Good Performance Hunting

[z929669]

@zManI did use your settings from this post rather than the ones in the guide for the constraints tab. So essentially, I don't need to do the steps using Compressonator at all, right? I must have missed, or it didn't sink in, about the MSE being a false negative.

To recap what I did:

 

• Extracted textures and dcl01 & 02.
• Fixed paths/filename.
• Combined the dlc and the vanilla textures.
• Applied Vano's 00 Core files from his archive.
• Ran DDSopt with constraint settings that you provided in this thread.
• Ran compressonator to get the report.
• Used Excel to generate commands.

Gathering from your post, I can drop 4, 6, and 7?

EDIT: I wanted to run through this to see what the results were on my system. I have 3GB of VRAM, so I'm not worried about running out.

 

 

Yep, that's right. You can still do option #4 if you want, but not 6/7. Your VRAM is admirable, so I would to full blast wherever possible (Vano is not necessary for you!) :envy:

[stoppingby4now]

This is very interesting. I installed the latest Beta drivers from nVidia, and wanted to see what kind of performance increase there was with the untouched textures and DLC. When looking at those areas that have always appeared smudged before...they actually look like what they were intended to be...ice patches, complete with light reflection.

 

[z929669]

I can see that somewhat in the last image you posted, but not so much in the first two. The stone meshes on that walkway in Windhelm are among the WORST in the game. I really hope that SMIM addresses this mess ...

 

You ought to compare with the DDSoipt'ed versions....

[stoppingby4now]

I'll compare with DDSopt versions soon. Based on the position of the sun, not all patches are reflecting. But in the first image, look at the area just below the top stairs. The right most ice patch has a bright reflection. With the second image, I shifted to the left, and the right most patch, and two to its left are reflecting. I wasn't getting this prior to these drivers.

 

Walking up to them reveals more reflection (which is more demonstrated in the 3rd picture).

[z929669]

OK, I finished my relatively big undertaking of creating standardized benchmarks for effects of DDSopt:

IMAGES REMOVED... OUTDATED

 

 

There is LOTS of info here, so I will be adding to the new Texture-Overhaul/DDSopt Guide on the wiki with links to all of the screens (of which there are MANY... one for each benchmark. Will need to wait for s4n to ready HighSlide galleries first I think to facilitate proper compares)

 

 

In my hours of screwing around with this, I have a new found respect for SRO as my favorite texture overhaul. SHD still has a few textures that I prefer, but I have not yet tested mixing my preferences to see what it looks like in game. I will do that next and post those screens at some point for eval. In the meantime, here are some compares of (L/T-R/B):

 

 

SHD2k-SRO2k | Markath | Riverwood | White Phial | Whiterun | Windhelm

 

IMAGES REMOVED... OUTDATED

 

Anyway, hope this is useful until I can get this properly created on the wiki.

[stoppingby4now]

So I redid DDSopt. The only caveat is that I had applied Vano's Core files to the texture set, so that is still there. I don't have the extracted files without, so I'm going to redo that process and not apply Vano's to see if there is any difference.

 

In any case, I'm still not getting any type of correction that you are seeing with those ice patches. I've lost all reflections on them, so in my case, the non DDSopt'ed versions look better.

 

Snow looks normal again though:

 

[Bealdwine]

That is a fascinating set of figures, and even more so the comparrison images. I keep flipping back and forth with them and trying to decide if I prefer the harsher 'grungy' look of HD - 2K, or the cleaner (and slightly more detailed (?)) look of SRO. It's a difficult one - but a great way to do subjective comparrisons, thank you.

[stoppingby4now]

I'm a fan of the SRO textures as well, especially with grass and stone.

 

I also loaded up SRO and did a test, and I'm getting proper reflections with it installed as well from the ice patches in Windhelm. I don't know what's going on, because indications are that my results and zMan's are swapped.

[MontyMM]

Good work gentlemen. Death to spurious anecdotal evidence!

[z929669]

I'm a fan of the SRO textures as well, especially with grass and stone.

 

I also loaded up SRO and did a test, and I'm getting proper reflections with it installed as well from the ice patches in Windhelm. I don't know what's going on, because indications are that my results and zMan's are swapped.

 

 

It may be that Vano overwrites those ice patches? I can think of nothing else :scratching head:

[stoppingby4now]

I'm going to redo DDSopt tonight with just the vanilla and DLC and see what happens.

 

The other thing I notice is when looking at the ice patches at an angle, reflections look great. When I get close, the reflection is very pixelated.

[torminater]

My desktop rig is pretty badass, but my laptop rig is not quite as good. So I'll check out the performance increase plus slight graphical improvements on my laptop and the graphical decrease from max-res mods to optimized mods on my desktop.

If you can present the community a close-to-perfect pro/con-list of DDSopt and other methods I'll be glad to check them out and give some feedback via screenshots/vids/whatever.

[Democrab]

 

Completely disabling the pagefile when using HDD's can still be detrimental to performance. Some Windows components force information out to the page file, and if one doesn't exist that information gets created as temp files, which further adds to the fragmentation problem.

 

 

Not if you turn off those components :D Most of them are silly safety and compatibility stuff, who needs that. But yeah this is not a path for the feint of heart, bsods will occur, its just how often. And you can create a RAMdisk for the swapfile if you have 32GB of memory which is my plan, all to fool the silly operating system that can't use it all but thinks it needs more and more in order to function.

Good catch stopping I was thinking aloud about my own build while giving tuning advice, not a good combo, wouldn't want to be responsible for that mess.

 

 

 

I'm yet to get any BSODs without a pagefile, the only issue I get at all is Battlefield 3 crashing if it runs out of vram. I recommend only 1GB vram if you have 8GB of RAM or above (For safety reasons) and 2GB with 4GB RAM, and none of the C:\ drive. Any BSODs already give you a code that lets you work the reason out easily.

 

Anything more is just a massive waste, I tax my system hard with multi-tasking (Right now I'm at 6GB RAM used) and I've never needed more than that.

 

Specs: Phenom II x4 B50 (x2 550 unlocked) @ 3.4Ghz, GTX 470, 8GB DDR3-1866 CL9 (Running at 1600Mhz), 256GB Crucial M4 for main drive, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB normal HDDs for storage, documents, etc.

[stoppingby4now]

BSOD's are indeed rare these days. I have still found a few occasions where having the crash data was useful for me over the years. Mostly it's needed for the oddball crashes that are not common, which thankfully does not happen very often anymore, and for those times when I'm not paying attention enough and don't look at the BSOD code.

 

But those are good suggestions. I have 16GB of RAM, and I have 3 1GB pagefiles setup across three drives, including C: because I want kernel debug information should I crash.

[z929669]

My desktop rig is pretty badass, but my laptop rig is not quite as good. So I'll check out the performance increase plus slight graphical improvements on my laptop and the graphical decrease from max-res mods to optimized mods on my desktop.

If you can present the community a close-to-perfect pro/con-list of DDSopt and other methods I'll be glad to check them out and give some feedback via screenshots/vids/whatever.

 

 

Working on the DDSopt guide on the wiki now. This will take some time, as it is largely a revision of a previous guide, but with a whole lot more added from my latest round of testing. Will need to create a big table I think.