If it can use eight cores efficiently? Lol, this game can't even use one core efficiently.

ESO does use multiple cores however there is still a single core bottleneck. So any 4 core intel CPU with good single threaded performance will beat a ryzen.

But, it also depends on the res+settings you play at. If you have a mid tier GPU and play at 4k then the CPU won't be the overall bottleneck.

Btw with the announced impending (or maybe the words are possibly eventually!) directX12 support, ESO will use multiple cores more efficiently.

From my screenshot you can see that it's probably on CPU7 that's "in contact" with my GPU.

That's 4k downsampled to 1440p CPU performance in Cyrondil.

I think one point some might be missing is that the one thread for ESO that is limiting will not only use the same core. It might hit the various cores at different times, but that limited thread will still CPU limit you. Hence the more powerful the single core performance the better it will run.

The near identical usage is because that limiting thread is utilizing a different core at different times.

EDIT: Here is a chart of thread usage via Process Explorer:



Note that the first thread is accounting for most of the usage. This was while walking around Mournhold.

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I think one point some might be missing is that the one thread for ESO that is limiting will not only use the same core. It might hit the various cores at different times, but that limited thread will still CPU limit you. Hence the more powerful the single core performance the better it will run.

The near identical usage is because that limiting thread is utilizing a different core at different times.

I think the thing that people aren't getting is that a lot of it is DirectX. DirectX 12 as per @Shadow-Fighter 's post should improve things for multicore operation quite a bit.

It's not really an ESO thing, DirectX12 will take some time to be implemented. Only a handful of newer games are supporting it right now, even though win10 supports it natively...

Of course, it's really up to ZOS with how far they go in implementing Directx12 (if and when they do).

That does make sense to me as the areas where it is CPU limited like in cities involves a large number of draw calls with everyone's outfits/skins/flashy mounts/pets. I use an add-on called Adaptive Settings which will dynamically reduce draw distance to help maintain a certain fps. Reducing draw distance will reduce this draw calls.

Unfortunately I doubt DX 12 will come for a while as they would need to update game engine to truly take advantage of it.

Dropping the 32 bit client early next year has already angered some and there were complaints when they dropped DX 9. They also have Mac's to support. Do Mac's support Vulkan?

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I think one point some might be missing is that the one thread for ESO that is limiting will not only use the same core. It might hit the various cores at different times, but that limited thread will still CPU limit you. Hence the more powerful the single core performance the better it will run.

The near identical usage is because that limiting thread is utilizing a different core at different times.

I think the thing that people aren't getting is that a lot of it is DirectX. DirectX 12 as per @Shadow-Fighter 's post should improve things for multicore operation quite a bit.

It's not really an ESO thing, DirectX12 will take some time to be implemented. Only a handful of newer games are supporting it right now, even though win10 supports it natively...

Of course, it's really up to ZOS with how far they go in implementing Directx12 (if and when they do).

That does make sense to me as the areas where it is CPU limited like in cities involves a large number of draw calls with everyone's outfits/skins/flashy mounts/pets. I use an add-on called Adaptive Settings which will dynamically reduce draw distance to help maintain a certain fps. Reducing draw distance will reduce this draw calls.

Unfortunately I doubt DX 12 will come for a while as they would need to update game engine to truly take advantage of it.

Dropping the 32 bit client early next year has already angered some and there were complaints when they dropped DX 9. They also have Mac's to support. Do Mac's support Vulkan?

That's the conundrum devs face. When to and by how much do they support something like directx12.

The "best" decision for performance is to recode and make it directx12 required, but that alienates some users or more precisely eliminates them.

Fortunately to implement the multicore aspect of directx12 they don't have to make it directx12 exclusive.

The other little wrinkle within directx12 is it's "Explicit Multiadapter" function. Think SLI with unmatched (and unconnected) gpus. You can actually run a nvidia card and an AMD card at same time (or offload some GPU functions to a intel processor's built in gpu).

We have at least gotten confirmation that directx12 support is being worked on. Intel/Microsoft have claimed it can give a 50% increase in performance, and even if it's half that it's huge.

Few misunderstandings people make:
- A single process using multiple cores is not the same as multi-threading. Processes in modern systems jump freely between cores.
- Every process has multiple threads these days, also single-threaded ones. Counting threads is useless.
Don't count cores nor threads. Count total CPU load. An actual multi-threaded process distributes significant load among multiple threads and they are programmed to run in parallel at the same time. You can see this in action when total cpu load of threads goes way beyond capacity of single core.

If you can look inside into a prosess and into it's threads and when it is cpu-bound in performance:
- A single-threaded process has one thread running close to 100% load.
- A multi-threaded process has usually handful of active threads and sum of their loads is clearly over 100%.
- Both single- and multi-threaded processes have these days lots of other threads, but their cpu load is below one or two percent.

ESO is slightly multi-threaded. At least during login it clearly executes multiple threads at significant load. But after login it falls back to executing only one thread at heavy load and sum of loads varying slightly below and over 100% load of one core.

It looks like LUA scripting can run in parallel with game engine. If you are using lots of heavy addons like Master Merchant, you will benefit having four core CPU and during login even eight core can potentially cut a blink away from wait time. Without addons ESO is happy with dual core CPU.

All this assuming other components are up to date: good GPU enuugh fast memory, fast net and SSD.