FPS drops after U33

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · March 2022

biounit112 wrote: »

Youyouz06 wrote: »

I've done all the work arounds available on the internet, but I won't go as so far to change CPU values.

I encourage you to try this fix anyway, just to provide ZOS with more proof it temporarily fixes the issue. It's a one-line change to a config file, and you won't hurt your computer by doing it. You can even un-do it right after testing if you're nervous about it.

But I agree, none of us should have to be touching config files or trying out 100 different experiments to work around things like this. But I'm willing to do so for now, because I wanna be able to enjoy the Jester's Festival, and I'm too impatient to wait for the real fix.

I did it out of frustration. The bogginess of ESO + a navigator has gone, so that worked.

Now I'll have to check PvP tonight at prime time....the ulimate test. I'll get back to you.

MageCatF4F · March 2022

Sheen wrote: »

ilander wrote: »

One of my guildmembers has no problems on a 6 core cpu, it is exactly the same as before the patch.

Someone else pointed out that there seem to be problems with 8 cores rather than 6 from what he had seen as well.

Thank you for this hint, I think we've solved the issue.
Asking for @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_AlexTardif @ZOS_Bill

My hardware: Ryzen 7 1700 / 32 Gb RAM / NVidia GTX 1070 / Archlinux

I've played with UserSettings.txt and variable : SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "x"

By default, I had 16 because my CPU is Ryzen 7 1700 (8 cores + HT), it's been years I have this settings, no issue until update 33.
Since update 33, when loading characters, my CPU reach 100% load for three minutes, a real pain, and I have stuttering in cities because of huge fps drop.

I've made some test changing this variable with two characters, one full of addons (character 1), one with few addons (character 2) and I've timed the loading time for each profile.

Results :

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "16" :
- Character 1 : 177 seconds (CPU Load 100%)
- Character 2 : 39 seconds (CPU Load 100%)

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "8" :
- Character 1 : 66 seconds
- Character 2 : 22 seconds

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "6" :
- Character 1 : 55 seconds
- Character 2 : 15 seconds

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "4" :
- Character 1 : 52 seconds
- Character 2 : 13 seconds

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "2" :
- Character 1 : 51 seconds
- Character 2 : 12 seconds

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "1" :
- Character 1 : 51 seconds
- Character 2 : 12 seconds

Now I'm using SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "2", and it works like before update 33, usual loading time and no more stuttering.
Update 33 broke something with multithreading on 8 cores CPU and more.

Sorry to say, but community is doing your job Zos, I hope now you will fix the issue instead of saying the problem is on our side.

Thanks a ton. I tried this on our Athlon 2 X4 (11 years old and played the game fine before U33) with GTX 1660 Super and it fixed almost all the graphics stutter in Vulkhel Guard, today even at the start of the fetching event.

Where is ZOS on this? The world wonders.

Red_Feather · March 2022

MageCatF4F wrote: »

Where is ZOS on this? The world wonders.

There an eso live tomorrow so they aren't on vacation. [snip] How is that supposed to make people feel. Every time someone new ran by my game stuttered and dropped 40 frames. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE UPDATE 33. Some guy on reddit said it's all of our computers that are at fault. [snip]

[edited for minor bashing]

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · April 2022

Update:

PvP is better than it was before the usersettings.txt line change, but there are still significant drops in FPS.
The good news is I don't get those weird freezes anymore.

tomfant · April 2022

Yeah, this fix just mitigates the impact of ESO's bad code on your CPU, but it is still bad code...

Red_Feather · April 2022

Yeah limited cpu cores gets rid of the stutters but doesn't fix the fps dropping. All of these after update 33. I guess we just keep posting about it until someone responds.

Eiagra · April 2022

Also experiencing severe FPS drops, especially around event areas, but in general when maneuvering as well. Frame rate bogs down severely, no one seems to be loaded in, I hit a load screen wall, and suddenly everyone is rendered properly and FPS tops out and is normal -- temporarily. The cycle begins anew: Lag, load screen, everything's fine. Lag, load screen, everything's fine.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · April 2022

Have they done a sneaky graphics update without telling us?
*tin foil hat on*

Rincewind63 · April 2022

Same issue for me in Blackwood, my FPS decrease suddently from 80 to 4 ... logout was not sufficient need to reboot the PC.

Denniskoenig · April 2022

I also changed the number in the config file to 2 cores.
Did something, but didn't solve the problem.

It is not only in zones with many people.
I also experiment this in zone swith a lot of fire, like City of Ash.

Runnning a RTX 2070 super and 32 Gig of RAM, so the problem should not be my GPU.
I have a 6-core i7 which is getting also quite hot when playing ESO. So it is not only a 8-core problem.

Wolfshade · April 2022

@Sheen

Efficient, Powerful Multi-Core Processing
True machine intelligence featuring 8 processor cores, 16 threads, and an astonishingly efficient 65W TDP.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-1700

Attention: This CPU just have 8 physical Cores with 16 logical Cores/Threads. No surprise that your CPU works with 100%!

Pls check out this for logical Cores/Threads in your Usertext:

SET RequestedNumJobThreads
SET RequestedNumWorkerThreads

Fabi95 · April 2022

The game forgets its cooked shadercache, and tries to build shaders live regardless. This is why the CPU usage is so high, and why framerates stutter so much in towns. Only ZOS can fix this, this is not something we players can do.

For context: There is a file called "Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\ShaderCache.cooked" in your user documents folder. This file is recreated on each update. Which is why you see maximum CPU usage for a good while on each patch. This is used to avoid having to recreate the shaders each time, which is a highly CPU intensive task.
Since update 33, apparently the game ignores the shader cache, hence why the performance has gotten worse. If you ever edited UserSettings.txt and set the "CachedRLREnabled" value to 0, you would have gotten the same problematic performance. The cache exists for a reason, and we can only wait until ZOS investigates and fixes this.

TL;DR: Don't tinker with weird settings, it cannot fix the real issue. It's band-aid at best. We need to wait for ZOS to fix this.

jkhsjdhjs · April 2022

@Fabi95 Very interesting, how did you find out about this? Also limiting CoresToUse seems to fix the stuttering, how does that fit in? If what you're saying is true, wouldn't decreasing CoresToUse worsen the performance even more, because the game has less CPU power to build the shaders?

Red_Feather · April 2022

Fabi95 wrote: »

The game forgets its cooked shadercache, and tries to build shaders live regardless. This is why the CPU usage is so high, and why framerates stutter so much in towns. Only ZOS can fix this, this is not something we players can do.

For context: There is a file called "Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\ShaderCache.cooked" in your user documents folder. This file is recreated on each update. Which is why you see maximum CPU usage for a good while on each patch. This is used to avoid having to recreate the shaders each time, which is a highly CPU intensive task.
Since update 33, apparently the game ignores the shader cache, hence why the performance has gotten worse. If you ever edited UserSettings.txt and set the "CachedRLREnabled" value to 0, you would have gotten the same problematic performance. The cache exists for a reason, and we can only wait until ZOS investigates and fixes this.

TL;DR: Don't tinker with weird settings, it cannot fix the real issue. It's band-aid at best. We need to wait for ZOS to fix this.

Holy cow, how did you figure that out. If that's true I hope it can get fixed.

Fabi95 · April 2022

Red_Feather wrote: »

Holy cow, how did you figure that out. If that's true I hope it can get fixed.

Due to two things. ESO only ever uses 100% CPU when it's compiling shaders. In my experience there is not a single scenario where the game ever uses 100% CPU outside of that. After each patch, the shaders are recreated, which is where the 100% CPU usage occurs. When there is no updates, this never happens. However, if you ever tested the CachedRLREnabled setting (disabling it), you could see that disabling this leads to worse performance. As ESO has to compile needed shaders live. Since this is currently ESO's behavior for some reason, testing it retroactively to see the difference is sadly of no use. But I do strongly hope that when developers read this, that this helps them to pinpoint the issue quickly. Because in the end, technically what I wrote is still a strong assumption, and not a 100% confirmation - since in theory this could be still something else.

jkhsjdhjs wrote: »

@Fabi95 Very interesting, how did you find out about this? Also limiting CoresToUse seems to fix the stuttering, how does that fit in? If what you're saying is true, wouldn't decreasing CoresToUse worsen the performance even more, because the game has less CPU power to build the shaders?

You can read above how I got a strong suspicion what the issue is. As with the core limiting, my guess is that ESO still runs best with fewer, but more powerful cores. The current multi-threaded rendering implementation does, from what I have seen based on FPS and core usage, use two cores instead of one. So it's not muli-threaded in the sense of using all cores, but multithreaded by using 2 instead of 1 for the main renderer thread. ZOS had done other optimizations in the past where even more cores can be used. But typically when lots of stuff happens on the screen, the main bottleneck is often still the main renderer.

Personally I have not adjusted the core limit setting yet, but I will test it in an hour and report back here. I'm generally not too keen on adjusting hidden settings, as that often indicates that these are considered "off-limits " - no one tests the hidden settings for production, but if you change these, you could potentially introduce new issues (in the worst case). For the sake of science I will see how the performance looks like after adjusting the core setting though.

Red_Feather · April 2022

Maybe the game is looking for a different filename now for the shader cache.

fred4 · April 2022

Fabi95 wrote: »

Due to two things. ESO only ever uses 100% CPU when it's compiling shaders. In my experience there is not a single scenario where the game ever uses 100% CPU outside of that. After each patch, the shaders are recreated, which is where the 100% CPU usage occurs. When there is no updates, this never happens.

Not true / only true on your CPU / on reasonably modern CPUs. I run on a very old quad core with no hyperthreading. Never mind why. It's sufficient in many PvE and PvP scenarios. FPS can be 60 (at which I have it capped). Only in trials and large PvP battles will it sometimes dip to unplayable values, e.g. below 20. ESO frequently pegs all cores of my CPU at 100% and not just in the above-mentioned cases.

As with the core limiting, my guess is that ESO still runs best with fewer, but more powerful cores. The current multi-threaded rendering implementation does, from what I have seen based on FPS and core usage, use two cores instead of one. So it's not muli-threaded in the sense of using all cores, but multithreaded by using 2 instead of 1 for the main renderer thread. ZOS had done other optimizations in the past where even more cores can be used. But typically when lots of stuff happens on the screen, the main bottleneck is often still the main renderer.

This may or may not be true. I'm assuming this reflects what you observe on a contemporary CPU. Mine is > 10 years old and frequently pegged at 100% on all cores. At first I thought ZOS' multi-threading optimisations were OK. In recent patches (even before Ascending Tide) however, the game has stuttered a lot and started dropping audio. I subesquently changed the number of cores to use from 4 to 3. I only have 4 cores to go around, no hyperthreading. The game runs much smoother now. Audio issues are also improved, if not completely fixed. FPS may be lower, but are more consistent.

In theory Windows should prioritise things such that audio and important operating system tasks take priority, even when the CPU is pegged on all cores. In practice this does not appear to be the case. I can only guess the issues were due to the OS not granting itself and/or video/audio drivers enough CPU resources when the game was using all 4 cores at full tilt.

jkhsjdhjs · April 2022

Fabi95 wrote: »

Personally I have not adjusted the core limit setting yet, but I will test it in an hour and report back here. I'm generally not too keen on adjusting hidden settings, as that often indicates that these are considered "off-limits " - no one tests the hidden settings for production, but if you change these, you could potentially introduce new issues (in the worst case). For the sake of science I will see how the performance looks like after adjusting the core setting though.

Yes, I can understand that. So far the only side effect I noticed from reducing MaxCoreToUse.4 is that addons run a lot slower, e.g. using DressingRoom to change equip and skills takes a lot longer. I've set it to 2, but Sheens testing indicates that the performance with 4 or 6 isn't much worse, so I might as well use one of these values, maybe the addons will run better then.

Fabi95 · April 2022

fred4 wrote: »

At first I thought ZOS' multi-threading optimisations were OK. In recent patches (even before Ascending Tide) however, the game has stuttered a lot and started dropping audio. I subesquently changed the number of cores to use from 4 to 3. I only have 4 cores to go around, no hyperthreading. The game runs much smoother now. Audio issues are also improved, if not completely fixed. FPS may be lower, but are more consistent.

In theory Windows should prioritise things such that audio and important operating system tasks take priority, even when the CPU is pegged on all cores. In practice this does not appear to be the case. I can only guess the issues were due to the OS not granting itself and/or video/audio drivers enough CPU resources when the game was using all 4 cores at full tilt.

Your observation here is very good! Because turns out this among why the performance is suboptimal. I just tested the "MaxCoresToUse.4" setting and can verify that setting a value that is below the existing cores helps avoid the stuttering. So if this is the shader compilation that maximizes the CPU usage to 100%, the main problem is that ESO consumes more CPU resources than it is supposed to do - competing even with itself. Because the threads within ESO that want to get the work done as fast as possible steal the CPU resources for the other threads, such as ESO's main renderer - and ultimately also Windows' audio and other processes. Since in scenarios with 100% CPU usage, Windows distributes the resources equally based on the set priorities of processes (most are "normal").

Therefore the main issue is, whatever ZOS has done in update 33, there is "something" that causes so much CPU usage within ESO that it gets in the way of other things that need the CPU. Therefore it does actually help to reduce the "MaxCoresToUse.4" value, as there is then still free room for the CPU to process other things. I'm still convinced that it must be related to shader compilation, but really, only ZOS can confirm for us.

So while it helps to set a value at "MaxCoresToUse.4", I need to say a bit more with this: This shouldn't be set too low. At most, if you ask me, it's wise to set a value that equals your "current cores" minus 2. So let's say if you have 8 cores, set the value to 6. When I tested this a moment ago, setting the value to 2 brought great results as well. However, the game is then much slower at rendering player characters. This can be quite problematic in Cyrodiil, as in the worst case, it may take too long until player characters render in. This is subject to testing of course, but this is just my personal observation.

And it's important to not forget to change this setting back, when ZOS fixes this issue (hopefully) in the long run. But for now, this is a very good workaround.

Fabi95 · April 2022

jkhsjdhjs wrote: »

Yes, I can understand that. So far the only side effect I noticed from reducing MaxCoreToUse.4 is that addons run a lot slower, e.g. using DressingRoom to change equip and skills takes a lot longer. I've set it to 2, but Sheens testing indicates that the performance with 4 or 6 isn't much worse, so I might as well use one of these values, maybe the addons will run better then.

Yep that is quite good with the testing there! In my case I have 8 cores, and limiting to 6 cores is overall the best balance (to have good performance, and fast loading speed). Setting the value to 2 does slow down load times when teleporting to other zones, and affects the rendering of player models. Nice job with the testing there. I'm convinced now that sadly this workaround is very important for the time being.

Parasaurolophus · April 2022

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/602395/pc-mac-patch-notes-v7-3-7
Nothing about///

tomfant · April 2022

Disappointing, indeed.

TheGreatFloki · April 2022

I can confirm problem still persists. In crowded zones or Cyro frames drop like crazy...

(AMD Ryzen 2700X 8-cores user)

Kolzki · April 2022

After the config file change my FPS in trial only drops to around 20fps rather than 5fps. Last patch it sat between 40 and 60fps. Disabling all addons has no effect.

I also wonder if this problem is connected to the large increase in game freezes and crashes this patch. Crashes are so common this patch that my raid team are now betting soul gem stacks on who will disconnect in each pull.

GorHanis · April 2022

No answers, no fix, no devs... this problem does not even exist! Pathetic ZOS... nearly a month.

Wyrd88 · April 2022

@ZOS_Kevin
Summoning MVP of these forums.

Can we get some information/confirmation on this, please?
Give us at least something.

Problem is still persists, trials/Cyrodiil is hardly playable at 20 fps when it's crowded.

GorHanis · April 2022

@ZOS_Kevin
Summoning MVP of these forums.

You won't get any answer here...
We've summoned them at least three times in the last month, but unconfortable problem is a non-existent problem.

TheGreatFloki · April 2022

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "4"

This setting helps with stability but my cpu is getting hotter and using half of the cores makes no sense at all...

Red_Feather · April 2022

TheGreatFloki wrote: »

SET MaxCoresToUse.4 "4"

This setting helps with stability but my cpu is getting hotter and using half of the cores makes no sense at all...

[snip] I'm about to uninstall.

[edited for minor bashing]

liasanya1 · April 2022

Same here. Before the last patch perfectly, constantly (limited) 59 FPS in Auridon. Now stuttering and Framedrops to 50 and far below . I´m sick and tired so i cancelled Eso+ for a start. So its unplayable for me and i limited myself to analyse crafting items since the developers do their job.