CTD and Performance patch ENBoost (by Boris Vorontsov)

[DoYouEvenModBro]

here's my opinion:

 

The mod does make a difference. But not as big as some people claim. Things get blown out of proportion. Some people praise it way too much, so in response, other people criticize it in an attempt to stabilize its exaggerated effectiveness. People who like the mod will continue coming up with reasons as to why it is effective and then offer up some data that supports their claim. Then those who are skeptical will come back and question whether or not the data they provided is legit, leading to questions about the integrity of the software used to measure said data.

...and the cycle continues... and continues... and 'round and 'round we go

 

 

Here is my experience, I will give it to you in a primarily qualitative manner:

 

I use ENB for graphics mod. So when this new binary was released, it was very easy for me to implement. All i had to do was switch from the 0.186 to the 0.193 binary.. the only new parameters were the ones added for the "fix".

 

For the past 3 months, I have been able to reproduce a CTD by traveling on foot from falkreath to DB sanctuary, then entering. My system mem would shoot up to ~3150mb and I would crash. This has been reproducible like clockwork.. i could do it all day long, assuming i repeated the same steps and followed the same path. Also, none of the ideas that have been offered as potential solutions over the past few months have made any difference whatsoever.

 

Ok, now comes this "fix" from boris. Just like i have a hundred other times, the first thing i do after implementing a proposed fix is try to replicate the CTD. This time, however, there was no CTD. The first time as long as ive been running this 'test' i was able to complete it without a CTD. What does this tell me? It tells me that, without even looking at any of the numbers/data, something is different and has changed enough to where I am no longer able to reproduce a CTD that I have done many, many time before. If the only variable that changes is the presence or absence of this "fix", and i get different results between the two, i feel pretty safe saying there is a causal relationship. As far as this is concerned, I do not need any data to tell me there was a change because i was able to observe the change first-hand.

 

Now, if we want to consider data, that is an entirely separate issue. One that we could debate all day long. As I have said in a different post, if we've gotten to the point of questioning the integrity and validity of the software we use to measure and acquire our data, we will never be able to find common ground.

The other thing is, even if your method of measuring memory use is not the most accurate, it will still be able to show you when a large variation has occurred as a result of adding in this mod. If you normally run at 2600mb according to one program and 2800 according to a different program, then you install this mod and the first program reports 2100mb and the second one reports 2250mb. Clearly both programs are giving different data measurements and each program showed a significant decrease in memory, but the amount of change (delta) reported by the first program is smaller than the amount of change reported by the second program.

We can debate all day about validity of this and accuracy of that, but what is important is the fact that clearly there has been some change, regardless of the amount.

 

 

What it means:

 

I have observed with my own eyes a change in the way the game is played. i.e. unable to reproduce an otherwise reproducible CTD. Furthermore, I have measured a significant decrease in memory use... so significant that, even with the largest margin of error and most "inaccurate" tool, can not be simply explained away and negated. Thus, with all of this combined, I have no choice but to conclude that the ENB 'fix' released by boris has helped me, in some way or another, alleviate some (if not all) CTD that results from exceeding the 3.1gb threshold.  The "evidence" would also seem to suggest that system RAM usage has decreased, although we do not know exactly how much or to what extent. But i feel safe concluding that there has been some decrease in system RAM.

Sorry if you said this but I didn't see it...what was your system RAM (from both software reports) after implementing the new ENB at the point where you normally CTD? Do you have a rough idea of about how much of a "decrease" you are seeing? That can give us a better idea of how well this "appears" to be working.

[torminater]

Stating it as short as possible: with my current setup i have a100% reproducable ram ctd (doesn't occur with downscaled textures). No version released until now has led to a lesser ram usage by skyrim and thus any version i tried out crashed at that spot. Even if this fix helps some people it doesn't help all people, and therefore it's not a real fix or workaround YET. I am not saying boris is fooling everybody. I have seen an enormous increase in vram usage - just not a decrease in ram usage using the monitoring utility vmmap which boris himself proclaimed as the only utility which displays true mem usage by a program. Look at the dev tgread of 1.93 if you want proof.

[exploiteddna]

Sorry if you said this but I didn't see it...what was your system RAM (from both software reports) after implementing the new ENB at the point where you normally CTD? Do you have a rough idea of about how much of a "decrease" you are seeing? That can give us a better idea of how well this "appears" to be working.

in that particular case, it went from ~3150 to ~2800, according to Elys MemInfo (which i would guess pulls it data from task mgr)

 

Edit From Aiyen: Please do not keep quoting walls of text without reason! :)

[dem1an]

This mod makes a huge difference for me. Without it, I would get through one or two loading doors before I would crash or get an infinite load on the third or fourth. Now, a circle cursor pops in, pops back out and then it keeps loading. I play for hours now without a crash. I have 379 mods, mostly Skyrim Revisited + SkyRe, ASIS, etc. I am really grateful. I played for hours last night and hours today and only once did I get an infinite load.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

Do you have an ATI or NVIDIA card. It is possible that it only works for nvidia since that is what Boris has. Torminator, do you have an amd?

[Valamyr]

I have an ATI card and used the performance version of his ini, which disables some of the RAM tweaks that appear to cause stuttering to ATI users... he states this might increase CTDs, while still being an overall improvement, and seems to be the recommended way to go for ATI users for now.

 

I didnt carefully bench everything, instead, I just played for 6 hours. Now, like my sig says, my current build is pretty stable... for a 252 esp, 388 mods install that is... meaning I'm used to a CTD every couple hours, sometimes a bit more, at least when playing in the world space and fighting big showy battles. In the last 6 hours I only crashed once, and it was in a cell that appears particularly vulnerable in my current build, across the river from Riverwood. I used to CTD there fairly easily if casting spells. I had to muck around quite a bit for it to happen this time.

 

I'm definitely keeping this on, and despite it being a work in progress and some discouraging comments on the Nexus, I dont regret trying it at all. Ive endorsed it, and I suggest given it a go. Given its a wrapper, its not like its a scripted mod that you could end up stuck with; its very easy to remove at any time. If you already use a ENB, its addition is trivial.

[torminater]

Nope GTX680.

[EssArrBee]

I'm starting to think something like Zan AutoPurge might work a bit better for decreasing the cell buffer since it uses a timed interval that is tweaked with MCM. I bet the scripts would be easier to port over.

 

I'm guessing it would seem like it works in the way cleanmen worked except that it uses the purge cell buffer function every so often instead of just trying to clear the working set.

[exploiteddna]

im running nvidia cards. i am currently using 2x gtx680 in SLI, but if someone really wanted me to i could pop in an old gtx580 Lightning or an even older EVGA 8800GT and test those. But i sold my 7970 just recently so i dont have any AMD cards that i could test

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I have an ATI card and used the performance version of his ini, which disables some of the RAM tweaks that appear to cause stuttering to ATI users... he states this might increase CTDs, while still being an overall improvement, and seems to be the recommended way to go for ATI users for now.

 

I didnt carefully bench everything, instead, I just played for 6 hours. Now, like my sig says, my current build is pretty stable... for a 252 esp, 388 mods install that is... meaning I'm used to a CTD every couple hours, sometimes a bit more, at least when playing in the world space and fighting big showy battles. In the last 6 hours I only crashed once, and it was in a cell that appears particularly vulnerable in my current build, across the river from Riverwood. I used to CTD there fairly easily if casting spells. I had to muck around quite a bit for it to happen this time.

 

I'm definitely keeping this on, and despite it being a work in progress and some discouraging comments on the Nexus, I dont regret trying it at all. Ive endorsed it, and I suggest given it a go. Given its a wrapper, its not like its a scripted mod that you could end up stuck with; its very easy to remove at any time. If you already use a ENB, its addition is trivial.

Should I not use the greater version then? 

[torminater]

I just tried the most recent 1.95

with reduce memory enabled, i got more stutter, but vmmap didn't show less mem usage. With only the 64 bit tweak enabled, it was ok, but not measurably improved. So, that's my verdict so far.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

I just tried the most recent 1.95

with reduce memory enabled, i got more stutter, but vmmap didn't show less mem usage. With only the 64 bit tweak enabled, it was ok, but not measurably improved. So, that's my verdict so far.

You have ATI, right?

[torminater]

No, for the last time: i use a nvidia gainward gtx 680 4gb phantom.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

No' date=' for the last time: i use a nvidia gainward gtx 680 4gb phantom.[/quote']

Gotchya. My fault for not catching that previously. I hope you figure out a way to make this work for you. I just installed STEP and ENB 0.195 with Boris's Boost .ini so hopefully I will see a stability improvement.

[Smile44]

Um 0.196 is out now.

 

:o_O: