Low FPS with gtx 1070

kjmugsy

I have a gaming laptop with an i7-8750H and gtx 1070 and am getting 20fps in town, max 40fps outside. Drivers and Windows are up to date. I don’t experience this issue with any other game. I even put settings on medium but my laptop should be able to handle the game at high settings. Is this common?

SirAndy

Your client hardware has no impact on server lag.

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

kjmugsy

SirAndy wrote: »

Your client hardware has no impact on server lag.

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

That’s disgusting

ssewallb14_ESO

That seems very low for that hardware. I get 50-80 at max settings on a stock 4790k/660ti.

Solid_Metal

weird, i got 40-60 even on my Dell 15 laptop with 1050ti, try to check if ESO run with your integrated graphics, and install the newest driver

thorwyn

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

uh.... care to explain?
FPS happens clientside. Even with a ping of 1000+ you can have 180 fps.
Server has absolutely nothing to do with that. Lagspikes of course are a different story.

Nemesis7884

turn water reflections off
turn shadows to medium
turn depth of field off in case u use it
reduce view distance to 70ish and reduce amount of particles

that should already help a ton... you find more ini tweaks and the such if you search for it

Isojukka

Reflections - low
Shadows- low
"Hd shadows" from usersettings - 0(off)
Particles to ~1700
Everyting else on and ultra

There was some other settings what i did change in usersettings but cannot remember atm.

With these, i have my fps around 60-100 all the time.

I5-9600k
Gtx 1060 6gb
16gig ram 3200mhz
M2 ssd

sionIV

I run ultra on everything with a I7-7700k and 1080. The only issues I have are in murkmire, where my FPS plummets to 20 while in Lilmoth.

Gatviper

I've got more or less hardware as the OP, same graphics card on a gaming laptop. All details on max, shadows off (those actually have one of the highest impact on FPS), Antialiasing is also off, usually getting 52-78 FPS depending on where I am. Important is also to turn Vertical Sync on (even if it doesn't live up to the monitor's frame rate) and Triple Buffering in the Nvidia Control Panel, that gives about additional 4-7 FPS.

MLGProPlayer

That's completely normal performance for this game. These are FPS numbers you can expect to see with high end hardware:

Base game:
Towns: 30-50
Overland: 50-100+

DLC:
Towns: 20-40
Overland: 40-70

Reducing view distance to 20 or less and turning off water reflections can get you to 100+ at almost all times, but the game will look worse than WoW.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

so basically responses to his issues are...lower the game graphics to make it look crappy so it might increase your fps...

TragedyOA

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO wrote: »

so basically responses to his issues are...lower the game graphics to make it look crappy so it might increase your fps...

Might as well play on consoles.

Uryel

thorwyn wrote: »

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

uh.... care to explain?
FPS happens clientside. Even with a ping of 1000+ you can have 180 fps.
Server has absolutely nothing to do with that. Lagspikes of course are a different story.

Actually, its not entirely true in this case. And not a matter of ping.

The servers are crap. I mean, a potato clock would laugh at how crappy the servers are. Gamigo would laugh at how vastly superior their servers are. And to top it all, the EU servers are located in Frankfurt, and Germany is one of the worst european countries when it comes to internet, with overall poor performance. Although I have to hand it to ZOS, they are making an effort, it's slightly better than it was a few months ago.

So, how does that impact local gameplay ? I'm not entirely sure, but I've noticed that, sometimes, you get absurd FPS drops for no apparent reason, like you're walking in a pretty empty area and suddenly your FPS drops to 10... Without any impact whatsoever on your ping. So how do I even know it's server side ? Took me a while to even figure that one, I initially thought it was my hardware... But it happened for lots of people, generally around the same time frames, either when servers are vey populated or for whatever reason, but for many people at the same time. This can't be local.

I suspect this has to do with the "trusted client" architecture. Basically, a trusted client architecture differs from a strict client / server by the fact some of the code is executed and validated locally, because the client is trusted (duh...). The servers mostly validates that what it receives is plausible. Note that I said "plausible", not "legit". If you found a way to, say, rewrite RAM to double your stam regen, if that still fits in the parameters the servers deem plausible, it would be considered valid. You'd have to bypass some foolsafe, but in theory it can happen.

That kind of architecture is mostly used when you want to alleviate the load on servers. Thousands and thousands of people executing all the code on the server itself ? You need some beasts there. While only validating some of the code and executing the rest means less bandwidth usage and a lower hardware specification required (still way more than your average home rig, of course).

Now what happens when the servers are bad and can't cope ? Synchronization errors, non validation of actions, repeated transmission to the server just like with a classical client / server architecture. The difference is that it causes an increased strain on the client's hardware because on top of everything you do, you have to reprocess everything you already did for a while.

Also, ESO is pretty intense on the CPU. And poorly handles multicore. It's getting better, but it's not really good at it. To be fair, most games aren't. I used to play on an AMD FX 4350 with a GTX 1060. 45 FPS, top. Now that I have a Ryzen 5 2600X, with the same GPU, I'm pretty much at 60 FPS all the time, maybe down to 45 in some very populated areas. The gap is quite big between those CPUs, but as you can see, without changing my GPU I had a large FPS boost because of the CPU.

So basically, when servers can't cope, your CPU is overworked because it keeps trying. Increased local calculations, and also increased network packets going out. And, on most modern systems, the network interface is integrated to the motherboard, meaning actual calculations are done by the CPU. Granted, that's a very minor amount of calculations, but still.

On most gamer's rigs, the CPU is a bottleneck. Lots of people invest in beasts of GPU and go for a merely decent CPU. Meaning that, if for any reason CPU load increases abruptly, you'll see a degradation of overall performance.

Now, as for WHY the poor server performance has so much impact on ESO, I can't tell exactly. Those are general principles, but you were partially right in saying it shouldn't affect performance. It does, but it shouldn't affect them this much.

So, maybe there is something else causing a strain on the user's CPU. If that is the case, there will also be a major hit on the game's performances when it happens. It can be really hard to tell apart local issues from server ones, especially when both can happen on top of each other.

MikaHR

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO wrote: »

so basically responses to his issues are...lower the game graphics to make it look crappy so it might increase your fps...

Dont buy overheating throttling laptops (Intel) for gaming.

Kikke

MMO's are usually very CPU demanding and the faster hard drive you have the better.

Currently on Rayzen 5 2600x, 1070 and eso installed on an M.2 drive.

Trials on highest graphics: 50-60fps, as my screen is trash.

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO

Isnt i7-8750H a mobile processor base clocked at @2.20 GHz. I mean the game is not that much optimized for multi thread performance. And on a laptop your CPU might be under-clocked and thermal throttling. Running the game on a high end PC does not give fantastic results so don't expect much from a laptop. Either than lowering the settings if you want to run the game faster just disable some of the cores and overclock one of them to the highest it can go (don't know if it will allow you to overclock though).

Fusozay

kjmugsy wrote: »

I have a gaming laptop with an i7-8750H and gtx 1070 and am getting 20fps in town, max 40fps outside. Drivers and Windows are up to date. I don’t experience this issue with any other game. I even put settings on medium but my laptop should be able to handle the game at high settings. Is this common?

looks like you play on intel HD, not the nvidia... chek videocard activation in properties.

fossoyer

My Asus ladtop has a gtx1070 8go, I7 and 8go of ram + w10, all is fine with high settings.

Ragnork

I have read elsewhere that if you set the screen to "full screen" and then lower the screen resolution so 1280x1024 rather than 1680 x 1050 (for example) you get higher FPS with the same in-game graphics setting.

Not tried it.
I get circa 60fps (screen bound) out of town and down to circa 30fps in high graphic rich areas.
Occasional random fps drop anywhere at anytime (not repeatable) down to 5 or 10 fps for a few moments before back to standard.

xeNNNNN

thorwyn wrote: »

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

uh.... care to explain?
FPS happens clientside. Even with a ping of 1000+ you can have 180 fps.
Server has absolutely nothing to do with that. Lagspikes of course are a different story.

I refer you to Uryels post.

However for some added clarity;

FPS happens client side depending on the game you are playing. If its a game that has no required external information i.e a single player game then it is almost always your computer with the exception of games with DRM which can tank game performance quite badly if not implemented properly.

Multiplayer games however are a lot more .... "problematic" as they require external data to your client in order to process what you see in front of you (In ESOs case other players and their abilities). Very few games have the Frame issue tied to latency issues however in a game like ESO say Cyrodil, hundreds of players fighting each other constantly meaning a large amount of imported and exported data, couple this with the clearly worse calculations method for processing (its predecessor was far better - when the game first came out the method they used seemed to be far more stable until they changed it as its easier for them to manage/interpret) and you will get frame lag because your computers resources are being requested for higher demand by the game while lagging as the games calculations just simply aren't as efficient as they should be (In other words, the game is tanking our computers slightly - and no this does not mean in any way your computer is in danger or something like that it just means ZoS needs to be better at their jobs in regards to servers and client performance).

Multiplayer games always request that your computer fill the load its data says it should this is how it knows to render players, skills and many other things. Because the game is telling your computer to but not all data is client side, a great deal of it as its an MMO comes from the servers otherwise you wouldn't see other players and their interactions as you need a server for the data and then your computer for rendering and processing it so you can see it and interact with it.

Finally, the engine the game uses while rebuilt from the hero engine isn't entirely a "fresh" engine. Meaning that a lot of the issues that were faced with the hero engine still exist in the game even after it being broken down and rebuilt. Its just the result of using one engine to build another instead of building a fresh one from the ground up which in all fairness to ZoS is "ok" considering how expensive it is to make game engines from scratch. Its not cheap, extremely expensive - to make a good one at least.

Though not entirely on topic;
There is one other issue and that is that for whatever reason, ESO demands that your router ping multiple countries before reaching germany.

Ex: I am in the UK so in theory I should only have to ping to Belgium and then to Germany. But instead my connection to the game then to France then to the Netherlands and then to Belgium and then finally to Germany. This will cause excess MS due to the number of countries your data passes through.

I have tested this and honestly, I sent a support ticket asking if it was okay to use a VPN to try and fix this problem but still no response and I cannot find any official response from ZoS regarding the use of VPNs so.

Reaper_00

Ragnork wrote: »

I have read elsewhere that if you set the screen to "full screen" and then lower the screen resolution so 1280x1024 rather than 1680 x 1050 (for example) you get higher FPS with the same in-game graphics setting

Yes that would give higher FPS as lower resolutions require less computing power to render. Only problem with this is the image would look blurry and blocky on full screen as LCD screens are designed to display at one resolution (usually the maximum supported one or “native” resolution) and anything lower than that is just stretched to fit.

@OP your FPS does seem low for that spec even if it is a laptop. Looking at 3dmark benchmarks for your combination of processor and GPU you should be getting fairly decent FPS running at 1080p. As mentioned above, check your nVidia profile settings to make sure the ESO.exe is using the nVidia GPU and not the integrated graphics.

Uryel

rosendoichinoveb17_ESO wrote: »

Isnt i7-8750H a mobile processor base clocked at @2.20 GHz. I mean the game is not that much optimized for multi thread performance. And on a laptop your CPU might be under-clocked and thermal throttling. Running the game on a high end PC does not give fantastic results so don't expect much from a laptop. Either than lowering the settings if you want to run the game faster just disable some of the cores and overclock one of them to the highest it can go (don't know if it will allow you to overclock though).

This might actually be the issue. Laptop CPUs are usually optimised for battery longevity and lower thermal peaks, meaning that unless you manually specify otherwise in the energy management settings they will usually lower their frequency when heating. And they will heat when gaming, especially with a game as CPU intensive as ESO.

It's even worse if you're gaming on battery rather than plugged. As of today, there are still so many people who believe that once the battery is full, one should unplug and let it get empty, then fill it again, else you'll damage it. While this would have been true on primitive hardware, like 20 years ago, today it's quite the oipposite : you're actually lowering your battery's life expectancy doing so. Modern battery have a firmware to manage their load. They still have a predetermined amount of expected life cycle (understand full charge / discharge), but can be partly charged or even left plugged if fully charged without any detrimental consequence. Anyone who unplug their laptop as soon as it's fully charged should have a reason to do so, and the only valid reasson would be mobile usage. If you're using it at home to play a game, keep it plugged. You're damaging both your battery and your game perfs if you don't, because the computer will try to conserve battery and save power where it can, thus throttling CPU and, if allowed, GPU too.

Also, for the very same reason of conserving battery, laptop CPU generally have lower frequency and make up for it with multicore... Assuming the applications makes use of it. In a typical web browing / office scenario, it works. Not so much when games are involved, because even in this day and age many games benefit more from high clock frequency than from a higher number of cores.

SirAndy

thorwyn wrote: »

Unfortunately, server lag in this game actually affects your client fps ...

uh.... care to explain?
FPS happens clientside. Even with a ping of 1000+ you can have 180 fps.
Server has absolutely nothing to do with that. Lagspikes of course are a different story.

in certain circumstances the rendering thread is actually affected by data it knows should be there but that hasn't been loaded yet because the client is waiting for the server to respond.
That usually happens when you zone or are in an area with a lot of assets that are part of the server side calculations (not just other players).
You get very visible stuttering and fps drops when that happens.

You can turn down your client side quality settings to the bare minimum and you can still see the impact of this as you get the same stuttering and fps drops.

The rendering thread and the data loading thread and the server communication thread aren't completely asynchronous.
There is a blocking between the rendering thread already knowing of assets that need to be drawn and the data loading thread waiting for the server communication thread to respond with asset information.

You can actually watch this happen in real time (haha) just using Wireshark on a 2nd monitor, the server packets (or lack thereof) clearly coincide with your stuttering and fps drops.

The solution to this would be client side prediction and a true lossy UDP based data protocol with no ACKs.
You'd see "rubber banding" if another player has a laggy connection but your client renderer thread would not be impacted.

Mudcrabber

It's hard to judge without knowing the resolution. 20-40 fps is very bad for 1920x1080 (to where you want to verify in the nvidia control panel that it's actually using your card for eso64.exe and not the laptop's integrated intel graphics), but if you're getting that performance at 4k then everything's normal.

Elrond87

I get 30 fps on a RTX2080 i7 4770k

Elrond87

it is the same fps if its in 4k or 1080