ENB Recommendations and Framerate Suggestions

[phazer11]

Alright so I think I have all of my freeze's taken care of, now I just need to get FPS up so it's more playable. Currently with an ENB (doesn't really matter which) I drop to ~18-23 FPS with a max of 25 (32 if I'm lucky and disabled DOF).

 

I'm using the Skyrim Revisited recommended ENB (Realvision) at the moment with DOF off but it seems lacking for my tastes. I don't care terribly much if I have DOF on or not (if it's on it needs to be fast) and any DOF probably needs to be pretty light on resources/frame rate.

 

 

I've looked at the ENB guide and while I have not followed it completely configuration wise I have done things such as put steam in offline mode. I've used Razor Game Booster before but would prefer not to use it. I currently have it setup to load Skyrim Performance Monitor which is set to load Mod Organizer.

 

I used to use Pineapple Vision ENB (customized so it was less dark) and liked that but it was also similarly heavy on resources (about 50% Framerate loss) and Fimbulwinter is good but too washed out and would need a palette change among other things. Skyrealism looks promising as does Project ENB but I need to get the settings right. I also have seen some amazing pictures using an ENB and mods (a fair number from STEP) here not a fan of all that grass from lush grass and trees however. But I'm looking into the ENB he says he has customized to see how it is.

 

I've enclosed my .ini files from Mod Organizer's Editor.

 

If there was a way to make Skyrim open in a borderless window at 1600x900 and fill the screen I'd try that but reducing the resolution from 1920x1080 (for everything) to 1600x900 looks really screwy on my monitor and Borderless window does seem to help with fps a bit.

 

 

Ideas?

Also I know Skyrim.ini says it's missing something but I can't find the Warning file to see what.

Skyrim.ini

SkyrimPrefs.ini

[FCqt]

Guessing the seam is also vanilla. Helgen is horrible for seams.

Winner, winner chicken dinner. Seam is in Vanilla with HRDLC and USKP, UHRP

 

Oh the horror I forgot HOW bad the farmhouses and wood poles looked *shudders*. Save me. All this testing has made me curious. Vanilla with Optimized HRDLC, USKP and UHRP ran between 900-1250 MB of RAM and about a constant 1000-1350MB VRAM the VRAM was always higher so my question is what causes the RAM to bloat so much is it a script mod or just the textures (I realize it's more of a combination but which mod contributes the most). I mean fully modded I use about 2600-2850 RAM with optimized textures and about 2250 VRAM. There seems to be a significant disparity here.

The textures, scripts and possibly meshes contribute towards high memory usage. I figured this out recently as I was re-doing my setup for a ctd free experience.

I stripped all the fluff that I didn't consider crucial for myself to reduce high memory usage... i.e high quality world map, loading screen, etc.

I was able to run with Hi-Res optimized and all the other texture at their full 2k glory and I was still at about 2.4gb of ram.

Then I started activating a bunch of script intensive mod like RND, Frostfall, Footprint, Dual Sheath, Wet and Cold, etc.

The memory usage sky-rocket to the point I was CTD'ing on entering Candlehearth Hall in Windhelm.

 

A simple SRO normal map optimization to 1k gave me 400mb room to play with. :)

 

Basically, every single mod you add have a high chance of adding to the memory usage so in my opinion you should ask your self "do I really need this" and not install every single mod because "you can".

 

EDIT:

It's hard to tell which non-textures mod contribute the most to high memory usage unless you test them out individually or know how the mod work internally.

[Aiyen]

It is also something that has puzzled me... however I do not think it is possible to really understand how the game assigns memory unless one had full access to the source code.

Another curious thing is the following.

Back a few months ago when we started doing ddsopting etc. to bring down the memory use we ran into a funny thing.

Two SR installs.. with the same texture load and install sizes etc.

one person has a 2Gb card, another a 4Gb card.

 

The person with 2Gb reports one VRAM figure, the guy with 4Gb another. Even though they stand in the same spot ingame and have loaded exactly the same amount of resources. Both games are stable etc.

 

However if one only had 1Gb of VRAM one is just not able to even load the same scene without the game going CTD, freezing etc. (I tried and verified that using my old 768Mb card).

So VRAM has something to say, but its effect on stability is largely overrated on several forums and sites around the web.

 

Also when you are using ENB then it reserves about 100-200Mb of VRAM.

 

Edit: Also what Fcqt said about mods... everything adds something obviously. The more space textures take up, the less room there is for scripts etc. This makes them unstable, and unstable scripts result in computation errors, which result in entries in memory which are not there, which cause any program to just crash.

 

Also a script mod will have many scripts activated at one point, while at another not so many... they are dynamic depending on what you do ingame. So it is more or less impossible to say how much any given script mod uses. At best you could make a very rough estimate... but it would be really hard to compare mods that way since the basis for comparison is really fuzzy.

[phazer11]

Well I would imagine that the larger the amount of VRAM you have the more "bloat" room it uses kind of like system RAM. It works that way for a lot of the programs I can think of whether or not they are correctly coded or not I don't have the time to try decompiling them to see.

 

But I noticed that when I used 4GB of system RAM say Firefox for example would use 1024mb of system RAM under one of my normal usage conditions. I then opened up the same install with 16GB of system RAM and it used for example 2048mb. Obviously these aren't the exact figures but I did see an increase in the amount of System RAM a program uses dependent upon the amount of system RAM the computer has which sort of makes sense.

 

But what I was asking was has anyone done a test to see which mods contribute the most to RAM usage? I could care less about VRAM usage as I usually have about 700MB-1GB Free VRAM at any given time it's the RAM that puzzles me and I have taken out many things like the loading screen additions as with my SSD's I rarely wait 1 second before it's loaded (3-5 with the ENB causing a slight hang in the runtime)

[Aiyen]

Answered in the other thread! ;)

[phazer11]

Answered in the other thread! ;)

Which one? Oh Nevermind.

 

You mentioned an ENB thread before I thought you were talking about the one for the wiki guide am I wrong? If so which thread.

[Aiyen]

You wrote in the General support thread with the exact same issue. I responded there.

 

There is a thread called ENB issues, and one called Lighting, Weather and ENB.

 

When I say thread I mean within the Skyrim Revisited subforum... sorry should have been more clear on that.

[phazer11]

Meh no problem really, never hurts to do extra reading.

 

By the by what would you recommend to help me eek out more fps outdoors grass on steroids? As far as draw distances go what would you recommend

[Aiyen]

This is what I use.... it gives about 3-5 FPS on my system depending on location. 

If you reduce the values further then I guess you could get more. I also have shadows on grass enabled in the skyrimprefs... If you remove that you also get some extra performance. 

 

Skyrim.ini grass settings. 

 

[Grass]

bAllowCreateGrass=1

bAllowLoadGrass=0

iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=7

bDrawShaderGrass=1

iMinGrassSize=110

 

 

Skyrimprefs.ini 

 

 

[Grass]

b30GrassVS=1

fGrassStartFadeDistance=6800.0000

fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=6800.0000

fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000

 

[phazer11]

Alright thanks I'll try those. Any recommendations for the towns?

[Aiyen]

If you mean inside cities, then I have never heard of any issues in those performance wise. Not counting the odd stutter here and there due to many actors in some cases.

[phazer11]

Odd... Seems to be my biggest hit ENB wise

[Aiyen]

Well there is not much you can do inside cities, since there are not really any way to reduce the amount of stuff that is rendered. If you want better performance there then I guess you have to reduce shadow quality further...

Other then that then draw distances might be the only way to go.

At least that is what I can come up with off the top of my head.

 

edit: For ENB you can also make sure that reflection is either turned off, or its sizescale is low. That should help a bit as well. Most people tend to forget that reflection take up performance as well.

[phazer11]

I think it is off. Actually what is the value for off 0 I would assume though does it apply to shiny object or just water? If it is 0 for off then it is on. TBH I'm still trying to find an ENB to stick with. You haven't updated yours yet right? I haven't seen an update notification.

[Aiyen]

Nope still testing and tweaking.. but if you have any feedback then just send me a pm :)

 

Also in order to turn reflection of you just put false under [EFFECT] reflection.

[phazer11]

I don't think I was installing yours right. I took the textures and made an archive for MO to install but wasn't sure where to put it in the load order. Do you have skype or something (and mind if we talk there)? That might make this a little easier. If we discover something helpful we can always come back and add it later, this back and forth is killing me.

 

Alright I just ran through Helgen most of the intro loaded a save from the torture room through to Whiterun and got the quest from Farengar that should be a pretty good indicator. I was getting about 22 FPS in the woods around Riverwood with ENB; not quite enough for my archer I'll need to tweak it. I was getting about 24 FPS in Whiterun which is just fine by me as long as I get more than 23.976 (Blu-Ray framerate) I'll be a happy camper. I guess draw distances will probably need to be the next things I edit.

 

Oh BTW Aiyen that's with your preset at 1080P (forgot to edit the d3d9 file so I guess it was using your screen res 1680x1050?). Looks good so far. Let me know if you'd like a guinea pig for your beta version I'd be happy to since I haven't actually gotten my playthrough truly started yet.

Skyrim.ini

SkyrimPrefs.ini