SKYRIMLE Skyrim Project Stability by GrandBulwark

[Lanceor]

Like most, I love simple tweaks that improve stability and/or performance, but I have my reservations on whether the tweaks in Project Stability work or not.

 

HPET Tweaks

 

Summary: Tests inconclusive, but I'm avoiding using it.

 

I've run a battery of fifteen-minute tests that show forcing HPET to be quite stable after a system restart. However, with HPET forced it seems that memory errors start to occur after a few hours of gameplay. The only way I can test this scientifically is to change the HPET settings, play for several hours and then run the memory test... a bit more time consuming than I can afford. Just for the record, these are the HPET settings that were available to me and I've tried all four.

 

Setting 1: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock not set (system/BIOS default)

Setting 2: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock true

Setting 3: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock not set

Setting 4: HPET: Enabled, HPET Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock true

 

 

Unparking Cores

 

Summary: No scientific evidence for/against, but I'm using it.

 

All my cores were already unparked due previous registry dabbling. I presume it either helps or does nothing so I'm leaving them unparked.

 

 

CleanMem

 

Summary: No obvious effect so I'm avoiding this tool.

 

I get a lot of load screen freezes on fast travel or cell transition. CleanMem didn't reduce them in any way. I've tried various "memory optimisers" on occasion since the 1990's and have yet to use one that has had a measurable effect. Given the controversy surrounding memory optimisers in general, I'm avoiding this tool.

 

 

But wait, there's more!

 

There's one more tweak that I think would have fit in well with Project Stability and I'm surprised that it wasn't included - turning off hyperthreading in the BIOS. I'm going to start a new thread on this so as not to hijack this thread. :)

 

Edit: I'm a doofus and wrote HPET as HDEP.

[GrandBulwark]

Like most, I love simple tweaks that improve stability and/or performance, but I have my reservations on whether the tweaks in Project Stability work or not.

 

HDEP Tweaks

 

Summary: Tests inconclusive, but I'm avoiding using it.

 

I've run a battery of fifteen-minute tests that show forcing HDEP to be quite stable after a system restart. However, with HDEP forced it seems that memory errors start to occur after a few hours of gameplay. The only way I can test this scientifically is to change the HDEP settings, play for several hours and then run the memory test... a bit more time consuming than I can afford. Just for the record, these are the HDEP settings that were available to me and I've tried all four.

 

Setting 1: HDEP: Enabled, HDEP Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock not set (system/BIOS default)

Setting 2: HDEP: Enabled, HDEP Mode: 32 bit, useplatformclock true

Setting 3: HDEP: Enabled, HDEP Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock not set

Setting 4: HDEP: Enabled, HDEP Mode: 64 bit, useplatformclock true

 

 

Unparking Cores

 

Summary: No scientific evidence for/against, but I'm using it.

 

All my cores were already unparked due previous registry dabbling. I presume it either helps or does nothing so I'm leaving them unparked.

 

 

CleanMem

 

Summary: No obvious effect so I'm avoiding this tool.

 

I get a lot of load screen freezes on fast travel or cell transition. CleanMem didn't reduce them in any way. I've tried various "memory optimisers" on occasion since the 1990's and have yet to use one that has had a measurable effect. Given the controversy surrounding memory optimisers in general, I'm avoiding this tool.

 

 

But wait, there's more!

 

There's one more tweak that I think would have fit in well with Project Stability and I'm surprised that it wasn't included - turning off hyperthreading in the BIOS. I'm going to start a new thread on this so as not to hijack this thread. :)

I'm assuming that you are referring to HPET or the High precision event timer.  They may be inconclusive on your end; however it's largely rig dependent as stated in the guide.

 

CPU parking is a power saving feature; aimed largely at laptops!  It does little to nothing until there is high demand for processing power

 

Cleanmem:

The effect is not supposed to be obvious and of course isn't needed if you aren't crashing in the first place.  The only way that I can "measure" it's effect is in that fact that I was crashing within ten minutes prior to it's use.

 

Turning off Hyperthreading in Bios is motherboard/processor dependent and may or may not have a beneficial effect, not just on skyrim but also upon everything else.

[Lanceor]

I'm assuming that you are referring to HPET or the High precision event timer.

Yes. :facepalm:

 

Editing my post now.

[TheCompiler]

GrandBulwark should be part of the STEP team imho, his knowledge would be of great help to polish and make STEP a more stable and safe experience.

[GrandBulwark]

GrandBulwark should be part of the STEP team imho' date=' his knowledge would be of great help to polish and make STEP a more stable and safe experience.[/quote']

I am honored and I would greatly appreciate that opportunity!

[z929669]

Again, not meaning to be a stick in the mud (I have been saying that a lot lately ... could it be true? :><: but we just had a recent expansion and are undergoing training with lot of people old to this community new the admin team. i think that should wait before adding more members at point.>

 

I must also say that since our team is not in support of said memory "optimizers" per se, it would be misleading to the community to pick up the otherwise-worthy aptitude of GrandBulwark at this moment. I have honestly not read his guide, so it might be very useful other than this one piece.

 

The recent silliness with Jason2112 (ATTK author) and his false claims and clearly less-than-gallant behaviors behind the curtains with Dark0ne one the Nexus and with our admin here have made us generally wary of folks promoting these methods ... not to say that GrandBulwark is not 100% well intentioned.

 

Regardless, I don't want to spoil this thread with a OT debate (level-headed debaters please head over to the thread I linked above for that.) ...

 

... OK, back to the merits of Project Stability (a noble endeavor indeed).

[GrandBulwark]

Again, not meaning to be a stick in the mud (I have been saying that a lot lately ... could it be true? :><: but we just had a recent expansion and are undergoing training with lot of people old to this community new the admin team. i think that should wait before adding more members at point.>

 

I must also say that since our team is not in support of said memory "optimizers" per se, it would be misleading to the community to pick up the otherwise-worthy aptitude of GrandBulwark at this moment. I have honestly not read his guide, so it might be very useful other than this one piece.

 

The recent silliness with Jason2112 (ATTK author) and his false claims and clearly less-than-gallant behaviors behind the curtains with Dark0ne one the Nexus and with our admin here have made us generally wary of folks promoting these methods ... not to say that GrandBulwark is not 100% well intentioned.

 

Regardless, I don't want to spoil this thread with a OT debate (level-headed debaters please head over to the thread I linked above for that.) ...

 

... OK, back to the merits of Project Stability (a noble endeavor indeed).

While I understand your concern, skepticism and I will support any decision that you and the other administrators make; I believe that by passing up my abilities in relation to the STEP team, you would be making a mistake.  Which isn't to say that I am more competent than anyone else here in any way, shape or form.  Rather, it is stating my confidence in my abilities outside of the cleanmem department.

 

Cleanmem USED to be what I "hung my hat on." In relation to my guide; however it has evolved to such an extent that cleanmem is just an experimental, subjective suggestion that I feel has helped me as on my install.  That isn't to say that it will help everyone and that fact is made clear in the guide itself.  

 

As for the rest of your concerns, training won't be a problem; point me to reference guides with the important information and away I go.  As for being like Jason2112; I am in not way affiliated with production or distribution of Cleanmem.  I am just a humble player; with more experience than most.  My guide consists of numerous helpful and generally unknown tweaks such as unparking CPU cores that are shut off by windows 7 to save power, enabling the HPET timer which may or may not decrease stuttering and it points the way to numerous wholesome, wonderful utilities that will help it's users maintain a healthy gaming environment (Operating System).  

 

That's just the stuff that is not directly related to Skyrim.  The users of my guide have access to a guide on how to use BOSS, TES5EDIT(Cleaning&Merging) and a brand spanking new Papyrus Troubleshooting guide just added tonight. :)  All of these JPG guides are original work, they are in a user friendly JPEG format and they are easy for everyone to understand.  

 

The guide also includes on the main page a blacklist of mods.  I hate that section personally, however in the current climate I feel that it is necessary to inform people mods that are potentially dangerous; if nothing else to ensure they backup their saves.

 

It contains links to every pertinent resource, utility, guide I could find.  BSAopt, Boss, Tes5edit, the unofficial patches, the skyrim configurator, SKSE and of course STEP.   It also contains INI edits that that can, in certain cases, improve performance without sacrificing visual quality.  In fact nothing in the guide will cost you any graphic fidelity; it's all about performance without sacrifice.

 

Another useful fact about me; I'm completely OCD.  Anything with my stamp on it; will be as close to perfect as I can get it.  Quite useful when posting guides, eh? ;)

[Deathwing514]

UPDATED

 

So I recently came upon this guide on nexus and was curious if it would actually improve my performance.

 

Like many of you, I was skeptical about his guide and didn't really believe a software like cleanmem would actually benefit or improve my performance.

 

However, after installing this so called cleanmem, and actually doing some extensive testing in heavy fps area's, I did notice an improvement on my game being a little bit more smoother.

 

Now I do want to emphasize that my game was already at 60fps constant (dropping to 59 sometimes) and I am below 2.5 on my vram.

 

My game runs perfectly fine without this program, but during the running in third person, it isn't as smooth as it is with cleanmem.

 

This is just from personal experience and I will not make a judgment call and state that this software will work as intended for every individual.

 

All I can say, is try it for yourself and follow his guideline.

 

If it works Great, If it doesn't, no harm done (uninstall the program)

[EssArrBee]

Are you using ENBoost? I can't imagine cleanmen doing anything in a truly dynamic way while ENBoost lets people use like 6GB VRAM and 1 GB RAM. 6GB of VRAM, what is that like 8k textures?

[Deathwing514]

Are you using ENBoost? I can't imagine cleanmen doing anything in a truly dynamic way while ENBoost lets people use like 6GB VRAM and 1 GB RAM. 6GB of VRAM' date=' what is that like 8k textures?[/quote']

 

I am actually using both ENBoost & cleanmem at the same time.

 

The author states that both these utility do different functions.

 

Also, I do want to state that I have only tried his first step, which is cleanmem.

[Garfink]

Cleanmem does nothing useful that I can see, did nothing for fps or stutters that was measurable and definitely did not help with CTDs, freezes or infinite load screens, just uses up some CPU cycles. Probably doesn't do any harm though, its not like Skyrim uses up all your CPU cores' cycles anyway. (at least with ATTK, it did make Skyrim load a little quicker.)

 

As for the "blacklist" of mods, I too have mods that I recommend people to keep out of their load-order if they are experiencing problems but to actually "blacklist" these mods is a bit unfair. As for most people that isn't modding their game like a nut, mods like EBT and Wet & Cold, even with their ongoing scripts shouldn't cause too much of an issue. Gopher's let's play series is living proof that Wet & Cold is fine if your load list isn't too much. And if you're going to "blacklist" mods, then this is a very incomplete list of mods with running scripts.

 

The guide also recommended various dubious ini settings that either don't do anything in Skyrim or can cause problems in some situations, like the threaded settings do nothing measurable and could potentially cause lock ups. (This section really made me suspicious of the rest of the guide and its credibility the first time I encountered this project)

 

I also recommend for most people to turn papyrus logging off unless you are actually having a problem and be reminded to turn it OFF once you've finished checking.

 

As for window services, most are harmless and take up insignificant resources when idle. So unless you have a very old system (which I did), even then I didn't observe any improvements in stability at all nor fps increases.

 

It just seems that the guide is a collection of "fixes" that the author has found on the internet and have tried and seemed to have helped him in his quest for stability. I think at least a part of the guide doesn't have a solid scientific foundation, has inadequate testing and contains nothing innovative.

 

And any guide about stability that doesn't mention the 3Gb 32bit limits and strongly recommend ENBoost and doesn't give advice about texture size (as a source of instability) is incomplete at best and outdated at worst.

 

(Before anyone jumps down my throat and eat me from the inside out (especially the author of the forementioned project ;) ): This is just my subjective opinion which I am entitled to, like you're entitled to yours, and I probably have as much end-user experience as anyone on this forum in our search for Skyrim Stability.)

[MontyMM]

You certainly are entitled to your opinion, Garfink, particularly when it is correct. :P  I've spent a lot of words on justifying why Cleanmem does not do as it claims, and there's no point going over it all again. But for new members who might not have read through all that jazz, I just offer my personal opinion for those that are interested, though I won't get into more debates about it:

• Cleanmem doesn't do what it claims and creates misleading memory readings. 

• ENBboost is genuine and does work.

• This guide contains several recommendations that I do not agree with, and could cause you significant problems.

[Garfink]

I also note that he says he had no freezes playing the game, completing dragonborn, main quest, etc. etc. Well...big deal!  I had no freezes either with Skyrim out of the box!! Not a single "fix" necessasry, the first time I finished the game! It was only after we all started adding textures & mods that caused me to hit the 3Gb brick-wall and too many concurrent complex scripts that I started experiencing problems.

 

The only positive thing I can say is that the Author of the project's aims are honorable and chivalrous even if I don't agree with many of his observations.

[Smile44]

Just to chime in on this, I did try all of this out before all the discussion began, seemed to work at first but then didn't anymore - I have no evidence that it does anything useful at all.

 

What it does do if you follow the guide is give lots of opportunities to download lots of different utilities all of which have free but so much better if you pay versions. I saw this as a hard sell disguised as a way to make skyrim work - the language used by the people who push these types of software and I include ATTK in this is all hard sell but no real "apparent" substance. Especially in all their arguments on this forum. So I have no interest in any of these so called quick fixes.

 

The game engine can only handle so much no matter how powerful your system is so there is a simple choice when looking for game stability - either use high res graphics for a "beautiful" skyrim but no or very limited scripted gameplay / content / spawn mods OR lower res graphics max 1K for a tougher more immersive gaming experiece and then carefully chosen content / gameplay mods with limited spawns. As soon as you increase the load on the game engine you run the risk of stability issues.

 

Unless somebody rebuilds the game engine completely to be 64 bit and probably other stuff then well there is going to be very limited options and or tweaks that can be done to improve stability but certainly no quick fix such as Cleanmem - which does nothing useful IMO.

 

I'm not accusing anyone of lying here and or on the Nexus in order to make a commission of some kind but IMHO it really just looks and sounds like that and that kind of hard sell presentation almost always = little / no substance and definitely something I don't need.

 

:)

[Aiyen]

If you do not have smooth gameplay with ENBoost then it is because the settings are not setup properly for your machine. This was a well known fact during the "beta" testing. Many people reported sluggish movement while panning etc.

All of those issues where solved by adjusting the settings further. I also had the issue, but I solved it by increasing

ReservedMemorySizeMb=256 -> 512

VideoMemorySizeMb=2048 -> 8192

 

In the enblocal.ini. Do note that increasing above 10Gb has no effect whatsoever since that is the limit Boris hardcoded in.

I have a 2Gb VRAM card and 16Gb DRAM.... game works stable, and loading is smooth, and the only panning issues I have are due to FPS spikes during loading new cells which I can live with.

Do note that depending on which card you have then some of the other settings might also require tweaking.

 

Edit: Just forgot that you where there when all this happened so sorry if you knew already Garfink! :)