Andy's Elder Scrolls Online PC Tweak Guide

personman_145

This is a work in progress. Largely for newbs, but maybe vets will find a trick or two. Somebody has probably already done this, but I never came across it. Just some things I've picked up over the last few years. If you have anything to add, I'm interested.

Tip Added 3/8/2019: Shadow resolution

Andy's Elder Scrolls Online Tweak Guide

So the prerequisites: make sure your software is up to date, Windows and drivers.

You can get the latest nvidia drivers here:

http://www.geforce.com/drivers

It may be worthwhile to install a driver from the chipset makers of all your hardware rather than to stick with the Windows-provided drivers. Examples include motherboard chipset drivers, video card drivers, network chipset drivers, sound drivers, & mouse drivers if you use a gaming mouse.

If you are techie you can look up the latest BIOS for your motherboard as well as firmware for devices that allow updating it.

My System:
Intel Core I5 8600k @ 4.7 Ghz w/ a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo heat sink and fan
16GB DDR4 2,666Mhz
nVidia GTX 1060 6GB
Samsung EVO 850 SSD 1TB

You may need to tweak these tips depending on your hardware.


Visual Quality Tips

Anti-aliasing

In-game anti-aliasing is FXAA which, while effective, can cause a blurring effect that may be undesirable. A better solution is to use SMAA, and for that I use reshade. If you want to use reshade make sure you turn the in-game anti-aliasing off.

https://reshade.me/

Once you download reshade, you will need to install for each game you want to use it with.
After installing and running the game, you should get text in the top left corner of your screen to indicate it's working. At this point, you should hit shift-f2 (or home with newer versions) which will bring up the reshade configuration. From there you can enable SMAA or any other post-processing effects you want.

Down-Sampling

Down-sampling is the process of rendering at a higher resolution than your monitor supports, and then down-sampling to what your monitor does support to improve detail. For example, my monitor is 1080p, but I downsample from 1440p. It's sort of like a free monitor upgrade. I'm sure not as good as an actual 1440p monitor, but it does help with aliasing and smoothing.

If you have an nVidia card, DSR is built into the driver. Pull up the nVidia Control Panel, enable DSR, and then set the resolution to down-sample from. I add every resolution up to 4k, even though I don’t really use all of them I like having options.

Next, launch the game, go into the video options, and set the resolution to what you’re down-sampling from. For example, I down-sample from 1440p to 1080p, so I do the 1440p. With older games, I could probably do 4k and get decent performance.


ESO Config Tweaks

Graphical improvements can be made by editing the ESO settings file. It’s located at Documents/Elder Scrolls Online/live/UserSettings.txt

There are two settings I always modify, one increases texture quality at distance, and the other removes the FPS cap.

Once you open the file look for the line:

SET MIP_LOAD_SKIP_LEVELS "0"

If you have a lot of video ram, (I have 6GB) you can set this to -3 and shouldn’t really see any performance difference. When I had a 2GB card I would set it to -1, which still helped a lot.

If you’ve ever walked up to an NPC and noticed that the armor texture quality changes from blurry to detailed, this setting will fix it.


Removing the FPS cap

ESO by default has a 100FPS cap. Here is how to get past it:

Search for

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01000000"

If you want to change your FPS cap to 120Hz, you can change it to this:

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00833333"

For 144Hz, you can use this:

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00694444"


Shadows

Shadow quality can also have an impact, and using lower res shadows can actually look more realistic while saving on performance because it's more diffuse. Look for this line:

SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS "1"

Just change it to 0.


Performance:

Here are some notes from Alex Tardiff, a graphics engineer who works on ESO:

“For almost all of you, the bottleneck of your framerate is your CPU, not your GPU, so if you're not seeing high utilization of your GPU, it's most likely because the CPU-side of the game isn't keeping up.”

“PS: Pro tip, if you have a good GPU and have all your settings maxed but want higher performance, change your Reflection Quality to Low instead of Medium or High. "Low" reflections are actually using screen-space reflections, rather than heavy-duty planar reflections. Planar reflections are more accurate, but they're far harder on the CPU, whereas screen space reflections are almost entirely a GPU operation and should lighten the load on your CPU quite a bit.”

So yes, if you are CPU limited and you probably are, set reflections to low. I did, I gained maybe 15-20 fps, and I don’t really notice a difference in visual quality.

If you have adequate cooling and ventilation in your PC, you might consider overclocking it. I don’t recommend it with a stock cooler, but if you have something groovy and aftermarket, and your system runs cold it’s worth looking in to. My CPU is rated for 3.6-4.3 ghz. I currently have it set to run at 4.7 ghz and have had no problems, the case hardly even gets warm.

<--- To Be Continued? -->

erliesc

Right now I subscribe to the "do not overclock" theory. Generally my impression is that it is heat and overtaxing the components that cause many computer failures...so I make an effort to just run at regular settings. I also have a rig with 5 case fans on it. Hopefully it will last 10 yrs.

Remember...I'm just a shadetree computer guy...if I need to work on a computer...I take it outside and work on it under a tree.

Good info though...I'll try some of it....

Merlin13KAGL

With tech available today, overclocking is absolutely unnecessary, and will generally only lead to difficult to diagnose problems down the line.

There's a reason why specs are specs, and there's hardware enough to handle anything ESO's gonna throw at it for years to come.

If your system is good enough to handle the heat, there's zero reason not to simply upgrade the hardware directly.

personman_145

I didn't include instructions for overclocking on purpose. If someone wants to, there are already a million guides on that. I didn't overclock my last CPU because it ran pretty warm already. This one runs very cool. If this chip is burned out in 10 years, I won't care because I'll have bought a new one years earlier.

Don't overclock unless you have taken the time to read up, make sure you have good temps, good CPU cooling.

Zero reason not to upgrade the hardware? I can give you 3 off the top of my head, first, cost. Second tech skills. Third overclocking safely is a free upgrade. I didn't buy an 8600k to run at stock speeds. The whole point of the K, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you can overclock it easily.

The game performance is very bound to single-core CPU speed. So if you can safely overclock, why not?

I've never burned out anything btw. My fermi quit working after a while, but those things ran at like 90c stock. I never overclocked it. It would literally heat my bedroom.

erliesc

Just read an interesting article from Intel on CPU core number and game performance. I have a 6 core I5 9600. Intel says that in some games the complexity of NPC behavior is relative to the number of cores...the 6 core being avg performance.

I went with the I5...and put the extra $ into the GPU...GTX 1070 turbo. Thought I was getting the 1070 ti...but it is just a "better" version of the regular 1070.

I do use the Asus tweak program for my GPU...but I just modified the fan speeds so that it runs a bit cooler...it was setup to run at 83C...now runs around 78C.

Interesting thing is that when running ESO it runs at maybe 2/3s the load it does in other games I've run so far....and I've got the settings maxed out. So far I'm able to run games at about their max settings...good enough for me.

At any rate it is a new box...but it will be outdated in time I'm sure.

Acrolas

"We may also recommend that you delete (or change the name of) your UserSettings file and let the game generate a new for you, and this can genuinely be helpful. Sometimes that file can find ways to get in a bad state after a patch. We also often see people making modifications to that file and then recommending those same modifications to other people. While well-intended, this can often lead to problems because no two people are likely to have the same PC hardware, so if you have modified your UserSettings file, we definitely recommend letting the game make a new one for you. We only recommend changing those settings if you have a solid understanding of how it will impact your machine."
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5161587#Comment_5161587

joseayalac

personman_145 wrote: »

I didn't buy an 8600k to run at stock speeds. The whole point of the K, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you can overclock it easily.

I think of this K thing as a marketing technique. Why pay more for a "K" CPU instead of just paying more for a processor with higher stock speed? The latter is probably better and you can run it without worrying about heat and damages.

There's a reason why CPUs have stock speed, that's the speed at which their design works best (a mix between temperature, performance and efficiency). So why pay more for a processor to use it for something it was not designed for? And if you're thinking that the processor was designed to be overclocked, then why not just "raise" it's stock speed and make it non overclockable? Is this some kind of trick to help users run their CPUs at the speed that their cooling systems allow? I don't get it.

Also, thanks for the tips! I'm eager to try some of them the next time I play the game.

personman_145

I think at the time I bought my I5 8600k, they didn't offer anything faster for I5, and I wasn't going to get an I7, because I have little use for hyperthreading and limited funds.

Lord_Wrath

Ive seen a tip before about unparking CPU cores. Not sure if it helped but I went and did it long ago.

personman_145

erliesc wrote: »

Interesting thing is that when running ESO it runs at maybe 2/3s the load it does in other games I've run so far....and I've got the settings maxed out. So far I'm able to run games at about their max settings...good enough for me.

ESO is VERY CPU limited, have you tried the reflections at low?

personman_145

Lord_Wrath wrote: »

Ive seen a tip before about unparking CPU cores. Not sure if it helped but I went and did it long ago.

I think I did that on my old cpu, I might look into it.

erliesc

personman_145 wrote: »

erliesc wrote: »

Interesting thing is that when running ESO it runs at maybe 2/3s the load it does in other games I've run so far....and I've got the settings maxed out. So far I'm able to run games at about their max settings...good enough for me.

ESO is VERY CPU limited, have you tried the reflections at low?

I don't think anything is limited for me at this time...using Asus Tweak as a guide...in ESO my GPU temp runs around 60C and fan % is lower with everything maxed out. I run a graph when playing...also get a reading on GPU usage %...it doesn't run maxed out...think it might in WoTanks.

Haven't really monitored the CPU % (checked and it runs at around 50%) ....have graph going though....need to look at it. I'm playing games...not running a lab.

One thing I will always buy for a computer from now on...an SSD drive. This one has a combo drive 1/2 TB SSD...3 TB Sata. This thing boots into Windows in around 5 secs. Not even sure what I'm doing with 3TB...be lucky to use 1 TB. Hadn't looked at specs in a long while.

Not bragging...just stating facts...expect this thing to last 10 yrs...ask me how well it plays most games then?

...

personman_145

I'd assume it works quite well.

Two things I can't go back to, 60hz and hard drives. Spoiled by my 144hz monitor and Samsung EVO 850 1TB.

Eldartar

The Link below will lead you a "Mega Thread" on the subject of "Tweaking" settings etc

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/368986/mega-thread-eso-performance-tweaks-fps-improvements-stutter-free-graphics-tweaking


I found it helped me.

erliesc

personman_145 wrote: »

I'd assume it works quite well.

Two things I can't go back to, 60hz and hard drives. Spoiled by my 144hz monitor and Samsung EVO 850 1TB.

I also upgraded my monitor 24" running at 144hz. The higher rate makes a diff.

I'm set for life...or so he thinks….

Actually if this beast lasts 10 yrs I'll be in my 80's...maybe I can upgrade the bod + brain and just keep on playing???

personman_145

Added the tip to use low res shadows because they perform better and look more diffuse/realistic.

Valkysas154

Here is a pick from a old thread long ago look at the bottom of the image to see the visual difference

personman_145

Valkysas154 wrote: »

Here is a pick from a old thread long ago look at the bottom of the image to see the visual difference

Oh yeah, it's huge. On a 2GB card I could run with -1 and it would get rid of the blurry armor to detail armor thing with other characters. Now that I have 6gb, I just do the full -3 thing.

personman_145

I did the GPUsmoothingFrames thing, but I set it to two, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what it does. By default it's set at 10, which seems like a lot, but 0 seems extreme, I set mine to 2. I don't know enough about it to add it to the guide.

Thogard

personman_145 wrote: »

I did the GPUsmoothingFrames thing, but I set it to two, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what it does. By default it's set at 10, which seems like a lot, but 0 seems extreme, I set mine to 2. I don't know enough about it to add it to the guide.

0 is the most responsive, this is more of a “fast twitch reaction for FPS” setting

personman_145

Thogard wrote: »

personman_145 wrote: »

I did the GPUsmoothingFrames thing, but I set it to two, mostly because I'm not entirely sure what it does. By default it's set at 10, which seems like a lot, but 0 seems extreme, I set mine to 2. I don't know enough about it to add it to the guide.

0 is the most responsive, this is more of a “fast twitch reaction for FPS” setting

I figured 0 was most responsive, but I didn't want to sacrifice smoothness. I dunno if that's a trade-off though.

Merlin13KAGL

personman_145 wrote: »

I didn't include instructions for overclocking on purpose. If someone wants to, there are already a million guides on that. I didn't overclock my last CPU because it ran pretty warm already. This one runs very cool. If this chip is burned out in 10 years, I won't care because I'll have bought a new one years earlier.

Don't overclock unless you have taken the time to read up, make sure you have good temps, good CPU cooling.

Zero reason not to upgrade the hardware? I can give you 3 off the top of my head, first, cost. Second tech skills. Third overclocking safely is a free upgrade. I didn't buy an 8600k to run at stock speeds. The whole point of the K, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you can overclock it easily.

The game performance is very bound to single-core CPU speed. So if you can safely overclock, why not?

I've never burned out anything btw. My fermi quit working after a while, but those things ran at like 90c stock. I never overclocked it. It would literally heat my bedroom.

The K means you can. It doesn't mean you should. If it's an older system you're eventually going to replace and you have the appropriate setup, then it's available.

If you have the tech skills to safely overclock, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you probably have the tech skills to install upgraded hardware. It's a way to get a cheaper processor that you can hopefully increase performance on.

If there was no caveat, they wouldn't bother making higher end processors.

I can get far more performance out of my car by waiting until 6000 RPM's before I shift, too. The engine will even handle it, for a while.

If you don't think there is any effect in the long run, I think you're fooling yourself. Of course, it also depends on the level to which you overclock. Most CPU's have 'burst' modes available for short periods of time. That is significantly different than full time overclock.

Systems are designed with specs in mind. Of course, they're built to be able to perform beyond those specs for reliability purposes. When you continuously and purposely exceed them, you're taking a gamble that everything will work just as well.

Ugly things happen when timing starts getting messed up between components, and heat, from OC only makes that worse.

There is little to nothing in this game that should tax any decent processor remotely close to 100% use, no matter how unoptimized it may be coded.

What I anticipate: The first time you have a cooler failure you don't catch right away, the difference between stock spec capability and tolerance vs OC'd will become painfully obvious, post haste.

If you don't have concerns about stability and don't mind if you burn up your hardware, by all means, OC. Personally, I'd rather be able to drive back and forth to work a bit longer, and save the race track stuff for the car designed for it outright.

personman_145

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

personman_145 wrote: »

I didn't include instructions for overclocking on purpose. If someone wants to, there are already a million guides on that. I didn't overclock my last CPU because it ran pretty warm already. This one runs very cool. If this chip is burned out in 10 years, I won't care because I'll have bought a new one years earlier.

Don't overclock unless you have taken the time to read up, make sure you have good temps, good CPU cooling.

Zero reason not to upgrade the hardware? I can give you 3 off the top of my head, first, cost. Second tech skills. Third overclocking safely is a free upgrade. I didn't buy an 8600k to run at stock speeds. The whole point of the K, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you can overclock it easily.

The game performance is very bound to single-core CPU speed. So if you can safely overclock, why not?

I've never burned out anything btw. My fermi quit working after a while, but those things ran at like 90c stock. I never overclocked it. It would literally heat my bedroom.

The K means you can. It doesn't mean you should. If it's an older system you're eventually going to replace and you have the appropriate setup, then it's available.

Why shouldn't I? Runs cool and fast, no issues.

If you have the tech skills to safely overclock, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you probably have the tech skills to install upgraded hardware. It's a way to get a cheaper processor that you can hopefully increase performance on.

If there was no caveat, they wouldn't bother making higher-end processors.

They didn't make higher-end processors. At the time I bought my chip there were no higher end i5s that I'm aware of. Not everyone can go buy a $250 processor, and even fewer would know how to install it.

If you don't think there is any effect in the long run, I think you're fooling yourself. Of course, it also depends on the level to which you overclock. Most CPU's have 'burst' modes available for short periods of time. That is significantly different than full time overclock.

As I said in the post you quoted, I don't care if my chip is dead in 10 years because probably in 5 years I'll have a new one. It's a judgement call on my part. But honestly, I don't think my chip will be burned even 10 years from now, that is if I were to still use it.

Systems are designed with specs in mind. Of course, they're built to be able to perform beyond those specs for reliability purposes. When you continuously and purposely exceed them, you're taking a gamble that everything will work just as well.

So far I'm winning my gamble. I don't consider it much of a gamble though to be honest. Never burned out anything by overclocking and I've been doing it for some of machines for over 20 years.

Ugly things happen when timing starts getting messed up between components, and heat, from OC only makes that worse.

Working fine. I think I've been pretty clear on this.

There is little to nothing in this game that should tax any decent processor remotely close to 100% use, no matter how unoptimized it may be coded.

It's single core performance that makes the biggest improvement. I thought I was pretty clear on that. Even with my overclocked CPU I'm still dropping into the 50 fps area at times. They're rarer now, but it happens. Alex Tardiff disagrees with you and he writes the graphics code. Unless you have a severe mismatch between a video card and CPU, you ARE CPU limited.

What I anticipate: The first time you have a cooler failure you don't catch right away, the difference between stock spec capability and tolerance vs OC'd will become painfully obvious, post haste.

So far 20 years and running strong... This is probably just about as likely even if you don't overclock. My BIOS has a fan fail warning. It'll shut down if it gets too hot. Hasn't done it yet.

If you don't have concerns about stability and don't mind if you burn up your hardware, by all means, OC. Personally, I'd rather be able to drive back and forth to work a bit longer, and save the race track stuff for the car designed for it outright.

I don't have concerns about stability or burning up hardware, it runs cold and solid, and so I did OC.

You don't need to use car examples because I don't work on cars. I've worked as a PC tech. I think we can just stick to PC talk. I actually know much much less about cars than PCs. Electronics != mechanics.

If you don't want to OC then don't do it. If you do and go do it safely, then do. It's weird to me that this is even controversial, people have been doing it for decades. Exiting your front door in the morning is a gamble too.

If you read what Alex Tardiff said, almost all of us are limited by single-core performance. So yeah, it won't use the entire processor at %100, but I'm willing to bet it comes very close on at least one core.