Drastic slowdown in very specific locations

[Phyrre56]

I'm running STEP 2.2.7 with Core texture resolutions, optimized according to guides, and TrueVision ENB set to the "Extreme Performance" setting. For the most part, the game runs perfectly fine. Indoor environments are 100% smooth. Outdoor can get a little shaky on occasion (~25-30 FPS) but nothing crippling. I followed all of the guidelines for a 2GB VRAM GPU. 

 

However, in certain specific locations, my system grinds nearly to a halt. I'm talking less than 1 FPS. Complete stutter-pocalypse. 

 

One location is Riften, any time I'm looking toward the town square with the shop stalls. It doesn't matter which angle, the slowdown is the same whether I'm looking toward the square from the main entrance or Mistveil Keep. It's particularly annoying because any time I exit the Keep, I have to deal with the stutter until I can turn my character around.

 

Another example is in Windhelm if I'm standing near the entrance and looking toward the shop district (where the blacksmith, potion shop, etc. are located). Maybe the common thread is areas with outdoor shops? What's really strange is that the slowdown happens even when all the details aren't being rendered -- like I can't "see" the people in the square in Riften yet but I get the slowdown anyway. Maybe a draw distance issue? 

 

If I turn away from the offending area, everything is fine. FPS jumps right back to normal. If I move toward these locations while staring at the ground, everything is fine. I've mastered the art of maneuvering around Riften while always looking outward...

 

Is this just a texture overload issue? I have a Radeon HD 7850 2GB, and a Sandy Bridge processor with plenty of RAM. I've never encountered stuttering remotely like this with unmodded HRDLC Skyrim or previous iterations of STEP. The main difference is that I'm using optimized textures and ENB for the first time. Is ENB that crippling in certain situations? I figured setting it to Extreme Performance would give me most of the benefits without a huge performance hit. (In normal areas, it reduces my FPS by 5-10 in crowded environments.) 

 

Just wondering if anyone has encountered this type of issue where FPS are usually fine except for very specific catastrophes. 

[rootsrat]

Switch off your ENB in game (Shift+F12 by default) and see if the issue persists. If so, then it's probably mesh/texture problem. If it goes away, then it's your ENB. We can troubleshoot further from there.

[Phyrre56]

I did switch off the ENB (Shift-F12) and that did not fix it. The ENB very clearly did shut off -- the colors changed noticeably -- but same slow down. 

[rootsrat]

Ok, you can rule out ENB as a potential culprit then. You shouldn't really have such problems with your rig to be honest...

 

- Please post your load order (in [ spoiler] [ /spoiler] tags with no spaces pls).

- Do you use any non-STEP mods?

- Just to confirm - you use optimizes 1K resolution textures for exteriors?

[Phyrre56]

I apologize that I posted this in the wrong sub-forum! 

 

I can post my load order tonight (not sitting at my gaming rig right now). It was run through BOSS so it shouldn't be too far off. 

 

I don't think I'm using any non-STEP mods but I'll double check. I tried to stick as close to the Core recommendations as possible. 

 

I optimized the vanilla/HRDLC textures according to this guide, using the "H" recommended settings: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt#tab=DDSopt_Optimization. I also optimized mod textures according to this guide, again using "H." https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:DDSopt#tab=Optimizing_the_STEP_Mods. I ran BSAOpt on the vanilla BSAs for which that is appropriate i.e. not the Sound BSAs. I'm using loose files for everything but the non-texture vanilla BSAs. 

 

Would my skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini files be helpful too? If so I can put them behind spoilers. 

 

Thanks for your help! 

[rootsrat]

Yeah, INI files will be most helpful too :)

 

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

[Phyrre56]

I'm just putting this here to remind myself to mention that I made the following changes to INI files based on instructions from TrueVision ENB. Since this goes a bit outside the realm of STEP, I thought it might be helpful. Maybe something here will jump out that might get missed as part of a full INI file dump.

 

SkyrimPrefs.ini

bFloatPointRenderTarget=1

bDrawLandShadows=1

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=5 

 

Also the ENB instructions include: 

 

- Open enblocal.ini and set the VideoMemorySizeMb parameter (e.g. VRAM + RAM - 2048)

 

This part confused me a bit, because I have 2GB VRAM and 8GB RAM, but I have my RAM partitioned using RAMDisk so that 512MB are dedicated to holding browser cache. So the math I did was: 2048 + 8192 - 512 - 2048 = 7680. I have no idea what this actually does or if I did the math correctly. It troubles me that in Skyrim Revisited, Neovalen says to use just VRAM -- but he's working with a different ENB so maybe an irrelevant comparison.

 

One final nugget from ENB: 

 

- Option 3. If you're using HD texture packs, then try this mod - Optimizer Textures. It will compress the textures in order free up some memory on your video card. (running out of memory will cripple performance) 

 

Is it possible that with ENB, hitting the 2GB limit on my VRAM is causing the catastrophic issue? I know I'm not hitting the 3.1GB limit but I'm probably hitting 2GB at times.

[Aiyen]

Make sure you do not have any transparency AA, Supersampling AA etc. enabled anywhere.. Riften area especially will cause immense slowdowns if those are on.

[rootsrat]

If you are running ENBoost (you are if the 2 following values in enblocal.ini are set to TRUE: ExpandSystemMemoryX64 and ReduceSystemMemoryUsage) then VRAM limit is not a problem, taking your spec and mod set up into consideration. I have 2 GB VRAM on my card and I was able to run 2K exterior textures with no problems using ENBoost (however I came across ILS problems then, so I wouldn't recommend).

 

As for the VideoMemorySizeMb in enblocal.ini set it to match your VRAM, i.e. 2048 in your case. Mirroring VRAM in this value proved to be most effective solutions for cards with more than 512 MB of VRAM. I don't know how the author of your ENB came up with the equation, but I would not recommend setting VideoMemorySizeMb to such a high value.

[Phyrre56]

Thanks, I'm going to fiddle with those settings later today and see if I get any improvements. I should probably stop guessing what the problem is, because I don't know enough about the nuts and bolts of this stuff, but based on prior experience I feel like the ENB has to be playing a role. Every other mod I've used before and had no problems. The question is -- what part of the ENB is the problem? Is it one of these settings? Something I screwed up while editing INI files? Something with my GPU driver settings? More data to come...

[Aiyen]

ENBoost needs to be setup for your system! The equation is just the theoretical correct value.... however every PC is different, so what works for one person do not have to work for you.

Specially then the motherboard you have will play a HUGE role when it comes to moving the silly amounts of data around that ENBoost makes use of to allow you to use higher detail textures.

If you just bought the cheapest Mobo when you made your machine then that is most likely why. Or if you bought one already made by any vendor, then you can be sure that they put in a cheap mobo to keep the price down. (Exceptions are there for those really expensive gamer rig ones, they normally use fairly good ones)

 

However back to ENBoost...

Setting the value equal to your VRAM is the first choice... if everything runs great... play game! If you get stuttering, try to increase or lower it. The rest of the values are pretty much on/off... and the effect of having the on or off is an increase or decrease in stuttering.

 

I personally run with 8192Mb since that is what works for me. Guess I can get away with it since I have 16Gb of RAM on top of the 2Gb VRAM, and an expensive mobo. (ASUS Z77 Sabertooth)

[rootsrat]

(SNIP)... and an expensive mobo. (ASUS Z77 Sabertooth)

 

DROOLS, BADLY!

[Phyrre56]

I have an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 -- built the system myself. It's a mobo for overclocking so I assume it can handle ENB.

 

Soooo...I'm really embarrassed. When I first installed the ENB, I had it set to the highest quality level and saw a marked drop in FPS. I uninstalled it to see if I liked the visuals without ENB. I didn't, so I reinstalled and dropped down to the extreme performance preset. I had saved the mod files in Mod Organizer, so I just turned those back on and copied in the ENB files that go in the Skyrim directory.

 

And forgot to edit the Video Memory Size variable on the 2nd install. :-(

 

It was set at a default of 1024 which was the problem. I bumped it up to 2048 and Riften went from <1 FPS to a nice smooth 45-50. I probably even have room to bump up the quality a bit.

 

Sorry to bother you guys with such a boneheaded mistake!

[deathneko11]

Glad you got it sorted out.

 

Moving to Answered.

[rootsrat]

I have an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 -- built the system myself. It's a mobo for overclocking so I assume it can handle ENB.

 

Soooo...I'm really embarrassed. When I first installed the ENB, I had it set to the highest quality level and saw a marked drop in FPS. I uninstalled it to see if I liked the visuals without ENB. I didn't, so I reinstalled and dropped down to the extreme performance preset. I had saved the mod files in Mod Organizer, so I just turned those back on and copied in the ENB files that go in the Skyrim directory.

 

And forgot to edit the Video Memory Size variable on the 2nd install. :-(

 

It was set at a default of 1024 which was the problem. I bumped it up to 2048 and Riften went from

 

Sorry to bother you guys with such a boneheaded mistake!

 

That's ok, no worries. To err is to human - or whatever the expression is in English :D

 

Glad you got it sorted in the end.