2x 970 GTX SLI, 4970k & 16gb DDR3 = potato experience

snuspresten · January 2016

I'm confused. I would assume that this rig would run most current gen games well, and I've got that reinforced Witcher 3 runs 4k with reshader and tons of mod almost steady at 60 fps with everything on ultra. I then launch up ESO, regardless of settings it has crazy amounts of fps drops. I see people with the same setup and they run 4k flawlessly.

1080p, low shadow, medium water, 75% draw distance, 85% particle supression and 1800 max particle (ini tweaked according to this posthttps://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3jjoql/are_you_having_fps_issues_wih_eso_on_a_pc_well/).
Here the fps is 100 in open world when stationary, but as soon as I move around it drops to 60. It is playable, but I get micro stutters like crazy making the experience terrible.

2.5k with same settings as above... 40-60 fps constant micro stutters and lag.

4k same as 2.5k for some strange reason.

I'm using the most up to date Nvidia driver, but I've tried more. CPU Cores are unparked. I've monitored temps and they are fine. I've got a strong enough PSU to run the system. I've tried many different settings in nvidia control panel. I've disabled all add-ons. I've set the same resolution in Win and ESO. I've disabled DSR. I've disabled SLI.

I am a bit at loss what to do here. Any ideas?

snuspresten · January 2016

I also want to add that I used both nvidia adaptive, strict and in-game vsynch, and that doesn't seem to make much of a difference. The game is also on an SSD drive.

Malmai · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

I'm confused. I would assume that this rig would run most current gen games well, and I've got that reinforced Witcher 3 runs 4k with reshader and tons of mod almost steady at 60 fps with everything on ultra. I then launch up ESO, regardless of settings it has crazy amounts of fps drops. I see people with the same setup and they run 4k flawlessly.

1080p, low shadow, medium water, 75% draw distance, 85% particle supression and 1800 max particle (ini tweaked according to this posthttps://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3jjoql/are_you_having_fps_issues_wih_eso_on_a_pc_well/).
Here the fps is 100 in open world when stationary, but as soon as I move around it drops to 60. It is playable, but I get micro stutters like crazy making the experience terrible.

2.5k with same settings as above... 40-60 fps constant micro stutters and lag.

4k same as 2.5k for some strange reason.

I'm using the most up to date Nvidia driver, but I've tried more. CPU Cores are unparked. I've monitored temps and they are fine. I've got a strong enough PSU to run the system. I've tried many different settings in nvidia control panel. I've disabled all add-ons. I've set the same resolution in Win and ESO. I've disabled DSR. I've disabled SLI.

I am a bit at loss what to do here. Any ideas?

Try Cyrodiil fights boy if you get more than 15fps grats! and less than 500ms lag!

Nestor · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

I'm confused.

I am a bit at loss what to do here. Any ideas?

Your ignoring that this is an Online Game where everything you do is reported back to the server, some calculations are ran, then sent back to your client. No matter how much hardware you have on this end, your Internet Connection and your Router have a lot to do with performance of the game on your rig.

So, have roomates that are streaming netflix or Hulu while you are gaming? How many people are latched onto your wireless AP? Are you gaming during Internet Rush Hour (3PM to 11PM in most places)

snuspresten · January 2016

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies.

Malbai: Considering I bought the game on PC (after ps4) only to play PvP that is making me very very concerned... is it really that bad? In 1v1 and 1vX? Skill based pvp is much better.

Nestor: I run a 40/20mbit setup which will be upgraded to 60/20 real soon. I realise that the bandwidth has a lot to do with these games as I have played MMO since Anarchy Online's early days, plus computers is something I've used for over 20 years now.

Was I expecting response and fps? Yeah. After seeing what other people push I really was (considering ESO is not really _current gen_ per say. Obviously it is maintained and updated. You know what I mean (I hope (inception

(I don't know where I am anymore....{string args private allyourbasesare.. *boom*})))). The game looks FAN-TASTIC with sweetfx, 4k and everything maxed out.

Maybe I'm a fool expecting too much. It's just, this stuff cost a bit of cash and it wasn't to play with low settings, if you know what I mean

Then a console would be more than good enough

LostScot · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

Maybe I'm a fool expecting too much. It's just, this stuff cost a bit of cash and it wasn't to play with low settings, if you know what I mean Then a console would be more than good enough

To be honest performance on the PC side of things was great right until the Imperial City expansion came out. Ever since that big update to the game we've been getting micro stutters, points where our FPS drops significantly then jumps back up to normal. I wouldn't mind if this was just in certain areas or only happened once or twice a day, but it's every few minutes, sometimes more often.

Imperial City update did something to bork performance on the PC version of the game. Doesn't matter if the DLC has been purchased or not. Something's broken and Cyrodiil just isn't fun anymore.

By the by, AMD FX6350 rig here with a Radeon R9 390 so nothing fantastic but worked great before the Imperial City update. I don't bother going above 1080p with ESO anymore.

snuspresten · January 2016

Yeah I guess you are right. Seems to run decent, but dips to 50 in some areas even with 1920, low shadow and med reflection. It's fine I am not that big a gfx junkie, but it doesn't hurt when games look incredible as it brings the immersion to a new level. Hopefully BGs and Arena will actually be implemented and PvP will be enjoyable

Nestor · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

Hey guys,

Nestor: I run a 40/20mbit setup which will be upgraded to 60/20 real soon. I realise that the bandwidth has a lot to do with these games as I have played MMO since Anarchy Online's early days, plus computers is something I've used for over 20 years now.

Was I expecting response and fps? Yeah. After seeing what other people push I really was (considering ESO is not really _current gen_ per say. Obviously it is maintained and updated.

I run this game on an I5-3570 and had an ATI 7950 and almost always stayed over 50FPS. With my current R9-390X 8GB card I did not see a significant increase in frame rates. I hit 60 most of the time, but the card was for another game, not this one. I will say the World Boss battles in Wrothgar are lot less laggy with my new card.

It is not bandwidth per say but more latency that is the issue with online gaming. You can only control latency issues so much on your end. First thing to check is do you have a decent router? Check the listings here and see how yours ranks.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/view

Good news is, there are not too many crap routers out there anymore and you don't have to spend a bunch to get something decent. Mid pack on those charts is fine for any home gaming. Bad news Walmart still sells the WRT54G and that is hands down the best way to sludge up your Internet connection short of doing DDOS attacks against multiple websites while trying to game.

Make sure no one is Streaming movies when your playing. You can get a full featured router and set up a zone for gaming that gets preferential bandwidth and gives the leftovers to the streamers.

The other thing is to test things at off hours to see what a baseline would be. Less internet and server traffic equates to better game performance. Then once you know how good it can be, then you will know how bad it is when things slow down. This weekend on Saturday I was seeing 1 Second Ping times and it was painful to play. Thankfully, that went away in about 30 minutes.

snuspresten · January 2016

Nestor: That is a very good point to bring up, which had actually gone over my head. Which brings up a valid point that I also had not thought about. Using a gaming VPN will probably cut the connection delay in half. Considering packet routing and using reserved packet flows has night and day effect on your response in-game. Having used it in the past I can vouch for how big a difference it can make.

Ugh... was gonna level, then I realised I could make my own presets for SweetFX... now I can't stop tweaking it.

blubbi4ever · January 2016

I had the same experience because I tweaked so much that the game got actually slower...

If you haven't tried this before:

- Delete,rename or backup your current settings.ini file into another folder
- Start ESO. The game will automatically create a new settings.ini file
- Close the game and go to your new settings.ini file
- Change only the following settings:
SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS "0"
SET GPUSmoothingFrames "0"
SET SkipPregameVideos "1"
SET LuaMemoryLimitMB "64"
- Start the game and see if your fps/stutter issues are gone. Lowering the draw distance to 30-40 and particle sliders to minimum could also help with FPS. Everything else can be set to maximum. I don't have a SLI configuration, so maybe keep your second GPU disabled first.

In PvE, my system runs with 57-60 most of the time@1080p, parked CPU cores and even the Nvidia power management mode is set to adaptive^^ (361.43 driver, win10 64bit)
PvP is still a horrible experience though, no matter what I try. I know already what's happening when my fps drops to 15: Behind that wall, a zerg vs zerg fight is going on...

snuspresten · January 2016

Blubbi: I already tried this and it really didn't improve the fps much. Add-ons do hug a lot of the resources, but even with them enabled it runs consistent 60 now after a lot of trial and error.

I boiled it down to Master Merchant + draw distance + amount of pixels + drivers for SLI just had some conflict of sorts. Could be something else but I don't want to spend more time on it right now. Gotta hit vr16 first.

Like I said it is currently running consistent 60 fps through any zone at 1080p (probably not Cyrodiil haven't tested there yet), with SweetFX doing some basic colour correction, tonal balancing, hdr and in-game AA / vsynch. I do run SLI as I do have higher fps with it enabled, settings in windows are in-line with the game, and I have everything tuned towards performance. Cpu cores are unparked. Low shadow, med water.

Oh_Skrivva · January 2016

I only get fps drops in cyrodil or high concentrations of players in towns. Roaming around I get steady 60+ fps. But I'm running i7 6700k over clocked to 4.5 ghz (water cooled system) and 16gb ddr4 and 2 gtx 980 ti's in sli. Also, of course running single player games at max settings is gonna be smoother than any mmo due to server communications.

snuspresten · January 2016

After checking Afterburner I now realise that the engine uses core1 95%+ and the rest 1-5%... No wonder it bottlenecks.

ZoM_Head · January 2016

LostScot wrote: »

snuspresten wrote: »

Maybe I'm a fool expecting too much. It's just, this stuff cost a bit of cash and it wasn't to play with low settings, if you know what I mean Then a console would be more than good enough

To be honest performance on the PC side of things was great right until the Imperial City expansion came out. Ever since that big update to the game we've been getting micro stutters, points where our FPS drops significantly then jumps back up to normal. I wouldn't mind if this was just in certain areas or only happened once or twice a day, but it's every few minutes, sometimes more often.

Imperial City update did something to bork performance on the PC version of the game. Doesn't matter if the DLC has been purchased or not. Something's broken and Cyrodiil just isn't fun anymore.

By the by, AMD FX6350 rig here with a Radeon R9 390 so nothing fantastic but worked great before the Imperial City update. I don't bother going above 1080p with ESO anymore.

Actually PC performance was bang on (except trails) until the lighting patch came out (i think it was update 3 or 4).

Ran everything on ultra and no drops or issues at all, till that lighting update/patch came out.

I found that by pushing the 4770K from 3.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz did help a lot, but still really bad performance in trails and Cyrodiil (must run medium and even then still getting 30 fps or so at times).

Wily_Wizard · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

After checking Afterburner I now realise that the engine uses core1 95%+ and the rest 1-5%... No wonder it bottlenecks.

Afterburner shows the GPU cores individually? Or are you talking about CPU cores?

snuspresten · January 2016

If I find a way to force the game into splitting the load onto more cores I'll let you guys know. This is where the issue lay and I really really REALLY don't want to stress 1 out of 8 threads 100% when gaming. That is just a recipe for burning out your hardware much faster.

Oh_Skrivva · January 2016

I don't think it's a problem on us the consumers end for performance issues. Eso needs to be better optimized. I would have been totally fine if ZOS delayed the past 2 new content releases and focused on fixing/stabilizing the game. Adding more content to a unstable game is just gonna add more things for them to fix down the road. Since I'm a die hard TES fan. I will continue to be optimistic about eso future.

Nestor · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

After checking Afterburner I now realise that the engine uses core1 95%+ and the rest 1-5%... No wonder it bottlenecks.

I paid attention to my FPS last night (I usually ignore it). In the cities I get about 48 to 52 FPS consistently, in the overworld and delves, I get 90 (so the new card is doing more than I thought as I was at 60 before). A Wrothgar World Boss fight put the FPS at 50 to 60, but I did have some lag. I attribute that to Server lag not Client, lots of AoE in those fights.

The reason the cities are so much lower is due to CPU load as you have sussed out. As for optimizing for multicores, I don't know if any INI tweaks can help. However, I will check my core usage tonight to see how it stands and report back.

blubbi4ever · January 2016

I also checked my CPU/GPU usage today and I get almost 60FPS in town, but only one cpu core stays at 90-95% (i7-6700k@4,4ghz). My GPU usage isn't particularly high and stays around 50%. I think the FPS would drop very quickly if larger fights in town would be possible.

Wily_Wizard · January 2016

snuspresten wrote: »

After checking Afterburner I now realise that the engine uses core1 95%+ and the rest 1-5%... No wonder it bottlenecks.

That's interesting. My CPU cores seem to be somewhat evenly distributed with ESO, but its barely putting a load on my CPU anyway.

LaughingJack · January 2016

Wily_Wizard wrote: »

snuspresten wrote: »

After checking Afterburner I now realise that the engine uses core1 95%+ and the rest 1-5%... No wonder it bottlenecks.

That's interesting. My CPU cores seem to be somewhat evenly distributed with ESO, but its barely putting a load on my CPU anyway.

HyperThreading versus Not ?

Wily_Wizard · January 2016

LaughingJack wrote: »

HyperThreading versus Not ?

He's got a 4970K and I have a 3770K. I would guess his processor is more advanced than mine.

Edit: I think he meant 4790k? Still, more processor than I have.

snuspresten · January 2016

Yeah I meant 4790k Wily. Which CPU do you run? I'm curious. The same goes to you Blubbi!

Nestor: Have you managed to see how much VRAM the game uses? I have a creeping suspicion that it uses more than 3.5 and that might be why I get worse performance than expected, paired with cpu overload and poor distribution swap when spiking.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO · January 2016

I guess the main problem is poor, or rather non-existant optimization for 64bit systems and multiple cores. There have been a few threads on here about poor usage of hardware components, but I can't find them.

Shogunami · January 2016

So far I haven't seen any real proof that anyone can run this game max with 60+ fps in high density fights in Cyrodiil or in cities.

I have i7 6700 @ 3.4ghz,
16gb ram,
GTX 980 Ti overclocked and goodness,
Really good cooling and chassi air flow.

I can run all games on my PC with max settings at 1200p resolution and constant 60+ fps, except for ESO. I get maybe 60+ fps when I'm out in the middle of nowhere or doing solo PvE, oh and also in Dungeons.
But in high density fights in PvP I get 20-25 fps (maybe even 15 fps in some cases, but I just logout from the game if that happens because that's just freaking unacceptable). Doesn't matter if I lower everything to minimum. In cities I get maybe 30-35 fps.
This is a case of poor game optimization and hopefully it'll improve with the 64 bit client that I've heard people speak of.

As you can see in this thread, hardware isn't the issue. The game is the issue.

Also, I don't get why people are messing around with SweetFX as I've yet to see a screenshot or video where SweetFX makes ESO look anything but worse. And it'll also add some unecessary strain on the system