Low performance on my (Decent?) P.C. ... what am I doing wrong?

xericdx

Hello all,

I have low FPS even on low settings with P.C. specs that (I thought), should be able to handle way more. I know that ESO is not the most optimized game but still, normal 30fps with many spikes as low as 5fps during dungeons on low settings??

Should I lower monitor resolution? Sell my soul to Molag Bal? Any advice from more IT savvy fellow players?

My specs (laptop)

GeForce GTX860
Intel(R) Core i7 4729HQ CPU @2.60GHz
8GB RAM

Bleuren

What is your resolution at? Perhaps 1080p would be better if you're at 4K.
Also, is it constantly low all the time, or when doing certain activities?

Example, for me, my FPS drops when I get on and off my mount, the fading of the mount drops mine, if it bothered me, I would probably optimize my Graphics Profile for performance.

Also, heat (of your device) can play a role.

xericdx

Thanks for the comment @Bleuren

Resolution is 1920 x 1080 but was thinking about testing a lower res.

As for when the fps drops, I would say the usual suspect: although it sometimes happen completely at random, it is more often the case when in busy cities and dungeons with a lot of mechanics happening at the same time. I might have seen a worsening situation the longer I play, with a relatively warm pc, which might hint at problems with over heating.

However, even considering the above, I still do not understand how performance is so low with this specs...

fred4

Setting shadow quality to low may help.

I run ESO on a super old Core 2 Quad (Q9650 overclocked by 20%, but still ancient and slow) and GTX970 with 8GB RAM. Mine is a desktop system. While my frame rate is not great, the only time it ever drops to 5 FPS is in very large PvP battles. It's usually between 30 and 60 in PvE @ 1080p. It doesn't noticeably drop iin 4-man dungeons.

I note you have a laptop. At least it's a laptop CPU. That means a couple of things. Your GTX860 won't be the same as a desktop spec GTX860. Still, I doubt that's where the problem lies.

This game tends to be CPU intensive and that can have a big impact on the framerate. My bet is your latop is experiencing thermal throttling. When both the CPU and GPU are in use, a laptop can run out of cooling headroom and many prioritise GPU performance in those cases, while CPU performace drops. Those drops can be drastic.

Things that come to mind is cleaning the fans. You might start by blowing compressed air into them, without disassembling the machine. I believe there are also laptop surfaces available that help with cooling, but don't know much about them. Furthermore you may look into programs that help with fan control and CPU throttling, such as:

Speedfan
Throttlestop
Intel XTU

Or simply start with a program that displays your actual processor frequency, such as CPU-Z, for diagnostics.