Game doesn't utilize full system resources.

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO

I run ESO on a machine that contains 12 GB RAM, and I7 Extreme Hexa Core 3,4 GHz, ASUS GTX 780 Ti and on a Samsung SSD. Even in the PvP area I have no performance issues. And I have everything set on max... (wanted to see how far I can push my card)...

The last time a game became choppy and weird was when somehow Hyperthreading was activated. I deactivated it again, and all was well.

And make sure that your graphics card driver is not hooked into your OS menu/gui...
That, too, can create weird problems... just open up your driver and uncheck that setting.

raglau

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO wrote: »

The last time a game became choppy and weird was when somehow Hyperthreading was activated. I deactivated it again, and all was well.

In practise, the Windows Executive will schedule threads on the real cores first, then hyper-threaded cores, because the CPU announces itself as hyper-thread capable to the OS. But some games, and indeed apps, try to schedule themselves, and if they do not understand what the CPU is they may well spawn threads on HT cores. That could have been what you experienced.

Audigy

Nvidia has a driver related issue, that's a well known fact - just wait for the new ones or use the beta.

As for the CPU discussion, well... 8 core CPU´s are sadly still a waste for most games. I sit on a 2500k and the game runs perfectly fine.

Maybe ZO can push a patch to address that issue, also the 32 bit app issue - we will just have to wait and see.

Synapse

I've been discussing this issue in Tamriel zone chats since day 1 of early access as I find myself getting 35 fps or lower in the large starter towns when I'm in a high population area and getting under 20 fps during larger scale PvP. This is on both the max and high settings, and my computer is no slouch:

FX-8350 OC @ 4.9GHz

EVGA GTX 780 (factory overclocked)

16GB DDR3 @‌ 1866MHz (G.SKILL Sniper)

Edit: Windows 8.1

Samsung 840 SSD x2.

I've also found that this game is inordinately CPU-bound in that only one core is ever utilized at more than 10% load. The one core that is utilized never reaches above an 82% load, however, and when I'm running no other processes but the game and my ASUS interface, the other seven cores rarely ever reach beyond 5%, spending a majority of their time between 0% to 3% load.

P.S. Curiously, my GTX 780 reaches it's highest load during the character creation screens, topping out at 83%. During gaming, however, it rarely reaches above ~70%.

P.P.S. No, I did not have an expectation of this game utilizing all eight of my FX-8350's cores. Nor, did I have any expectation that this game would utilize four cores. I did, however, believe that we would be seeing two cores utilized since the amount of gamers with single core processors must be an exceedingly low number.

raglau

What OS are you using firstly? Win7 needs a hotfix for AMD CPUs to help it recognise what modules contain what cores. Win8.x natively supports this.

Secondly, have you tried turning off half the cores, so that each module runs only one core? This is known to help a lot of games.

Basically the AMD architecture is not truly multicore, each module contains two execution unit (AMD calls these cores) but they share FPU, cache etc, and this can cause contention problems. Perhaps you know this already, sorry for patronising if so.

Synapse wrote: »

I've been discussing this issues in Tamriel zone chats since day 1 of early access as I find myself getting 35 fps or lower in the large starter towns and getting under 20 fps during larger scale PvP. This is on both the max and high settings, and my computer is no slouch:

FX-8350 OC @ 4.9GHz
.

Synapse

squicker wrote: »

What OS are you using firstly? Win7 needs a hotfix for AMD CPUs to help it recognise what modules contain what cores. Win8.x natively supports this.

Secondly, have you tried turning off half the cores, so that each module runs only one core? This is known to help a lot of games.

Basically the AMD architecture is not truly multicore, each module contains two execution unit (AMD calls these cores) but they share FPU, cache etc, and this can cause contention problems. Perhaps you know this already, sorry for patronising if so.

Synapse wrote: »

I've been discussing this issues in Tamriel zone chats since day 1 of early access as I find myself getting 35 fps or lower in the large starter towns and getting under 20 fps during larger scale PvP. This is on both the max and high settings, and my computer is no slouch:

FX-8350 OC @ 4.9GHz
.

Win 8.1

No, I didn't even realize that was a thing.

No worries.

raglau

Synapse wrote: »

Win 8.1

OK, so Win8.1 has proper Bulldozer\Piledriver support natively in the OS.

It would be a useful experiment if you are able to go into the BIOS and disable half of the cores (disable one per module). What motherboard have you got?

I am about to do some tests on ESO CPU use, which might throw a little light on things also.

Synapse

squicker wrote: »

Synapse wrote: »

Win 8.1

OK, so Win8.1 has proper Bulldozer\Piledriver support natively in the OS.

It would be a useful experiment if you are able to go into the BIOS and disable half of the cores (disable one per module). What motherboard have you got?

I am about to do some tests on ESO CPU use, which might throw a little light on things also.

ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z

NicoNine

The thing people don't understand is that just changing a application to 64 bit don't make it run faster. If it don't need more than a 32 bit application can allocate, it make it slower to change it to 64 bit.

Using 64 bit memory allocations will take longer time to allocate and clear up. Also 64 bit memory pointers take more memory so to get more memory the application use more memory.

One problem I see is that the work is not divided evenly at all on the CPU cores.
A DICE dev said when making Battlefield, one of the harder things was to divide the work for the CPU on different cores to make the game optimized.

The image show that the CPU only utilize around 40% of its power.



On the other hand, my GPU is at 80% so the FPS drop might be because my GPU is not fast enough. The strange thing is that turning off GPU heavy tasks like "Ambient Occlusion" don't give me much FPS increase in crowded areas. Why I feel that it's more of a optimization problem.

Nidwin

A version of MS visual c++ gets installed during the Download, I think during the patcher download/installation already. Didn't check if it was the latest stable one although.

My guess, just a guess, is that some part of the client engine could be recompiled during the install procedure of the game. Would make sense to have the engine optimized vs our PC specs. Also to achieve the 32bits and 64bits versions of the client engine on our PC's.

As I wrote, it's just a guess of course.

raglau

Synapse wrote: »

ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z

I just checked the manual here: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/CROSSHAIR_V_FORMULAZ/HelpDesk_Manual/

You can disable some cores in the BIOS:

Section 3.5.6 in the manual.

Advanced menu\CPU Core on\off Function.

The objective is to disable 1 core in each module, so something like disable 2, 4, 6 and 8. This means that only real CPU cores are running.

Now, this might not do anything (due to the way Win8 now properly works with AMD architecture) but in games like ESO where one core seems particularly loaded (the game operates somehow like a single-threaded game would, although is multi-threaded) people have seen good results by disabling secondary cores and removing resource contention within a module.

You can always re-enable them after testing this change.

Here is someone who has made that change on their board: http://www.overclock.net/t/1448178/lightbox/post/21454507/id/1809754

The other thing I thought, and it's a bit of a beginner questions so apologies, is the game definitely using your NVidia card, not onboard?

GossiTheDog

The game is multithreaded (32 threads) and supports greater than 4gb RAM allocation, and 64-bit .exe doesn't not mean faster.

The problem is how it's threaded (not very well). Some tasks group together on one core. So one core gets battered (which slows frame rendering). I see 15fps in PVP during large battles, however GPU usage is very low at those times.

Sangeet

I had similar problems, i disabled overwolf, which is a teamspeak addon, this impvoved the performance quite a bit. Also set the software firewall to game mode if you have one. But i still get 50 fps from a GTX 770, on an i7 2600k, not overclocked. (13% less cpu power than an i4770 )

I think zenimax should do a 64 bit client, so that eso.exe does not need to fetch as often from the hard drive.

raglau

Sangeet wrote: »

I think zenimax should do a 64 bit client, so that eso.exe does not need to fetch as often from the hard drive.

Thing is, another guy on the forum put the game on RAMdisk and it made no performance improvement. So that leads me to believe even 64bit RAM access holding everything local RAM, would not make much difference.

Synapse

squicker wrote: »

The other thing I thought, and it's a bit of a beginner questions so apologies, is the game definitely using your NVidia card, not onboard?

I don't believe I understand the question fully.

The GTX 780 is my onboard card, and the Crosshair V does not have a built in graphics processor.

GossiTheDog

64-bit would make no difference. It's optimization around threading and cores which is the issue.

raglau

"Synapse wrote: »

The GTX 780 is my onboard card, and the Crosshair V does not have a built in graphics processor.

Apologies, my mistake

NicoNine

@GossiTheDog i agree, looks like optimization problem.

GossiTheDog wrote: »

The game is multithreaded (32 threads) and supports greater than 4gb RAM allocation, and 64-bit .exe doesn't not mean faster.

The problem is how it's threaded (not very well). Some tasks group together on one core. So one core gets battered (which slows frame rendering). I see 15fps in PVP during large battles, however GPU usage is very low at those times.

My thought as well.

Nidwin

Sangeet wrote: »

I think zenimax should do a 64 bit client, so that eso.exe does not need to fetch as often from the hard drive.

Can you please elaborate this?

As far as my IT knowledge goes there's no difference of the "fetch as often from the hard drive" between a 32bits and a 64bits adressing. But I could have missed something bro ;-)

raglau

I think what he is saying is that because a 64bit process can address 8TB of RAM in Windows and a 32bit process only 4GB (on 64bit OS), the game could hold all textures and maps in RAM, thereby alleviating the need to fetch data from hard disk.

Nidwin wrote: »

Sangeet wrote: »

I think zenimax should do a 64 bit client, so that eso.exe does not need to fetch as often from the hard drive.

Can you please elaborate this?

As far as my IT knowledge goes there's no difference of the "fetch as often from the hard drive" between a 32bits and a 64bits adressing. But I could have missed something bro ;-)

Ran_some

felixgamingx1 wrote: »

Btw the human eye can only process 20 frames per second so don't get crazy about getting 100fps

That's not completely true. We can discern movement at much faster speeds. Our brain can put frames together to replicate fluid movement at slower frame rates.

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5188053_fast-can-eye-see_.html

http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html

http://amo.net/nt/05-24-01FPS.html

(any number of simple searches will find many more)

Movement seems more natural at higher frame rates, and we can see it. (You'll see a blurry fan blades that move at high speeds) Pursuing solutions to allow one to see games faster than 20 fps is the same as those who want sharper images. It's not needed to play a game, but it shouldn't be suggested that it is unnecessary.

Maleficus

Disable core parking...

GossiTheDog

Maleficus wrote: »

Disable core parking...

Doesn't fix. Just for info.

Audigy

GossiTheDog wrote: »

64-bit would make no difference. It's optimization around threading and cores which is the issue.

Those issue´s however many games have, do you know a game that utilizes all 8 cores? I couldn't name one right now, most go for either 2 or 4.

About the 64-bit, I would assume it does give a tiny boost. But ya its totally theoretical of course and maybe it wont. I know that wow jumped in FPS and stability when it went 64-bit.

Synapse

Audigy wrote: »

GossiTheDog wrote: »

64-bit would make no difference. It's optimization around threading and cores which is the issue.

Those issue´s however many games have, do you know a game that utilizes all 8 cores? I couldn't name one right now, most go for either 2 or 4.

About the 64-bit, I would assume it does give a tiny boost. But ya its totally theoretical of course and maybe it wont. I know that wow jumped in FPS and stability when it went 64-bit.

He wasn't talking about eight cores, six cores, four cores, etc. He's referring to the fact that this game doesn't even properly utilize the one core it uses.

GossiTheDog

Exactly. I'm not saying the game should have Battlefield 4 level optimisation around cores, Zenimax don't have those resources. I'm just saying one core shouldn't be a bottleneck as that slows down rendering as it ain't talking to the GPU fast enough.

LorenzoButtigieg

Rhian-Skybladeb16_ESO wrote: »

I run ESO on a machine that contains 12 GB RAM, and I7 Extreme Hexa Core 3,4 GHz, ASUS GTX 780 Ti and on a Samsung SSD. Even in the PvP area I have no performance issues. And I have everything set on max... (wanted to see how far I can push my card)...

The last time a game became choppy and weird was when somehow Hyperthreading was activated. I deactivated it again, and all was well.

And make sure that your graphics card driver is not hooked into your OS menu/gui...
That, too, can create weird problems... just open up your driver and uncheck that setting.

What do you mean by "driver is not hooked into your OS menu" if you can show how to find the settings please?

raglau

I've done some analysis of the game in PvE today:

There are 30-32 threads spawned by ESO. Threads 0 and 7 are the key threads for the game and thread 0 does most of the work. When thread 7 waits, it appears to often wait for thread 0. Thread 0 often waits for input so I assume this thread runs the main interface for the gamer.

Because thread 0 does all this work and cannot be sub-divided into more granular threads, it means ESO does not spread the load very well across multiple cores. Thread 7 does about 1/3 as much work as thread 0 and so I imagine it gets scheduled on a separate core to Thread 0. The other thread's impact upon the CPU are negligible.

The Eso process and these two threads are prioritised correctly and their respective priorities change upwards when the game is the foreground task.

There are no memory leaks.

The game runs well and does what it ought to do. I think the bottleneck arises simply because of Thread 0 being the main worker thread and it therefore consuming its home CPU core's resources, the other 30 odd threads no doubt depend upon this Thread 0 for themselves to act (have not looked yet but will) and therefore we find that the app behaves something like a single-threaded app (but it is not!) in that all activity is bound by the performance of the core that Thread 0 lands on. Consequently the GPU ends up twiddling its thumbs waiting for geometric data from the CPU.

CPU clock speed and not cores will benefit this game.

In an AMD setup if Thread 0 and 7 ended up on two separate cores in the same module it may cause resource contention.