lionspider wrote: »

Does ESO look good in 4K?

Yes. I play in 4K. The main benefit is the almost total elimination of jagged edges compared to 1080p (I have not played at 1440p). Depending on zoom and how closely you look, character models also look better, e.g. especially if you take screenshots and crop them.

As I have all the settings cranked, there is possibly an improvement to shadows and sense of depth, which however doesn't have anything to do with resolution. People keep telling me to look out for the red berserkers in vRG, yet I was puzzled about what they're talking about until I looked at a dead berserker closely. I think this may have something to do with the shadow rendering at maximum settings. It looks good, but from a competitive gameplay perspective it isn't always helpful.

Does ESO run well in 4K?

Yes.

Do all the textures go in 4K? Or do some textures run in 1080P and some in 4K?

No idea / refer to previous answers.

What kind of computer do I need to run ESO in 4K at 60FPS?

I run it on a 5800X3D, RTX3070 and a 144Hz 4K TV with variable refresh rate support. I have limited the CPU to 8 cores (no hyper-threading) and the GPU to a 70% power target in order to achieve a whisper-quiet PC. With almost all settings cranked to maximum, but using DLSS Quality, the average frame rate is around 100Hz on that setup.

Do I need a computer to be the best of the best to run eso in 4K?

No. If your target is only 60Hz, you probably only need something like an RX6600. That said, I don't know how that card scales to 4K in this or any game and whether FSR looks as good as DLSS. The RX6600 has about 60% the power of the RTX3070. If you insisted on rendering natively (no DLSS), and with every slider more or less cranked, you would probably need something like an RTX3070 to achieve 60Hz. TL;DR: You need something mid-range, not high-end, albeit mid-range isn't cheap these days.

The only issue is, when I record with OBS, the footage is subtly but noticeably juddery. It's normally very smooth. This may may have to do with with downsampling to 1080p / 60Hz during recording, although I notice it even while playing with OBS recording, not just in the recorded footage. Could be nvenc having an impact on the card's performance or that recording at 60Hz impacts VRR.

This is a desktop system we're talking about. If you're thinking about a laptop, especially a thin one, you got to temper your expectations. I have run ESO on a 4K 16" laptop with a mobile RTX3080. I believe the GPU on that laptop was power limited to 80W, but that's in maximum power mode, where such a machine IMO gets unreasonably hot and loud. Frame rates would basically match the desktop, but be all over the place, as the laptop seemed to frequently veer into thermal throttling territory. Changing the Windows 10 power slider to medium or low power tamed the noise and thermals - actually really well implemented - but the GPU would lock in at 60Hz or even 30Hz. In order to get a consistent 60Hz with lowish fan noise and bearable thermals, I had to drop to 1080p on this particular laptop. That said, this was a slim workstation design, not a chunky gaming laptop.

I wouldn't say that ESO needs the 5800X3D. My guess is that something more mid-range, 6 cores and up, would be fine for ESO. I just decided to go with the endgame gaming CPU for my socket (AM4), as I tend to retain my systems unchanged for many years.