The game is nearly unplayable (FPS wise)

Sailor_Palutena · October 11

I used to have my frame rate above 60 even in populated areas (45 in Ali'kr Desert Dolmens), playing in 4k and most settings on High, but

Since the last big patch, frame rate is often below 30, sometimes going down to the 15. It keeps stuttering no end and FPS keep floating around 20 to 40.

My PC is a i7 6700k, 32GB RAM, RTX 4060ti.
(yeah I know I should upgrade my CPU, but it was working fine for ESO until a couple of months ago).

What I tried:
Setting Optimized in Geforce Experience: didn't improve.
Removing all addons: didn't improve.
Uninstalling ESO and do a clean install with no addons: didn't improve.
Playing in 1080p and lowest settings: didn't improve.
Changing the SetMaxCores from -1 to 2, 3, 4 none of it solved.

I tried many solutions including the one in the link below, but nothing has fixed it
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/429099/easy-and-huge-fps-increase-with-this-one-simple-trick-core-usage-and-how-to-change-it

Resident Evil 2, 3, 4 Remake are all running in 4k60fps here. I can even run Elder Scrolls Oblivion at 45fps and Medium settings. It is just ESO with this problem.
Any more suggestions besides changing my PC specs?

FullMax · October 11

Are you experiencing low FPS in all locations, or just large ones? Try teleporting to a frozen cliff or a Khenarthi nest, and then to a larger location, like Cyrodiil or Craglorn, and compare your FPS.

Alternatively, you may have a setting enabled that you didn't notice. It's strange that after disabling anti-aliasing, your FPS is still so low. Try disabling shadows and light rays and compare.

By the way, I noticed that games, especially Elder Scrolls, start to freeze if I have GIF wallpapers enabled on my desktop. After disabling them, the freezing went away. Maybe you also have some unnecessary program running in the background?

It's highly unlikely that an update has only changed your personal FPS. For me, everything is fine (knock on wood).

Zodiarkslayer · October 11

I wouldn't worry. It's not your fault.
It's the ancient engine, that is pushed beyond it's limits.

I have played on "good looking for 1080p" mid settings for five years and even my last rig (2015-2023) barely had to start the fans for cooling. That is how little computing ESO took back then.

Ever since the updates last year, where they defaulted to higher settings, more complex post processing and more demanding animations, the game goes ballistic from time to time. And it nukes your video card, regardless of how good it is, how old/new it is or what drivers you use.

Best example for me is one of the animations of the Mudcrab World Boss on Solstice. During the fight I always have two or three screen freezes that last about 5s each. The sound doesn't freeze, skill input doesn't freeze. It's just the frame that freezes while the Boss pops up. I obviously don't know exactly, because I never see it happening. It's ridiculous.

Sarannah · October 11

Every update ESO keeps getting more and more heavier on the hardware, that is just how software progresses. As with every update they need to keep up with the latest technology/software.

You could try many things... but setting your display from 4k to 1080p and your fps drops not getting any better is a HUGE red flag! As doing that makes the game four times less intense/heavier, which means there should be a major improvement. To me this points out something else is terribly wrong with your system. Which could be anything from a hardware failure to a software conflict. Personally I would suggest looking into the latest windows 11 updates using too much CPU lately(as you have an older CPU this may affect you massively), and I would suggest looking into reinstalling the GPU drivers or finding a stable GPU driver(could be a miss-install or software conflict).

There is also the possibility that your hardware is just stressed to it's limit with ESO, especially the motherboard. The motherboard has channels through which data flows between the RAM/GPU/CPU, if ESO suddenly stresses these channels more while the motherboard can't take that load, it will slow you down to play catch up(lower your fps).

Hope that helps.

PS: If you change anything in ESO's usersettings, keep in mind these changes can affect your ESO install if ESO releases a new update. So write these changes down or try not to change anything at all to possibly prevent any future conflicts/problems.

Sailor_Palutena · October 11

FullMax wrote: »

Are you experiencing low FPS in all locations, or just large ones? Try teleporting to a frozen cliff or a Khenarthi nest, and then to a larger location, like Cyrodiil or Craglorn, and compare your FPS.

Alternatively, you may have a setting enabled that you didn't notice. It's strange that after disabling anti-aliasing, your FPS is still so low. Try disabling shadows and light rays and compare.

All locations yes. It got 60fps inside dungeons in one session, but never again.
I've set everything on minimum, to the point of looking like a Playstation 1 level of graphics, 1080p with everything on LOW.
It is the same thing as running in 4k max: 30fps tops and going as low as 7FPS.

I'm still using Windows 10 and wondering if it is an attempting to force me to move on. While running ESO, both CPU and memory usage stay below 50% same with the temp below 50º celsius (122F).

Tandor · October 11

Try searching "Windows 10 performance settings" and follow the tips there. It sounds to me like some Windows settings might have got changed (it can happen when running Windows Updates, for example).

StihlReign · October 11

Try moving to Windows 11Pro if you can. I believe they even advertised it as better for gamers. Everything else you have looks good unless you want to buy more Ram

silky_soft · October 11

When you reinstall did you remove your shadercache.cooked and usersetting.txt?

Are the games that run fine using the same drive as eso? Maybe the drive is full or failing. Maybe the windows drive is full or failing?

Have you tried running DISM and SFC in admin cmd to see if Windows update has gone bad? Google for some guides or videos about it.

moderatelyfatman · October 12

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

I wouldn't worry. It's not your fault.
It's the ancient engine, that is pushed beyond it's limits.

I have played on "good looking for 1080p" mid settings for five years and even my last rig (2015-2023) barely had to start the fans for cooling. That is how little computing ESO took back then.

Ever since the updates last year, where they defaulted to higher settings, more complex post processing and more demanding animations, the game goes ballistic from time to time. And it nukes your video card, regardless of how good it is, how old/new it is or what drivers you use.

Best example for me is one of the animations of the Mudcrab World Boss on Solstice. During the fight I always have two or three screen freezes that last about 5s each. The sound doesn't freeze, skill input doesn't freeze. It's just the frame that freezes while the Boss pops up. I obviously don't know exactly, because I never see it happening. It's ridiculous.

I keep seeing people throwing the argument of 'old game engine' to justify why ESO is so buggy and with such poor performance.
Then I realised that Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 are all older than ESO.
And they are all less buggy and run better than ESO.

In a normal MMO bugs get fixed over time and performance gets optimised over time. The only real exception is when major new content get added where devs have to fix bugs and reoptimise the engine, but these usually get fixed within weeks and are temporary.

PapaTankers · October 12

Could it have anything to do with "limit background fps" setting? That limits background fps to 30. Maybe unitck that setting.
Altho I do have to say. Your cpu is becoming kind of a relic.

Sailor_Palutena · October 12

silky_soft wrote: »

When you reinstall did you remove your shadercache.cooked and usersetting.txt?

Are the games that run fine using the same drive as eso? Maybe the drive is full or failing. Maybe the windows drive is full or failing?

Have you tried running DISM and SFC in admin cmd to see if Windows update has gone bad? Google for some guides or videos about it.

Yes to the first question, I deleted the folder in Document and it created a new one after I executed the game. And yes about the drive. It is working fine.

I'm telling you guys, the game was running at 4K 60fps almost no dips until September. Then after that, it started to suck really bad. I just got the game barely playable setting it to Medium graphics and 1080p.

Actually, I'm going to test a last option. I just noticed my last Geforce update was in September 30 when Nvidia released an update for Battlefield 6. I think i will roll back a couple of drives before that.

Sailor_Palutena · October 13

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Sarannah · October 13

Sailor_Palutena wrote: »

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Roll back your GPU driver to the last 40 series stable one(DDU+reinstall older)... which was 566.36 if I'm not mistaken. Everything after is known to cause major issues, depending on pc configuration.

Also, disable GFE(GeForce Experience) completely before running ESO. I've had problems in the past where GFE was unstable/bugged and was causing major lag/delay/crash issues for games.

Other than that, such a large performance drop is caused by something. I would not be surprised if you are having a hardware failure within the next month or so. Make sure to investigate further!

Sailor_Palutena · October 25

Sarannah wrote: »

Sailor_Palutena wrote: »

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Roll back your GPU driver to the last 40 series stable one(DDU+reinstall older)... which was 566.36 if I'm not mistaken. Everything after is known to cause major issues, depending on pc configuration.

Also, disable GFE(GeForce Experience) completely before running ESO. I've had problems in the past where GFE was unstable/bugged and was causing major lag/delay/crash issues for games.

Other than that, such a large performance drop is caused by something. I would not be surprised if you are having a hardware failure within the next month or so. Make sure to investigate further!

I tried Resident Evil 2 Remake, Elden Ring and Horizon Zero Dawn, they are all running at 4K, with high settings (some even Ultra), at 60fps. The only games running bad or not even running anymore are current Microsoft games such as ESO and Oblivion (which was running at Medium settings, 4k and 45-60fps until september).

As soon as the support for Windows 10 ended, conveniently all Microsoft recent games started to run bad. Yes, I'm still using Windows 10 and I just renewed support until October 26.

As for your suggestions, I tried: rolling back my GPU drivers down to June, reinstalled ESO, reinstalled Geforce, played without addons and the ESO is still running bad, no matter if I set it to 1080p, 4k, low or high settings, it just doesn't matter, the game stutters and stay between 10-30fps in any populated location, 45-90fps in closed locations (dungeons, delves, isolated places). The fps goes up, but the stuttering remains. (Again, no matter what setting I put, even 1080p in lowest graphics or 4k and graphics on High it is the same result in fps/stutter).

So, considering it only happens with Microsoft games, It is obvious that the reason is planned obsolescence. I don't think further investigation is needed. I have no rush to install Windows 11.

Vraedlich · October 25

Runs fine in Windows 7 on my i5 2500K/1660Ti (I have a better build), but I only play at 2k.

If you mean at the siege camps or busy cyro fights, fps drops are expected.

freespirit · October 25

I hate to be the one to say this but as soon as I saw 4060ti I was suspicious, currently that card has a really bad rep for gaming, not all games are affected but @Sailor_Palutena might be worth some investigation maybe?

For what it's worth my potato PC(2017) using way older cpu and gpu runs ESO at 60fps pretty much always(I have it capped at 60) and I have seen no change recently.

My PC cannot even run win11!

Sarannah · October 26

Sailor_Palutena wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Sailor_Palutena wrote: »

Oh well since the game runs bad even in 1080p and I couldn't find a solution, time to unsubscribe and possibly come back when I upgrade my PC someday.

Roll back your GPU driver to the last 40 series stable one(DDU+reinstall older)... which was 566.36 if I'm not mistaken. Everything after is known to cause major issues, depending on pc configuration.

Also, disable GFE(GeForce Experience) completely before running ESO. I've had problems in the past where GFE was unstable/bugged and was causing major lag/delay/crash issues for games.

Other than that, such a large performance drop is caused by something. I would not be surprised if you are having a hardware failure within the next month or so. Make sure to investigate further!

I tried Resident Evil 2 Remake, Elden Ring and Horizon Zero Dawn, they are all running at 4K, with high settings (some even Ultra), at 60fps. The only games running bad or not even running anymore are current Microsoft games such as ESO and Oblivion (which was running at Medium settings, 4k and 45-60fps until september).

As soon as the support for Windows 10 ended, conveniently all Microsoft recent games started to run bad. Yes, I'm still using Windows 10 and I just renewed support until October 26.

As for your suggestions, I tried: rolling back my GPU drivers down to June, reinstalled ESO, reinstalled Geforce, played without addons and the ESO is still running bad, no matter if I set it to 1080p, 4k, low or high settings, it just doesn't matter, the game stutters and stay between 10-30fps in any populated location, 45-90fps in closed locations (dungeons, delves, isolated places). The fps goes up, but the stuttering remains. (Again, no matter what setting I put, even 1080p in lowest graphics or 4k and graphics on High it is the same result in fps/stutter).

So, considering it only happens with Microsoft games, It is obvious that the reason is planned obsolescence. I don't think further investigation is needed. I have no rush to install Windows 11.

If you are getting the same stutter with that GPU on any settings, something else is going on. My experience tells me it is something with the CPU.

-You could try turning multithreaded rendering in the ESO settings on or off.
-Turn down the nearby player's graphics in the ESO settings(don't remember what this setting is called exactly), and/or lower the range at which the game renders other players with better graphics.
-Make sure you have the motherboard's chipset drivers/hardrive drivers/sound drivers installed.
-Turn on undervolt protection for the CPU in the BIOS. (it might be the CPU trying to play catch-up after getting too little power to perform its tasks.)

Hopefully you do get this resolved somehow.

PS: Those are totally different types of games. MMO's are quite different animals when it comes to performance.
PPS: I doubt win 10 or win 11 would make a difference with performance for ESO. (If you are staying on windows 10, keep in mind that at some point ESO may require windows 11 for some reason. So it might be a wise choice to get ESO to run perfectly on windows 11 already, to prevent future issues.)

StihlReign · October 26

I prefer Windows 11 Pro, it offers enhanced gaming performance through features like DirectX 12 Ultimate, Auto HDR, and DirectStorage. The Pro version includes additional features like virtualization and remote management. Windows 11 Home allows 128GB of RAM and allows 1 processor with 64 cores while Windows 11 Pro allows 2TB of ram and allows 2 processors up to 128 cores. Yes, I noticed a difference from 7 and 10.

It looks like you might be right and Windows obsolescence is catching up...Windows 11 Home's features might be helpful:

DirectX 12 Ultimate: Provides higher frame rates and better graphics effects.
Auto HDR: Adds High Dynamic Range (HDR) to many games, improving lighting and visuals.
DirectStorage: Reduces game loading times by using the speed of NVMe SSDs.
Game Mode: Optimizes system resources for gaming by prioritizing game processes and reducing background activity.

Brumme · October 26

Wierd
dont have ANY props here with fps
I think it's locked to 100, because it's there 95% of the time.
and doesn't go any lower than 90 in heavy combat

I've tested at the middle camp where there are always a lot of people when it spawns, but it has no effect on my fps at all

Ryzen 5600X
32 gb ram
RTX 4060
2560x1440 , 165 hz

win 10 pro

SeaGtGruff · October 26

I've been playing ESO on a gaming laptop ever since the PC I'd been playing it on decided to die. Now I'm able to crank up the graphics settings and the game looks so much better than it used to.

But because I'm using a laptop, I've run into an issue that never used to come up, and I'm mentioning it just in case anyone else out there is playing ESO on a laptop and has been experiencing this issue.

It seems that Microsoft made some changes in Windows 11 as far as power-saving options. As a result, if you are using the laptop with Wi-Fi and the laptop is running on battery power rather than being plugged into a power outlet, the Wi-Fi speed is curtailed dramatically in order to help the battery power last longer-- and it's impossible to stop this from happening by going into your power options and changing the settings.

I don't like to keep the laptop plugged in if the battery is already at 100%, so I try to delay plugging it in until the warning about how much battery power is left pops up. When I'm playing ESO with the laptop running on battery power, the game is sluggish and feels as though I'm running around in molasses, with my character's speed constantly slowing down and then speeding up in spurts. As soon as I plug in the power adapter, the game runs smoothly and all of the sluggishness disappears.

I only discovered the reason for this by searching for "why does my laptop wifi slow down when unplugged" or something to that effect. It might not be pertinent to a lot of players, but even if you aren't playing on a laptop it does indicate one thing-- that Microsoft can and does make changes in Windows which are intended to be helpful as power-saving options and which can dramatically affect the performance of ESO due to the way Wi-Fi speed or other power-hungry processes (such as being run by your high-end graphics cards) are being slowed down to conserve energy.

mattaeus01b16_ESO · October 26

Unable to play ESO for more then 30 mins without restarting the game.
Iv tried... The games FPS made me want to upchuck >.<

Iv turned everything down to LOW (Thats down from Ultra before) Just to be able to see the bosses spawn during the event. And even then, I have to drop my AOES on the ground to hit the MOBs at peak hours.

So I log in, do one round of dailies, and log out.

I guess it dosnt really matter. Everyone still gets paid even if we cant play, right?

PC/NA

silentxthreat · October 27

check your settings. apps like geforce for example will "optimize" your game and turn on ray tracing and max everything out for example. eso's engine is really bad for a lot of graphics. Turn off shadows and audio footsteps and it will run good again

smallhammer · October 27

Have had stutters too, after last update (48)

Sailor_Palutena · October 27

freespirit wrote: »

I hate to be the one to say this but as soon as I saw 4060ti I was suspicious, currently that card has a really bad rep for gaming, not all games are affected but @Sailor_Palutena might be worth some investigation maybe?
For what it's worth my potato PC(2017) using way older cpu and gpu runs ESO at 60fps pretty much always(I have it capped at 60) and I have seen no change recently.
My PC cannot even run win11!

My PC can't run Win 11 either, although I've seen some channels saying you can actually modify something at the boot, to trick Windows and allow it. I just don't want to reinstall Windows for now, I will go to w11 when I do that.

As for the 4060ti thing, it makes no sense to run a lot of other games way heavier than ESO just fine. It was running ESO at 4k60fps ultra settings until mid September. It makes no sense! And yeah I rolled back Nvidia updates until July/August. Doesn't change anything.

Brumme wrote: »

Wierd
dont have ANY props here with fps
I think it's locked to 100, because it's there 95% of the time.
and doesn't go any lower than 90 in heavy combat
I've tested at the middle camp where there are always a lot of people when it spawns, but it has no effect on my fps at all
Ryzen 5600X
32 gb ram
RTX 4060
2560x1440 , 165 hz
win 10 pro

Your CPU Ryzen 5600X is equivalent to a 12th GEN INTEL. I have a 6th GEN (i7 6700K), which might validate what Sarannah said about CPU.

silentxthreat wrote: »

check your settings. apps like geforce for example will "optimize" your game and turn on ray tracing and max everything out for example. eso's engine is really bad for a lot of graphics. Turn off shadows and audio footsteps and it will run good again

Yeah I already tried all of that.

mattaeus01b16_ESO wrote: »

Unable to play ESO for more then 30 mins without restarting the game.
Iv tried... The games FPS made me want to upchuck >.<
Iv turned everything down to LOW (Thats down from Ultra before) Just to be able to see the bosses spawn during the event. And even then, I have to drop my AOES on the ground to hit the MOBs at peak hours.
So I log in, do one round of dailies, and log out.
I guess it dosnt really matter. Everyone still gets paid even if we cant play, right?
PC/NA

This is what I'm doing. Next year after I decide to build a new PC, I will consider to play more. Although... latest expansions have been so... so.

katorga · October 27

Ryzen 5700G + 2080Ti + 16GB ram and 60fps locked at 4K.

Disable addons, And always check that your settings are where you had them. Most times I see FPS issues my graphics settings have mysteriously reset.

Unfadingsilence · October 28

katorga wrote: »

Ryzen 5700G + 2080Ti + 16GB ram and 60fps locked at 4K.

Disable addons, And always check that your settings are where you had them. Most times I see FPS issues my graphics settings have mysteriously reset.

CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
GPU GeForce RTX 5090
MEMORY
128GB DDR5
STORAGE
8TB SSD

I run way to many addons and no issues with the game anymore its truly beautiful no lag, high FPS and low ping 25-50 on NA server and 120 on EU server its truly amazing

Sailor_Palutena · October 28

katorga wrote: »

Ryzen 5700G + 2080Ti + 16GB ram and 60fps locked at 4K.

Disable addons, And always check that your settings are where you had them. Most times I see FPS issues my graphics settings have mysteriously reset.

I said in my very first post, that i tried without any addons and even reinstalled the game.

TwiceBornStar · October 29

I'm getting a constant 100 FPS on a Ryzen 5 9600X that's paired with FlareX memory and a RX 5700 XT so I'm just going to keep the RX going until the fans fall off.

Grafahel · October 29

I had a similar problem earlier this year, and if I read this as a solution back then I would've told that person to step in a bucket of paint because it makes no sense, but for me it was fixed after reseating my RAM.
I also thought 'that's nonsense, I only have this problem with ESO' , but most other games have settings to smoothe out framerate and stutters so I guess I didn't notice performance drops as much. But in ESO, even turning my settings all the way back to 1995, I kept getting horrible framedrops, texture pop-in and I could hardly walk around in cities. I don't know why the issue was most noticeable in this game, but it was. After I reseated my RAM, everything worked like a charm.
Could be a different issue for you, PCs are still boxes of chaotic magic, but maybe it's worth a try if you've exhausted every other possibility.