The game is nearly unplayable (FPS wise)

Sailor_Palutena

I used to have my frame rate above 60 even in populated areas (45 in Ali'kr Desert Dolmens), playing in 4k and most settings on High, but

Since the last big patch, frame rate is often below 30, sometimes going down to the 15. It keeps stuttering no end and FPS keep floating around 20 to 40.

My PC is a i7 6700k, 32GB RAM, RTX 4060ti.
(yeah I know I should upgrade my CPU, but it was working fine for ESO until a couple of months ago).

What I tried:
Setting Optimized in Geforce Experience: didn't improve.
Removing all addons: didn't improve.
Uninstalling ESO and do a clean install with no addons: didn't improve.
Playing in 1080p and lowest settings: didn't improve.
Changing the SetMaxCores from -1 to 2, 3, 4 none of it solved.

I tried many solutions including the one in the link below, but nothing has fixed it
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/429099/easy-and-huge-fps-increase-with-this-one-simple-trick-core-usage-and-how-to-change-it

Resident Evil 2, 3, 4 Remake are all running in 4k60fps here. I can even run Elder Scrolls Oblivion at 45fps and Medium settings. It is just ESO with this problem.
Any more suggestions besides changing my PC specs?

FullMax

Are you experiencing low FPS in all locations, or just large ones? Try teleporting to a frozen cliff or a Khenarthi nest, and then to a larger location, like Cyrodiil or Craglorn, and compare your FPS.

Alternatively, you may have a setting enabled that you didn't notice. It's strange that after disabling anti-aliasing, your FPS is still so low. Try disabling shadows and light rays and compare.

By the way, I noticed that games, especially Elder Scrolls, start to freeze if I have GIF wallpapers enabled on my desktop. After disabling them, the freezing went away. Maybe you also have some unnecessary program running in the background?

It's highly unlikely that an update has only changed your personal FPS. For me, everything is fine (knock on wood).

Zodiarkslayer

I wouldn't worry. It's not your fault.
It's the ancient engine, that is pushed beyond it's limits.

I have played on "good looking for 1080p" mid settings for five years and even my last rig (2015-2023) barely had to start the fans for cooling. That is how little computing ESO took back then.

Ever since the updates last year, where they defaulted to higher settings, more complex post processing and more demanding animations, the game goes ballistic from time to time. And it nukes your video card, regardless of how good it is, how old/new it is or what drivers you use.

Best example for me is one of the animations of the Mudcrab World Boss on Solstice. During the fight I always have two or three screen freezes that last about 5s each. The sound doesn't freeze, skill input doesn't freeze. It's just the frame that freezes while the Boss pops up. I obviously don't know exactly, because I never see it happening. It's ridiculous.

Sarannah

Every update ESO keeps getting more and more heavier on the hardware, that is just how software progresses. As with every update they need to keep up with the latest technology/software.

You could try many things... but setting your display from 4k to 1080p and your fps drops not getting any better is a HUGE red flag! As doing that makes the game four times less intense/heavier, which means there should be a major improvement. To me this points out something else is terribly wrong with your system. Which could be anything from a hardware failure to a software conflict. Personally I would suggest looking into the latest windows 11 updates using too much CPU lately(as you have an older CPU this may affect you massively), and I would suggest looking into reinstalling the GPU drivers or finding a stable GPU driver(could be a miss-install or software conflict).

There is also the possibility that your hardware is just stressed to it's limit with ESO, especially the motherboard. The motherboard has channels through which data flows between the RAM/GPU/CPU, if ESO suddenly stresses these channels more while the motherboard can't take that load, it will slow you down to play catch up(lower your fps).

Hope that helps.

PS: If you change anything in ESO's usersettings, keep in mind these changes can affect your ESO install if ESO releases a new update. So write these changes down or try not to change anything at all to possibly prevent any future conflicts/problems.

Sailor_Palutena

FullMax wrote: »

Are you experiencing low FPS in all locations, or just large ones? Try teleporting to a frozen cliff or a Khenarthi nest, and then to a larger location, like Cyrodiil or Craglorn, and compare your FPS.

Alternatively, you may have a setting enabled that you didn't notice. It's strange that after disabling anti-aliasing, your FPS is still so low. Try disabling shadows and light rays and compare.

All locations yes. It got 60fps inside dungeons in one session, but never again.
I've set everything on minimum, to the point of looking like a Playstation 1 level of graphics, 1080p with everything on LOW.
It is the same thing as running in 4k max: 30fps tops and going as low as 7FPS.

I'm still using Windows 10 and wondering if it is an attempting to force me to move on. While running ESO, both CPU and memory usage stay below 50% same with the temp below 50º celsius (122F).

Tandor

Try searching "Windows 10 performance settings" and follow the tips there. It sounds to me like some Windows settings might have got changed (it can happen when running Windows Updates, for example).

StihlReign

Try moving to Windows 11Pro if you can. I believe they even advertised it as better for gamers. Everything else you have looks good unless you want to buy more Ram

silky_soft

When you reinstall did you remove your shadercache.cooked and usersetting.txt?

Are the games that run fine using the same drive as eso? Maybe the drive is full or failing. Maybe the windows drive is full or failing?

Have you tried running DISM and SFC in admin cmd to see if Windows update has gone bad? Google for some guides or videos about it.

moderatelyfatman

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

I wouldn't worry. It's not your fault.
It's the ancient engine, that is pushed beyond it's limits.

I have played on "good looking for 1080p" mid settings for five years and even my last rig (2015-2023) barely had to start the fans for cooling. That is how little computing ESO took back then.

Ever since the updates last year, where they defaulted to higher settings, more complex post processing and more demanding animations, the game goes ballistic from time to time. And it nukes your video card, regardless of how good it is, how old/new it is or what drivers you use.

Best example for me is one of the animations of the Mudcrab World Boss on Solstice. During the fight I always have two or three screen freezes that last about 5s each. The sound doesn't freeze, skill input doesn't freeze. It's just the frame that freezes while the Boss pops up. I obviously don't know exactly, because I never see it happening. It's ridiculous.

I keep seeing people throwing the argument of 'old game engine' to justify why ESO is so buggy and with such poor performance.
Then I realised that Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 are all older than ESO.
And they are all less buggy and run better than ESO.

In a normal MMO bugs get fixed over time and performance gets optimised over time. The only real exception is when major new content get added where devs have to fix bugs and reoptimise the engine, but these usually get fixed within weeks and are temporary.

PapaTankers

Could it have anything to do with "limit background fps" setting? That limits background fps to 30. Maybe unitck that setting.
Altho I do have to say. Your cpu is becoming kind of a relic.

Sailor_Palutena

silky_soft wrote: »

When you reinstall did you remove your shadercache.cooked and usersetting.txt?

Are the games that run fine using the same drive as eso? Maybe the drive is full or failing. Maybe the windows drive is full or failing?

Have you tried running DISM and SFC in admin cmd to see if Windows update has gone bad? Google for some guides or videos about it.

Yes to the first question, I deleted the folder in Document and it created a new one after I executed the game. And yes about the drive. It is working fine.

I'm telling you guys, the game was running at 4K 60fps almost no dips until September. Then after that, it started to suck really bad. I just got the game barely playable setting it to Medium graphics and 1080p.

Actually, I'm going to test a last option. I just noticed my last Geforce update was in September 30 when Nvidia released an update for Battlefield 6. I think i will roll back a couple of drives before that.

Sailor_Palutena

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Sarannah

Sailor_Palutena wrote: »

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Roll back your GPU driver to the last 40 series stable one(DDU+reinstall older)... which was 566.36 if I'm not mistaken. Everything after is known to cause major issues, depending on pc configuration.

Also, disable GFE(GeForce Experience) completely before running ESO. I've had problems in the past where GFE was unstable/bugged and was causing major lag/delay/crash issues for games.

Other than that, such a large performance drop is caused by something. I would not be surprised if you are having a hardware failure within the next month or so. Make sure to investigate further!