I run a RTX 2080 TI 11GB and the performance is still garbage. I still routinely see single digits during random FPS drops. It must be my **** graphics card.

Save your money unless you're going to play a game that actually works.

For cross-reference purposes, I play the game on an ancient Q9650 processor (albeit with a 20% overclock) and a not-quite-so-ancient GTX970. I also tried it on a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 (current model) with an i7-9750H (45W, hex core) and a GTX1650. This was, of course, the mobile version of the card. While it was supposedly the Max-Q, it consistently clocked to 1845MHz according to GPU-Z - quite the opposite of what a Max-Q (low power variant) should do. In other words, the GPU in that particular laptop seemed to run much faster than advertised.

If your game is laggy, as in skills delayed or not firing - Cyrodiil prime time - the laptop did not fix that. It did, however, yield better framerates. How much that matters to you probably depends on personal tolerances, but when the game falls below 20FPS, I find that definitely hinders you. It gets hard to make out exactly where people are. I would say, if your card regularly drops below 20FPS in big fights, it's worth upgrading. It will not fix skill delay, but the greater smoothness nonetheless makes the game a bit more playable. For example people say Dizzying is easy to avoid, but on my desktop system I never really see the animation. Of course that may also be due to the processor.

What surprised me was running at 4K. I didn't think I needed or wanted it for this game, however it (a) wasn't much of a performance hit with that laptop GPU and (b) everything looked so much smoother. Aliasing artefacts, still visible at 1080P, were virtually non-existent. At the end of the day that's probably a nice-to-have, but it was much nicer than I expected.

I have the same cpu running ~4.4Ghz, RTX2080 8GB driving a 60hz 4K display. Everything maxed except grass and shadows. The FPS pegs at 60fps all the time.

kaithuzar wrote: »

The absolute BEST thing you can do to see noticeable improvement to both the game & your play, is upgrading from 60 frames per second to 120+ FPS!
Purchase a 120 or 144 Hz monitor.
Make sure you’re getting the actual hertz and not some thing that over clocks to that frequency, as monitor overclocking over-complicates things & the tech is often very wonky. (Hit or miss)

(This assumes you’re already running the game from an SSD, otherwise that’s the best, first option)

This is coming from someone who has played this game since beta, performed every optimization tweak multiple times over to both the OS and the game settings files, swapped computer hardware multiple times, and has 20 years experience in IT.

Once your monitor is on-point, most other stuff is just small over clocks and some settings tweaks, provided the rest of your hardware isn’t older than ~15 years and you utilize a network cable and not Wi-Fi.

Nah. The game looks stunning in 4K. I'll take 60fps 4K over my previous 120fps 1080p. This is a 5 year old game. It doesn't stress my computer at all, and I'm running what is now an ancient CPU. The pleasant side effect being no fan noise.

To be honest, Cyro performance issues are not on the client side.

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

The best way of boosting your performance in zones with lots of players around such as towns or cities is to get a CPU with very strong single core performance and low latency. İdeally one of the modern intel CPUs and then pair it with fast dual channel RAM.

Since the OP is running an i7-4790K, perhaps this video will be of interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApGq4FkkYLc

The reviewer paid particular attention to pairing that CPU with faster than stock memory. It seems to still be on par with modern 4-core CPUs in that configuration.

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

Since running ESO at 1080P is way too easy for any modern GPU, I will give you a link that compares them at 4K Ultra instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9uE2ivNAR8

As a 1070 owner I can say that my performance is similar to the one on the video. You can notice that between 1070 and 1080 there is little performance difference, its because unfortunately the game does a bad job of utilizing CPU power available.

The best way of boosting your performance in zones with lots of players around such as towns or cities is to get a CPU with very strong single core performance and low latency. İdeally one of the modern intel CPUs and then pair it with fast dual channel RAM.

Edit: If you're wondering where 1650 super falls in this comparission it would be a little bit below 1070, however at 1440P or 1080P I'm pretty sure both cards would offer nearly identical performance.

This is exactly the kind of information I'm looking for.

The card I was originally looking at was the 1650super, but they raised the price of the card since in received all the value accolades, and they are out of stock everywhere.

So looking upwards, there is the rx5500xt and 1660 super. Which are from 20-60 more, and would be above the 1070.

In that video, they were in a low requirement overland section; I imagine the extra headroom of the faster card may help in busy areas. I think going to 120/144 fps would probably take more power than running 4k.

It appears that my strategy for updating this machine for "light" gaming"

* New GPU at high end of budget segment.
* Research memory upgrade (Idr what I put in there or what the board supports)
* New 4K monitor.

Since this computer is used for other things, I suspect the 4K monitor will have more benefit than a 120/144 monitor.

fred4 wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

The best way of boosting your performance in zones with lots of players around such as towns or cities is to get a CPU with very strong single core performance and low latency. İdeally one of the modern intel CPUs and then pair it with fast dual channel RAM.

Since the OP is running an i7-4790K, perhaps this video will be of interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApGq4FkkYLc

The reviewer paid particular attention to pairing that CPU with faster than stock memory. It seems to still be on par with modern 4-core CPUs in that configuration.

On par would be a stretch however it does really well for its age.

I did some more research and the best upgrade path for me is a 144Hz 1080p setup.

Is anyone able to play ESO at 144 / 1080p with a 1660 super

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

The best way of boosting your performance in zones with lots of players around such as towns or cities is to get a CPU with very strong single core performance and low latency. İdeally one of the modern intel CPUs and then pair it with fast dual channel RAM.

Since the OP is running an i7-4790K, perhaps this video will be of interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApGq4FkkYLc

The reviewer paid particular attention to pairing that CPU with faster than stock memory. It seems to still be on par with modern 4-core CPUs in that configuration.

On par would be a stretch however it does really well for its age.

We are talking about 5fps difference, which is almost negligible.

The amazing thing about this computer, I built it for around $600! The CPU was < $300 on a christmas sale in 2014. The Gigabyte Mobo was another 100 as part of a package. Water cooling was only $75, and 16GB DDR3 was cheap back then. I used the 7850 from the previous machine I had.

It will overclock to 4.7 with corsair water cooling and without delidding, although I have been running it at 4.6.

I'm not much of a gamer any more, but its amazing to me that with a 1660 Super, I could get another few years out of it at 144Hz / 1080p.

ESO is locked to 100 frames per second by default but you can get it as high as you want if you fiddle with the usersettings.txt file in the game folder.

But all things considered I don't think ESO gets much benefit from a 144Hz monitor. I have one. I don't see the point of it when the best gaming CPU money can buy struggles to stay above 100 frames in cyrodiil or towns.

erio wrote: »

my 2070 super and 3700x still drops to like 30-40 frames in big fights on medium or low settings, its insane

I agree, it’s terrible, but at least that’s better than 15 to 20 frames.

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

ESO is locked to 100 frames per second by default but you can get it as high as you want if you fiddle with the usersettings.txt file in the game folder.

Interesting. I hit that limit with the laptop at times, but even my ancient desktop hits 80 frames occasionally (not in PvP).

Once it falls below 20FPS it's really atrocious. Getting into the 30-40 range is something I'd love to have in Cyro. I suspect the FPS in this game depends heavily on the CPU as well as GPU, though, and maybe to some extent the network. Thus I would say, if the OP can already reach the 30-40 FPS in bigger Cyro fights that erio mentioned, then perhaps a GPU upgrade is questionable, otherwise go ahead.