MAC 🖥 - FPS & Performance enhancements?

eMKa8 · August 2020

Hi fellow MAC players

First of all i want to mention that as a MAC user , i am quite happy actually that ESO is supported for MAC users. On top of that i am actually very happy with the performance and quality.

Yes it crashes sometimes and there are some issues but all in all a very good experience until now.

My question goes more into the direction of enhancing my FPS or my performance in general.
I have been playing ESO on the following MAC (catalina , ssd harddrive and a late 2015 21,5 inch edition , 3.1 ghz quad core intel core i5, 8gb mhz ddr , intel iris peo graphics 6200 1536 MB, retina 4k)

I have been playing for months on medium settings (with no water reflection , low shadow quality , ....) and it runs ok (a bit laggy but ok) and usually i am at 35-45 fps

I saw a video on youtube on higher performances by adjusting settings ingame and i tested some things out. In the end i actually changed medium to high quality and i was amazed by the beautiful sharp graphics and i want to keep them now ! 😛😛.

Only problem is that i only have 17-30 fps whzn running on high graphics quality , although it is still quite ok (laggy but bearable)

I do know the basic stuff ingame to enhance performance (like setting shadows off and depth of sight etc .... however can anyone give me other advice on how to level up your performance WITHOUT touching to much on the graphics quality ?

I noticed on youtube videos that deleting add ons can make a big difference on fps .... however it doesnt for me . I have about 25 addons , however when deselecting all of them i do not see any change in fps or laggyness.

Do other people experience fps of 20 in cities etc?

What can i do ingame to have better performance

More importantly maybe ... what can i do out of the game to improve game performance. Are there some settings on a mac computer where you can chose to focus on certain applications , as a result it might run better ?

Looking forward to any advice !!!!

Thank you !

BlueRaven · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Hi fellow MAC players

First of all i want to mention that as a MAC user , i am quite happy actually that ESO is supported for MAC users. On top of that i am actually very happy with the performance and quality.

Yes it crashes sometimes and there are some issues but all in all a very good experience until now.

My question goes more into the direction of enhancing my FPS or my performance in general.
I have been playing ESO on the following MAC (catalina , ssd harddrive and a late 2015 21,5 inch edition , 3.1 ghz quad core intel core i5, 8gb mhz ddr , intel iris peo graphics 6200 1536 MB, retina 4k)

I have been playing for months on medium settings (with no water reflection , low shadow quality , ....) and it runs ok (a bit laggy but ok) and usually i am at 35-45 fps

I saw a video on youtube on higher performances by adjusting settings ingame and i tested some things out. In the end i actually changed medium to high quality and i was amazed by the beautiful sharp graphics and i want to keep them now ! 😛😛.

Only problem is that i only have 17-30 fps whzn running on high graphics quality , although it is still quite ok (laggy but bearable)

I do know the basic stuff ingame to enhance performance (like setting shadows off and depth of sight etc .... however can anyone give me other advice on how to level up your performance WITHOUT touching to much on the graphics quality ?

I noticed on youtube videos that deleting add ons can make a big difference on fps .... however it doesnt for me . I have about 25 addons , however when deselecting all of them i do not see any change in fps or laggyness.

Do other people experience fps of 20 in cities etc?

What can i do ingame to have better performance

More importantly maybe ... what can i do out of the game to improve game performance. Are there some settings on a mac computer where you can chose to focus on certain applications , as a result it might run better ?

Looking forward to any advice !!!!

Thank you !

I don't know how to fix the issues you mentioned. But I have had even more drastic FPS drops then below 20 FPS. Right now as I am writing this, I am at 9 FPS and I am not even in a city.

eMKa8 · August 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

eMKa8 wrote: »

Hi fellow MAC players

First of all i want to mention that as a MAC user , i am quite happy actually that ESO is supported for MAC users. On top of that i am actually very happy with the performance and quality.

Yes it crashes sometimes and there are some issues but all in all a very good experience until now.

My question goes more into the direction of enhancing my FPS or my performance in general.
I have been playing ESO on the following MAC (catalina , ssd harddrive and a late 2015 21,5 inch edition , 3.1 ghz quad core intel core i5, 8gb mhz ddr , intel iris peo graphics 6200 1536 MB, retina 4k)

I have been playing for months on medium settings (with no water reflection , low shadow quality , ....) and it runs ok (a bit laggy but ok) and usually i am at 35-45 fps

I saw a video on youtube on higher performances by adjusting settings ingame and i tested some things out. In the end i actually changed medium to high quality and i was amazed by the beautiful sharp graphics and i want to keep them now ! 😛😛.

Only problem is that i only have 17-30 fps whzn running on high graphics quality , although it is still quite ok (laggy but bearable)

I do know the basic stuff ingame to enhance performance (like setting shadows off and depth of sight etc .... however can anyone give me other advice on how to level up your performance WITHOUT touching to much on the graphics quality ?

I noticed on youtube videos that deleting add ons can make a big difference on fps .... however it doesnt for me . I have about 25 addons , however when deselecting all of them i do not see any change in fps or laggyness.

Do other people experience fps of 20 in cities etc?

What can i do ingame to have better performance

More importantly maybe ... what can i do out of the game to improve game performance. Are there some settings on a mac computer where you can chose to focus on certain applications , as a result it might run better ?

Looking forward to any advice !!!!

Thank you !

I don't know how to fix the issues you mentioned. But I have had even more drastic FPS drops then below 20 FPS. Right now as I am writing this, I am at 9 FPS and I am not even in a city.

Is it playable ?
Is it annoying or bearable?

What settings are you at ? Medium / high or Ultra?

BlueRaven · August 2020

I had these issues at “recommended settings”, however I have since pushed the distance slider out to max, and improved the ground clutter a bit to little detriment. (I think I also pushed the graphic fidelity up slightly too.)
I figured if the game was going to have low frame rates anyway, might as well make it look nice.

It only really bothers me during trials where sometimes it just freezes completely for a seconds at odd times. I was in sunspire for example, just running down a hallway, not even in a fight, and then the frame rate just fell.

eMKa8 · August 2020

That is horrible i guess.
I have been playing the game for 5 months now , however never went into a trial or cyradil pvp yet.

I guess that might make it laggy ;-)

Any ideas how to boost your computer maybe ?
Or ingame stuff which really makes a difference?

I do have 25 add ons however i do not see any change if i deactivate them in any way

BlueRaven · August 2020

I am not certain. TBH the FPS drops are not my main concern with the Mac client (although they are certainly troublesome).

When I use a wayshrine to many areas, my computer system often restarts. Not the client, the whole Mac os. And I am not alone with this issue.

I keep coming to this forum on the extremely off chance there is news about progress being made in this issue. It feels like a fools hope, but there it is.

The moderators told me that I should not enter multiple bug reports over this, but how long do I have to wait? It’s been close to two years at this point. As far as I can tell there is no work being done on this or on any Mac related issue.

How do I know the team knows of the system restarts?
How do I know the team knows about the FPS drops?
Is there any point in entering a bug report for the Mac client at all?

AlbertVonMoosseedorf · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Hi fellow MAC players
Looking forward to any advice !!!!
Thank you !

Even when I do not understand your satisfaction with MacOS Version of ESO, because in my opinion its very unstable:
crashes, freezing screens, unable to switch to another task, keyboard errors, UI-Problems, loose of focus,
unable to loot, ... With this I agree with @BlueRaven.

But I can give you an advice to increase your performance and this is the only you can do:

Since a few weeks I am using an eGPU (Razer Core X - Thunderbolt™ 3 eGPU and Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 5700 XT Special Edition). This runs ESO with aproximately 40 to 90 fps ! Still quite a broad range, but this is an unchangeable
variable given by the ESO architecture, their hardware and it's lousy developed.

requirements: Catalina and Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C connector)
.

soulferin · August 2020

Does anyone knows anything about fps lately? I noticed it dropped for me from around 40-50 to 20-30 with no reason at all. And Admins deleted old thread about Mac OS performance as "old" but nothing was solved so it should be called "actual"

eMKa8 · August 2020

Same here.
I was commenting on a Mac thread and it got closed down suddenly

soulferin · August 2020

About FPS yesterday, after patch, it became unacceptable - around 20. I change some setting it turned worse - even 9 fps in my house and never above 35. Probably it won't be popular answer but repairing client helped a lot. FPS jumped up to 65 in my house and its stable at 30+.

I have no idea why it helped. I downloaded a clean copy of game when Greymoor update came out so it should not be an issue.

Hope it might help someone.

eMKa8 · August 2020

Oh ... tell me more !
Yesterday it was also very bad for me.

Very very laggy!
Probably because a lot of addons needed updating ? If not up to date i guess they might lag ?

What does repairing client mean exactly ?
Is that uninstalling the game and installing the 60GB again?

Do i lose a lot of saved settings Then?
How do i repair client ?
What are the downsides ?

Thanks , i wiln try it if not to dangerous

@soulferin

soulferin · August 2020

Oh yes! Once I tried new dungeons I have 1 sec+ lag so didn't know what's happening on the screen.

and by repairing I mean really simple option from launcher:

so it doesn't mean uninstalling and only downsides might happen if it will find something corrupted then maybe it will need to download some data.

In my case everything took maybe 5 min, so I hope it will be good for You too

eMKa8 · August 2020

Thank you ! Will test that out straight away!

eMKa8 · August 2020

Sadly it did not help much. Fps still at 20

soulferin · August 2020

Sorry to hear that.
I was a little surprised that it worked in my case so I hoped it will be helpful to others ;/

frnic · September 2020

Well, I have been running ESO in MacOS since the beta. I am currently running the latest Big Sur beta.

Except for some bumps when Catilina came out. I have been happy.

Maybe I am less picky than others? Don't know. But, I have had NO crashes lately. Fairly stable FPS around 45FPS (maybe 35 in some cities)

I am running on a 5K 27inch 2019 iMac Pro with a bit of extra ram, SSD, and an upgraded GPU. I realize that is NOT a gaming machine, and for that money, I could own a couple of the best gaming machines in the world, but I use it for work, and the fact I can run ESO also, is just a plus - not a requirement.

I have an occasional pause - maybe once or twice an hour or so - it normally lasts about 2 or 3 seconds. I expect is because I am running over WiFi. But, maybe not...

For my settings, I set to max and then back down particles, shadows, and turn off DOF.

Just reporting my personal experience, and not arguing with anyone else's.

I also have a 13" 2019 MBP. It is mostly a base model with some extra memory and I get a reliable 20-30 FPS on it with medium settings. But, playing on the 13" screen is definitely limited to when I don't have access to my 27inc.

demerdecanswrath · September 2020

frnic wrote: »

I have been running MacOS on ESO

How in Sithis' name did you do that? O.o

eMKa8 · September 2020

demerdecanswrath wrote: »

frnic wrote: »

I have been running MacOS on ESO

How in Sithis' name did you do that? O.o

Hahahahha 😂😂🤣😂☺️

thedavidventer · September 2020

I get about 20-30 FPS (depending on content and location) on my iMac 4K. Not ideal but still playable. Would’ve probably been better if the game was coded for Metal rather than using MoltenVK to translate Vulkan to Metal. I suspect this is also the cause of the occasional screen tearing and blurry textures - Some things probably getting “lost in translation.”

alterfenixeb17_ESO · October 2020

When I am running on internal GPU (Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB) it is a problem, true. But then that graphics is no good in any game really, even those using Metal (unless we talk here some ports from iOS really). Getting same results as OP. Then when I switch to external I can easily pull 30-40 fps on ultra settings in cities. Not perfect but I do not consider this really as a problem obviously. Bottom line is that those integrated cards are no good choice and they as the matter of fact never were. See HD 4000 - one of the most widely used when TESO got released. Even though ZoS officially supported it still playing on anything than some low settings was hardly possible. Now just history repeats itself and that's it.