Asking the heavy hitting questions. I'd be surprised if ZOS actually commented on this at all.

Ah, they won't do it. They're cutting corners as it is and ZOS is being targeted for massive layoffs.

I wouldn't count on it.

LadyGP wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

Asking the heavy hitting questions. I'd be surprised if ZOS actually commented on this at all.

Why would you be surprised? ZoS has done a 180 on their communication and been very transparent about things.

The thread asking why they won't say the word "Warden" would like to speak with you lol.

I imagine the Microsoft on top of its mountain of gold like Smaug from the Hobbit, ''I will not part with a single coin''.

Don't forget that the game was in development for like 7 years. So, many aspects of the game are older than 2014. But yeah, textures in ESO are something to be ashamed of. I understand going back and reworking everything would take too much time. But at the very least new stuff should come in (optional) higher textures.

I wouldn't be surprised we're still being blocked by outdated consoles (Xbox One and PS 4) which they refuse to let go.

Luneca wrote: »

Asking the heavy hitting questions. I'd be surprised if ZOS actually commented on this at all.

I totally agree with OP and I would also like to get official statements about these.

I admit my first thought was the same as the one I quoted, but then I've thought about the many good changes that happened with the new game direction and... No, I think after all this time we should get answers about these topics, and I'm hopeful the new people in charge will be different from what we endured for such a long time and will understand the importance of this and don't let it slide.

EDIT: btw, I also get the point "Gaming Industry is collapsing" - yep, we don't even know if videogames will still exist in 5-10 years from now going on like this XD half of us could be in a position where we won't be able to even possess the required hardware XD and I use all these "XD"s to avoid crying about this...XD

Luneca wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

Asking the heavy hitting questions. I'd be surprised if ZOS actually commented on this at all.

Why would you be surprised? ZoS has done a 180 on their communication and been very transparent about things.

I'm still hopeful of an engine upgrade coming with crossplay - yes there has been literally 0 things said that would hint this - again just copium for this gamme being the 30 year game they want. I just don't see how this game lasts with its engine for like... 37 years.

Maybe all these things you're asking would be coming with an engine upgrade.. that maybe they aren't ready to talk about "yet"?

Because the effort to implement it doesn't seem like it will ever be expended. Right now the game crashes every time I close it, it jerks terribly, audio sounds robotic, etc. -- obviously a problem with how the game is handling threading and memory.

If ZOS won't even comment on fixing that, I don't really have faith for them to comment on updating the game in the manner described.

Who is the graphics engineer at ZOS right now anyway? The last guy I knew that handled it does not seem to be on the game anymore and has moved elsewhere.

It's unlikely we will get any response at all considering that.

Again, in their defense.. the amount of things that are on the consumers side that can have an impact in all those issues you described is near infinite. Drivers, hardware configurations, software, add ons, multiple windows, things running in the background, its 100% unrealistic to expect them to comment on every single persons instance of "my game crashed".

I really don't want to see the demand for upgraded graphics being pushed while we all get to watch hardware upgrades become barely affordable for quite a lot of people.

SwordOfSagas wrote: »

I imagine the Microsoft on top of its mountain of gold like Smaug from the Hobbit, ''I will not part with a single coin''.

This ones agree

I don't play in 4K, so making the downlod for it optional would be amazing. I had to move ESO off my SSD to a hard drive because the file size is so huge. I don't know how much of it is the 4K textures that I can't use, but other games that make it optional save a huge amount of space.

And the most frustrating part, on top of an already terrible situation, is that this makes the whole thing even more unbearable. If only they’d decided to unlock the textures, something we've been asking for ages.
I mean, I could put together a 4K texture pack in a single week, and so could countless other modders. Just look at what we managed to do with Skyrim, Oblivion, and games like that.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

What happened to the DX12 migration? Why was a core engine update abandoned, leaving a huge chunk of the community with outdated performance tools?

Somewhat of a flawed premise. DX12 is a newer API but is not necessarily superior to DX11, it depends entirely on what the overhead is and what you are trying to achieve.

DX12 is better than DX11 when the CPU is bottlenecked. While ESO can be high CPU usage and bottleneck on older processors, more modern ones don't suffer that fate.

DX11 also provides a higher maximum and more stable FPS than DX12. Where DX12 excels in comparison is the upscaling, but even there it isn't an absolute must, especially for AMD GPUs as games without newer versions of FSR can utilise AFMF on the driver level.

So yes, the technology is dated, but at the same time the performance gain isn't that big, if at all, and may in fact cause a performance loss and additional stuttering especially in combat.

And, not for nothing but you said "We aren't asking for a complete engine overhaul from scratch" but you in effect are, as implementing DX12 would require ZOS to write and optimise the shader compilation. That would require a big re-write on the engine.

As for the textures, there are some truly terrible ones in game and they are in need of a severe overhaul. If they were to introduce 4k textures then they would have to migrate to DX12 to utilise the latest upscaling, or even people with modern systems would see a dramatic drop in FPS. That's a lot of development time, and given where the game stands with coming crossplay, and console hardware limitations, as well as the average age of player PCs, it will be little gain for a lot of effort.

That is not to say that they shouldn't be looking at this, but this will likely be over a matter of years. On a side note: Introducing 4k textures would also massively increase the VRAM requirements, and to cope with that players would likely need 20+ GB of VRAM.

Honestly, this is a massive mix of technical buzzwords and forum myths that completely misses how modern game engines, APIs, and hardware actually work.
Let’s break down these flaws, especially considering the game is now over 10 years old.

1. The 20+ GB VRAM Myth
Saying that introducing 4K textures would require "20+ GB of VRAM" is factually absurd.
There are countless modern games (and heavy graphical mods for older games like Skyrim or Fallout 4) that utilize 4K texture packs flawlessly on 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB GPUs.
Modern engines use texture streaming, the game doesn't load every single 4K asset of the entire continent into the memory at once, only what’s in your immediate view.

2. Confusing Textures with Upscaling (DLSS/FSR)
You are completely mixing up two different concepts. 4K textures impact VRAM capacity, not GPU rendering compute power. Upscaling tech (like DLSS or FSR) does the exact opposite: it renders the game at a lower internal resolution (like 1080p) and scales it up to save performance.
You don't "need DX12 upscaling to handle 4K textures". DX11 can handle high-res textures perfectly fine if the VRAM is there.

3. The "Engine Overhaul" Excuse
While migrating an API is definitely work, saying it requires "rewriting the engine from scratch" is a massive exaggeration. Look at World of Warcraft (an MMO much older than ESO): Blizzard successfully implemented DX12 and Ray Tracing into their ancient engine without "rewriting it from scratch". It requires investment, shader compilation optimization, and dev time, yes, but it is a pipeline upgrade, not a total engine rewrite.

4. CPU Bottlenecks and 10 Years of Technical Debt
You claim modern CPUs don't suffer from bottlenecks in ESO. That's entirely false. ESO runs on a decade-old engine that is heavily reliant on single-core CPU performance. Go to a crowded city or Cyrodiil during peak hours: your GPU will sit idle while a single thread of your CPU screams for mercy.
This is exactly where a proper DX12 or Vulkan implementation excels, because it distributes the driver overhead across multiple CPU cores, stabilizing those awful FPS drops and stutters in heavy combat.

The Real Reason for me
Let’s stop making up fake technical barriers to defend a multi-million dollar studio.
The reason ZOS hasn't given us a 4K texture pack or a modern API option isn't because "the tech isn't there" or "it requires 20GB VRAM".

It's purely maybe a financial and business decision. They still support old-gen consoles (PS4/Xbox One) and want the game to run on the lowest common denominator of player PCs.
They choose not to spend the budget on optional PC graphical updates when they can spend it on the next paid Chapter.
It's about ROI (Return on Investment), not technical impossibility.
After 10 years, asking for modernized assets is a completely reasonable request from the community.


And i conclude in 10 years a little IT can create a entire operating system from nothing for your information.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

What happened to the DX12 migration? Why was a core engine update abandoned, leaving a huge chunk of the community with outdated performance tools?

Somewhat of a flawed premise. DX12 is a newer API but is not necessarily superior to DX11, it depends entirely on what the overhead is and what you are trying to achieve.

DX12 is better than DX11 when the CPU is bottlenecked. While ESO can be high CPU usage and bottleneck on older processors, more modern ones don't suffer that fate.

DX11 also provides a higher maximum and more stable FPS than DX12. Where DX12 excels in comparison is the upscaling, but even there it isn't an absolute must, especially for AMD GPUs as games without newer versions of FSR can utilise AFMF on the driver level.

So yes, the technology is dated, but at the same time the performance gain isn't that big, if at all, and may in fact cause a performance loss and additional stuttering especially in combat.

And, not for nothing but you said "We aren't asking for a complete engine overhaul from scratch" but you in effect are, as implementing DX12 would require ZOS to write and optimise the shader compilation. That would require a big re-write on the engine.

As for the textures, there are some truly terrible ones in game and they are in need of a severe overhaul. If they were to introduce 4k textures then they would have to migrate to DX12 to utilise the latest upscaling, or even people with modern systems would see a dramatic drop in FPS. That's a lot of development time, and given where the game stands with coming crossplay, and console hardware limitations, as well as the average age of player PCs, it will be little gain for a lot of effort.

That is not to say that they shouldn't be looking at this, but this will likely be over a matter of years. On a side note: Introducing 4k textures would also massively increase the VRAM requirements, and to cope with that players would likely need 20+ GB of VRAM.

Honestly, this is a massive mix of technical buzzwords and forum myths that completely misses how modern game engines, APIs, and hardware actually work.
Let’s break down these flaws, especially considering the game is now over 10 years old.

1. The 20+ GB VRAM Myth
Saying that introducing 4K textures would require "20+ GB of VRAM" is factually absurd.
There are countless modern games (and heavy graphical mods for older games like Skyrim or Fallout 4) that utilize 4K texture packs flawlessly on 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB GPUs.
Modern engines use texture streaming, the game doesn't load every single 4K asset of the entire continent into the memory at once, only what’s in your immediate view.

2. Confusing Textures with Upscaling (DLSS/FSR)
You are completely mixing up two different concepts. 4K textures impact VRAM capacity, not GPU rendering compute power. Upscaling tech (like DLSS or FSR) does the exact opposite: it renders the game at a lower internal resolution (like 1080p) and scales it up to save performance.
You don't "need DX12 upscaling to handle 4K textures". DX11 can handle high-res textures perfectly fine if the VRAM is there.

3. The "Engine Overhaul" Excuse
While migrating an API is definitely work, saying it requires "rewriting the engine from scratch" is a massive exaggeration. Look at World of Warcraft (an MMO much older than ESO): Blizzard successfully implemented DX12 and Ray Tracing into their ancient engine without "rewriting it from scratch". It requires investment, shader compilation optimization, and dev time, yes, but it is a pipeline upgrade, not a total engine rewrite.

4. CPU Bottlenecks and 10 Years of Technical Debt
You claim modern CPUs don't suffer from bottlenecks in ESO. That's entirely false. ESO runs on a decade-old engine that is heavily reliant on single-core CPU performance. Go to a crowded city or Cyrodiil during peak hours: your GPU will sit idle while a single thread of your CPU screams for mercy.
This is exactly where a proper DX12 or Vulkan implementation excels, because it distributes the driver overhead across multiple CPU cores, stabilizing those awful FPS drops and stutters in heavy combat.

The Real Reason for me
Let’s stop making up fake technical barriers to defend a multi-million dollar studio.
The reason ZOS hasn't given us a 4K texture pack or a modern API option isn't because "the tech isn't there" or "it requires 20GB VRAM".

It's purely maybe a financial and business decision. They still support old-gen consoles (PS4/Xbox One) and want the game to run on the lowest common denominator of player PCs.
They choose not to spend the budget on optional PC graphical updates when they can spend it on the next paid Chapter.
It's about ROI (Return on Investment), not technical impossibility.
After 10 years, asking for modernized assets is a completely reasonable request from the community.


And i conclude in 10 years a little IT can create a entire operating system from nothing for your information.

1. The "view" is massive comprising literally hundreds of textures. To run at 4k resolution with a 4k texture pack would require an absolute truckload of VRAM to run a stable FPS on high settings. Skyrim, which you give as an example, needs at least 16GB of VRAM to run smoothly and have stable fps on high settings. Skyrim has limited 3rd person view, it's a lot smaller than ESOs.

2. I'm mixing up nothing. I didn't say DX11 couldn't upscale, I said it was limited in what scaling it could use. DX12 is designed to work with the latest upscalers.

3. They would have to go through all of the relevant code, and write their own shader compilation (which then requires maintenance). It's not a simple pipeline change. It's an absolute heap of recoding the engine. Oh as you mentioned WoW, guess which famous MMO uses FSR 1.0?!

4. Me stood in a house vs me stood in a city. Hardly a "bottleneck". You'd also see my GPU isn't sitting idle in the city, but it is in the house.

The reason ZOS hasn't given us a 4K texture pack or a modern API option isn't because "the tech isn't there" or "it requires 20GB VRAM".

They still support old-gen consoles (PS4/Xbox One) and want the game to run on the lowest common denominator of player PCs.

You get those statements are at odds with each other, right?!

And again: That is not to say that they shouldn't be looking at this, but this will likely be over a matter of years.

Gabriel, you are continuously proving that you don’t understand the absolute basics of how 3D graphics engines handle assets, memory, and hardware workloads. Honestly, I have no intention of giving you a computer science lecture every time you reply, so you can stop grasping at straws and talking absolute nonsense.

Let’s dismantle your points one last time, because your own arguments and data completely betray you

1. The VRAM, Skyrim, and Camera Distance Myth
Your claim about Skyrim needing "16GB of VRAM" for 4K textures is completely fabricated. 4K resolution has been mainstream since 2013, and games have been releasing with high-resolution texture packs for well over a decade, long before graphics cards with 16GB of VRAM even existed.

More importantly, your argument about "massive views comprising hundreds of textures" proves you don’t know what Mipmapping or LOD (Level of Detail) streaming is. An engine never renders full 4K textures for buildings, trees, or mountains in the far distance. The engine automatically swaps them out for tiny, heavily downscaled versions. Camera distance doesn't exponentially multiply VRAM because 95% of what you see on your horizon uses a microscopic memory footprint.

Vanilla Skyrim with official high-res textures doesn't even cross 6GB, is enough for you?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/Skyrim_High_Resolution_Texture_Pack_Free_DLC/

Even heavily modded 4K setups run perfectly on 10-12GB cards.

2. The Upscaling and DX11 Confusion
You are still confusing asset resolution with render resolution. 4K textures increase VRAM capacity usage; they do not increase the mathematical shading workload of the GPU core. You don’t need an upscaler to run 4K textures if your card has the memory for it.
Furthermore, FSR 2 and FSR 3 run flawlessly on DX11 via standard compute shaders.
DX12 is absolutely not a requirement for modern spatial or temporal upscaling.

3. The WoW Example Backfired Completely
Bringing up World of Warcraft completely destroys your own argument. WoW implemented a highly optimized, native DX12 multi-threaded backend years ago. The fact that they still offer FSR 1.0 as a legacy menu option for players on ancient machines flags the reality of modern development: a studio can modernize their engine with a new API while keeping legacy fallbacks for older hardware. It is a business choice, not an engine rewrite impossibility.

4. Your Own Data Proves the Bottleneck
Look closely at your own screenshot. Your GPU Utilization is at 1% (and only 62% in the other).
Having 1% GPU utilization while getting 71 FPS is the textbook definition of a single-core CPU bottleneck. If your GPU isn't hitting 95–100% utilization, it means it is sitting idle, completely asleep, waiting for your CPU to feed it instructions.
Because ESO's DX11 engine shoves almost all player data, network packets, and draw calls through a single CPU core, that core maxes out and chokes your hardware.
DX12 addresses this exact issue by parallelizing those draw calls across multiple CPU cores to stabilize frames.

5. There is No Contradiction
There is zero contradiction in my statement; you simply chose to misunderstand it.
The technology is there: ZOS is fully capable of writing a modern API render pipeline for the PC client while leaving the old DX11 pipeline intact for older hardware. Countless cross-platform games do this.
They choose not to: It is a corporate, financial decision. They do not want to allocate development budget to PC-specific graphical overhauls when they can spend those resources making the next paid Chapter. It’s an issue of Return on Investment (ROI), not a technical paradox.

6. It is Optional for a Reason
If someone wants to download an optional high-resolution texture pack, it means they have the hardware capability to run it. That's exactly what the word optional means. It doesn't force players with older PCs or legacy consoles to upgrade anything; it just stops holding back those who actually have modern rigs.

Stop playing the classic fanboy with horse blinders on, inventing fake technical limitations to defend a multi-million dollar studio's budgeting decisions. ZOS doesn't update the engine because it's not financially profitable for them, and the community didn't complain enough to have it, not because the technology is an "impossible heap of recoding.

I'm done here. Enjoy your low texture quality and your 1% GPU utilization.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Toriga wrote: »

What happened to the DX12 migration? Why was a core engine update abandoned, leaving a huge chunk of the community with outdated performance tools?

Somewhat of a flawed premise. DX12 is a newer API but is not necessarily superior to DX11, it depends entirely on what the overhead is and what you are trying to achieve.

DX12 is better than DX11 when the CPU is bottlenecked. While ESO can be high CPU usage and bottleneck on older processors, more modern ones don't suffer that fate.

DX11 also provides a higher maximum and more stable FPS than DX12. Where DX12 excels in comparison is the upscaling, but even there it isn't an absolute must, especially for AMD GPUs as games without newer versions of FSR can utilise AFMF on the driver level.

So yes, the technology is dated, but at the same time the performance gain isn't that big, if at all, and may in fact cause a performance loss and additional stuttering especially in combat.

And, not for nothing but you said "We aren't asking for a complete engine overhaul from scratch" but you in effect are, as implementing DX12 would require ZOS to write and optimise the shader compilation. That would require a big re-write on the engine.

As for the textures, there are some truly terrible ones in game and they are in need of a severe overhaul. If they were to introduce 4k textures then they would have to migrate to DX12 to utilise the latest upscaling, or even people with modern systems would see a dramatic drop in FPS. That's a lot of development time, and given where the game stands with coming crossplay, and console hardware limitations, as well as the average age of player PCs, it will be little gain for a lot of effort.

That is not to say that they shouldn't be looking at this, but this will likely be over a matter of years. On a side note: Introducing 4k textures would also massively increase the VRAM requirements, and to cope with that players would likely need 20+ GB of VRAM.

Honestly, this is a massive mix of technical buzzwords and forum myths that completely misses how modern game engines, APIs, and hardware actually work.
Let’s break down these flaws, especially considering the game is now over 10 years old.

1. The 20+ GB VRAM Myth
Saying that introducing 4K textures would require "20+ GB of VRAM" is factually absurd.
There are countless modern games (and heavy graphical mods for older games like Skyrim or Fallout 4) that utilize 4K texture packs flawlessly on 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB GPUs.
Modern engines use texture streaming, the game doesn't load every single 4K asset of the entire continent into the memory at once, only what’s in your immediate view.

2. Confusing Textures with Upscaling (DLSS/FSR)
You are completely mixing up two different concepts. 4K textures impact VRAM capacity, not GPU rendering compute power. Upscaling tech (like DLSS or FSR) does the exact opposite: it renders the game at a lower internal resolution (like 1080p) and scales it up to save performance.
You don't "need DX12 upscaling to handle 4K textures". DX11 can handle high-res textures perfectly fine if the VRAM is there.

3. The "Engine Overhaul" Excuse
While migrating an API is definitely work, saying it requires "rewriting the engine from scratch" is a massive exaggeration. Look at World of Warcraft (an MMO much older than ESO): Blizzard successfully implemented DX12 and Ray Tracing into their ancient engine without "rewriting it from scratch". It requires investment, shader compilation optimization, and dev time, yes, but it is a pipeline upgrade, not a total engine rewrite.

4. CPU Bottlenecks and 10 Years of Technical Debt
You claim modern CPUs don't suffer from bottlenecks in ESO. That's entirely false. ESO runs on a decade-old engine that is heavily reliant on single-core CPU performance. Go to a crowded city or Cyrodiil during peak hours: your GPU will sit idle while a single thread of your CPU screams for mercy.
This is exactly where a proper DX12 or Vulkan implementation excels, because it distributes the driver overhead across multiple CPU cores, stabilizing those awful FPS drops and stutters in heavy combat.

The Real Reason for me
Let’s stop making up fake technical barriers to defend a multi-million dollar studio.
The reason ZOS hasn't given us a 4K texture pack or a modern API option isn't because "the tech isn't there" or "it requires 20GB VRAM".

It's purely maybe a financial and business decision. They still support old-gen consoles (PS4/Xbox One) and want the game to run on the lowest common denominator of player PCs.
They choose not to spend the budget on optional PC graphical updates when they can spend it on the next paid Chapter.
It's about ROI (Return on Investment), not technical impossibility.
After 10 years, asking for modernized assets is a completely reasonable request from the community.


And i conclude in 10 years a little IT can create a entire operating system from nothing for your information.

1. The "view" is massive comprising literally hundreds of textures. To run at 4k resolution with a 4k texture pack would require an absolute truckload of VRAM to run a stable FPS on high settings. Skyrim, which you give as an example, needs at least 16GB of VRAM to run smoothly and have stable fps on high settings. Skyrim has limited 3rd person view, it's a lot smaller than ESOs.

2. I'm mixing up nothing. I didn't say DX11 couldn't upscale, I said it was limited in what scaling it could use. DX12 is designed to work with the latest upscalers.

3. They would have to go through all of the relevant code, and write their own shader compilation (which then requires maintenance). It's not a simple pipeline change. It's an absolute heap of recoding the engine. Oh as you mentioned WoW, guess which famous MMO uses FSR 1.0?!

4. Me stood in a house vs me stood in a city. Hardly a "bottleneck". You'd also see my GPU isn't sitting idle in the city, but it is in the house.

The reason ZOS hasn't given us a 4K texture pack or a modern API option isn't because "the tech isn't there" or "it requires 20GB VRAM".

They still support old-gen consoles (PS4/Xbox One) and want the game to run on the lowest common denominator of player PCs.

You get those statements are at odds with each other, right?!

And again: That is not to say that they shouldn't be looking at this, but this will likely be over a matter of years.

Gabriel, you are continuously proving that you don’t understand the absolute basics of how 3D graphics engines handle assets, memory, and hardware workloads. Honestly, I have no intention of giving you a computer science lecture every time you reply, so you can stop grasping at straws and talking absolute nonsense.

Let’s dismantle your points one last time, because your own arguments and data completely betray you

1. The VRAM, Skyrim, and Camera Distance Myth
Your claim about Skyrim needing "16GB of VRAM" for 4K textures is completely fabricated. 4K resolution has been mainstream since 2013, and games have been releasing with high-resolution texture packs for well over a decade, long before graphics cards with 16GB of VRAM even existed.

More importantly, your argument about "massive views comprising hundreds of textures" proves you don’t know what Mipmapping or LOD (Level of Detail) streaming is. An engine never renders full 4K textures for buildings, trees, or mountains in the far distance. The engine automatically swaps them out for tiny, heavily downscaled versions. Camera distance doesn't exponentially multiply VRAM because 95% of what you see on your horizon uses a microscopic memory footprint.

Vanilla Skyrim with official high-res textures doesn't even cross 6GB, is enough for you?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/Skyrim_High_Resolution_Texture_Pack_Free_DLC/

Even heavily modded 4K setups run perfectly on 10-12GB cards.

2. The Upscaling and DX11 Confusion
You are still confusing asset resolution with render resolution. 4K textures increase VRAM capacity usage; they do not increase the mathematical shading workload of the GPU core. You don’t need an upscaler to run 4K textures if your card has the memory for it.
Furthermore, FSR 2 and FSR 3 run flawlessly on DX11 via standard compute shaders.
DX12 is absolutely not a requirement for modern spatial or temporal upscaling.

3. The WoW Example Backfired Completely
Bringing up World of Warcraft completely destroys your own argument. WoW implemented a highly optimized, native DX12 multi-threaded backend years ago. The fact that they still offer FSR 1.0 as a legacy menu option for players on ancient machines flags the reality of modern development: a studio can modernize their engine with a new API while keeping legacy fallbacks for older hardware. It is a business choice, not an engine rewrite impossibility.

4. Your Own Data Proves the Bottleneck
Look closely at your own screenshot. Your GPU Utilization is at 1% (and only 62% in the other).
Having 1% GPU utilization while getting 71 FPS is the textbook definition of a single-core CPU bottleneck. If your GPU isn't hitting 95–100% utilization, it means it is sitting idle, completely asleep, waiting for your CPU to feed it instructions.
Because ESO's DX11 engine shoves almost all player data, network packets, and draw calls through a single CPU core, that core maxes out and chokes your hardware.
DX12 addresses this exact issue by parallelizing those draw calls across multiple CPU cores to stabilize frames.

5. There is No Contradiction
There is zero contradiction in my statement; you simply chose to misunderstand it.
The technology is there: ZOS is fully capable of writing a modern API render pipeline for the PC client while leaving the old DX11 pipeline intact for older hardware. Countless cross-platform games do this.
They choose not to: It is a corporate, financial decision. They do not want to allocate development budget to PC-specific graphical overhauls when they can spend those resources making the next paid Chapter. It’s an issue of Return on Investment (ROI), not a technical paradox.

6. It is Optional for a Reason
If someone wants to download an optional high-resolution texture pack, it means they have the hardware capability to run it. That's exactly what the word optional means. It doesn't force players with older PCs or legacy consoles to upgrade anything; it just stops holding back those who actually have modern rigs.

Stop playing the classic fanboy with horse blinders on, inventing fake technical limitations to defend a multi-million dollar studio's budgeting decisions. ZOS doesn't update the engine because it's not financially profitable for them, and the community didn't complain enough to have it, not because the technology is an "impossible heap of recoding.

I'm done here. Enjoy your low texture quality and your 1% GPU utilization.

I'll skip over all the misinformation and go straight to the main incorrect presumption: It's at 71 fps because that's where I cap it. If I were to uncap it, I'd be running at 120+ fps and the bottleneck would still hit the GPU before the CPU.

Nothing you just said changes a single thing. You are still refusing to accept reality.
Everything I've laid out is objective fact, and you can't keep insisting that 2+2=5.

Maybe you haven't even read the whole thread, because I already stated in a previous post that they officially announced DX12 back in 2015, only for everything to disappear into total radio silence, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.

Go do some actual research instead of wasting my time, because this is literally my job, and frankly, I'm tired of replying to you just to correct every single piece of misinformation you write.

I think before upgrading the PC versions, we have to look at the real culprit here why high resolution textures, more fancy animations and other things are not happening yet: they have to cut PS4/XboxOne support.

The last months have seen a clear shift finally toward dropping PS4/XboxOne support. The biggest confirmed cases are Call of Duty 2026, Genshin Impact’s future updates, The Finals, PUBG, MLB The Show and games like Fortnite are in limited feature mode. As soon as they drop this 13 old hardware, things might improve.

They sure will have some competition from upcoming MMO's like Guild Wars 3 that are multiplatform and do use all the modern technologies when it comes to visuals. Then there will also be Elder Scrolls 6, while not an MMO, have a big impact on ESO if it lives up to be the next Skyrim.