DDSopt -increases- VRAM usage

Brujah · December 31, 2013

Hi, I just ran through the DDSopt optimisation for the vanilla textures (plus all DLC).

Running the performance benchmark (new game to first autosave), I've found my VRAM usage is notably higher. Can anyone tell me what's going on, what I've done wrong, or what further information you require to analyse the problem?

I used the High settings in the STEP guide as suggested (2048x2048 regular and 1024x1024 normals).

More info: I'm using Mod Organizer (which unpacks BSAs as a matter of course). So, I figured I should put the texture folders into Mod Organizers's "mods" folder, unpacked, then tick them in MO before running. The game didn't horribly crash, so I'm guessing I must be pretty much right.

I also moved those BSAs which pertain only to textures ("Skyrim - Textures.bsa", "HighResTexturePack01.bsa", "HighResTexturePack02.bsa" and "HighResTexturePack03.bsa") to a different folder.

Thanks

Before making changes with DDSopt

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_hLJWAmHi9b01BZmpFS2hSa1k/edit?usp=sharing

After making changes with DDSopt

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz_hLJWAmHi9ZWZhZUt0ZnAyWVk/edit?usp=sharing

I'll also include the raw data in case people can't view those files:

[spoiler:Raw data before]

Memory Used [MB]

237

230

243

414

415

487

1175

1144

1145

1364

1373

1379

1380

1381

1383

1384

1415

1476

1491

1494

1506

1509

1513

1531

1532

1538

1535

1536

1571

1600

1601

1602

1607

1598

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1604

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1600

1608

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1596

1603

1600

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1601

1598

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1600

1603

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1682

1689

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1696

1752

1753

1778

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1837

1849

1850

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1850

1853

1858

1853

1856

1857

1858

1808

1809

1805

1806

1794

1688

1693

Memory Used [MB]

Average 1477.30

Standard Deviation 444.40

[spoiler:Raw data after]

Memory Used [MB]

240

241

239

243

238

232

410

411

412

479

1188

1171

1407

1413

1424

1419

1420

1419

1420

1421

1420

1423

1422

1423

1441

1518

1543

1545

1558

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1565

1588

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1630

1648

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1652

1645

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1654

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1656

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1665

1735

1753

1758

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1772

1829

1854

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1884

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1884

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1912

1932

1933

1936

1937

1936

1933

1936

1944

1937

1938

1941

1942

1943

1895

1891

1890

Memory Used [MB]

Average 1467.99

Standard Deviation 532.61

Edit: Added more info

Kelmych · December 31, 2013

Did you have the 3 High Res Texture Packs esp plugins enabled in the Before case? Are you using any other mods that affect exterior textures? The VRAM numbers seem fairly high if the vanilla textures are the only ones being used.

Brujah · January 2, 2014

Hi Kelmych, thanks for the reply. :)

Yeah, that's with STEP Enhanced, so using the High Res Texture Packs as well as all the suggested HD textures on the 2.2.7 STEP guide. I used no 4k textures though, because that's what started killing my game before. I used higher res textures for indoor areas (like dungeons) and stuck mostly with 1k textures for outdoors. I think SFO might have been the 2k version though.

Should I try it Vanilla Game vs Vanilla Game with Optimised Textures?

I might not have made it completely clear in the OP, but the mod setup and load order is identical in both cases, the only thing that's changed is I used DDSopt to optimise the vanilla textures (including the HighResTexturePacks), then added them to Mod Organizer and loaded them at the top of the load order.

So my question is not about why the numbers are high (I would expect them to be), but about why they're higher after using the Optimiser (given my understanding that it's meant to reduce VRAM load, not increase it).

Edit: Clarification

Kelmych · January 2, 2014

I haven't run the cart benchmark test with unoptimized vanilla textures (including HRDLC) and no mods installed compared with optimized vanilla textures. The benchmark tests I ran were primarily testing optimized vs. unoptimized mod textures, and these showed significant differences; all of these tests used optimized vanilla textures and the mod optimization included reducing the size of normal maps. Z's benchmark tests from last year showed a small reduction in VRAM using optimized vs. unoptimized vanilla textures with the optimization reducing the max texture size to 1Kx1K. The notes didn't say whether the reduction was on all large textures or just tangent space normal maps.

The optimization should also improve quality, but I'm surprised your tests showed a VRAM increase. The test that should be tried is the cart benchmark with all of the vanilla textures unoptimized vs. the same textures optimized, with no additional mods installed. The results should be similar to what Z found in his test. With this test the VRAM use should be a little less for the optimized case if the optimization included some texture size reduction. For the vanilla textures the DDSopt guide suggests reducing the tangent space normal map texture (*_n.dds) size for any 2Kx2K textures. Lately the recommendation has been to reduce most of the exterior textures (not just the exterior normal maps) to 1Kx1K max to help reduce VRAM use. This has already been done, for example, with the optimized SRO version mentioned in other posts. The exterior textures in STEP core and extended mods overwrite a large percentage of the large vanilla exterior textures, so the effects of reducing the size of large vanilla exterior textures are often small when using the STEP mods. Of course, the vast majority of vanilla textures are not large exterior textures, so optimization is still useful.

Brujah · January 2, 2014

Cool, I'll give it a go sans mods then and see if I can see an improvement. :)

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