Saviorsrd

Doing a fresh install of STEP Extended, the Extended patch lists "Vividian - Extended Weathers.esp" as a requirement, which isn't in the mod list.

Used this for my last playthrough - worked completely flawlessly.

Yeah. Mind, the shadows thing is crazy regardless, but the best I can say without getting some stock hardware to test on would be putting in a suggestion regarding disabling the meshes if the mod runs into problems on the Wiki and move on. At least assuming nothing that's not quite that performance-crazy shows up as a substitute. This will probably be the last time I post on the topic.

Well, fortunately for you the real issue is only confined to one configuration from a certain manufacturer. Check under your display adapter settings - if it shows 3.5 GB of dedicated video memory, there shouldn't be any weirdness. The problem is specific to EVGA's OC model, not the 970 in general (as far as I know, some other manufacturer might have done something similar.)

I just tried that (even though I told myself I wasn't going to boot up Skyrim today.) No dice. I suspect the reason for the difference may be in the 970 OCs hack to get around the "problems" with the 970's memory. The short short short version is that the GTX 970 effectively only has 3.5 GB of full-speed VRAM with a 512 MB cache. The OC model from EVGA uses some tricks to get that pseudo-cache up to full speed, but can make it really sensitive to problems. Normally, in my experience, that's weird stuttering when VRAM gets close to maxed out (due to the memory not physically being able to keep up with demand) but Skyrim already being a fickle beast, things might be getting weird. Unfortunately, I don't have enough cash for a brand new video card right now, especially not to take care of problems with one mod.

Erm, just to clarify, I did a couple of runs against each mesh individually (nothing else loaded but the mesh) and ALL caused CTDs. They're not just carbon-copies of each other either - even I can tell that just by looking at some of them, there's at least three different ones at work.

Hokay, never mind - I just went ahead and did it, on the assumption that the worst that could happen would be making no effective progress. . . and other than discovering just how many bugs there ARE in Skyrim (they really pop with that default pink-purple shiny texture) the game was stable, so I decided to start going through and started to verify WHICH assets are worth looking at. Unfortunately, the conclusion I came to is that it's everything in \meshes\83Willows101BUGs\ From there, I'm hoping you can do something more with it, but I'm out of ideas for things to try. EDIT: . . . sorry, the 'bugs' pun was not intended.

All right, my appologies for the delay - at some point in the middle of all this I managed to pick up some malware that was throwing off results. Traces seem to be gone, reran the tests up to the point where I was at. So where I stand now is: Vanilla with ENBoost and Unofficial Patches: Works. With modified 86 Willows: CTDs in under 5 minutes. (I'm not reposting the numbers again because it all looks the same at this point.) The only idea I have left to eliminate the assets as the source of the problem would be to...well, eliminate the assets - use MO to hide everything but the plugin itself. Obviously this will result in other issues, but before I proceed with that someone more familiar should probably chime in and inform me what I should be expecting from doing something this drastic.

Hmm...nope, that doesn't seem to have worked either. I'm going to go for broke here and revert completely to vanilla and SKSE only, plus default ini files (which should be good enough to eliminate any remaining variables, since I'm using MO for mods.) I keep an archive of the Steam install for just this kind of situation, so it'll likely be an hour before I'm back. EDIT: ...I've run into obviously unrelated issues. I'll be back when I'm ready to resume testing.

Heh. Right, so, now I've really disabled all those nasty, nasty shadows. Let's start again. Just so we're clear, the only differences from Vanilla are: ENBoost, SKSE, Live Another Life, and the Lo-Res 83 Willows mod with shadows removed from all meshes. Testing begins at the campsite outside Helgen created by LAL Min VRAM: 1285 MB Max VRAM: 1498 MB Time to Crash: 4:36, 1:39, 3:07, 3:36, 9:37 Average Time to Crash: 4:31 Noteworthy points - this DID resolve the issue with the "spiking" VRAM, while it did ramp up it did so smoothly, which is about what I expect from stable runs (until the obvious.) VRAM use was also consistent throughout the tests, and in that same ballpark, so I didn't record individual runs after the second. There was very little stuttering as well. Lastly, I took a direct trip into the swamps near Morthal, where I would expect even more bugs than that river valley, a few times and always crashed instantly. I have no clue what that means, but retesting it gave such consistent results that I don't think numbers matter. What does all this mean? *Tears hair out* I Don't Know!

Hokay, seem to have found them in the right spot this time. Once I go through a proper retest will probably take me about an hour, so go ahead and get to real life. And thanks for the help/discussion so far, I realize not everybody has the day off.

Oh, agreed. I'm going through again, just reporting back because I'd done that BEFORE you mentioned finding them elsewhere.

Entirely possible. At any rate, that would bear out the first run where it helped, but still crashed at about the five minute mark instead of consistently going down in the first three.

...it's a good thing I have all day. EDIT: For reference, the meshes where I found shadows. \meshes\83Willows_101BUGs\DF_Grim \meshes\83Willows_101BUGs\fireflygo_red \meshes\83Willows_101BUGs\Ingred_DF_Green \meshes\83Willows_101BUGs\ladybird \meshes\83Willows_101BUGs\ladybirdgo Off to retest. Low res only.

Is that an option here? I'm pretty sure this mod actually adds new insects to the game - those won't have vanilla textures as an alternative, so doing that would just result in missing texture errors. Ready. I'm here all day, really.

Sure, I'd be willing to give it a try. Let me grab the program, go ahead and PM me the tutorial when you get some time.

Well, thanks for saying so. I guess the fundamental question becomes, is this mod's visual improvements worth that kind of overhead increase and potential stability issues, given the mission statement of a valuable baseline setup?

Right. I didn't remember that the lower-res version existed. I just reran the "River Stress" test with that. Just to recap: What's installed with all tests: SKSE, ENBoost Live Another Life, Unofficial Skyrim Patches. The test is a variant on the standard "stability test" wherein, instead of running at high speeds throughout Skyrim, limiting oneself to the Markath/Solitude river paths (I'm sure it has a name, but I never picked it up.) This is chosen due to a high number of insect spawns in the area. "Vanilla" (nothing but the baseline): Min VRAM used: 1387 MB Max VRAM used: 1537 MB Run time: 15 minutes (before giving up.) With 83 Willows High Res Min VRAM used: 1191 MB Max VRAM used: 1484 MB Run time: 3 minutes Now for the new test with the low res version Min VRAM used: 1286 MB Max VRAM used: 1398 MB Run Time: 2 minutes Another few observations, since I don't really have the tools to chart things: One, while the vanilla test looks kind of similar to the low-res test, the behavior was markedly different. On the low-res, the VRAM usage didn't swing up much until it had several large spikes, up and down, in a row, before crashing. On the Vanilla test, by contrast, VRAM slowly swung up until it hit the maximum, then barely changed at all, within 50 MB at a time. The high-res test, of course, is a different beast. It actually starts out lower than the other two, then rapidly spikes out MUCH higher. Lastly, I've run each test multiple times - while the specific numbers change, the results are remarkably consistent. I'll let the experts draw actual conclusions, or if someone wants to point me at better benchmarking tools so I can provide better details for another few runs I'll try that.

One: Yes, verified it was a correct install. Two: I just did a stability test using just Live Another Life (for convenience), the Unofficial Patches, ENBoost, and this mod. While it passed with a 15-minute run, I noticed periodic VRAM spikes on my second monitor that seemed completely out of line (something along the lines of 200-500 MB at a time) while running around Tamriel. I have a GTX 970 OC, so in essentially Vanilla it's tolerable, but that could explain the CTDs. . . although why on earth it would be an issue on one card and not another, or one setup and not another, is beyond me unless something is trying to do some kind of resource detection and spawn different numbers of "species" based on what's available. And before you ask, I ran the test without it as well, no spikes. I also ran with 83 Willows and without the Unofficial Patches, since if that's an incompatibility it would basically be the kiss of death, and that just caused random CTDs. I include the latter point only for completeness sake, since I'm pretty sure the cause there wasn't the mod. Regardless, based on that I don't think I'll be re-enabling this one on a permanent basis. EDIT: And I just repeated the test with a twist, running up and down along the length of the western river running between Markarth and Solitude, because the area (I've noticed) tends to have a lot of insects. Same memory spike, then CTD within a minute of reaching it. Repeated the test with no mod, smooth as silk and no issue.

I'm going to suggest re-testing this one - I recently did a STEP install and, after extensive testing, found this mod was causing CTD problems. I haven't yet done testing to find out what might be conflicting, but I'll try to get to it in a few days.