FSP and Low GPU/CPU usage

Lexcro

Hello,

I have also posted this in PC support but thought I'd post here too due to higher traffic.

My system is:

Alienware m15 R3 (Laptop)

Windows 10 Home
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
16GB Memory
82GB SSD / 512GB SSD

My FPS sits between 40-65 in Daggerfall and 60-100 out and about in zones.

My CPU never passes 50% usage and my GPU never gets past 35% (even in cities).

I can change my resolution from 1080p (screen default) to 4k DSR with barely a change in FPS or CPU/GPU usage.

My graphics settings are set just below ultra.

My performance plans are set to High Performance in Window/Alienware Software and NVIDIA.

Considering the low CPU / GPU usage why isn't my FPS stable at 100?

Is my laptop throttling performance or is it the game?

Thanks in advance for any advice as I am a little frustrated considering the cost of the this laptop which runs all my other games at higher FPS.

Banana

It's the game.

Lexcro

Thanks for that

danno8

Firstly make sure your CPU is going up to turbo frequency during gameplay.

Secondly.... Yah this game has some kind of, I don't know, heartbeat? It seems like no matter how powerful your system is the game is simply unable to use more than a certain level of your hardware. Almost like it has to "wait" for information in order to complete the frame and that information just takes a certain amount of time.

But I noticed the same thing as you years ago. My GPU and CPU would be at best 50% usage and yet FPS would be well below my framer rate cap.

OH BTW the game has a frame cap built in of 100. You can change that in the usersettings file under the 'setminframetime' setting. Google it if you need to.

Darkstorne

It's an awful engine.

Lowering the draw distance setting makes the biggest impact on frame rate, even more than lowering resolution does. Try setting it at 60 or 70 and seeing how that affects your performance (happens in real time, doesn't require a restart, so very easy to measure the difference).

Also worth noting this game has a weird issue where your frame rate degrades over time. No matter how low you set that draw distance, after a couple hours of play you will need to restart the game if you want to return to a smooth 60fps.

EDIT: This game doesn't have much of a draw distance to speak of anyway, instead opting for a 1999 "wall of fog" technique, so lowering that setting doesn't change much visually. You can even install the Daybreak mod to push the fog way back at the same time, for zero performance loss, and get a better looking game:

EatsManyPancakes

does your laptop have an Ethernet (wired internet) port? or are you playing over wifi? Try plugging in and see if that helps. I wonder if its a case of server-client delays causing lockups.

Also... 82GB SSD? im assuming that's a windows partition for the system, right? lol.

Kadoin

It's the game. The limit of the floating point units in your computer processor will limit this game's performance. This game's engine most likely does not use modern floating point at all, and probably uses SSE2 which has not seen any update or optimizations since Intel 3000 and 4000 series, and is abandoned completely in most newer software (though some games in 2020 still use it ).

If floating point instructions in software isn't parallel, it doesn't matter how parallel the software is, it will eventually become a bottleneck. Games especially use floating point for lighting and shadows, and in this game's case its used for physics too (and you can see the result of that when you PvP Many bugs can be linked right back to the game's use of floating point and truncation either client or server-side).

It literally provides the best explanation for why there is little to no gain from CPU to CPU despite generation advances, and why it's even sometimes negative on CPUs that are optimized more for multi-threading and parallelization, even on the Intel side.

idk

Some here have provided worthy information. I would like to point out that the CPU load is pretty much useless information for ESO and most games as multi-threading support is lacking. What one needs to look at the load on the individual cores.

Lexcro

Thanks very much for your responses everyone....really appreciate it.

Looks like it's the game and nothing can be done on my part.

At the end of the day I get great performance overall so I guess I should be happy with that and not sweat the small stuff