My 2cents regarding "input lag"
Caesar Tantalia
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Hi everyone,
First all my sincerest apologies for leeching off this forum and the people who have been contributing. I've been watching vids pre-launch, been playing this game almost as of launch and ... never posted anything on this forum yet got a lot of help and advice from it ... So I promised myself that my first post ever would be constructive and hopefully helpful one for others so here goes.
PS - English is not my native language so hopefully, not too much spelling errors, ...
As I said, I have been playing this game almost from day 1 and just like many of you, I had my load of issues after patch XX.XX. Over time, I have been looking for solutions and came across some interesting findings. One general issue I had as of day one was the weird input lag. I call it input lag (I'm not a tech expert) but "lag" may very well be the wrong word here. My FPS is above 50 all times and latency is around 100/120 all times (well not all times but that's a different topic). But still - my input would not register all times.
Just FYI - I play the game on ultra setting (no shadows) on a Lenovo y510p SLI laptop (I know, I know ... towers are better but I temporarily live in the US and didn't want to rebuild entire rig - will do so when I'm back in EU).
First item I came across was the architecture of my CPU. Could be a Lenovo problem only but my CPU was auto throttling. It's normal to throttle if a certain heat threshold is exceeded but mine was doing this automatically when turning on games. Just turn on a game - minimize - and see the effect on CPU (3.4ghz to 2.2 ghz). Throttlestop saved my day here. So, for all people playing with the same laptop as I do - Throttlestop is a must. Version 7 is the one you should be looking for. This remedy singlehandedly removed a lot of the issues I had.
Second was an easy fix - again for the poor lenovo (cooling) design - get a cooling pad and lift your laptop. I use a separate monitor through HDMI. This saved me from heating issues with my laptop without needing to e.g. fix the thermal paste, ...
Third - I thought they fixed this but still I needed to disable the Nvidia streamer. This one literally made an end to my input lag. Type into run "services.msc". Look for Nvidia streamer, double click, disable, save ... enjoy.
Fourth - I did allow the Eso exe top priority when it comes to using CPU resources ... I don't know if this is a must but if it doesn't hurt ...
So - probably not new for everyone but hopefully it helps someone out there. The 4 items mentioned above helped me to run this game smoothly. The only issue that remains (for now) is the (sometimes) slow loading of the environment, people, NPCs, ... I haven't found a solution for that one but I've learnt to live with it (for now at least).
So that's it. I hope it helps at least 1 of you out there.
If anyone knows a solution for the slow loading - feel free to share. I have tried to threadload setting but that made it worse.
Sincere Regards,
CT
First all my sincerest apologies for leeching off this forum and the people who have been contributing. I've been watching vids pre-launch, been playing this game almost as of launch and ... never posted anything on this forum yet got a lot of help and advice from it ... So I promised myself that my first post ever would be constructive and hopefully helpful one for others so here goes.
PS - English is not my native language so hopefully, not too much spelling errors, ...
As I said, I have been playing this game almost from day 1 and just like many of you, I had my load of issues after patch XX.XX. Over time, I have been looking for solutions and came across some interesting findings. One general issue I had as of day one was the weird input lag. I call it input lag (I'm not a tech expert) but "lag" may very well be the wrong word here. My FPS is above 50 all times and latency is around 100/120 all times (well not all times but that's a different topic). But still - my input would not register all times.
Just FYI - I play the game on ultra setting (no shadows) on a Lenovo y510p SLI laptop (I know, I know ... towers are better but I temporarily live in the US and didn't want to rebuild entire rig - will do so when I'm back in EU).
First item I came across was the architecture of my CPU. Could be a Lenovo problem only but my CPU was auto throttling. It's normal to throttle if a certain heat threshold is exceeded but mine was doing this automatically when turning on games. Just turn on a game - minimize - and see the effect on CPU (3.4ghz to 2.2 ghz). Throttlestop saved my day here. So, for all people playing with the same laptop as I do - Throttlestop is a must. Version 7 is the one you should be looking for. This remedy singlehandedly removed a lot of the issues I had.
Second was an easy fix - again for the poor lenovo (cooling) design - get a cooling pad and lift your laptop. I use a separate monitor through HDMI. This saved me from heating issues with my laptop without needing to e.g. fix the thermal paste, ...
Third - I thought they fixed this but still I needed to disable the Nvidia streamer. This one literally made an end to my input lag. Type into run "services.msc". Look for Nvidia streamer, double click, disable, save ... enjoy.
Fourth - I did allow the Eso exe top priority when it comes to using CPU resources ... I don't know if this is a must but if it doesn't hurt ...
So - probably not new for everyone but hopefully it helps someone out there. The 4 items mentioned above helped me to run this game smoothly. The only issue that remains (for now) is the (sometimes) slow loading of the environment, people, NPCs, ... I haven't found a solution for that one but I've learnt to live with it (for now at least).
So that's it. I hope it helps at least 1 of you out there.
If anyone knows a solution for the slow loading - feel free to share. I have tried to threadload setting but that made it worse.
Sincere Regards,
CT
2
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Wily_Wizard✭✭✭When you say input would not register, do you mean keyboard/mouse input?
(I'm going to make some assumptions here, because I don't have all the data)
If you set eso.exe to the top CPU priority (realtime), then if ESO causes a spike in your CPU load, at that moment anything with lower priority will likely experience "lag", which includes your mouse and keyboard. Realtime scheduling excludes the exe from auto-scheduling, so it can be dangerous in certain situations. If you feel you must set the priority level higher, try setting it to "Above Normal", that's a much safer option. Honestly, you are better to leave the ESO CPU priority scheduling at default settings to maintain system stability.2 -
Caesar Tantalia✭✭✭Input lag: during e.g. AoA heavy moments (group spamming), my "input" could get "lost". Meaning I activate a skill but there is no output (no effect and no visual). At the same time, my fps and latency didn't drop resp. spiked.
The Nvidia streaming setting did tge trick for me. I should test if I can set prority of exe to normal again and see if the unput lag returns (but I doubt it will). I will test tonight and update the post.
The one issue I still have is the slow loading though I have learned to live with that. E.g. I come to the undaunted tents, storming on my max speed kitty - everything has to load in while I'm allready there. So people pop, detail on tents, ... takes about 5 to 10 seconds till everything is there. I haven't found a solution for this. Following advice from other posts, changing the load settings in ini made it actually worse.0 -
Wily_Wizard✭✭✭OK, I'm having the same problem then. I hit a key for a skill but nothing happens. My guy just stands there getting hit. To be sure, I check and my magica and stamina bars are full, and still, nothing happens. Then about 5 seconds later, the skill(s)executes.
I also disabled my NVidia streamer service, but it didn't fix this occasional issue. Like you, I checked everything possible to no avail, so I'm starting to think it could be server side latency spikes. My latency(ping) has been stable, but I guess I can put up a monitor and watch for packet loss and see if it coincides...at least that would make sense.
Are you running off an SSD on your laptop? Hard drives on laptops are notoriously slow, this could account for most of your loading issues. Even a cheap SSD would significantly improve load times.
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Nestor✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Caesar Tantalia wrote: »
Third - I thought they fixed this but still I needed to disable the Nvidia streamer. This one literally made an end to my input lag. Type into run "services.msc". Look for Nvidia streamer, double click, disable, save ... enjoy.
Any back ground app can be suspect when troubleshooting game performance. Especially anything that is rendering or processing video, or using the internet with on line games (like Rhapsody or IM or Skype etc). Always as a troubleshooting step stop all the back ground apps from loading, and the NON-Microsoft Services from loading, then reboot and test again. You can use MSCONFIG for this. Just don't eliminate any Microsoft Services from loading unless you have researched them and determined they are safe and benificial to turn off. Like Indexing which can cause game issues.
See this for more details
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135
I also do not notice any slow loading of graphics, but I have an SSD, so that might be the reason for that.
Enjoy the game, life is what you really want to be worried about.
PakKat "Everything was going well, until I died"
Gary Gravestink "I am glad you died, I needed the help"0 -
Caesar Tantalia✭✭✭Wily_Wizard wrote: »OK, I'm having the same problem then. I hit a key for a skill but nothing happens. My guy just stands there getting hit. To be sure, I check and my magica and stamina bars are full, and still, nothing happens. Then about 5 seconds later, the skill(s)executes.
For me, the input sometimes got lost forever - so no delay.Wily_Wizard wrote: »I also disabled my NVidia streamer service, but it didn't fix this occasional issue. Like you, I checked everything possible to no avail, so I'm starting to think it could be server side latency spikes. My latency(ping) has been stable, but I guess I can put up a monitor and watch for packet loss and see if it coincides...at least that would make sense.
I have read that in some other posts as well. My changed setting could be pure coincidence but striking nonetheless.Wily_Wizard wrote: »Are you running off an SSD on your laptop? Hard drives on laptops are notoriously slow, this could account for most of your loading issues. Even a cheap SSD would significantly improve load times.
Yes I am. Stupid question - new SSD (or any) HD on a laptop. Easy to do or would I use an external one? If so, I presume I would need to reinstall the game on the SSD drive, ... (looking forward to the entire download lol)
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Caesar Tantalia✭✭✭So I did some more testing. Setting eso.exe priority back to normal didn't make things worse.
What I did notice very clearly was the increase of the loading issue I refer to above. Whatever ZOS did with Patch 2.08, it made the loading issue worse (for me at least). I'm pretty sure the patch did something. Everything on my end didn't change and loading got worse immediately after the patch has been applied. Moreover, I asked around and searched the forum on this issue - it seems orher people are experiencing this as well - whether they have an SSD drive or not ...0 -
Attorneyatlawl✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭In the usersettings.ini, change this:
SET GPUSmoothingFrames "10"
to this:
SET GPUSmoothingFrames "0"
Enjoy
. -First-Wave Closed Beta Tester of the Psijic Order, aka the 0.016 percent.
Exploits suck. Don't blame just the game, blame the players abusing them!
-Playing since July 2013, back when we had a killspam channel in Cyrodiil and the lands of Tamriel were roamed by dinosaurs.
________________
-In-game mains abound with "Nerf" in their name. As I am asked occasionally, I do not play on anything but the PC NA Megaserver at this time.0