2.2.7 Making me Crazy

[redfenix117]

So I have been using STEP for quite a while now.  I use MO, I now how to use TES5Edit and BOSS.  My system:

 

Alienware m17x R4

Windows 7 home (service pack 1)

Intel i7-3610QM ~2.3Ghs (pre-boost)

6Gb RAM

DirectX 11

AMD Radeon HD 7970M 

 

I was running STEP 2.2.3 and decided to come back and have a new play through so I completely re-installed Skyrim vanilla, cleaned the files, tweaked ini's and started downloading the mods according to 2.2.7.  Well now I have a headache, I have been over the list and made sure they are in the correct order four times now. I checked for patches, special install notes and so far it all looks to be in proper working order.  

 

Note: I always use the LQ options when possible.  Technically I should be able to run almost all recommended settings but I am not super picky and many times I can't tell much of a difference.  

 

My issues:

 

SMIM is not adding all the mesh changes that I have selected during install. Namely the 3d ropes. Neither buildings nor docks have them.

 

My other issue is a general FPS and Lag problem.  I do understand that there could be a million reasons for this so asking for help is difficult to nail down.  Hopefully the two are related.  Specifics:  Outdoors looking a distant objects (i.e. Mountains/flat lands)  I only get 18-45 FPS before I started changing things I was getting upwards of 70 and I limited it to 60 just for smoothness sake.

 

I know that the FPS is a general issue and make take a while to solve if you have any ideas or suggestions for either of my issues please let me know I can try whatever.

 

TO THE STEP TEAM:  Thank you for making this guide its a huge help to amateur modders like myself. I love being able to add a little realism and simplicity to my gaming as well as learn some neat technical stuff along the way!!! 

 

Edit: Spelling

[Nearox]

I would start by disabling all the distance terrain & LOD mods, see if that resolves the fps issue. Also make sure you did the SFO tweaks as per https://wiki.step-project.com/Skyrim_Flora_Overhaul#Recommendations

[redfenix117]

I checked the grass tweaks: changed the second line from 75 to 40. No major change.

I first disabled the distance terrain & LODs, 1-5 fps bump, tried completely removing them still no more than a 1-5 fps bump.

[Nearox]

I'd recommended to make a new profile in MO just for testing. Copy your current one.

 

Then disable gameplay mods. Check FPS. Disable Sound mods. Check FPS. Disable Clutter & Miscellaeous, check FPS.

You should use the coc riverwood console command. When ingame type: player.setav speedmult 500. Also type: tgm. Then do test runs to where you had your issues. This way you can find where the (biggest) culprit is, and can limit down the range of mods that can pssibly cause this issue. If it happens to be grass, you could check out Grass on Steroids and put iMinGrassSize=100 or higher for a noticable performance gain.

 

Also, while the 7970M is the most powerful mobile gpu, it's score is roughly equivalent to my HD6950 2GB. I can tell you that full STEP consumes about 80-90% of my vram, with spikes to 100% - i.e. if I do not DDSopt some of the texture packs. FPS can surely drop to about 40-50fps in some areas if I have 4x AA on. You can check out how your GPU compares at https://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2300495 . 7970M has pretty much similar horse power to 'Tier E Mid-Upper Mid-Range'

[Aiyen]

Mobile cards have the memory, but lack the power.

 

Reduce grass via grass on steroids, and reduce shadow quality etc. In general just lower the amount of stuff that needs to be rendered until you have an acceptable FPS.

Use SFO basic, instead of SFO full. the list goes on.

[redfenix117]

Ok so I ran some tests on the vanilla game:

 

On ALL settings "low,medium,high,ultra" when looking at a distance or moving outside in the open I'm getting 20-35 FPS. When I get near a cave/dungeon entrance/building FPS jumps to 55-62.

 

Indoors, both caves and buildings, FPS wildly fluctuates between 35-62.

 

This does not seem to be affected by combat either.

 

I really feel like I am missing something simple I had these same exact problems when I first started using STEP and I was able to fix them but I can't remember how.

 

TOTAL DERP EDIT: I remember how I fixed it. I hooked up my ps3 controller and played for about an hour using MotionJoy 360 emulator. I remember telling someone that fixed it and no one seemed to know why.

 

I don't have a console anymore so IDK if I'll be able to reproduce the effect. I've checked the mouse acceleration and its turned off.

 

Also I tried just activating SMIM and it still does not place the 3d rope meshes.

[Deathwing514]

Ok so I ran some tests on the vanilla game:

 

On ALL settings "low,medium,high,ultra" when looking at a distance or moving outside in the open I'm getting 20-35 FPS. When I get near a cave/dungeon entrance/building FPS jumps to 55-62.

 

Indoors, both caves and buildings, FPS wildly fluctuates between 35-62.

 

This does not seem to be affected by combat either.

 

I really feel like I am missing something simple I had these same exact problems when I first started using STEP and I was able to fix them but I can't remember how.

 

TOTAL DERP EDIT: I remember how I fixed it. I hooked up my ps3 controller and played for about an hour using MotionJoy 360 emulator. I remember telling someone that fixed it and no one seemed to know why.

 

I don't have a console anymore so IDK if I'll be able to reproduce the effect. I've checked the mouse acceleration and its turned off.

 

Also I tried just activating SMIM and it still does not place the 3d rope meshes.

Here are a couple of tweaks that I would like you to try.

 

1. Turn off Grass Shadows in SkyrimPrefs.

 

2. Use a FPS Limiter and set it to 60 and turn off Vertical Sync.

 

3. Change Shadows to High or configure it to be 2048 on the shadowmapresolution. Also Change the interior/exterior shadow distance to 2800

 

4. Turn off Anti Aliasing

 

Let me know if these tweaks helped you in solving your fps problem.

[redfenix117]

Ok that totally fixed the FPS problems for Vanilla Skyrim. However with the mods the drop still persists. I'm going to go compare 2.2.3 and 2.2.7 and see what major changes where made and go from there with removing textures and such to get it back to normal.

 

However the SMIM missing mesh updates still persists.

[Deathwing514]

Ok that totally fixed the FPS problems for Vanilla Skyrim. However with the mods the drop still persists. I'm going to go compare 2.2.3 and 2.2.7 and see what major changes where made and go from there with removing textures and such to get it back to normal.

 

However the SMIM missing mesh updates still persists.

Couple of questions,

 

1. Are you using an ENB?

 

2. Are any of your textures 2048?

 

3. What exactly is your VRAM, as you dont state it in your opening?

 

The best way I to find the exact problem of your fps loss is by taking nearox advise and turn off each mod 5 at a time.

Sooner or late, you will see which mod is causing your major fps loss and thus find a solution to your problem.

 

Now regarding your smim not working properly, I would suggest a manual installtion at this point.

[redfenix117]

Ok that totally fixed the FPS problems for Vanilla Skyrim. However with the mods the drop still persists. I'm going to go compare 2.2.3 and 2.2.7 and see what major changes where made and go from there with removing textures and such to get it back to normal.

 

However the SMIM missing mesh updates still persists.

Couple of questions,

 

1. Are you using an ENB?

 

2. Are any of your textures 2048?

 

3. What exactly is your VRAM, as you dont state it in your opening?

 

The best way I to find the exact problem of your fps loss is by taking nearox advise and turn off each mod 5 at a time.

Sooner or late, you will see which mod is causing your major fps loss and thus find a solution to your problem.

 

Now regarding your smim not working properly, I would suggest a manual installtion at this point.

No I am not using and ENB 

 

None of the textures are over 1024

 

and my VRAM is at 9141

 

I went through deactivating them 5 at a time and Idk if I didnt do it right or something but nothing seemed to change, but I'm also tired and its to early to be doing this I'll do it all over again tomorrow and see if I can nail it down.

 

 

Thank you guys for the help, its always nice to be able to communicate with a friendly and helpful community.

[Salvador]

You should try running ENBoost at least, should give you smoother gameplay, not sure if it will help with the FPS though.

 

Another thing you could look at, although I expect you did that already, is to make sure all crapware is shut down (unnecesary software starting up with windows). And that the energy settings for your laptop are set to maximum performance (otherwise it will throttle the processor speed, as well as park some of your cores when usage isn't high enough, which could possibly explain your FPS fluctuations).

Although this doesn't explain the difference between STEP 2.2.3 and 2.2.7. Have you tried/saved your old ini files as well?

 

EDIT: About SMIM, are you only missing the rope meshes? You can see in MO which files overwrite eachother from other mods. This should show you how it is possible that you loose the mesh ingame. From the top of my head, just doubleclick the mod in the left panel and go to conflict tab.

 

EDIT2: Your VRAM at 9000+ (is this Mb?) would indicate you have 3GB dedicated and the 6GB RAM is shared between GPU and system?!? Do you know if this is the case? If it is, there usually is the option to disable the shared VRAM in your bios. I suggest you do that.

 

Good luck!

[Nearox]

I went through deactivating them 5 at a time and Idk if I didnt do it right or something but nothing seemed to change, but I'm also tired and its to early to be doing this I'll do it all over again tomorrow and see if I can nail it down.

 

 

At some point you must see improvement, unless your vanilla game has the same issues. You can obviously also do it the other way around, start with zero mods and then add them per category. Make sure you are running a default low/medium/high/ultra INI (made from launcher).

[phazer11]

Another useful tool for any laptop user (or desktop if you feel like you're cpu is throttling) is Throttlestop (Tech this is especially useful for post Sandybridge ASUS laptops)

[redfenix117]

EDIT2: Your VRAM at 9000+ (is this Mb?) would indicate you have 3GB dedicated and the 6GB RAM is shared between GPU and system?!? Do you know if this is the case? If it is, there usually is the option to disable the shared VRAM in your bios. I suggest you do that.

Now we are talking about things I do not know how to do or understand....  :/

 

 

EDIT: Wow....I feel like a bit of a tool now but I was looking at the wrong "v"ram  I was referencing Virtual Memory not Video Memory...my bad.  I Have 2048 dedicated and 2791 shared.   My Virtual Memory is set at 9141 right now, do you know if that is where it should be or do I need to adjust it.  That is the (recommended) setting by windows.

[redfenix117]

Ok So I worked my way through all the mods twice and I was able to get a few frames regained here and there but nothing significant. So I backed up the mod istall files and cleaned out my skyrim directory and re-verified to start completely over. I also reset my amd catalyst control panel to defaults and then made sure that mod organizer deleted the modified ini's.

 

So I started a character completely vanilla according to the skyrim launcher's auto detect settings and played through till I was out of helgen. Then made two saves One for a completely vanilla save and one to work on. I also created two profiles in MO one for vanilla and one for mods.

 

1. I then installed SKSE and ran it = No change

2. I then made the suggested ini changes according to 2.2.7 and set up my catalyst control scheme as well.

3. loaded the save and immediately noticed that I went from a steady 57-60 down to 38-45fps.

4. I went in and loaded the vanilla mod with the unchanged ini's, but left the catalyst settings - no change still lowered FPS

5. I reset the catalyst settings to default and ran the vanilla profile - back up to 60FPS

6. I then ran the profile with the edited ini's through MO using SKSE and it retained the 60FPS

 

So apparently the catalyst profile changes are making a huge difference which doesn't make sense, since the settings match the skyrim launcher settings.

 

 

EDIT: So far I am 1/3 of the way into the STEP mods and the only thing I have not done is setup the CCC according to STEP instructions, but I'm retaining my 60fps so Im not going to. I did get to SMIM and even with nothing installed after it and no overwriting conflicts there are still no dang 3d ropes and I can't seem to find a way to manually install it.

[Nearox]

If you did the following, then that would explain why you went from 60fps to 45fps in step 3.

 

"Under Antialiasing, select 4 Samples, as the difference between 4 Samples and 8 Samples is very subtle and not worth the performance loss (per Tweakguides). Drop down to 2 Samples as a last-resort to improve performance. NOTE: If using SMAA, set this value to zero. This change is appropriate for all systems that meet or exceed the Minimum hardware specification."

 

The reason you're running at 60fps again is most likely because your AA is disabled. You could try out SMAA injector as an alternative.