Good Performance Hunting

[z929669]

Updated what I will call my own "official" DDSopt performance review results (

 

Now with both Hi-end-rig & Lo-end-rig results and a performance summary.

[stoppingby4now]

Kind of surprised by the low performance results. But the apparent "fixing" of the textures is enough to run through the process. Curious what the results would be like out in open fields.

[Bealdwine]

Updated what I will call my own "official" DDSopt performance review results (<-- link to previous updated post)Now with both Hi-end-rig & Lo-end-rig results and a performance summary.

Excellent stuff zMan, thank you :) I do hope you are right about the cumulative benefits for VRAM and as there appears to be no appreciable reduction in quality I will be trying the technique on the major texture packages on my next clean install for 2.1.

 

The process is a bit involved but as s4n said it's worth it for the visual corrections alone. The 'smudged' trees always dig bug me badly ;)

[Bealdwine]

On another note: For those of us scrabbling for every FPS from our older rigs I have been trying out FPS Background Booster in conjunction with iObit's Game Booster 3 and seem to be gaining about 3-5 fps which finally takes me up to around the 20 FPS mark out of doors.

 

FPSBB uses a technique employed by Microsoft in their Media Player that encourages the CPU to reach it's maximum (safe) capacity. Therefore it is not Skyrim specific and if it works at all on your rig (there are a number of variables and it may be of no benefit to some systems) it will increase performance for any games you play.

As my main bottlenecks in Skyrim (apart from Bethesda's own code :P ) are CPU and VRAM I did gain some benefit but 'mileage will vary'. I am less certain about the gains from Game Booster 3 but it doesn't hurt to try and they work happily together.

 

Some people have found the instructions for FPSBB confusing according to their thread, basically run the .exe before skse_launcher and simply leave the cmd box it opens alone until you finish the game then end it before you shut down the PC. There are instructions for using a bat file to get everything running in one shot if you prefer that method.

[z929669]

@Beald

The large texture packs may already be optimized, but it doesn't hurt to run them through anyway just in case they missed some or used diff settings. It will not change anything that is already "to spec". Just remember to add your analogous water textures to the DDSopt ini as they are already added for Pure Waters and RWL.

 

RE FPSBB, I will give it a try on both hi and lo systems and report back the results. I'll need to install more of STEP on the hi system as my FPS is capped at 60 almost everywhere, so I will need to add more stress. The lo system is ready on just plain vanilla! I'll use the same procedure to keep comparability.

 

Also want to try SkyBoost when it gets updated.

[stoppingby4now]

Don't hold your breath on SkyBoost. :P

[frihyland]

Alexander said that going forward he was not going to update skyboost until 30 days after bethesda releases a patch, at their current rate that will be never.

[stoppingby4now]

@zMan

I'm going through your DDSopt guide, and step 4.2 you say to combine the directories from 01 and 02 and let them overwrite, but you don't say which one should overwrite the other.

 

Also wanted to make sure I'm getting the right file for Vano's fixes. In step 2.2 you have a link to Textures BugFix ---FOR EVERY VERSION---, but the link no longer references a valid mod. The only file from the first link is Bethesda Hi-Res Optimized --FOR EVERY VERSION-- which is over 700MB in size. Should I go ahead and apply that one still?

[z929669]

@zMan

I'm going through your DDSopt guide, and step 4.2 you say to combine the directories from 01 and 02 and let them overwrite, but you don't say which one should overwrite the other.

 

Also wanted to make sure I'm getting the right file for Vano's fixes. In step 2.2 you have a link to Textures BugFix ---FOR EVERY VERSION---, but the link no longer references a valid mod. The only file from the first link is Bethesda Hi-Res Optimized --FOR EVERY VERSION-- which is over 700MB in size. Should I go ahead and apply that one still?

 

 

That guide is in need of update ...

 

It should not matter which HR pack overwrites the other, as there should be no overlap, so the end result will be the same I think. However, 02 traditionally overrides in-game, so maybe it is best to write over 01 with 02.

 

Yep, go with the most recent Vano package.

 

I have found some more textures in that pack compressed as DXT5 when they should be DXT1 (half the size), so I imagine he will update this when I let him know (probably will address specifically tonight).

 

I'll have much more on DDSopt for SHD and SRO shortly. Testing both now and should finish tonight (if the wifey lets me ;))

[Bealdwine]

I'll have much more on DDSopt for SHD and SRO shortly. Testing both now and should finish tonight (if the wifey lets me ;))

 

Not wishing to throw a spanner in the works ;) but which version of Skyrim HD - 2K are you testing with zMan?

The author appears to have split his pack not only into a Full & Lite option in version 1.5 but also into seperate downloads for Dungeons, Landscape, Misc., and Towns.

 

Due to my system limitations I generally use the Lite versions.

[SmegmusMagnus]

Alexander has posted that he has begun work on Boost for 1.5.26.

 

I have had fantastic success w/ Boost, so much so that I am still using the 1.4 exe, and STEP 2.01 (w/ about 30 other mods as well); I also use Gamebooster. I'm running a 4x 2.9GHz w/ 6g RAM + the 1g GTX 560 ti; I also dedicated around 400g of my terabyte HD to act as memory. The balance of all these manipulations is that my game runs with almost buttery smoothness.

 

 

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[z929669]

 

I'll have much more on DDSopt for SHD and SRO shortly. Testing both now and should finish tonight (if the wifey lets me ;))

 

Not wishing to throw a spanner in the works ;) but which version of Skyrim HD - 2K are you testing with zMan?

The author appears to have split his pack not only into a Full & Lite option in version 1.5 but also into seperate downloads for Dungeons, Landscape, Misc., and Towns.

 

Due to my system limitations I generally use the Lite versions.

 

 

I have the numbers now for 1k for both SHD and SRO. Will add 2k tonight and look at DDSopt results as well as compare the performance & appearance between texture packs.

 

Prelim results are in my original benchmark post further up this thread, but I can say in addition right now that SRO 1k is already completely DDSopt-imized, but SHD is definitely NOT. Descent gain in VRAM by optimizing SHD 1k. Performance is also better for SRO 1k than for SHD 1k, by just a smidge.

[stoppingby4now]

@zManI'm going through your DDSopt guide, and step 4.2 you say to combine the directories from 01 and 02 and let them overwrite, but you don't say which one should overwrite the other.

Also wanted to make sure I'm getting the right file for Vano's fixes. In step 2.2 you have a link to Textures BugFix ---FOR EVERY VERSION---, but the link no longer references a valid mod. The only file from the first link is Bethesda Hi-Res Optimized --FOR EVERY VERSION-- which is over 700MB in size. Should I go ahead and apply that one still?

 

That guide is in need of update ...It should not matter which HR pack overwrites the other, as there should be no overlap, so the end result will be the same I think. However, 02 traditionally overrides in-game, so maybe it is best to write over 01 with 02.

Yep, go with the most recent Vano package.

I have found some more textures in that pack compressed as DXT5 when they should be DXT1 (half the size), so I imagine he will update this when I let him know (probably will address specifically tonight).

I'll have much more on DDSopt for SHD and SRO shortly. Testing both now and should finish tonight (if the wifey lets me ;))

 

I thought at first it was just going to be the directories that it asks to merge, but the copy hit a dds file which is why I asked. Stupid me didn't even think about load order and base it off that.

[z929669]

Alexander has posted that he has begun work on Boost for 1.5.26.

 

I have had fantastic success w/ Boost, so much so that I am still using the 1.4 exe, and STEP 2.01 (w/ about 30 other mods as well); I also use Gamebooster. I'm running a 4x 2.9GHz w/ 6g RAM + the 1g GTX 560 ti; I also dedicated around 400g of my terabyte HD to act as memory. The balance of all these manipulations is that my game runs with almost buttery smoothness.

 

 

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

 

 

assume '4x' means 4 core? Can you be more specific? Intel AMD? Processor? Sounds like a decent rig, so more info on the effects of each of those boosters on a controlled bench would be interesting... not sure that you need to allocate any of your HDD to memory, as you should have plenty (and HDD 'RAM' should be pretty choppy if you actually ever need it). In fact, you are most likely not even close to consuming your available VRAM. Bleeding out to even system RAM will give you a lot of stuttering ;)

[stoppingby4now]

I agree with zMan, 400GB for a page file is not enabling your smooth play. While it doesn't hurt anything, that is a huge waste of disk space. With that much RAM, I would set the min and max to 6GB. If you wanted to be on the ultra safe side, you could go 8-10GB.

 

I'll also through this out there. While there are articles that paint a picture on the benefits of having a min and a max for the page file to allow it to grow, it's a load of bull (I always set min/max to the same). You don't want the page file to adjust, as it leads to unwanted fragmentation. If the min value is set too low, it can lead to disk thrashing which is definitely detrimental to performance. In other words, for best performance, you never want the min to be exceeded.