Lower than expected FPS, is this normal?

Dudis · September 2018

So today i stared to delve into why my FPS is lower than i expected, and i found out that for some reason my hardware seem to be bottlenecked.

For example, in Battlefield 5, my GPU and CPU are pinned at 100% pretty much all of the time, with my GPU boosting to 1950ish mhz and i often hit my G-sync FPS cap at 100 FPS, never been below 60 FPS.

In ESO, well... have a look.

GPU is sitting around 55% at 1100 mhz while i struggle to break 40 FPS. Is this normal?

This is with Ultra settings 1080p in both games.

ZOS_Bill · September 2018

Low FPS issues can have a variety of sources such as the use of add-ons, the graphics card, or overall computer performance.

Add-Ons

We recommend that, while trying our troubleshooting steps, you remove all add-ons and any add-on managers you have for The Elder Scrolls Online.
After any patches to the game, any add-ons you have for the game will be out of date and may cause issues with the game that cause your FPS or general performance to drop dramatically. To resolve this issue, you should not only disable any add-ons, but completely remove them to make sure no residual effects are left behind.
To remove your add-ons, please navigate to the following default location and move these folders to your desktop so you can easily put them back later.
If using a PC, the typical default install path is: C:\Users\user.name\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live
Once they are removed, you should then go to Control Panel and Add/Remove Programs. Once here you can select Minion or any other add-on related programs and then uninstall.
If the add-on removal has not fixed your issue, please proceed to the next steps.

Ensure that your graphics card is updated

Please follow the manufacturer's installation instructions and try to run the game again as an administrator. If on a laptop, see your laptop manufacturer for updates to your drivers.

Nvidia Video Cards: http://www.nvidia.com

Click Drivers.
Choose Option 2: Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products.

You can also try the troubleshooting recommended in the thread linked below.

FPS Problem / Usage

qbit · September 2018

It's probably your single-core CPU performance. It's not showing capped on your CPU monitor, because it's only using a couple of cores at their max. So overall percentage is low while the game stutters. Needs to be rewritten with better threaded API like DX12. I have the same problem with my X-Plane flight simulator (which uses OpenGL and is converting to Vulcan to fix this issue, but I digress).

It's especially problematic with AMD CPUs which have slow single-core performance. But I hear that even the best Intel i7 won't always be perfect with this game.

Edit: But the good news is your GPU is being underutilized so you can do like me and crank up the resolution and detail and enjoy great image quality and good FPS when there isn't a lot of CPU intensive stuff (players) in your scene. I use that DSR feature and render at ~4k and scale down to 1080p. Looks great.

Septimus_Magna · September 2018

What is your view distance set at? Even with high-end specs you start running into fps problems if the view distance is set too high.

I am running a GTX1080 with i7-8700K with view distance set to 70 to avoid fps drops.

Dudis · September 2018

Thanks for the tips, i suppose i should have posted my full PC specs and game options, although it kinda shows in the specs in the screenshot.

My graphics driver is the latest version and this issue has persisted through multiple driver versions.

MSI gaming laptop

CPU: I7 6700HQ - high-end ish mobile 4 core with multithreading.
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6gb
16 GB Ram
Game runs off of a m.2 SSD

Settings are all maxed out, including draw distance.
Disabling my addons made marginal or no difference
Reducing Draw Distance from 100 to 50 gave me a net 10-12+ fps.
My PC is nowhere near throttling due to heat

I guess i could try 4k scaled down for a prettier experience, but I mainly just want my game to run smoother.

Like i said, i think the problem is that my computer doesnt boost to anywhere near its max performance, in fact my GPU runs at a lower MHz than when just watching any random twitch stream or Youtube clip.

Here are some similar screenshots while playing other games. I noticed that my GPU useage isnt maxed in those either, so im starting to think that its not very accurate, but like you can see, my GPU boosts about 7-900 MHz higher in those games., almost doubled and the CPU utilization is 20-30% higher (can see each cores useage on the far right side).

GTA 5: https://i61.servimg.com/u/f61/12/51/00/69/gta510.jpg
Fortnite: https://i61.servimg.com/u/f61/12/51/00/69/fortni10.jpg
Farcry 5: https://i61.servimg.com/u/f61/12/51/00/69/farcry10.jpg

And no, I dont normally run my fans at 4000 RPM, i just wanted to remove any variables from heat

Dudis · September 2018

Update:

I have figured out that when i first start the game in fullscreen, my GPU boosts normally, but if i tab out nd back in, it stops boosting completely.

And i normally tab a lot or keep something running on my second screen /cry

Is this a known issue? Like i said, GTX 1060, latest drivers