How about you give us your system specs?

IF the game played OK at some point in the past, then you have to look at what has changed.

Did you install or change your Anti Virus?
Turn on Windows Firewall?
Any new software you installed that wants to load with Windows?

Do a strict clean boot and see if the game plays any better?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows

Did you ever open the ports on your firewall? Were they ever opened?

Are you using Wireless/WiFi? If yes, get an Ethernet cable, NOW.

Speaking of Routers, are people leached onto your router sucking up your bandwidth?

@Nestor I left the game for about six months. When I came back, my previously very fine computer could not play the game as well as it could when I left. My pure desktop computer still did fine. Just my experience.

dup

Wow, I don't see how. My ESO uses almost 5GB of RAM when it's running. Not sure how you get away with < 1 GB RAM usage. I'm running everything on high, but still.

The memory is obviously the first thing to upgrade, and it will make a difference. Upgrading the graphics card is probably also essential. You might get away with running the game on the lowest settings but is it worth it? The game is better than that and deserves to be enjoyed - assuming the budget allows it.

People tend to base their expectations on how a game used to run, expecting it to remain the same but forgetting that with every game update comes new content often of a higher quality or depth and which will test borderline systems. That's fine with offline single-player games that remain pretty much as they were with only the odd mod, but online MMOs are constantly evolving and every update imposes new demands on a system. Compare the minimum specs on the back of the original ESO box with that on the later Tamriel Unlimited box and you'll see what I mean - and there have been several updates since then! I believe ZOS update the requirements on the website from time to time so you may want to check that out. I always reckon on aiming for the recommended specs rather than the minimum required ones.

You might also want to ensure that you're using a reasonable OS - Windows 7 or later - and that you have at least 20% of your hard disk free for OS and other requirements. Is that what you mean by 100% disk useage? You should also be using a cabled internet connection, not wireless, for smooth gaming. Lastly, if you're running a borderline system then you probably shouldn't be using some of the game addons and certainly not the trading ones as they are a drag on performance. Any you do use must be updated or disabled whenever there's a game update or it's inviting a performance hit.

When you do upgrade your system I suggest you start on low game settings and gradually tweak them up until you hit the right balance between quality and performance. Doing it the other way and starting on higher settings and then dropping them individually until you hit that balance is never as effective. If you search the forum you will find tips on which settings to keep low in any event for performance optimisation.

parkham wrote: »

@Nestor I left the game for about six months. When I came back, my previously very fine computer could not play the game as well as it could when I left. My pure desktop computer still did fine. Just my experience.

@parkham

People have reported that a file can get corrupted over time if you do not play the game, and can result in issues. I wonder if that was it? I think it was one of the shader files but not sure. I have not seen a post on it in months.

Definitely upgrade your RAM. It's not just how much memory the game needs, but also keeping enough available for Windows to do its thing as well. 8GB of RAM is a good general-purpose amount.

Your video card may be a bit underpowered, especially since ESO switched to requiring DirectX 11 to run. Their minimum spec for an AMD graphics card is a 6850 now. (Geforce 460 for Nvidia) Basically, you probably need something with better DX11 performance. A minimum-spec GPU won't get you terribly far on graphics settings, though. The "recommended" spec is now a Radeon 7850 or a GTX 750. Still advisable to be careful on the graphics eye candy settings.

Thank you guys, I'm gonna buy 8gb ram(total of 12)next week. We'll see how it pans out

If your system supports 16GB I'd recommend that. Here's my system resources while running ESO (had to use phone because I could not take a desktop screenshot with the game running). You can see I'm using 10GB of RAM.