Launchers, loaders, and ini tweaks

[mtar925]

First of all thanks to deathneko11 for prodding me (on another thread) to watch his videos and learn MO. It looks like a great tool with a lot of new features (over WB) that will enhance my Skyrim experience.

 

I am now using MO and have installed SKSE, and am in the process of tweaking my Skyrim ini for my first playthrough. I am also using Skyrim Performance Monitor* to check my performance as I tweak. I am not sure I'm seeing my ini tweaks working and am confused about how these utilities interact.

 

I have loaded SKSE_loader as an executable in MO, and launch the game from MO by selecting SKSE as my exectuable in MO and clicking Run. This is correct, yes? When I do this does the game use the inis that I tweaked via MO, because I'm not sure I'm seeing the tweaks. 

 

It seems that in order to use Skyrim Performance Monitor I need to add another layer and launch the game through that program. Should I set the launcher path in SPM to modorganizer.exe or skse_loader, to get the game to use the ini tweaks made via MO?

 

I hope I'm making myself clear enough.

 

One more question. Since I haven't even started playing the game yet I've been using the intro sequence - the cart ride into Helgen - to test performance of ini tweaks. My system is mediocre (notably, below recommended processor speed for even Performance STEP) and I'm seeing fps mostly in the high 20s with vanilla, so I want to get the ini close to right before attempting playthrough. But is the intro cart ride a decent indicator of performance later in the game? How does fps in the intro sequence compare to later in the game....in other words if I tweak for a good performance/quality balance using the intro will I have to re-tweak later, or is there some adjustment factor to build in?

 

Thanks!

 

Matt

i7-2640 @ 2.8gHz, 8mb RAM, GT555M w 3mb VRAM, Win7

 

* [sorry that I have bypassed, for now, the official STEP benchmarking process. I read up on it and downloaded the utilities but stopped when I saw that spreadsheets were necessary. I don't know how to use spreadsheets (probably dated myself right there) and learning them feels too much like work to sidetrack me from modding and playing Skyrim. I will remember my lack of contribution in terms of benchmarking in deciding how much to donate to the STEP project.]

[Uhuru]

My understanding of Skyrim perfomance Monitor is you start it through Mod Organizer and it just runs in the background just start it and then run Skyrim using SkSE as normal.

Each profile's Ini's are copies of main game Ini's but any edits done after apply to that profile only. Unless you copy a current profile then all its Ini settings are copied.

 

Consensus for testing is top of Dragonreach steps in Whiterun is most resource intensive spot and should give you lowest FPS.

[GSDFan]

I have loaded SKSE_loader as an executable in MO, and launch the game from MO by selecting SKSE as my exectuable in MO and clicking Run. This is correct, yes? When I do this does the game use the inis that I tweaked via MO, because I'm not sure I'm seeing the tweaks.

Yes, SKSE has to be run for SKSE mods to function properly. Each profile uses its own skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini. These are copied from the my games folder when a new profile is created.

 

It seems that in order to use Skyrim Performance Monitor I need to add another layer and launch the game through that program. Should I set the launcher path in SPM to modorganizer.exe or skse_loader, to get the game to use the ini tweaks made via MO?

The proper way to do this is Skyrim Performance Monitor launches MO and you run the game from there via the SKSE loader.

 

One more question. Since I haven't even started playing the game yet I've been using the intro sequence - the cart ride into Helgen - to test performance of ini tweaks. My system is mediocre (notably, below recommended processor speed for even Performance STEP) and I'm seeing fps mostly in the high 20s with vanilla, so I want to get the ini close to right before attempting playthrough. But is the intro cart ride a decent indicator of performance later in the game? How does fps in the intro sequence compare to later in the game....in other words if I tweak for a good performance/quality balance using the intro will I have to re-tweak later, or is there some adjustment factor to build in?

I can't say if this is  a good indicator for performance later on in the game, buy if you mess something up it will show up as a bugged cart ride.

 

I prefer to use one of the alternate start mods that are available on the Nexus or Steam. Right now I use Skyrim Unbound in my play through. These will allow you to mod the game a little and choose different starting points to test. I usually try at least three locations after I add mod and play for a short while to see if I have any problems. It takes longer to mod the game doing it this way, but I feel I get better results and less crashes.

[mtar925]

Thanks for the help so far. Maybe I will try one of the alternate start mods for better testing, or probably just pick a reasonable-looking ini to get started with and dive in. One thing about the intro cart ride is that there's no combat, and with my cpu being the weak point that may be a big deal. Also, I recall that with Oblivion on my system, large expanses of water and reflections brought a big fps hit and there's none of that in the intro, either.

 

Some related questions...

 

I have been tweaking the ini by editing it directly through the ini menu in MO. Am I supposed to be creating new folders and mods instead, as described in the thread https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=3581 

 

Also, does MO include some baseline ini tweaks? I decided to try using as my starting point the "Optimized" settings recommended by nVidia for my system, via their GeForce Experience utility. I ran the utility which edited my skyrim and skyrimprefs inis, then copied and pasted those edited inis over those in the Profiles folder in MO. So I would have overwritten any tweaks that MO adds on its own. Have I lost anything and should i revert to MO's original ini files, and is there a way to do that other than reinstalling MO? I did not back up the MO inis because I assumed they were the same as vanilla.

 

One odd ini thing I noticed is the presence of ''iPresentinterval=0'', which turns off Vsync. According to the oft-recommended tweakguide it's not there by default, and I'm pretty sure I didn't put it there manually. Just out of curiosity, anybody know if it was introduced by MO, or GeForce Experience, or the Skyrim update I downloaded via Steam, or ??? I'm not really worried about it as my system hasn't gotten near 60fps yet anyway, but I wonder what else is in there that I haven't noticed yet.

 

Matt

i7-2640 @2.8ghz, 8mb RAM, GT555M w 3gb VRAM, Win7

[deathneko11]

My understanding of Skyrim perfomance Monitor is you start it through Mod Organizer and it just runs in the background just start it and then run Skyrim using SkSE as normal.

Each profile's Ini's are copies of main game Ini's but any edits done after apply to that profile only. Unless you copy a current profile then all its Ini settings are copied.

 

Consensus for testing is top of Dragonreach steps in Whiterun is most resource intensive spot and should give you lowest FPS.

I absolutely HATE using this method.  The reason being that yes, it is a good indicator of performance inside the city, but a poor indicator of performance outside the city.  I have seen this spot tested in my personal experimenting at a full 35 fps and yet seen some exterior cells in the outer world drop down to 15 (not what I play with trust me, this was back when I was testing some rediculous mods).  Not everyone is going to get a reliable test because of this reason.