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

[phazer11]

Just a bump mainly. Didn't have time to do much yesterday. Which draw distances would help the most without being very noticeable, and which direction do they need to be edited towards (higher/lower) I'd also appreciate it if anyone noticed any glaring issues in my ini's that might slow things down to post here.

[Iroha]

Just a bump mainly. Didn't have time to do much yesterday. Which draw distances would help the most without being very noticeable' date=' and which direction do they need to be edited towards (higher/lower) I'd also appreciate it if anyone noticed any glaring issues in my ini's that might slow things down to post here.[/quote']

Yes, I recommend to erase from skyrymprefs.ini any threaded tweaks, and havok section of skyrim.ini.

I can attach my ini than I will be at home, well - it's almost pure ultra settings, but can be used if you lost your default vanilla ini's.

[phazer11]

I have the default ini in my Vanilla Skyrim Profile under Mod Organizer (fairly certain anyways) it doesn't seem to have the z-fighting tweaks at any rate.

 

What would you recommend setting the draw distances to? I looked through the INI Tweaks sub-forum and didn't find too much in the way of explanations.

Vanilla Skyrim.ini

Vanilla SkyrimPrefs.ini

[Redferne]

Your iMinGrassSize seems to be very low.

If you want more grass I recommend you this mod: https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/33582//?

You should leave iShadowMapResolution=4096 to 2048 especially on a laptop.

You can also try to put fShadowDistance=8000.0000 to 4000.

Shadows are framerate killers.

To use an ENB remember to put bFloatPointRenderTarget=0 to 1.

Beside those I didn't see anything very taxing in your ini's.

 

For the draw distance, beside grass, you can put all the sliders to the middle without a very noticeable difference and the fps gain can be substantial.

 

In ENB the most taxing is DoF, SSAO, Shadows and Bloom. If without those you still need to deactivate some feature you better not use an ENB ^^

 

I hope I helped because I have to admit I haven't read all the topic :p

[phazer11]

Oh those were the vanilla ini files I'm tweaking them to fit with SR and GoS now. I was asking about the other performance tweaks.

[Iroha]

I have the default ini in my Vanilla Skyrim Profile under Mod Organizer (fairly certain anyways) it doesn't seem to have the z-fighting tweaks at any rate.

 

What would you recommend setting the draw distances to? I looked through the INI Tweaks sub-forum and didn't find too much in the way of explanations.

If you really want to reduce draw distance - I suggest that you should reduce only actor fade distance to value about 70-90% from default, object fade distance to 80-90% from default, item fade distance to 70-90% from default. If you using FOV tweak - set 75 instead of 85. 

[phazer11]

I'm just trying to eek out some more FPS so it runs faster without the ENB and therefore smoother with it. I'll look at those I think I edited them some but will check the values.

 

As far as the FOV I just tried 85 (normally use 67) and O.O do the arms and stuff look weird. There's also the slight issues of the carts turning around and other funky things happening during Helgen intro; Hadvar and his horse are closer to the cart etc.

 

I actually had just set them both (FOV) to 75 to test before reading your post

[Iroha]

I'm just trying to eek out some more FPS so it runs faster without the ENB and therefore smoother with it. I'll look at those I think I edited them some but will check the values.

 

As far as the FOV I just tried 85 (normally use 67) and O.O do the arms and stuff look weird. There's also the slight issues of the carts turning around and other funky things happening during Helgen intro; Hadvar and his horse are closer to the cart etc.

 

I actually had just set them both (FOV) to 75 to test before reading your post

hehe, definetly it's "intro carriage glitch". Try to reset videodriver settings for skyrim and remove threaded tweaks if you didn't already

[phazer11]

Well resetting the FOV seemed to fix the carriages but the NPC's seemed to be behind in their lines. I.E. Ralof is cut off talking about Vilod's mead by the carriage stopping or one fo the guards saying General Tullius the Headsman is waiting after you pass Tullius and the Thalmor instead of in front of the gates.

 

Think I should try it with default driver settings? I'm using 314.22 driver with Neo's instructions via Inspector.

[phazer11]

Ok I just have to post(sorry for the double). Shouldn't decreasing my resolution help increase performance by a bit?

I decreased both my ENB fx files resolution to 1600x900, decreased my default resolution through nvidia control panel to 1600x900 and have the borderless window plugin. Framerate without ENB increased but stayed the exact same (as what it was at 1920x1080) when I turned it on.

 

I was playing at 1920x1080 before and that is also my laptop's native resolution

[Iroha]

 Framerate without ENB increased but stayed the exact same (as what it was at 1920x1080) when I turned it on.

 

I was playing at 1920x1080 before and that is also my laptop's native resolution

keep native resolution then

[Aiyen]

Decreasing resolution should help on performance logically, since less stuff needs to be rendered. However on todays cards the difference between 1920x1080 and 1680x1050 are somewhat marginal unless you are using really high AA settings.

If you see the Nvidia comparison/tweak guide for Skyrim you can see what I am talking about.

[phazer11]

Turns out it was the fullscreen=1 flag forgot to turn it to 0 when I re-vanilla'ed my ini's so it did help but only without ENB. I got about 5 FPS more with ENB outdoors, 10 on interiors by going from 1920x1080 -> 1600x900. Non-ENB FPS goes up to 55 (41-55) depending on the area, outdoors and seems to stay around 60 indoors.

 

Also Aiyen are you using sunrays at .25? If you are and can see through that then props to you. Also should I use the Skyrim Flora Overhaul's 2048 Tree LOD instead of yours or...?

Come to think of it I'm using a fairly taxing load for SMIM but those are mainy in towns right? If so that probably explains some of the slow-downs I get in towns. Wonder if there's anything similar for outdoors...

[Aiyen]

My sun settings are based on the sun textures I have included in my preset. If you use any other sun texture then you need to adjust accordingly.

The LOD texture I include makes the LOD textures a bit darker so they do not "glow in the dark", or just overly bright during the brighter weathers.

You can use any texture you like of course, but I just thought it was a serious eye sore, especially in some of the winter regions during the night.

Vurt is aware of this issue, but as he states on his site, then he cannot make a seperate texture for every ENB setting out there. The same is the case for some of the grass, but my settings are set so it is not super bad imo.

 

SMIM is taxing everywhere there are alot of ropes... and fences mainly. Riverwood gets really demanding due to all the rope work that is present there, but also some of the ports like in solitude get a big hit. Do note that there also are some 4k textures included that you can live without imo. I believe one is for a bird if I do not recall incorrectly. Not something I wanted to spend a 4k texture on anyways.

[phazer11]

I edited my shadows and some other stuff and get 60FPS (Capped) on average outdoors now (Vanilla without ENB) with iMinGrassSize=150 but notice a bit of odd flora pop in among a few other things popping in but mostly the grass. Ideas?

Skyrim.ini

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=1024

and

SkyrimPrefs.ini

 

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=512

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=1024

iShadowMapResolution=2048

 

 

Idk if the last shadow map resolution in SkyrimPrefs.ini being set to 2048 helps any or not so feel free to let me know on that.