Bottle neck: Stuttering

[Spock]

Hey people,

 

I know this is the kind of question techies hate but I will ask it anyway. My Skyrim Setup is STEP:Extended modded (1024 textures for exteriors) and runs Opethfeldt ENB 7 beta 3. Today my new GPU arrived, Powercolor r9 290 pcs+. But I was very surprised I did get exact same fps (27.5) on a very low fps savegame I made near Riften (with lots of trees, no water visible) as with my 280x.

 

The things I checked are:

CPU: I7 920 @ 3.8 GHz (windows doesn't show full cpu usage, on no core)

RAM: 6 GB @ 1.5 GHz triple channel CL 7 (windows doesn't show full physical ram usage)

 

I thought the 290 should at least get me slightly more fps then the 280x so I'm thinking something else might hold my system back. Could it be the PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth?

Ugrids=7 costs me roughly 0.4 fps which encourages me to think this is really not geometry or shader limited but has something to do with bandwidth. Resolution is pretty much the only thing that has a huge impact on my fps, I'm currently at 1440p.

 

My ENBoost settings:

 

 

[MEMORY]

ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true

ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true

DisableDriverMemoryManager=false

ReservedMemorySizeMb=256

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false

DisablePreloadToVRAM=false

VideoMemorySizeMb=4000

EnableCompression=true

AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for any input on this!

[keithinhanoi]

Don't know if I can help since I'm worthless testing out any suggestions with my seriously underpowered GPU, but here's a few thoughts:

 

1. spock, If AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true then the VideoMemorySizeMb is ignored.

 

AutodetectVideoMemorySize will set the Video Memory Size to physical VRAM + shared system RAM allocated by the video card driver. This will be a value similar to what you'd find in the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag) information output for your v-card, which will look similar to this:

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
          Card name: AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
       Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
          Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68A1)
           DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
         Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68A1&SUBSYS_00CC106B&REV_00
     Display Memory: 4095 MB
   Dedicated Memory: 989 MB
      Shared Memory: 3106 MB
       Current Mode: 2560 x 1440 (32 bit) (60Hz)

What this dxdiag output is telling me is I've got 989MB of VRAM (1GB minus some shared kernel memory address space) and CCC is allocating up to 3106 of system RAM as shared memory (for caching textures, etc.)

 

If I understand it correctly, if you set VideoMemorySizeMb to be the same as your VRAM (or a little less,) then the ENB dynamic memory allocations won't make use of the video driver allocated shared memory, and just use the RAM allocated by the enbhost.exe process(es). This may or may not give better performance and in turn affect the amount of stuttering.

 

So, you could try disabling AutodetectVideoMemorySize, and then "playing" with the VideoMemorySizeMb value.

 

2. Does the area where you see low FPS, possibly due to foliage, have lots of falling leaf / pineneedle animations? There are .ini settings, and even a lower-resolution texture mod to deal with slowdowns due to those animations.

 

3. I don't know if it's compatible with your card(s), but you could also try RadeonPro which does have some dynamic framerate control settings. Although its on-screen display features don't work with ENB, most of the features that control / override CCC seem to hook in along with the ENB libraries just fine. But - "Use at your own risk," as the author states.

[Seldar]

Hey all, I've tried borderless window in enblocal, one tweak and a combination of both but nothing works :(

 

Did anybody end up finding a solution to the stuttering?

Did you try this setting :

[LIMITER]

WaitBusyRenderer=true

 

It works well for me and removes micro stuttering at the cost of some fps drop

[O0mix0O]

Hey all, I've tried borderless window in enblocal, one tweak and a combination of both but nothing works :(

 

Did anybody end up finding a solution to the stuttering?

Did you try this setting :

[LIMITER]

WaitBusyRenderer=true

 

It works well for me and removes micro stuttering at the cost of some fps drop

Yeah I did, it's a shame it gives the fps drop as I'm running at 28-35 fps in crowded areas and the few frames that are lost really make a difference :/ I hope someone comes up with something to negate the stuttering effect but leave fps in-tact. I'm unsure if it's an ENB thing or not, maybe someone NOT running an ENB could tell us if they have stutters?

 

I'm gunna wait until V.252 and see if upgrading to that helps anything, fingers crossed it does.

 

EDIT: Just upgraded from 250 to 251 and the stuttering has decreased but hasn't gone (This is with WaitBusyRender set to false)

[Spock]

Don't know if I can help since I'm worthless testing out any suggestions with my seriously underpowered GPU, but here's a few thoughts:

 

1. spock, If AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true then the VideoMemorySizeMb is ignored.

 

AutodetectVideoMemorySize will set the Video Memory Size to physical VRAM + shared system RAM allocated by the video card driver. This will be a value similar to what you'd find in the DirectX Diagnostic Tool (dxdiag) information output for your v-card, which will look similar to this:

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
          Card name: AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
       Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
          Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x68A1)
           DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
         Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68A1&SUBSYS_00CC106B&REV_00
     Display Memory: 4095 MB
   Dedicated Memory: 989 MB
      Shared Memory: 3106 MB
       Current Mode: 2560 x 1440 (32 bit) (60Hz)

What this dxdiag output is telling me is I've got 989MB of VRAM (1GB minus some shared kernel memory address space) and CCC is allocating up to 3106 of system RAM as shared memory (for caching textures, etc.)

 

If I understand it correctly, if you set VideoMemorySizeMb to be the same as your VRAM (or a little less,) then the ENB dynamic memory allocations won't make use of the video driver allocated shared memory, and just use the RAM allocated by the enbhost.exe process(es). This may or may not give better performance and in turn affect the amount of stuttering.

 

So, you could try disabling AutodetectVideoMemorySize, and then "playing" with the VideoMemorySizeMb value.

 

2. Does the area where you see low FPS, possibly due to foliage, have lots of falling leaf / pineneedle animations? There are .ini settings, and even a lower-resolution texture mod to deal with slowdowns due to those animations.

 

3. I don't know if it's compatible with your card(s), but you could also try RadeonPro which does have some dynamic framerate control settings. Although its on-screen display features don't work with ENB, most of the features that control / override CCC seem to hook in along with the ENB libraries just fine. But - "Use at your own risk," as the author states.

Thanks a lot for your detailed troubleshooting post. The limiting factor might indeed be particle animations. I did install the reduced resolution version recommended by STEP:Extended, I cannot tell for sure if that's it (fps should drop when uninstalling it, I will try that).

I also did deactivate auto detect memory shortly after my post, should have updated it. If I remember right Torminator or Aiyen gave some advice on ENBoost memory settings.

 

About the "stuttering": From what I perceive my game doesn't really stutter. It seems like normal frame behavior if vsync fps drop below 30. My current theory is that Jafin is right about SSAO and the frame rate is limited by the post processing time required to render each frame. The fact that this is so prominent in foliage areas could be explained by the vast amount of edges/joints/angles produced in such an environment (trees HD and flora overhaul might exacerbate this). It would also explain why going from ugrids 5 to 7 only cost me 0.4 fps in that area (my SSAO area is limited below ugrids 5).

 

About half a year ago I tried radeon pro with my 280x, it was version 1.1 back then and some required process wouldn't start after some time (seemed to be a more common issue). I will have to check for a new version. "Free Sync", the dynamic vsync option interests me, dunno if it will work with my monitor though. And from back in the day I remember enabling the triple buffer was a bad thing.

 

I will have to test these things when my card is back from RMA. Thanks again for your detailed post!