with the good videocard, not the inbuilt potato one, right? They love to default to the inbuilt one for some reason, at least mine definitely does.

Tai-Chi

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

USEFUL TIP:
Place the Laptop on a sturdy, wire cake-cooling rack - the higher, the better. It is much cheaper than an underneath fan and work a treat for me.

Megabear

Tai-Chi wrote: »

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

USEFUL TIP:
Place the Laptop on a sturdy, wire cake-cooling rack - the higher, the better. It is much cheaper than an underneath fan and work a treat for me.

Thanks for the tip but I tried various cooling devices.. nothing helped.

Valve

Megabear wrote: »

Tai-Chi wrote: »

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

USEFUL TIP:
Place the Laptop on a sturdy, wire cake-cooling rack - the higher, the better. It is much cheaper than an underneath fan and work a treat for me.

Thanks for the tip but I tried various cooling devices.. nothing helped.

That's because, unfortunately, this game runs terribly on even high-end Desktops.

Hmm, or maybe you mean cooling devices didn't help the laptops last?

Either way, the game still runs like poop.

Atreyix

It's your CPU, ESO overall runs poorly because it runs off of 1 core. Doesn't matter if you have a high-end Desktop or a laptop like yourself, the CPU's single core performance judges how well it'll run ESO. That's why you could hop over to lets say GW2, and your FPS is a lot better. That is because GW2 takes use of more then 1 core.

Rohamad_Ali

Overclock .

Judas Helviaryn

Belyar wrote: »

System Information


Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4750HQ CPU @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960M, 4065 MB VRAM
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Page File: 3832MB used, 6669MB available

My problem:

I either experience low FPS all the time ( 40-50 with a lot of random stuttering ) , or my FPS drops from 60 to 20-30, the game starts to stutter for a few/seconds minutes, etc. In Cyrodill it is completely unplayable.

What I tried so far

> changed graphic settings from high to the lowest and it had little to no impact
> drivers up to date
> tried to cap FPS to 60/30, but doesn't seem to work
> tried the game with and without Addons, but nothing changed

I've been playing the game like this for months and found no solution. I think my laptop should be able to run this game pretty smoothly, so what do you guys think the problem is?

Just to let you know, the moment I switched to an i7 processor, my game also started stuttering heavily at pretty consistent intervals. The only thing that removed that issue in all but the heaviest cases, for me, was disabling hyperthreading in my BIOS.

Apparently other people play just fine with it on, but this might be something to consider.

Nestor

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

The new Asus ROG have a much better air handling scheme than most laptops. Part of the reason they are so big. I researched this aspect as my job requires travel and I finally had to break down and get a gaming laptop and I did not want heat being a factor.

PlagueSD

Belyar wrote: »

System Information


Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4750HQ CPU @ 2.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 960M, 4065 MB VRAM
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Page File: 3832MB used, 6669MB available

Boost your memory to 16GB. On my desktop, I ran 8GB of ram. I had screen freezes all the time. I ran with Perfomance monitor active and noticed the "random" freezes coincided when there was NO physical memory left and the game had to utilize swap file. Problem went away when I upgraded to 16gb. I'm also running 2400Mhz speed memory instead of 1600.

As you can see, more than 8GB is in use when ESO is active.

UnseenCat

There is a memory leak in ESO currently. Windows 10 does a fairly good job of shoveling memory around and dodging it, but at the cost of eating as ridiculous amount of total RAM for the game plus space to sort out the memory leak. That's why 8GB is getting cramped. 16GB on my desktop doesn't have the problem -- more room for Windows to bounce memory addresses around as long as I don't have a ton of browser tabs or other applications open while I play. So -- If you can upgrade to 16GB of RAM, it will help until the memory leak gets fixed (maybe with Clockwork City upgrade?), and improve performance all around.

Be aware that most laptop GPU chipsets still use shared memory. So your GPU is also likely to be robbing you of usable RAM or causing more in RAM to swap to disk. Upgrading memory helps reduce that impact.

Also -- try turning off Hyperthreading in BIOS. I've found that at lower base clock speeds, hyperthreading can can cause intermittent stutter/slowdown during the required wait states while the CPU checks to see if anything can/should be shuffled off to a virtual core. Most laptops run slower base clocks to reduce heat and power consumption, and can't afford the momentary wait states when you have a timing-dependent single main thread like a game that needs to be serviced right now.

PlagueSD

And close that damn launcher when you're playing ESO.

Belyar

UnseenCat wrote: »

There is a memory leak in ESO currently. Windows 10 does a fairly good job of shoveling memory around and dodging it, but at the cost of eating as ridiculous amount of total RAM for the game plus space to sort out the memory leak. That's why 8GB is getting cramped. 16GB on my desktop doesn't have the problem -- more room for Windows to bounce memory addresses around as long as I don't have a ton of browser tabs or other applications open while I play. So -- If you can upgrade to 16GB of RAM, it will help until the memory leak gets fixed (maybe with Clockwork City upgrade?), and improve performance all around.

Be aware that most laptop GPU chipsets still use shared memory. So your GPU is also likely to be robbing you of usable RAM or causing more in RAM to swap to disk. Upgrading memory helps reduce that impact.

Also -- try turning off Hyperthreading in BIOS. I've found that at lower base clock speeds, hyperthreading can can cause intermittent stutter/slowdown during the required wait states while the CPU checks to see if anything can/should be shuffled off to a virtual core. Most laptops run slower base clocks to reduce heat and power consumption, and can't afford the momentary wait states when you have a timing-dependent single main thread like a game that needs to be serviced right now.

Sadly I can't turn off hyperthreading because there is no such an option in my BIOS menu. I've tried everything else you guys suggested, still no luck. My laptop is never overheating btw.

Guess I'll just buy 8GB ram and see if that solves the problem.

Megabear

Nestor wrote: »

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

The new Asus ROG have a much better air handling scheme than most laptops. Part of the reason they are so big. I researched this aspect as my job requires travel and I finally had to break down and get a gaming laptop and I did not want heat being a factor.

Asus ROG is a solid recommendation and I almost bought one. However after having lost two laptops to heating issues I did extensive research and everyone praised Sager and was in favor over Asus cooling capabilities, which is why I went with Sager instead. I guess if I were to get a fourth one I'll give Asus a try.

Megabear

Valve wrote: »

Megabear wrote: »

Tai-Chi wrote: »

Megabear wrote: »

I've had three high end laptops. All three lagged no matter what I did, and all three crapped out in under three years. I don't buy gaming laptops anymore. Main issue is overheating and a fan underneath won't solve the issue.

USEFUL TIP:
Place the Laptop on a sturdy, wire cake-cooling rack - the higher, the better. It is much cheaper than an underneath fan and work a treat for me.

Thanks for the tip but I tried various cooling devices.. nothing helped.

That's because, unfortunately, this game runs terribly on even high-end Desktops.

Hmm, or maybe you mean cooling devices didn't help the laptops last?

Either way, the game still runs like poop.

My old gaming laptops did not run ESO, they ran other MMO's and games.. but I tried maybe three different cooling pads. Last two were pretty pricy I remember, but in the end nothing helped.