ENBoost/Skyrim INIs recommended STEP settings wrong?

[blattgeist]

Hi STEP community. This is my first post here so I hope this is the right place.

 

I noticed that the description for recommended ENBoost settings might be wrong on a certain part:

 

Quote: "Set this line to true to use the memory reduction features without the graphic modifications of ENB.

UseDefferedRendering=(false, true)" http://wiki.step-project.com/ENBoost

I believe the line above is wrong. Setting it to true would be for ENB - users and settings it to false for Non - ENB users, meaning for people that do not use any graphical modifications.

 

 

Evidence? This post:

 

from Skyliner90 in the ENBoost comments on Nexus, Quote:

 

"UseDefferedRendering=true Some sort of rendering technique, unimportant unless you use ENB graphics."

 

And also this post: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1042116-ctd-and-performance-patch-enboost/page-70

 

Quote: "Most if not all ENB presets work with ENBoost. Pick an ENB you like, use v0193 or latest enb, change UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false and UseDefferedRendering=true in enblocal.ini for enb effects. If your enb comes with sweetfx, change EnableProxyLibrary=true, InitProxyFunctions=true and ProxyLibrary=yoursweetfx.dll in enblocal.ini as well."

 

 

So... am I right?

 

Greetings, blattgeist.

 

 

Edit: Here the link to the STEP site that I was referring to.

 

https://wiki.step-project.com/Recommended_ENB_Profiles#Global

Edited May 6, 2014 by EssArrBee

[Kuldebar]

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS is worthwhile if you have a script heavy/mod heavy build because it allows the game more time to set the stage, this also adds to loading screen time to a certain degree but anyone who has ever load into a cell with stalled or incomplete actors, this setting helps alleviate that problem. I keep mine at fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0. And I have changed settings:

 

[Papyrus]

fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6

fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.6

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0

iMinMemoryPageSize=256

iMaxMemoryPageSize=1024

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=115200

bEnableLogging=0

bEnableTrace=0

bLoadDebugInformation=0

bEnableProfiling=0

 

 SmkViper, Bethesda Dev:

The default of 1.2 should be fine for most people, even with modded setups. If you do increase it, keep it to small values or don't be surprised if your game framerate drops or hitches during periods of high script activity. (And if it's a combat mod, that would be during combat!)The last CPU-related setting (fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS) will not affect your framerate, but will affect your load times. Unlike the other settings, Papyrus will use the entire time even if it has nothing to do. Increasing this will only help make sure cells and such are set up if there is a load screen. For example, the civil war can stress this because it has to set up a ton of things in the cities for the war when you enter through their load doors.

 

 

 

 

CTD and [Papyrus] tweaks

in INI Tweaking

[blattgeist]

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS is worthwhile if you have a script heavy/mod heavy build because it allows the game more time to set the stage, this also adds to loading screen time to a certain degree but anyone who has ever load into a cell with stalled or incomplete actors, this setting helps alleviate that problem. I keep mine at fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0. And I have changed settings:

 

[Papyrus]

fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6

fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.6

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0

iMinMemoryPageSize=256

iMaxMemoryPageSize=1024

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=115200

bEnableLogging=0

bEnableTrace=0

bLoadDebugInformation=0

bEnableProfiling=0

 

 SmkViper, Bethesda Dev:

 

 

 

CTD and [Papyrus] tweaks

in INI Tweaking

So when I increase the default MS settings the biggest problem I could get is FPS drops? 

I will change my HAVOK settings to default because firefreak mentioned that they work for quadcores.

 

I'll set fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0, Loading times ar eno biggie.

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=2457600 Why is that setting so low in your config? I guess it tells the game how much memory papyrus gets.

Shouldn't it be fine with a high amount of RAM (16GB)? Or will papyrus never require that much memory?

bEnableLogging=1 To see if mods clutter the log with uncecessary stuff (very useful when installing new mods imo).bEnableTrace=1 What does this do?bLoadDebugInformation=1 And this?

 

iMinMemoryPageSize=256 What is this used for? Most people have this at 256 as far as I could see.iMaxMemoryPageSize=512 And this. Is there a general recommendation? You have it at 1024.

 

So here are the big ones:

These 2 are the ones that give me the most trouble when deciding if I want to trust old or new sources. Setting these to 800 gives each "operation" 800milliseconds time do do whatever it wants to do? That means the operations won't end until the time is over? Sorry I simply don't understand it :)fUpdateBudgetMS=xxxfExtraTaskletBudgetMS=xxx 

Setting these 2 to values that are super low won't slow the script language down? It won't cause any problems with a heavy scripted game? What would the highest recommended value be?

 

 

 

Generally I would like to know what the maximum recommended settings are. Like a.. medicine that works for everything.

Edited May 5, 2014 by blattgeist

[Kuldebar]

Highly recommend reading this thread with the dev comments and Creation Kit infornation:

 

Getting a LOT of script lag. Going over 10000 ms sometimes..

 

 

Papyrus INI Settings Creation Kit

 

The less is more rule is definitely the law to live by in regards to Skyrim INI tweaks and Papyrus specifically. The Havok and Thread Tweaks floating around are popular but completely unsubstantiated, I have never seen any confirmation that they actually work (and have used them in the past). It's more likely such tweaks will cause issues for people who try them.

 

Reverting to a clean default INI files and starting slowly, there's really only a handful of tweaks that are proven to actually work.

 

The Papyrus Tweaks I use are based on the devs comments and my own Mod Build demands.

 

In regards to iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes:

 

Quote

WARNING: this setting is for stack size not heap size, so there is no reason for setting this to a huge value even though it is possible. Increasing iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes to values much larger than default can cause stack thrashing (stack buffer overflows), intermittent game stuttering, erratic game behavior and CTDs. Stack thrashing will produce stack dumps in the Papyrus log, similar to the example below. The dumps can be very large if many scripts are running, producing a very large log file.

 

I doubled the default amount (and that was with prior understanding that even that amount might be too large), any higher multiples is rather insane, TBH.

Edited May 5, 2014 by Kuldebar

[Kuldebar]

 

Generally I would like to know what the maximum recommended settings are. Like a.. medicine that works for everything.

That's just not a good way to view this, or maybe it is...if you append this caveat: too much "medicine" will harm you...it's a sliding scale with variance based on the game and system that runs it.

There being so such thing as a free lunch, nearly all the Papyrus related settings have trade-offs of one kind or another.

[z929669]

Are using ENBoost's anisotropic filtering (AF) settings in enblocal.ini less efficient performance-wise than using AF settings in NVIDIA's driver settings?  In other words, will the performance cost of using 16x AF in enblocal.ini cost me more FPS versus using 16x AF in NVIDIA's driver settings?

In my XP, using AMD-side AF gives a 2-4 FPS gain over using it ENB side (using one or the other, not both). Whether this is a consistent user XP, I don't know.

 

Do us a favor and try it yourself and report back your findings. Just load up a frame-intensive save under both conditions and report your FPS. I suggest looking South over the bay towards the marshes outside of Solitude main gate area or likewise. Just load up the save and wait about 60 seconds. Then record your FPS under both conditions (all eslse being equal). You might try saves in two other areas as well.

 

Other people might recommend running around or doing some other sort of benchmark, but that will only add potential noise. Just load the save, and don't touch the mouse as a fast and simple first measure. Then do whatever second measures you like.

[oqhansoloqo]

That's a significant gain in FPS.  I would test it out if my current build was working right.  It's currently messed up because I installed the STEP Extended 2.2.9 Patch without properly setting up the aMidianBorn Addon Content mod package, so I'm waiting until the wiki page gets updated before doing anything else with Skyrim.

[keithinhanoi]

This thread has veered severely off topic and should have been moved elsewhere, but as z has even thrown his hat in the ring, what the hey?

 

 

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=2457600 Why is that setting so low in your config? I guess it tells the game how much memory papyrus gets.

Shouldn't it be fine with a high amount of RAM (16GB)? Or will papyrus never require that much memory?

 

blattgeist, with all due respect, before changing settings like this to the value you are suggesting, I recommend doing just 5-10 minutes of "Google research" for a reality check.

 

I'd hope you'd find the most direct official source of information about the Papyrus settings on the CreationKit Wiki site - the link Kuldebar pointed out: Papyrus INI Settings Creation Kit

 

Now maybe a lot of words on that page are new and don't have any meaning to you, so then wikipedia would be the place to go find out what things like a "stack" and "heap" are. Then you'd find out that a stack is something designed to hold a tiny amount of data.

 

Then, sit back, apply some common sense.

 

Remember that Skyrim, more exactly TESV.exe is a 32-bit application. It is LAA ("Large Address Aware" - google it ) executable, which means on 32-bit Windows it can access a maximum of 2GB of memory (unless you use a special and somewhat risk hack, in which case it's 3GB) and on a 64-bit system it cannot address more than 4GB of memory. In practice, Windows system libraries have to take up about 900MB of memory, so you're left with about 3.1GB of accessible memory - sound familiar ("the 3.1GB memory cap of Skyrim")?

 

Now, the Papyrus virtual machine (that VM does NOT stand for virtual memory) runs as a process in TESV.exe, so it, along with everything else running in TESV.exe, are collectively limited to that 3.1GB of memory on a 64-bit Windows system.

 

So, how, for the love of inserty your diety here, can we expect one tiny little process in Skyrim to actually grab up 16GB of memory, knowing everything I've just typed here?

 

Clearly, if we believe that we've been "sipping the kool-aid", standing in Steve Jobs "reality distortion field" (diety bless his sould), etc.

 

Just because iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes can be set to 2GB does not mean it was designed to do that. The wiki entry also give a clear warning (though I don't think it's clear enough, judging on vast amounts of wasted bits and misinformation from people with half a brain on magical papyrus .ini settings that will deliver world peace.)

 

Long story short, the whole TL;DR mentality will not bring world peace. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

Thank god the people posting these kinds of recommendations aren't doing programming of the International Space Station computers...

[blattgeist]

Before I comment on the rest what has been said I agree that the thread should either be renamed (I wish I could) or move it somewhere else.

 

@ Kuldebar, thanks for the help. I will read the threads that you posted and decrease the settings to a proper value. It seems like a lot of bad information has been posted in the past and everyone used it.

 

@ Keithinhanoi, that's what I did. I google searched and there are even higher recommended settings.

I never ask questions before doing my own research. But sometimes I get a lot of conflicting statements. Like with this one: https://www.rcrncommunity.com/five-quick-skyrim-tweaks-you-may-not-know That site should not be that high up in google, since the settings seem to be very inaccurate.

 

Hm... that means that Frostfall's Troubleshooting page might be giving wrong information too. https://sites.google.com/site/skyrimsurvivorseries/frostfall/troubleshooting

 

[Papyrus]
fUpdateBudgetMS=800.0
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=800.0
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0
iMinMemoryPageSize=256
iMaxMemoryPageSize=512
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=153600

 

Here is an interesting quote regarding the Frostfall setting:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1605598-id-like-to-know-ways-i-could-reduce-script-lag/page-2

 

To the OP. Based on a Beth guy's responses in another thread (another site, it was Steam forums if I remember correctly, there's a link somewhere on Nexus that I lost), apparently the best way to reduce script lag was actually limiting the FPS.

 

Playing the game at 60FPS gives the script engine on 15ms to fire (scripts must fire per frame, each one rendered at 15ms on 60FPS. The ini tweak frostfall gives it  800ms to fire, meaning in 1second, you let the game wait 800ms to fire a frame, so that turns it to 2FPS if in any situation a script fails to fire and the game decides to wait for it. Bringing the FPS down to 35 gives each frame about 29.XXXX(basically round it off to 30)ms.

 

This effectively doubles the waiting time for the engine for scripts to fire, reducing lag at the cost of FPS. I'm not saying drop it to 35, but take your max FPS indoors, and limit your FPS via Nvidia Inspector or ATi equivalent to within a max of 7units higher than your lowest outdoor FPS. IMO ideally you should put it smack in the middle of your highest and lowest outdoor FPS. Of course this tweak works only if your rig can play the game at higher than 40FPS in the first place. If you're PC can only max at 35FPS with no limiter, clamping it to 32FPS (skyrim for PC hates a cap lower than that for some reason) wouldn't bring any visible improvement.

 

https://www.creationkit.com/INI_Settings_%28Papyrus%29 This site is really helpful. Good link.

 

 

Thanks for clarification, yeah I know the limits of skyrim. The memory cap was a big topic in the past. The reason why people suggested high amounts of iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes must be because they thought it was for heap size, not stack size.

 

TL/DR someone move this thread to the appropriate section or rename it please:)

 

 

Edit:  Thanks EssArrBee

 

 

 

I'll list the changes that I made since my last post:

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=153600 That's around double the vanilla value ~153kb

 

I'm still doing research on the  fUpdateBudgetMS and fExtraTaskletBudgetMS values until I know a proper setting for my setup.

I tried out doubling the default values from 1.2 to 2.4 and I got no SkyUI error. Don't know about Frostfall though. I will keep them at 2.4 for now.

 

@ Kuldebar: I noticed that you doubled iMaxMemoryPageSize from 512 to 1024, how come? The CK wiki says "changing that to a higher value causes papyrus to allocate memory differently and could cause performance loss." Just trying to understand the reason here.

Edited May 10, 2014 by blattgeist

[EssArrBee]

Title changed to include both ENBoost and Skyrim INI discussion. Lots of good stuff here and new users learning about the terrible amount of disinformation out there. Keep it going, keep it civil, and we shouldn't have any problems.

[NewYears1978]

Found lots of helpful info in here.  Appreciated.

 

I had a question, I wanted to limit my FPS just to smooth out the framedrops in some areas..but if I set ANY fps limit below 60..I get this very odd bounce/stutter..like the game is pausing every other second..hard to explain?

 

Any idea what that might be caused by?  For reference I run 200+ mods (including STEP and other mods) and also Skyrealism ENB and I still get about 60 FPS in MOST cases..obviously not Whiterun, Markarth, etc..or when heavy weather effects I may dip to 50-55 (Markarth I drop to 30-40 in that spot we all know)

 

i7 4790k

GTX 780

Windows 7 64 Bit

8Gb Corsair Vengeance

2x Samsung SSD 840 250Gb

 

So just curious if I have another setting wrong not letting me use the limiter properly.

[Nozzer66]

I never set mine BELOW 60. Have heard a few people say setting to 59 works, but I find with my 120HZ monitor and 780Ti, I get best results setting my limit to about 75 FPS. 

 

I don't know why or whether it's even just a placebo, but I can run a bajillion mods and ENB up the wazoo and nothing stutters...

Edited July 25, 2014 by Nozzer66

[EssArrBee]

Setting an FPS cap below 60 seems to add microstutter to interiors. The Skyrim engine is actually designed to be played no higher than 60 FPS or the physics can get a bit weird. Rooms with all the clutter flung around. I think vsync automatically limits the game to 60 FPS, but you will get framerate drops with Skyrim no matter how powerful your system. You could have a quad Titan overclocked monster with liquid helium cooling and that thing would still get framerate drops in certain spots that just aren't optimized.

[NewYears1978]

I never set mine BELOW 60. Have heard a few people say setting to 59 works, but I find with my 120HZ monitor and 780Ti, I get best results setting my limit to about 75 FPS. 

 

I don't know why or whether it's even just a placebo, but I can run a bajillion mods and ENB up the wazoo and nothing stutters...

I only have 60hz monitor and run with Vsync on..I can't play games without Vsync as it feels really unsmooth.

 

I get 60 FPS most of the time..with no issues or stutter..it's only a few spots in the game where I get the issues..or heavy weather :

[EssArrBee]

I only have 60hz monitor and run with Vsync on..I can't play games without Vsync as it feels really unsmooth.

 

I get 60 FPS most of the time..with no issues or stutter..it's only a few spots in the game where I get the issues..or heavy weather :

That's just from using a Beth game all modded up. Try using New Vegas with a big gaming rig and the Strip will still give you terrible framerate.

[NewYears1978]

That's just from using a Beth game all modded up. Try using New Vegas with a big gaming rig and the Strip will still give you terrible framerate.

 

Yah..frustrating too to have a beast rig and not be able to get the smooth 60..but hey compared to when the game was first released..it's a gem now...I remember drops to 5 fps back then ;)

 

I just wish 30-45 FPS felt smooth for me..have sensitive eyes or something..