Hardware, Software and Settings guide for High FPS in ESO

RouDeR

Hi there, we all know that ESO is a game that normally do not use the CPU cores at their full potential, however there are several things that you can do so ESO can use all of the CPU cores and even Max the CPU usage to 100% in some cases.

NOTE: this guide is for users with relatively new hardware that supports DDR4 ram (Intel 6 gen + and Ryzen 2 gen+), we wont discuss video cards here as they are almost irrelevant in ESO unless you want to run 1440p / 4k above 60FPS

Hardware tweaks:
Let's get started:
1) The first step is to ensure that you have pushed your CPU to it's maximum clock capacity that is stable and does not thermal throttle, these days there are many user/beginner friendly software applications that can do the overclocking and you do not have to mess with the BIOS.

2) RUN MEMORY IN DUAL CHANNEL ! - If you are using only 1 ram stick this is SINGLE channel, if you are using 2 ram sticks this is DUAL channel, note that some motherboards have more than 2 ram slots and support more than 2 channels, you need to read your motherboard manual to figure out which ram slots you need to use for DUAL channel.
2.1) If you are using ram with low clock speeds like 2666mhz or even 3000mhz (yes 3000mhz is considered low now days) and high CL timings, you definitely need to consider upgrading your ram, or try to overclock it.
2.2) The easiest way to get the high frequency ram is to buy new sticks of RAM on the desired clock speed and timings, however if you already have ram on 3000/3200 mhz for example you can try to clock a bit higher (most of them will easily clock +200-400 mhz above the official specs if you add a tiny bit more voltage), however this is a bit advanced and i recommend you to watch some youtube guides how to clock ram.

Software tweaks
3) Upgrade your windows to the latest Insider preview Windows 10 BUILD 19018, Microsoft is pushing very nice changes to the task scheduler that are optimizing multicore/thread usage in gaming and applications !.
3.1) Make sure that your Power Plan is set to Maximum Performance.

ESO settings tweak
4) In ESO video settings, make sure you do NOT push your draw distance to 100 (leave it between 50 and 80), because it is real performance killer and there is little to no difference at all between Draw distance 100 and draw distance 80 for example.
4.1) In ESO video settings, make sure your water reflections are set to LOW (setting them to when the reflections are set to medium and above they use your CPU to render which causes SIGNIFICANT performance hit in ALL cases, not just when you are near water.
5) In UserSettings.ini file make sure to tweak the following settings:
- SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS "0"
- SET MIP_LOAD_SKIP_LEVELS "-1"
- SET PlayerStandInsMaxPerFrame "2"


Here is video showcase how my 4000 mhz dual channel RAM combined with the other tweaks makes ESO use all of my 4c8t i7 7740x when there is stress environment (Capital cities with a lot of players).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcPtLGaE6MM&feature=youtu.be

MartiniDaniels

Nice info, but shadow tweaking is tricky. Basically high resolution shadows allow you to see good (not pixelated, not jerking) shadows with medium shadow setting. With turned off "high resolution shadows", you need to set general shadows to ultra or they will look like crap.
So far I found that it is easier to turn off shadows at all when you are going to performance demanding content and in other cases to run high resolution + medium. IMO.

RouDeR

@MartiniDaniels actually i don't notice any difference between HR shadows 1 and 0, and my ingame shadow settings are High

Here is screenshot comparison showing amazing 70% performance difference between 1333mhz(simulating DDR3) ram vs
fast DDR4 4000 mhz ram