BethINI (by DoubleYou)

[DoubleYou]

41 minutes ago, thantoasty_ said:

hello, first post, very new to this site but I figured i'd share some of my findings on fallout 4 with bethINI 3.6.

regarding the blocky HBAO+ mentioned above, i also had this issue. 

and regarding the heavy stuttering; i found that when using the bethINI presets, under the [General] list, iTextureUpgradeDistance and iTextureDegradeDistance is pushed WAY, WAY too high. like comically high. its insane. no idea who thought this was a good idea but this if someone could verify that this is happening on their end also, i think we'll have found our culprit. i use the vanilla high res pack and it quickly fills up 8gb vram + 16gb system ram on the very first save load and starts dying badly. these can be changed to their default values easily though if you wanna actually be able to play the game.

here's what bethINI HIGH preset pushes them to...

iTextureUpgradeDistance1=8192!!!!!!!!!
iTextureUpgradeDistance0=4096!!!!!!!!!!
iTextureDegradeDistance1=10240!!!!!!!!!!!!
iTextureDegradeDistance0=6144!!!!!!!!!!!

 

...and here are the vanilla values:
iTextureUpgradeDistance1=1200
iTextureUpgradeDistance0=600
iTextureDegradeDistance1=1500
iTextureDegradeDistance0=800

 

These changes are intentional and in line with what I have said above.

[thantoasty_]

11 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

These changes are intentional and in line with what I have said above.

It seems bethINI medium also has these settings...

obviously you dont have to listen to me at all, but uh, those are disgustingly high. like absolutely ridiculously high. too high. WAY too high. 

i personally leave these at vanilla values because the high resolution texture pack is too big, but i know people often use double the vanilla values to get a nice boost to fidelity, and it doesnt affect performance much either even with lots of texture mods.  these ones are more than 6x greater! far far far too much.

[DoubleYou]

21 minutes ago, thantoasty_ said:

It seems bethINI medium also has these settings...

obviously you dont have to listen to me at all, but uh, those are disgustingly high. like absolutely ridiculously high. too high. WAY too high. 

i personally leave these at vanilla values because the high resolution texture pack is too big, but i know people often use double the vanilla values to get a nice boost to fidelity, and it doesnt affect performance much either even with lots of texture mods.  these ones are more than 6x greater! far far far too much.

It is well known that the Official Fallout 4 HD Texture Pack is a complete waste of resources with very little to no improvement to visual fidelity but at a much higher performance cost. Using higher quality game texture settings for optimized texture sizes produces higher fidelity with better performance. It is definitely better than having textures pop-in right in front of you. I use these settings with Welcome to Paradise Wabbajack with very little if any performance drop, but significantly higher quality.

[thantoasty_]

16 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

It is well known that the Official Fallout 4 HD Texture Pack is a complete waste of resources with very little to no improvement to visual fidelity but at a much higher performance cost. Using higher quality game texture settings for optimized texture sizes produces higher fidelity with better performance. It is definitely better than having textures pop-in right in front of you. I use these settings with Welcome to Paradise Wabbajack with very little if any performance drop, but significantly higher quality.

knew someone was gonna say something about the HD pack LOL.

i use it because literally every texture pack on nexus has issues. many that touch landscape textures break lod's on trees and bushes in a subtle way but once you notice it, its hard to unsee. i wish it were otherwise. hd packs issue is that its huge and SOME textures arent improved. a lot of textures, like clothing, DO look way better - people tend to ignore that once they see the size though (and they're not wrong for that). 

i will try the bethINI values WITHOUT the hd pack real quick just to see what its like.

Edited March 12, 2022 by thantoasty_

[thantoasty_]

25 minutes ago, thantoasty_ said:

knew someone was gonna say something about the HD pack LOL.

i use it because literally every texture pack on nexus has issues. many that touch landscape textures break lod's on trees and bushes in a subtle way but once you notice it, its hard to unsee. i wish it were otherwise. hd packs issue is that its huge and SOME textures arent improved. a lot of textures, like clothing, DO look way better - people tend to ignore that once they see the size though (and they're not wrong for that). 

i will try the bethINI values WITHOUT the hd pack real quick just to see what its like.

tried the tweaks with vanilla textures. used 2gb ~more vram and 1gb~ more system ram upon initial load in boston. no stutters though since vanilla textures are light enough and didnt overload memory limits. using any big texture mods - like luxors HD pack or SavrenX's textures - will still probably cause a bunch of issues with such high upgrade/degrade values. please consider changing these values in a future update, because no matter which way you cut it, they're too big. or reserve such high values for ultra only.

 

[DoubleYou]

I will definitely consider it. Proper testing needs to show at what distance is the tradeoff between performance and quality perceptible in quantitative degrees. My testing is based off vanilla and very well optimized texture packs that had no issue with these draw distances. This obviously will vary with modded setups using textures that may have been enlarged to combat the very low vanilla texture load settings. Different configurations will respond differently, and feedback of this sort is very valuable and appreciated.

[z929669]

2 hours ago, thantoasty_ said:

tried the tweaks with vanilla textures. used 2gb ~more vram and 1gb~ more system ram upon initial load in boston. no stutters though since vanilla textures are light enough and didnt overload memory limits. using any big texture mods - like luxors HD pack or SavrenX's textures - will still probably cause a bunch of issues with such high upgrade/degrade values. please consider changing these values in a future update, because no matter which way you cut it, they're too big. or reserve such high values for ultra only.

You can't really assess VRAM usage unless you reboot and run the game with different settings. VRAM allocation is constant and unpredictable from GPU to GPU. Besides, VRAM usage is overrated. Just because you are maxed out isn't a bad thing. It's likely just efficiency of the GPU. Same as Windows memory management.

[thantoasty_]

14 hours ago, z929669 said:

You can't really assess VRAM usage unless you reboot and run the game with different settings. VRAM allocation is constant and unpredictable from GPU to GPU. Besides, VRAM usage is overrated. Just because you are maxed out isn't a bad thing. It's likely just efficiency of the GPU. Same as Windows memory management.

...i literally rebooted with different settings though? i was testing the vanilla upgrade/degrade vs the new bethini ones with vanilla tex. same place on the map, same save, taken right after loading in. just to see how much more resources were being used on hwinfo. 

also i understand the difference between vram being "allocated" and actually being fully utilized. one has a massive performance pentalty - the other does not. as was shown when i booted with the bethini settings + high resolution texture pack and the game ate all memory and was unplayable. 

5600X / 16Gb 3800MHz / Vega 64 8Gb @1080p

15 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

I will definitely consider it. Proper testing needs to show at what distance is the tradeoff between performance and quality perceptible in quantitative degrees. My testing is based off vanilla and very well optimized texture packs that had no issue with these draw distances. This obviously will vary with modded setups using textures that may have been enlarged to combat the very low vanilla texture load settings. Different configurations will respond differently, and feedback of this sort is very valuable and appreciated.

appreciate you responding so candidly. looking forward to future updates <3

Edited March 13, 2022 by thantoasty_

[azumukupoe]

following @thantoasty_'s tip the stutter seems to have gone away for me

thank you

[Rebel47]

On 3/12/2022 at 10:56 PM, thantoasty_ said:

tried the tweaks with vanilla textures. used 2gb ~more vram and 1gb~ more system ram upon initial load in boston. no stutters though since vanilla textures are light enough and didnt overload memory limits. using any big texture mods - like luxors HD pack or SavrenX's textures - will still probably cause a bunch of issues with such high upgrade/degrade values. please consider changing these values in a future update, because no matter which way you cut it, they're too big. or reserve such high values for ultra only.

 

Odd considering when I was running my tests, and even when loading with the same settings you listed, I never clocked more than 3Gb of System ram being used and mostly 85% and upwards of gpu usage, I consider that normal behaviour for BGS games, but if you are willing to test this in your game with new starts and system reboots to clear out any possible artifacts from previous tests and provide results that prove your theory correct I'd be more than happy to try your then revised settings.

 

Good luck with your testing, looking forward to your results.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Rebel47 said:

Odd considering when I was running my tests, and even when loading with the same settings you listed, I never clocked more than 3Gb of System ram being used and mostly 85% and upwards of gpu usage, I consider that normal behaviour for BGS games, but if you are willing to test this in your game with new starts and system reboots to clear out any possible artifacts from previous tests and provide results that prove your theory correct I'd be more than happy to try your then revised settings.

Good luck with your testing, looking forward to your results.

You will need to look at your GPU VRAM rather than system RAM. If there is 4 Gb+ VRAM, then VRAM consuption really doesn't mean much. It's more about GPU memory clock and allocation decisions/longevity/timings.

Obviously, based on two people's independent results on this topic, reducing the INI values works, so allocation is not optimal with those settings for at least some systems.

[thantoasty_]

18 minutes ago, z929669 said:

You will need to look at your GPU VRAM rather than system RAM. If there is 4 Gb+ VRAM, then VRAM consuption really doesn't mean much. It's more about GPU memory clock and allocation decisions/longevity/timings.

Obviously, based on two people's independent results on this topic, reducing the INI values works, so allocation is not optimal with those settings for at least some systems.

^^^
all I can say is this. 

increasing the upgrade/degrade values WILL increase vram usage. no room for argument on that.

depending on your texture mods, total vram and system ram, you might be fine.

for me, 8gb vram, 16gb system ram, 1080p, !with the bethesda hd texture pack!, these settings were too much and ate all resources.

if vram limits are exceeded, textures will be loaded and stored on system ram instead, which is why BOTH of them filled up for me.

as evidenced by the some of these posts, im not the only one that had this issue. take care to monitor your system. i use hwinfo64. cpu-z and gpu-z are great too - and much simpler.

 

 

[z929669]

19 minutes ago, thantoasty_ said:

if vram limits are exceeded, textures will be loaded and stored on system ram instead, which is why BOTH of them filled up for me.

This is the key point. it's like maxing out your Windows memory cache/swap and going to page file as a fallback. Much degraded performance. Gaming memory speed must be near real time.

[Rebel47]

@thantoasty_

Have you made any more progress with testing these settings? I'm keen on reviewing and eventually testing your findings.

For my system specs you can click on the small link under my posts.

[thantoasty_]

4 hours ago, Rebel47 said:

@thantoasty_

Have you made any more progress with testing these settings? I'm keen on reviewing and eventually testing your findings.

For my system specs you can click on the small link under my posts.

here's some VERY basic stuff i did. pc specs on profile.

ALMOST vanilla game -  no mods on mo2, but i have some things installed manually, like buffout, f4se, high fps fix etc. 60fps cap. no modded textures. no beth high res pack. 
i also disabled TAA, AO and fog in game to get a super sharp image. tested in/near boston since thats the absolute worst case for vram/ram usage. very dense area.

this is with vanilla upgrade/degrade.
~2450mb VRAM usage, 7gb system RAM usage.

     iTextureDegradeDistance0=800 iTextureDegradeDistance1=1500 iTextureUpgradeDistance0=600 iTextureUpgradeDistance1=1200

 

-----------------------------------------------------
this is with DOUBLED upgrade/degrade from vanilla values.
~2900mb VRAM usage, 7gb system RAM usage.

     iTextureDegradeDistance0=1600 iTextureDegradeDistance1=3000 iTextureUpgradeDistance0=1200 iTextureUpgradeDistance1=2400

--------------------------------------------------------

 

this is with the BethINI High values for upgrade/degrade from 3.6
~4500mb VRAM usage, 7.4gb system RAM usage.

     iTextureDegradeDistance0=6144 iTextureDegradeDistance1=102400 iTextureUpgradeDistance0=4096 iTextureUpgradeDistance1=8192
 

 

remember, this is with the vanilla textures. not very big at all, yet theres an IMMEDIATE 2gb vram increase over vanilla values after the first save load after booting the game with bethINI high preset values.
these screenshots are only @ 1080p so it makes it harder to see any visual changes. regardless, i see none. could be the area i chose, though.
at 1440p or 2160p, maybe you will see some visual improvement. but vram usage also increases at higher resolutions. 
these increases in vram will be more severe with modded textures. to what degree will depend on how many you have, and how big they are.

this is PURELY my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. i do not think upgrade/degrade values need to be increased from vanilla at all. 
but if you ABSOLUTELY must, just double them. i think thats good enough.

Edited March 15, 2022 by thantoasty_