FPS Issue

uso245 · November 2015

Now I've gone through and checked out some dead and necro threads regarding possible ways to fix this issue where my fps will suddenly drop below 10 (generally in AoE situations). Now I have never had this issue prior to IC patch but I ended up going away from the game for about a month and came back around a month ago just prior to Orsinium launch. After going through turning off various features and capping my frames to 48 (even with a GTX 970) just in the hopes of reducing any possible cause. I gone in disabled/removed (purged) several addons even though people in the past that didn't have addons experienced this as well. My rig listed below used to run this game at all max settings but now I can barely run the same veteran dungeons I farmed prior to IC. (I have all the monster sets prior to IC) to demonstrate that I have done these more then once. Yet now a days I can barely run dungeons at all and I am getting no responses regarding the matter. If I could at least get a confirmation of it actually being looked into that would curb my curiosity of anything being done about this. @ZOS_RichLambert (I see you at least posting in posts half of the time so I'm asking if it can at least be looked into) @ZOS_MollyH (saw you moved a thread to the PC Technical Support) and @ZOS_GinaBruno since you are one of the leads in the community any answer would be greatly appreciated.

My name is Dave, I work in IT and currently a double major in Computer Information Technology and Information Security.

GTX 970
AMD Zambezi 6200 FX Processor
Sabertooth 990 FX Mobo
Corsair HX750 PSU
16gb PNY RAM

My room has a regulated temperature and my rig doesn't run hot. I also have tools and check and repair any system issues along with running a program that monitors system performance and notifies me when something is amiss. Never had this issue before but noticed some of the old posts I read went back to the days of launch and I never experienced them before even though I've been here since beta. I've gone in and even disabled programs to make sure they weren't the cause of the issue. I've gone through all the troubleshooting suggested on the forums regarding Nvidia GeForce Experience/Control Panel along with editing the text file for UserSettings when capping frames and disabling VSync.

Any and all information you're willing to divulge would be greatly appreciated also saw you guys found out what was causing the long loading screens so I know you can do it!

- Uso

uso245 · November 2015

Now one thing I have tested since I saw multiple posts regarding the GTX 970, I swapped out my older graphics card back to my Sapphire 7850 1gb (huge downgrade sorta) and this did help immensely with fps. Now the problem is still there yes and this is most likely caused by the server and how information (threads) are read from it however with the definite noticeable change I can actually do dungeons again without having severe fps drop (other then the regular latency caused during heavy AoE situations) but for the most part it helped greatly.

Another thing I noted was one of my classmates in my Network Fundamentals course pointed out he also has a GTX 970 and was experiencing the same issue in another MMO. There is a rating system built into the computer and apparently the game on a scale of 1-7 was rated a 1.4 for this particular MMO. Now originally this was a good graphics card but I have had issues in the past with drivers and started to think the drivers being put out are gearing the card more towards single player/multi-player games as opposed to MMOs (way it reads the information from the server) so just wanted to point out it isn't entirely ZoS on this one since my older card is currently processing the game in max settings better then the GTX 970.

Sad we spent all that money on a "higher tiered" card *shrugs*.

uso245 · November 2015

@ZOS_MollyH you might want to move this to the Player Helping Players since there really isn't a fix atm.

SapphireThunder · November 2015

It's not just GTX970, but all of the new high end cards from past 2 years.
GTX 950/960/970/980/980Ti
R9 280/290/290x/380/390/390x/Fury/Fury X

For you, it doesn't help that you have an AMD, an FX-6200 too nonetheless.
The cores are very weak and the game only uses up to 2 cores.
Even Pentium G3258 performs better in this game than that cpu.
My FX-8350 isn't much better. For me, an simple i3 would perform better in this game in comparison.

The performance in this game is just messed up and Zenimax seemingly has absolutely no plans on ever doing anything to it. They will just keep bringing useless game balances and updates.
And some important and some less important bug fixes.

Maybe they first want to get all the small bugs out of the way and then work on the performance. Which is actually a stupid idea because they might just re-emerge after performance tweaks.

uso245 · November 2015

I've seen a great many i3s at my work and they can barely handle regular browsers. i5 or 97 sure.

uso245 · November 2015

Also wanted to note I have a guildie with a GTX960 runs everything max and doesn't have an issue. Maybe he's like a unicorn.

blubbi4ever · November 2015

It is somehow unbelievable that the HD7350 outperforms the GTX 970 in heavy situations. The only problem with the GTX 970 is that it uses only 3.5GB of VRAM effectively and even then it should run better than your old GPU. Have you maybe tried other games? Or maybe you could borrow another GPU from someone and do some tests.

The performance has gotten worse with every patch. I have an i7-2630qm + AMD 6990m GPU and my fps is doesn't change that much, no matter what I do. I've tried a 800x600 resolution with lowest settings (which looks really horrible) and I still get only 40 fps in town (38fps with medium/high settings @ 1080p).

You won't get a response from ZOS (atleast no other than "check your Internet connection") because they already know that performance issues exist in this game.

uso245 · November 2015

blubbi4ever wrote: »

It is somehow unbelievable that the HD7350 outperforms the GTX 970 in heavy situations. The only problem with the GTX 970 is that it uses only 3.5GB of VRAM effectively and even then it should run better than your old GPU. Have you maybe tried other games? Or maybe you could borrow another GPU from someone and do some tests.

The performance has gotten worse with every patch. I have an i7-2630qm + AMD 6990m GPU and my fps is doesn't change that much, no matter what I do. I've tried a 800x600 resolution with lowest settings (which looks really horrible) and I still get only 40 fps in town (38fps with medium/high settings @ 1080p).

You won't get a response from ZOS (atleast no other than "check your Internet connection") because they already know that performance issues exist in this game.

Don't get me wrong there is still an issue with the server, I'm just stating I am currently having better luck with my Sapphire 7850 instead of my GTX 970 because with my 970 I will get constant drops in fps just sitting still whereas my 7850 it only happens during heavy AoE situations.

Buck · November 2015

uso245 wrote: »

blubbi4ever wrote: »

It is somehow unbelievable that the HD7350 outperforms the GTX 970 in heavy situations. The only problem with the GTX 970 is that it uses only 3.5GB of VRAM effectively and even then it should run better than your old GPU. Have you maybe tried other games? Or maybe you could borrow another GPU from someone and do some tests.

The performance has gotten worse with every patch. I have an i7-2630qm + AMD 6990m GPU and my fps is doesn't change that much, no matter what I do. I've tried a 800x600 resolution with lowest settings (which looks really horrible) and I still get only 40 fps in town (38fps with medium/high settings @ 1080p).

You won't get a response from ZOS (atleast no other than "check your Internet connection") because they already know that performance issues exist in this game.

Don't get me wrong there is still an issue with the server, I'm just stating I am currently having better luck with my Sapphire 7850 instead of my GTX 970 because with my 970 I will get constant drops in fps just sitting still whereas my 7850 it only happens during heavy AoE situations.

I "upgraded" yesterday to a MSI R9 390 8Gb from a Sapphire HD6950 2Gb that is 5 years old next month, and the performance loss on all settings low to ultimate is just ridiculous. I could get 90-100 FPS picking flowers on the 6950 on ultimate off and on the last few months, and now I can barely get 45-55 and only 20-35 in town on the R9 390. On the lowest setting with the draw distance at 0 I barely hit 80 FPS and less in towns.

After the last patch the 6950 was running awesome once again, and I almost didn't order the 390. But it didn't last long and in cyrodiil I hit a low of 11 FPS and couldn't get over 20-25. And now with the 390 I can barely get over 30-35 FPS and hit a low of 17 with the lowest settings and draw distance at 0.

"Upgrading" use to be fun.

uso245 · November 2015

Good to know, seems like my guildie's 960 is just a rare unicorn.

uso245 · November 2015

blubbi4ever wrote: »

It is somehow unbelievable that the HD7350 outperforms the GTX 970 in heavy situations. The only problem with the GTX 970 is that it uses only 3.5GB of VRAM effectively and even then it should run better than your old GPU. Have you maybe tried other games? Or maybe you could borrow another GPU from someone and do some tests.

The performance has gotten worse with every patch. I have an i7-2630qm + AMD 6990m GPU and my fps is doesn't change that much, no matter what I do. I've tried a 800x600 resolution with lowest settings (which looks really horrible) and I still get only 40 fps in town (38fps with medium/high settings @ 1080p).

You won't get a response from ZOS (atleast no other than "check your Internet connection") because they already know that performance issues exist in this game.

I've done tests and I know that this game in particular was having issues. One thing I haven't tried just yet that a classmate in my networking suggested (since I'm using my older GPU) was to completely remove all the drivers and clear the memory.

blubbi4ever · November 2015

Buck wrote: »

I "upgraded" yesterday to a MSI R9 390 8Gb from a Sapphire HD6950 2Gb that is 5 years old next month, and the performance loss on all settings low to ultimate is just ridiculous. I could get 90-100 FPS picking flowers on the 6950 on ultimate off and on the last few months, and now I can barely get 45-55 and only 20-35 in town on the R9 390. On the lowest setting with the draw distance at 0 I barely hit 80 FPS and less in towns.

After the last patch the 6950 was running awesome once again, and I almost didn't order the 390. But it didn't last long and in cyrodiil I hit a low of 11 FPS and couldn't get over 20-25. And now with the 390 I can barely get over 30-35 FPS and hit a low of 17 with the lowest settings and draw distance at 0.
"Upgrading" use to be fun.

AMD GPU nowadays tend to be more CPU dependent. The more CPU-Power you have, the better your AMD GPU becomes. Maybe this could be one reason why your FPS is lower than expected, but 17 fps even with such a good GPU is a disappointing result indeed, especially with lowest settings. ZOS should really start to do some technical optimizations instead of ignoring or putting this at low priority.

uso245 wrote: »

I've done tests and I know that this game in particular was having issues. One thing I haven't tried just yet that a classmate in my networking suggested (since I'm using my older GPU) was to completely remove all the drivers and clear the memory.

This could really help. I've done a clean install of Windows 10 and it seems that the overall gaming performance in ESO got slightly better than before. Old problems like heavy fps drops will most likely still continue to exist, but maybe you get atleast a better performance in AoE situations with your GTX 970. Don't forget to select "prefer maximum performance" instead of "adaptive" after reinstalling the driver. Another option would be to try an older driver if you haven't done this yet.

uso245 · November 2015

Yeah I've already gone through and done all that, I spent around a month dredging up old threads that mentioned all sorts of "fixes" that only seemed to alleviate the issue for a short time.

seipher09 · November 2015

I have a gtx 760 running into 10 fps even around 1 npc making the game very hard to enjoy. Haven't played in months but never had the issue before.

Did you find a solution yet to this?

JamilaRaj · November 2015

uso245 wrote: »

I've seen a great many i3s at my work and they can barely handle regular browsers. i5 or 97 sure.

I have too seen a few computers at work and while I agree i3s can barely hande regular browsers, same goes for i7s or, more generally, a machine with any arbitrary amount of computing power. The problem here is that predatory companies trained users a bit too well so they now install so much of their mass surveillance/ads serving crapware thinly veiled as nifty toolbars or security software that machines, regardless of CPU, simply can not run fast, if at all. They are so slow users can not even use them and be surveilled and served ads meanwhile (despite the fact that invidiual pieces of crapware are usually the most solid, well-written and ubreakable programs running).

uso245 · December 2015

JamilaRaj wrote: »

uso245 wrote: »

I've seen a great many i3s at my work and they can barely handle regular browsers. i5 or 97 sure.

I have too seen a few computers at work and while I agree i3s can barely hande regular browsers, same goes for i7s or, more generally, a machine with any arbitrary amount of computing power. The problem here is that predatory companies trained users a bit too well so they now install so much of their mass surveillance/ads serving crapware thinly veiled as nifty toolbars or security software that machines, regardless of CPU, simply can not run fast, if at all. They are so slow users can not even use them and be surveilled and served ads meanwhile (despite the fact that invidiual pieces of crapware are usually the most solid, well-written and ubreakable programs running).

I've seen a great many of these as well. One client had an issue where their laptop kept freezing... found out there was over 10k malware on it... literally 10,000+ malware. Like how? *scratches head*