DDSopt - quick question

[zorminster]

I'm not finished installing all of the step mods I intend to use, but I am down to the sounds and gameplay sections so I'm through with almost all textures at this point.  Thus far, i've been logging my FPS only and 'feeling' if it's smooth over 15-30 minutes of play each time i went testing (every few mods or every section).  Somewhere between the start of the animations section and the end of clutter section, I began noting pronounced slow down when coming out of a load screen (so i assume cell loading).  I went on and ran a proper benchmark run with GPU-Z and fraps and every indication is i've fully consumed my vRam.  I guess specs are now relevant so:

 

i5-2500k @ 4500 MHZ

16 GB PC3-12800 (800 mhz) @ 9/9/9/24/2T

GTX 460 SE, 1GB ((Overclock through precision X to GPU 800 MHz, Mem 1710 MHz, Shader 1600 MHz-- stable, though i'm not sure i don't have headroom on the memory.  Pretty sure my GPU starting causing issues if i went over 800))

SSD on Sata 3

Running @ 1980 x 1020

 

Step installation has followed performance / baseline - I've not selected any textures over 1024 when given the option.  Mod organizer has been used for all installations, boss run before any test, Tes5E cleaning on mods when they appear in the list (unless noted in STEP instructions), and then skse launched.

 

I've forced antialiasing and ambient occlusion off via NVIDIA inspector profile for driver control.  I've done this with the intent of using SMAA and an ENB for post.

 

 

 

 

Of immediate note: im pretty i went with the hybrid option on HDDLC Optimized  which leads to question #1:

 

If i want to avoid DDSopt (because it introduces another chance for me to screw it all up), and instead want to go back and try lower res options on various mods...can I simply right click the mod and utilize the "Reinstall Mod" option to change which options i've used? Or will that cause issues with subsequently installed mods?  ((For clarity:  Can i reinstall to select new options for mod 3 without causing issues for mod 7, which further modifies the same textures of mod 3?  Or do i need to remove and reinstall mod 7 after reinstalling mod 3 with new options?))

 

And question #2:

Can i go ahead and do my DDSopt at this point or do i need to complete installing all mods before starting texture optimization?   Seems like it'd be okay for me to go ahead and do it now but i want to be sure.     Reasons to do it now include making uninstallation / reinstallation of mods easier, or helping me decide to limit further mod installation.

 

Thanks guys!

 

 

Quick edit:

Added resolutions to specs and....

I have two monitors, but the second is set to duplicate the first. Am I using up system resources that could be better used running the game or is the effect negligible? What about if i changed to extend desktop but did not extend the game to any larger resolution (IE: second screen for web browsing)

[Kelmych]

Q1: the purpose of a good mod manager is to allow you to install and uninstall individual mods (or groups of mods) while maintaining the proper resource and plugin data in the Skyrim\Data folder. You should be able to install/uninstall mods at any time with a good manager. Both Wrye Bash and Mod Organizer do this; there are advantages and disadvantages for each of these. In using these you will establish an installation order which then allows you to do what you want in Q1.

 

Q2. optimization is best done on individual mods or small sets of mods. You can always optimize a mod and install the optimized version at any time (including after you have installed all the mods) as long as you use a good mod manager. Even if you want to optimize some of the mods it's a good idea to have a good benchmark with no or minimal optimization so you can compare the results and see what actually helped.

 

Q3. I use two monitors, but I have other data on my 2nd monitor (not the game itself; I do have some performance monitor tools on the 2nd monitor as well as a web browser, etc.). This does add a little to VRAM use (probably at least 50Mb).

[zorminster]

Okay thanks! That's really what i was thinking on the mod manager but i wanted to be sure. I've not taken much time to 100% understand what files are being modified or how. I think I understand what you are saying about the texture optimization and it makes good sense to simply create an optimized version of each mod to install in order. Creating one big archive makes for a bigger mess if i ever want to uninstall or change those specific textures i suppose. Thanks for this info! I'll give a shot and see what i'm workin with.

[Zerocloud411]

Q2. optimization is best done on individual mods or small sets of mods. You can always optimize a mod and install the optimized version at any time (including after you have installed all the mods) as long as you use a good mod manager. Even if you want to optimize some of the mods it's a good idea to have a good benchmark with no or minimal optimization so you can compare the results and see what actually helped.

Is there any reason to not optimize everything? I thought the point of your batch files was to seperate the textures into how they should be optimized to prevent issues. Also at the bottom of the step ddsopt guide it says "All mods, even those which have No in all of the first 4 columns, gain benefits from DDSopt processing:". Which is why I used the batch file to optimize all my textures at once and I've had no issues.

[Kelmych]

DDSopt replaces the mipmaps in textures with higher quality versions which is useful even for textures that are not resized or reformatted, so in general running DDSopt helps. There are some exceptions. The DDSopt Recommended column was revised a few months ago in the STEP Mod Texture table to indicate which mods shouldn't be optimized, either because they were already optimized (e.g., Terrain Bump and Soul Gems Differ) or because optimization wouldn't actually help (e.g., Consistent Older People which has 256x256 uncompressed textures that are already good enough; if it is optimized the parameters need to be chosen carefully so it isn't converted to compressed textures). This is mentioned in the guide in the "Organizing the Mod Textures for Simpler Optimization" subsection. If DDSopt was used for the original optimization it will recognize that textures are already optimized and bypass them, but it best (but not critical) to not reoptimize them. The installer for Real Ice shouldn't be optimized in a large batch run since if optimized it should be done with a 4Kx4K maximum size setting; it allows selection of textures during installation.

[Zerocloud411]

" The DDSopt Recommended column was revised a few months ago in the STEP Mod Texture table to indicate which mods shouldn't be optimized, either because they were already optimized (e.g., Terrain Bump and Soul Gems Differ) or because optimization wouldn't actually help (e.g., Consistent Older People which has 256x256 uncompressed textures that are already good enough; if it is optimized the parameters need to be chosen carefully so it isn't converted to compressed textures)."

 

Well would optimizing said textures with the correct settings hurt in any way other than just being redundant? I feel like it's more of a hassle to hand pick each and every mod that might not require optimizing rather than optimizing in batch with your .bat file and the step ddsopt settings for each folder created.

[phazer11]

The are very few textures that optimizing would "hurt" per se. As for hand picking mods. Cabal's textures. The landscapes, and armors, etc are all (from what I've seen) been optimized correctly there are some others. As for the batch files I'll defer to Kelmych as I haven't been keeping up with the guide (I need to brush up so I can make another stab at the DDSOpt video).

[Kelmych]

I don't think anyone has checked to make sure that there aren't any problems, but I don't see why there would be problems with reoptimizing if the optimization parameters are correct. This column does indicate that if optimization of the mod is done some additional care in choosing the right DDSopt parameters might be needed. For example, Consistent Older People is on the list because it has small uncompressed textures and if it is optimized it should be done with different DDSopt parameters than those typically used. The column also helps select which mods to include when using the batch files to assist in optimization. The batch files and DDSopt optimization take less time when the mods that don't need further optimization are excluded.

 

Uncompressed textures present some problems in optimization. If a mod has a mix of compressed and uncompressed textures, the standard constraints tab parameters which expect compressed files convert all the uncompressed textures to compressed; however, uncompressed normal maps yield noticeably better graphic quality than the equivalent size compressed normal maps. The DDSopt GUI filtering doesn't allow selecting only uncompressed textures (except for manually selecting them individually), so there is no easy way using just the DDSopt GUI to process compressed textures in a mod with one set of parameters and the uncompressed textures with another (except for model space normal maps).