CFG Maker

[venkman781]

I'm starting to refine my .ini settings for Skyrim. I'm curious if any of you have tried out this config maker: https://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/skyrim/

 

I'm also curious what the STEP users here use for uGrids. I tried 7 last night with a throwaway save. Seems to improve distance without too much of an FPS drop. I've capped my FPS at 50 to smooth out stuttering.

 

Also, do any of you use the Multi-Threaded tweaks (e.g. bUseThreadedBlood)? Any advantages?

[z929669]

The DNA cfg editor is nice for learning about the INIs, and provides some useful ideas, but I would not recommend it until you have a complete setup that you know runs well on your system using the STEP settings.

 

uGridsToLoad=7 is only for STEP users with display adapters having 1.5 Gb+, as the FPS drop is nothing compared to the VRAM load for faster systems.

 

If you have quad or six core system, multi-thread will likely give you a slight performance boost, but I have not benchmarked on my quad yet.

[venkman781]

Thanks zMan. I'm familiar with many of the more common ini tweaks from the various Skyrim tweak guides and my Fallout days, but hadn't seen the multi-thread options before that are offered in the cfg editor.

 

I updated my sig with my rig specs and here's a brief rundown of my current setup. Full STEP setup through 2.1 Update 3. In general, I chose 2048 textures, and I've not done any optimization of those yet with DDSopt or Optimizer Textures.

Forcing 16x AF through CCC, no AA, disabled vsync, Tessellation is AMD Optimized, Catalyst AI set to High Quality, using Skyrim Crossfire profile.

 

At 1920x1080 120Hz, I get between 50-70 average fps outside and max out at 120 fps inside dungeons. When I added in Beautiful Whiterun and Better Villages, my fps in Riverwood dropped to 40, but remains at 50 elsewhere outdoors.

 

To control stutter and physics issues indoors, I've been using Dxtory to cap my fps at 50. This has smoothed out gameplay quite a bit. I've just now started tweaking the ini files to start to expand the field of view. My main point for looking at these tweaks is to help improve the draw distances. I've been getting lots of tree pop in and land objects popping into view, so I'm trying to adjust for that without crippling my gameplay. Hence my question about uGrids=7...

 

I need to do some more benchmarks to see the fps hit, but I'm just curious what others are doing for tweaks.

[z929669]

You have a powerful rig, so you definitely should be using uGrids=7. You would probably even be able to safely run at 9... be sure to use the formula [uExterior Cell Buffer = (uGrids+1)^2] .

 

Multi thread away is what I say. Still recommend ensuring rock-solid stability with standard settings though --and test like that for several hours of game play with benchmarks, yada yada

[venkman781]

Did a few benches tonight on a fresh, vanilla install using Fraps to cap a run down the hill into the center of Riverwood. Plenty of trees, water, smoke and a few NPCs.

 

With AA off, vsync off and x16AF:

 

Default high = 82fps

Default ultra = 60fps

Default high, uGrids7 = 70

 

Next, I'm going to try ramping up the draw distance on high with uGrids7, then I'll do STEP at default high, ultra and with uGrids7.

 

One thing I noticed right away with uGrids7 is the tree pop in effect had greatly diminished. It was driving me nuts before - beautiful trees but only after they render when your 100 yards away. I'll try 9 as well and stress test a little to see how stable these are longer term.

 

Ultra vanilla is pretty nice to look at, but I'm already missing my STEP textures...

[MontyMM]

I'm a bit cautious of uGrids - I've always assumed that TC omitted them for a good reason. I think longer term testing is a good idea. I read respectable-looking reports that higher ugrids settings tend to CTD after crossing a certain number of cells.

[MontyMM]

A question for the heavy tweakers among you. Have you found a good spot for memory usage and caching settings - MaxAllocatedMemoryBytes, cells to load, and all that jazz?

[z929669]

I have not tested most of that myself, sorry!

 

I will likely tweak it in the future though

 

as far as uGrids goes, note that venkman has plenty of VRAM, system RAM AND uses an SSD ... My guess is that uGrids settings require all three of these be up to snuff, so i expect he will be able to go to 9 stable (I can run 7 without issue as long as my VRAM is kept down below 1.5 Gb, venkman should be able to go up to nearly 3 Gb VRAM)

[venkman781]

uGrids - I agree, Monty, I need to test it more. Recently, I tried using STEP and uGrids7 before with my current rig and it crashed under the load. That said, I hadn't really done my due diligence beforehand to ensure that my rig was stable with STEP and the .ini settings I kept tweaking (mostly just increasing draw distances). I imagine the combination was just overkill - I wasn't really being too prescriptive in how I was going about optimizing my settings.

 

Tweaks - Back before Skyrim was patched to use 4GB, I was using the LAA fix and MaxAllocatedMemoryBytes, but I can't say I noticed anything major. That was before I had implemented STEP or was using WB. Since then my tweaks are mostly to shadows, grass, etc. largely from here.

 

 

I'm debating the order of my next tests, but I think I'll continue to benchmark for "livable" frame rates by incrementally adding in STEP mods into the mix, starting with the textures. Although, I wonder if there is any logic to how one goes about making these tweaks to improve FPS?

 

Just thinking here - does it make sense to start with video card settings (AA/AF), then textures (resolution, optimization), then draw distances/uGrids, then shadows, then multi-thread/CPU? I don't know - but I'll bet there's a method to the madness.

[venkman781]

Deleted dupe post.

[venkman781]

Deleted dupe post.

[venkman781]

Deleted dupe post.

[Guest Generic]

I'm definitely interested in the wiki. I'll be on the look out. Thanks for the consideration!

I'm responding to the CFG Maker in the INI Tweaks forum. Here's the post copy:

 

 

uGrids - I agree, Monty, I need to test it more. Recently, I tried using STEP and uGrids7 before with my current rig and it crashed under the load. That said, I hadn't really done my due diligence beforehand to ensure that my rig was stable with STEP and the .ini settings I kept tweaking (mostly just increasing draw distances). I imagine the combination was just overkill - I wasn't really being too prescriptive in how I was going about optimizing my settings.

 

Tweaks - Back before Skyrim was patched to use 4GB, I was using the LAA fix and MaxAllocatedMemoryBytes, but I can't say I noticed anything major. That was before I had implemented STEP or was using WB. Since then my tweaks are mostly to shadows, grass, etc. largely from here.

 

 

I'm debating the order of my next tests, but I think I'll continue to benchmark for "livable" frame rates by incrementally adding in STEP mods into the mix, starting with the textures. Although, I wonder if there is any logic to how one goes about making these tweaks to improve FPS?

 

Just thinking here - does it make sense to start with video card settings (AA/AF), then textures (resolution, optimization), then draw distances/uGrids, then shadows, then multi-thread/CPU? I don't know - but I'll bet there's a method to the madness.

[venkman781]

Deleted dupe post.

[frihyland]

I would get all the big system hits balanced before moving on to the more subtle fine tuning tweaks. The known heavy hitters are Ugrids, AA, SSAO, ENB, Skyrim HD, and HD textures DLC.