I have a much older i7 CPU. I think its an 870(Yes 3 digit) circa 2009. The game uses 18% to 25% of my CPU. I have an older GPU ( GTX 650) and i get between 30-100 fps on medium graphics though i am not in HD.

Both CPU are GPU are important. CPU is not as important as people here make out. The GPU actually is far better at math calculations than a CPU. This is why one of the measurements of a GPU is in FLOPs. FLOPs are Floating Point Operations which are math calculations. A CPU is for general processing. and will do a lot of grunt work like unpack and load various data files. But it doesnt do near the work of the GPU.

*You want a good CPU not only for this game but just for general performance reasons in general. I would go with an I5 or I7 8th gen. A late 7th gen will be fine as well. As you can see from above my earlier 7th gen that gets pretty low bench marks compared to current 8th gen( i think im about half benchmark wise) is just breaking a sweat to run the game. I dont recommend AMD CPUs. They are not near as good as Intel.

* For you GPU it really depends on how much graphics matter to you in your gaming. I dont need my graphics to be top of the line So i would go with a Nvidia 1060 or 1070. I should note the last two numbers symbolize the quality of the card and first number symbolizes the "generation" So my GTX 650 would be the 6 generation of the GTX series and the 50 would mean it is the lowest quality. 80 is typically the highest quality. You get a decent amount of improvement for an upgrade from a 50 to a 60 and then less bang for your buck from 60 to 70 and a lot less from 70 to 80. I dont recommend buying 80s because they are absolutely a waste of money. You will pay as much for one as a new basic pc and in 2 years it will be out of date and on par with $200 or $300 card.

*The part of the PC likely to be slowing down performance is actually the area people often overlook. Sure better CPU increases performance but this often do to bigger cache moreso than actual computing power. This is because people do not look at the 2 places that slow the performance down the most:

1)Memory. You need double the recommended memory of your OS just to perform basic tasks, quadruple that at minimum for any kind of gaming or cpu/gpu intensive program. For ESO i would go nothing short of 12 GB of memory and recommend at least 16 or more. ESO has a memory leak and you will start out at around 2GB used but play for an hour or two and you will be to 3 or 3.5 GB and possibly higher depending on what you are doing in the game. Memory also serves as the buffer between the very slow hard drive and the CPU. More memory means your CPU can work more efficiently. There is no sense in getting a good CPU and skimping on memory.

2) The harddrive is typically the king of congestion. Mechanical HDDs are slow as arms have to search platters for information much like a record player. This mechanical movement greatly slows down access times especially on HDDs that are more than 50% full and are not often defragmented. SSD is a much better option and the newer versions are built more with program access in mind rather than long term storage making them even better. Intel also has an Optane card which basically is designed as a high performance temporary drive that feeds the very efficient DRAM modules used for memory. The Optane is better at this job than current SSD but only marginally and cost much more per GB than an SSD.


Overall, i dont usually recommend building your own PC from scratch, especially on a budget. You are not getting parts cheaper than a computer manufacturer and if you think you are that is because you are getting lower quality versions. Many companies will allow you customize your own PC and then ship you the PC you build on their website. You almost always get more bang for your buck this way. And it comes with a warranty and support. I personally prefer HP and have built my own HP PCs for nearly 20 years.

I am in fact about to order my next PC from HP here in the next couple of weeks. I built 3 options that i am deciding between ranging from $1500 to $2500. The cheaper one has an 8th gen i7-8700, 32 gb ram, GTX 1060 6GB, 256GB NvMe M.2 SSD and a 2 TB HDD.

The $2500 is actually on sale right now for $2000 and has an Omen gaming chassis which is very much like Alienware if you like fancy cases. It also has an i7-8700( the benchmark improvement for the "K" is very marginal for the price increase), 32 GB of HyperX ( high performance gaming memory) ram, 256 GB NvMe SSD and 2 TB HDD, and Nvidia RTX 2070 8 GB.


Rather than focus on one area such as CPU or GPU which is a common mistake, it is much better to build a well rounded machine. You need to make sure information flows to where it needs to be as efficiently as possible rather than have a super CPU and 8 GB of ram and a 1 TB HDD that is causing bottlenecks and the CPU is not even using 20% of its power.

If i was going to build a PC i would focus on memory and storage devices first and then do the best CPU and GPU i can afford. Ultimately i would probably just build one at a place like Hp Shopping or Dell as you get a lot more bang for you buck even after you figure in their profits.

DISCLAIMER: I have been a certified PC tech since the late 90s and use to custom build as well as repair and upgrade PCs. I stopped custom building in the early 2000s because i could not compete with the prices of companies like HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, etc. I continue to upgrade and repair computers on a part time basis.

While it is GPU intensive, having a good CPU is still beneficial.

@KairanD

Looking at the Ryzen 7 1800X compared to the I7-8700 and I7-8700K, The Ryzen is a cheaper. by $80 and $150 respectively. You can get three 1800X for the same price as two 8700k. In overall benchmarks they are pretty comparable. The Ryzen sits snugly between the 8700 and 8700K in performance with about 2.5% increase in performance between CPUs 8700>1800x>8700k. But the 1800x has to use 8 cores to get the same kind of results as 8700 with 6 cores.

This means when all cores are not fully utilized Ryzen quickly loses its ability to be a competitive CPU. In fact the 1800X loses 25% of its computing power when comparing thread to thread with the 8700. The only reason it can score higher on benchmarks is because it uses more cores and 8 cores at 75% to 6 cores at 100% are.... comparable. No current AMD processor( and likely none in the past) has outperformed a comparable Intel processor thread for thread.

Some other issues that i have with AMD include tendency to both run hot and have sensitivity to heat which requires much better airflow than Intel to keep performance up. AMD processors generally are not as durable as Intel and i often find the longevity of the processor is much shorter than that of Intel. Ive had to replace many AMD processors whereas replacing an intel because of failure is rare from my personal experience. To borrow from a mechanic's saying, " The only thing i i would use an AMD processor for is a fishing weight". You get what you pay for and while AMD will do the job most of the time, id rather spend a bit of extra money and buy quality. You never skimp on quality in safety equipment or electronics.

I don't think the word "quality" fits in there. The last two numbers symbolize the performance level of the card, or its class in the generation.

It fits perfectly you are just trying to be more technical than me. I could go in to explaining how CPUs and GPUs and "cards" are manufactured but i wont. Basically think of processors like diamonds. Some diamonds are nearly flawless and some have flaws. They have differently level of quality. The same is true of processors. Some processors have higher quality than others even though they are identical. So you end up with different levels of quality across cards. Thus you come to XX50, XX60,XX70, etc. Nvidia doesnt intentionally make lower quality cards. Rather the XX50 will be the standard and anything below that will be recycled. The XX60 and above designations will be cards that see slightly above average, above average and greatly above average performance consistently and will be marked as such as a card/processor is tested to see which standard it can achieve in the series consistently without failures.

Furthermore, on GPUS, and a bit contradictory to my take on CPUs, graphics cards are not the place you want to blow a bunch of money. They simply improve the tech at to fast of a rate to warrant a large investment. Lets take the GTX 780, GTX 1070, and RTX 2060. Now the reason i picked these cards is because they were all released about 3 years apart. They also have deteriorating classes/quality levels as we get newer. The 780 retails for over $700. the 1070 about $450ish and the 2060 about $350ish. The 1070 performs 42% better than the 780 but for about 60% of the cost. The 2060 performs 66% better than the 780 but for half the cost.

So if i was buying or building a PC i would never throw money into a XX80 and unlikely to throw money into a XX70 unless they were steals. For the same $700 or so spent on the 780 back in the day, i could of instead stayed with the (X)X60's of each generation and upgraded every 3 years for the same cost and 6 years have a card that performs 66% better and has much better tech than my expensive "high tech" 780.

I shake my head and laugh when i see people on game forums tote how much they know about computers and gaming but have ridiculously expensive setups to run games that in three years i will be able to out perform them with a pc that cost a third to half as much. You dont want to do PCs on the cheap but you also dont want to pay stupid high prices for the best tech either. You are just throwing money away for the sake of throwing it away.

Also, ESO runs fine with 8GB of ram, even if the user opens browser and other things while gaming. For general gaming, it is the minimum and I would recommend at least 12GB too.

I run ESO with 8 GB of ram and a raid 0 HDD and with Chrome running with a few tabs, i run 70-90% memory used depending on what stage of memory leak ESO is at. I would not say it runs fine, Id say it runs but not fine. How good it will run on 8GB depends a lot on the rest of your pc.

SSD is a must have for better use experience with a computer, no doubts. I highly recommend it. But I don't think it will give a performance boost in ESO other than reducing loading screens.

The most obvious will be shorter loading screens. There are not so obvious improvements that most people wont notice( because they are actively playing). Though you can pay attention to how much your DD is used during play you will notice just how often your CPU is accessing the DD. For people who bounce all over the place in the game and experience loading screens so often, like me who keeps a slots game up on my phone while i wait for load screens, the difference will be far more noticeable than someone who hangs out at the bank, in their house, or a dolmen for hours on end and rarely goes anywhere new.

If i had to choose between more memory( within reason) and going with a SSD upgrade( from HDD) i would choose the memory first. But i would choose both more memory and SSD upgrade before i choose to spend that extra money on something like the (K) processor or an XX70 or XX80 card.

Keewo wrote: »

eForce® GTX 1060 3G Lol what a waste of Money.. take the 6G instead.

That was part of a build i was keeping under 1000 Euros as every post the OP mentions how they are on a budget. The benchmark score between 3G and 6G is not even 2% for an extra $100. 6G is no doubt better but its not $100 better.

duje.majmuneb17_ESO wrote: »

Both are a waste 1660 crushes them both by alot for a lower price

I would never recommend something that is new and hasnt been tested yet to someone, especially someone on a budget. The 1660 looks good on paper, but its very thin paper. The Samsung Galaxy S7 also looked good on paper....until the batteries exploded.

I gave the same advice to my brother about a smartphone yesterday in fact. I never buy something within 6 months of it coming out. And right now that 1660 has two sample benchmarks compared to thousands for the other two cards.