Horrendous memory leak / frame drops recently

Kirawolfe

tomfant wrote: »

Maybe the FPS and stutter problem introduced with U33 is now spreading to other specs? The tweak described here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/599878/fps-drops-after-u33 helped for me. I'm still running this setting and haven't problems.

Yes, I did try that, and thanks for the link. Unfortunately it made my GPU go bananas to compensate and pushed its temps up into the 90s (on medium settings what the hey). That's with full fans on an Alienware Area 51m, which means jet engine time.

Someone else mentioned vsync. I'm only using that to make sure my cpu and gpu don't go ballistic in housing where I see the fps rise back up above 220. They know no self-restraint and both push into the 90s, which is very bad %)

I am just confused because I will have moderate temps (80 on gpu, 75 on cpu) with fps 100-130 (low for me) and the screen is tearing.

I don't get why my computer is working so hard now, and why it's taken such a nose dive in populated areas when I could previously do dolmens with no choppiness.

Next step is to take this sucker apart, and heck, maybe I'll repaste it...

CharlieFreak

I didn't read every reply, but wondering if you've ruled out add-ons? Action Duaration Reminder is one that I have isolated as causing massive performance issues for me. 20-40 fps loss and a weird stuttering effect. There may be others as well.

Other than that, I've not seen any problems with the game itself. I run with all graphic settings maxed for many hours at a time and never seen fps drop under 150 or so.

Zymcio

perfiction wrote: »

Does it fix once you restart the game? If so, next time try changing your texture quality in settings to anything else (you can change back afterwards) and see if it helps. It works in trials, which are also notorious for frame drops - your fps gets lower after each wipe so if you wipe a lot during a prog you either enjoy the slideshow or change texture settings / restart the game every few pulls.

Yes and hey didnt know u can just change quality. For me this is the only issue it would be much better to solve this automatically.
Ofc this problem dont appear in 4man or solo pve only in trial scenario but after some wipes like you point.

Sarannah

Yesterday, for the first time in years, my FPS dropped significantly from a steady 60-59 to low 40's. And it keeps dropping within this same range. PC EU. This hadn't happened to me for a long long time, literally years. The issue happened in stormhaven and rivenspire, which I am completing 100%(done with stormhaven now).

Specs: Windows 10, RTX 2080 TI, no add-ons, i9 9900k.
The only thing which changed for me was that windows 10 installed a new small update yesterday(KB5022282), which I assume is causing this major issue with ESO. Not sure why. To try and fix it I installed the latest GPU drivers, and re-capped my program and background program FPS to 60(they already were) in the Nvidia settings. This did not fix the issue. So my guess is this most recent windows 10 update clashes with ESO somehow. (Note: There were no other issues, GPU temp(54-56C) and such are all normal when the issue occurrs)

PS: This could be your issues as well, depending on when this W10 update rolled out and where.
PPS: If you are having issues, post as many relevant specs as possible, so we can compare and maybe find/isolate the issue.

AJTC5000

Can confirm I've been having FPS issues for a few days now and only just installed the Windows update this morning (UK-time). Seems to happen after I've been playing continuously for a couple of hours. Recently I've been doing multiple runs of Unhallowed Grave, and the only thing I've changed in-game is downgrade a version of S'rendarr due to the latest version giving error messages occasionally.

Specs: Windows 10, RTX 3070, i5-8600
Usually get about max (capped) 140 fps and stutters cause this to drop to about 30-40 for a couple of seconds before returning.

Kirawolfe

CharlieFreak wrote: »

I didn't read every reply, but wondering if you've ruled out add-ons? Action Duaration Reminder is one that I have isolated as causing massive performance issues for me. 20-40 fps loss and a weird stuttering effect.

Interesting. I deleted add-ons one by one, including my UI, and nothing changed. I did have Action Duration Reminder installed, but removing it didn't help. I appreciate the perspective though.

I don't think it's the recent Windows 10 update, because my issues started before then, but that's probably not helping.

I am going to take this rig apart, clean the entire thing, and repaste it. Let's see what happens then.

Someone asked for specs:

i7-9 700 (8-core, 12MB cache, up to 4.7GHz, tends to float around 3.8GHz)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
32GB DDR4-2400MHz ram
1TB NVMe SSD

I have loved this machine, but something is going terribly wrong. %) I was at my guild hall the other day and my cpu was creeping through the 90s. It seems Alinor, Blackwood, Vastyr tax the hell out of it, when they weren't a big deal at all before. Hope what I do above helps.

Sarannah

Just wanted to say the issue is still happening to me. Happened just before the maintenance on Jan 18 2023.

Some more of my specs:
Multi-threaded rendering is turned off. (maybe this makes a difference)
32GB DDR4 RAM.
970 Pro M2 SSD 1TB.
Acer G-SYNC monitor XB281HK. (G-Sync is on)
No GeForce Experience installed.

PS: Doubt taking your computer apart is going to help, as that would only make a few degrees of difference. And I seriously doubt that would affect FPS in any way.

Kirawolfe

Sarannah wrote: »

PS: Doubt taking your computer apart is going to help, as that would only make a few degrees of difference. And I seriously doubt that would affect FPS in any way.

Sorry you're experiencing this too. I was wondering if perhaps they did something during the patch where I experienced it, I honestly have no idea.

However, I have some hope that repasting and giving the thing a good clean out might do more than reduce temps by a few degrees. I found an article from another Alienware owner that started getting 90+ temps and doing a big clean and repasting dropped temps by about 20 degrees.

Something about the game is absolutely making my rig work harder though. It doesn't seem to be related to add-ons.

Kirawolfe

Just a little update. I was in Fungal Grotto, decided to switch to Low Quality. It was taking forever to change, and ESO was using 76% of my CPU and temps were going to 94 degrees.

This isn't my computer. What the heck.

Kirawolfe

Sarannah wrote: »

PS: Doubt taking your computer apart is going to help, as that would only make a few degrees of difference. And I seriously doubt that would affect FPS in any way.

Well, you'll be as stunned as I was seeing a 20-30 degree improvement.

In case anyone else was following, I took my laptop apart and repasted the cpu and gpu. Paste over both was in bad shape. Used entry level stuff I think - Arctic Mx-4.

Coming into Betnikh was seeing cpu temps in the 40s. Going to a dragon fight the GPU hit 69, the CPU stayed in the 50s.

However, I'm still seeing the big frame drops in the city of Rimmen, just as I was before. It seems much steadier outside of the city or less populated areas.

I wonder if this could have anything to do with the option to turn pets off.

I'm going to turn multithreaded rendering back on, which will improve FPS overall anyway, and this time without melting my PC. Really thrilled I did this anyway, even if it hasn't quite solved the mystery.

Kirawolfe

Update 6 million and 36:

Still seeing stuttering and fps drops, even with low temps on cpu/gpu. So frustrating.

Going to get a rendering stats overlay of some sort so I can track down what's causing this.

Kirawolfe

From the FPS drops after update 33 thread, a post from Fabi95

"The game forgets its cooked shadercache, and tries to build shaders live regardless. This is why the CPU usage is so high, and why framerates stutter so much in towns. Only ZOS can fix this, this is not something we players can do.

For context: There is a file called "Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\ShaderCache.cooked" in your user documents folder. This file is recreated on each update. Which is why you see maximum CPU usage for a good while on each patch. This is used to avoid having to recreate the shaders each time, which is a highly CPU intensive task.
Since update 33, apparently the game ignores the shader cache, hence why the performance has gotten worse. If you ever edited UserSettings.txt and set the "CachedRLREnabled" value to 0, you would have gotten the same problematic performance. The cache exists for a reason, and we can only wait until ZOS investigates and fixes this.

TL;DR: Don't tinker with weird settings, it cannot fix the real issue. It's band-aid at best. We need to wait for ZOS to fix this.
Edited by Fabi95 on April 8, 2022 4:11PM"

Has this been ruled out?

Kirawolfe

Running around Craglorn, not in a city. 140-130fps, 50s temps, stuttering...

My friend, when I had horrendous stuttering fighting the group boss in the public dungeon Nchthnkarst in Blackreach, said he was getting the stuttering too, and this is the only game he gets that on.

So, I really don't think this is my computer anymore. Back to Zos - what did you do a few updates ago?

acastanza_ESO

Kirawolfe wrote: »

Running around Craglorn, not in a city. 140-130fps, 50s temps, stuttering...

My friend, when I had horrendous stuttering fighting the group boss in the public dungeon Nchthnkarst in Blackreach, said he was getting the stuttering too, and this is the only game he gets that on.

So, I really don't think this is my computer anymore. Back to Zos - what did you do a few updates ago?

Are you, by any chance, running the "MiniMap by Fyrakin [Masteroshi430's branch]" addon? I found that this was causing serious stuttering issues with my game. Switching to a different minimap (Votan's Minimap in my case) completely resolved the issue.

Kirawolfe

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Are you, by any chance, running the "MiniMap by Fyrakin [Masteroshi430's branch]" addon? I found that this was causing serious stuttering issues with my game. Switching to a different minimap (Votan's Minimap in my case) completely resolved the issue.

I'm not no, but I appreciate the troubleshooting. I don't use a mini map of any kind. I removed LUI (which I love) thinking maybe it was doing something, but it didn't fix anything.

With temps much more under control, I turned multithreaded rendering back on and my fps has jumped back up as you'd expect it to. I used the solution one person had above - MaxThreadsToUse set to 4, to keep my CPU from going bonkers. I turned off Vsync and that helped with the stuttering - apparently it can be an issue where one frame comes in before another has resolved.

Now I'm getting fps where it used to be, on mostly Medium however, and the temps are stabilizing at around 70 on gpu and 60 on cpu. This is so much better than it was. The repasting helped a ton.

I've still noticed some 'brittle' fps swings (not sure how else to describe the odd drop in frames I can see) in some weird places that don't make a lot of sense (ie, not always in populated areas). Had hoped to get an overlay that would show me rendering statistics, but most are just fps/general gpu usage.

I'm going to put settings back to High, and see about restricting fps to just above screen refresh through UserSettings to keep temps down.

Thanks for the help, everyone. Much appreciated!

Kirawolfe

Hey. Been a while. I'm still on medium settings. MaxCores is set to 8, frames locked to 200.

I'm in Sweetwater Cascades - focused on a wall , looking at menus, and my GPU is creeping up to 84 degrees.

O.o

Kappachi

I've also been experiencing the memory leak, so any time I go afk i have to /quit out of the game instead of leaving the game to simply go to the logout screen to quickly log back in. Hopefully it's fixed soon!
There is no problem with my hardware because I run very high-end hardware, but if a dev comes by to look at this:

The_Titan_Tim

On Xbox Series S/X I’ve noticed this for some time now, and an easy fix to it I’ve found would be to cycle off of “Performance” into “Fidelity” then cycle back.

I don’t understand why the gameplay progressively deteriorates or in specific regions is extremely choppy when loading in, but this cycling process has had a 100% success rate for me.

Sarannah

So after playing some weeks with this issue, I have figured out it is triggered by something. But I do not know what that something is.

I can play(quest/town/house) for hours and hours(4+) without so much as a single FPS drop, or I can log in and a few seconds or minutes later have the game starting to drop FPS from 60 to low 40's. But once the FPS drop is triggered during a gamingsession, it keeps happening during that session.

So whatever is triggering the FPS drops, it is a rare occurrence. Either a non-combat pet(galen wisp?), an ability which both players and some monsters have, a certain outfit piece, a certain mount, or a status effect/combination of status effects is causing this. But eventually I will run into it, and have the FPS drop issue.

PS: The only region I had this FPS drop happen twice, is the alik'r desert's "Tava's Blessing", while doing the side quest(ship plans) and main quests there. (yesterday the FPS drops started there, after a two hour playing session on my warden with 0 issues) Maybe some other players experiencing this issue can go there and combat around somewhat to see if they get the same result there, as this might set ZOS on the right path of finding out the cause of this strange issue.

Sarannah

I hate it when things do not work right, so I experimented quite a bit to get this issue fixed. And I was able to fix it completely, for the last four playing sessions(2+ hours each) my FPS was a steady 60 FPS again. And I specifically went to the areas where the issue used to appear for me, just to check if it was still happening. Which it no longer did.
So I did everything I could think of: Updating drivers, changing ESO settings, even updated my BIOS drivers(very risky), checked windows settings/updates, etc. But none of it worked. So after some research, I found out Nvidia has 'recently' added some new power management settings, one of which is "optimal power". Nvidia was so kind(ahem) to automatically select this option for everyone. Which for normal applications/games is no issue, as they draw a constantly similar amount of power for the GPU to use. But in ESO, which can have load spikes(the trigger), this is a bad thing. Because every time the game had the GPU require more resources/power, this power wasn't available due to this setting. Meaning: in order to compensate the GPU lowered it's output, causing the FPS to drop drastically. How much the drop and how often, depends on the GPU and display settings someone would be using.

What I did to fix it:
**Before changing any settings, write down what settings you are changing, and what the original value was. Just in case you want to change everything back. Lower the ESO's in-game graphical settings beforehand, just to be sure.**
Step 1: Go to the Nvidia settings control panel -> go to manage 3D settings -> click the tab for program settings(do not change these settings globally, or your GPU will be working overtime even when staring at the desktop) -> click the list of programs and find elder scrolls online - > select elder scrolls online -> when elder scrolls online is selected, change the power management setting to "optimal performance". -> After doing this, click apply in the bottom right.
Step 2: Now check the desktop icon(right click -> properties) with which you start ESO, and repeat the above steps while adding that specific path to the Nvidia settings program list as well. This way you can be 100% sure this setting is applied, no matter how you start ESO.

Note: With this new setting, depending on your GPU and your ESO gamesettings, your GPU may run at a hotter temperature and will draw more power when running ESO. My GPU remained the same temp, as my gamesettings are quite low. Check the GPU temp, and lower your gamesettings accordingly. (maybe lower the in-game graphical settings beforehand)
Note: After applying the fix, run ESO and check if you need to lower your in-game graphical settings. You may need to lower your ESO settings, to make sure your GPU does not become too stressed with "optimal performance" on. (for me turning v-sync on was an option, as my monitor only runs at 60hz(FPS))
Note: My "max FPS" and "max background FPS" are off and my vertical synchronisation is on for all ESO additions in these Nvidia settings. While in the ESO game itself, my v-sync is on, my limit background FPS is off, and multi-threaded rendering is off. Some of you may need different settings for these, to keep your GPU from going insane. Mainly the "max FPS" setting may help with this.

Hopefully this 'fix' will help some of you as well. And be careful, if you are unsure if your in-game graphical settings are too high for this fix, lower them before trying this fix. You can always turn the in-game graphical settings back on/up again after trying the fix.

PS: For some players this option could have automatically been set already, due to using GeForce experience or through steam settings. Personally I set all options/everything manually, so when programs automatically change settings, I have to figure things out all over again.

PPS: I'm playing in 4k, on a max 60hz(FPS) monitor.

TLDR: Change the Nvidia power management option for ESO to "optimal performance".

ZOS_Bill

With multiple threads discussion this issue, we have decided to close this thread.
You can find further troubleshooting to try for frame rate issues in the thread below.

Unusual and Unplayable FPS Issues, Other Games Running Fine