Using ENB with GTX560-TI

[ManuZorch]

HelloI hope you'll excuse me if the question has already been asked but the search engine of the forum is down, and I quickly browsed other topics without finding a direct reference to my question.

 

I'am currently in the process of installing STEP Core 2.2.9

 

Here is my config:

AMD Phenom II X4

8GB RAmNvidia GTX560-TI 1GB

 

The question is quite simple:

 

Given this config should I consider installing ENB and look for a good preset to enhance graphics or not?If yes would you have any recommended preset that would not be too perfomance consuming?

 

Thanks for your time & congrats to the devs and to the team behind this project

 

[ManuZorch]

Altering grass settings wasn't enoughAfter struggling with many different settings, I finally reached an acceptable compromise between performance & graphic qualityI downgraded a number of graphic quality settings in skyrimprefs regarding grass, textures, shadows (moving from ultra to high) and reduced the draw distance of several types of objects

+Followed your guide to set AA to be handled by ENB only in skyrimprefs+Modified settings in enblocal.ini with the following figures

ReservedMemorySizeMb=768

VideoMemorySizeMb=2048

&

ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true

MaxAnisotropy=8

ForceLodBias=true

LodBias=0.5With this I reach around 50FPS outdoors quite consistently with rare & very light stuttering occuringI'll keep fine tuning the game from now to try to reach the best compromiseThank you for all your help

Edited July 26, 2014 by ManuZorch

[Aiyen]

I would suggest you try out a few to see what you like. Then after that you can come back and I will gladly help you tweak the performance of the preset as much as possible. 

 

With your system you still would be able to get a decent amount of visuals at 1080p... but it is cutting it close and something might have to be disabled entirely. 

[ManuZorch]

okay, i will do thatthanks a lot for your reply

[ManuZorch]

So far so goodI installed the RealVision ENB mod https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/30936, which seems one of the most popularsI selected option A PerformanceI just began the game, and inside the first mine, FPS values appeared to be quite good, around 70But outdoors FPS values drop significantly, sometimes down to 10, or less, while sometimes reaching 50+So it is quite inconsistent and I experience sometimes some stutteringI noticed FPS value drops more when I look around, especially in directions I never looked at before (maybe is it due to loading textures or new portions of the map?)Note I am using the HighResTexturePacksTell me what you need for the tweak, from enblocal, enbseries, skyrimprefs ini files or any other file and I'll publish it hereThanks again

Edited July 23, 2014 by ManuZorch

[Aiyen]

Yeah the inconsistency in FPS is most likely due to bad enblocal settings... you do not have the ability to run with 2k textures etc on a 1Gb card without having some stuttering issues etc. However the Official HDDLC should not be an issue. 

 

Try to use this under Memory in enblocal 

ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true

ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true

DisableDriverMemoryManager=false

DisablePreloadToVRAM=false

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false

ReservedMemorySizeMb=512

VideoMemorySizeMb=1024

EnableCompression=true

AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

 

If that provides no change then try to increase Videomemorysize to 2048 and try again. With 8Gb of RAM that should still be possible without any real issues. Ofc. all of this assumes you are running on a 64bit install of windows! If you do not then it will start to get really tricky. 

 

I forgot what specifically what realvision have enabled and disabled in its performance A option... but due to your description then the overall issue is more getting the memory issues in line rather then mess with rendering of things. 

[ManuZorch]

OK Thanks, I'll try thatI am still in process of installing STEP. I am in the middle of 2.F. Conflicting GraphicsI always follow instructions regarding installation of graphic resources and choose options accordingly to the VRAM size of my GPU (1024)

Thus i rather choose 1k textures

 

I also face the "Hardware antialiasing detected, some effects disabled" issueI'll follow the instructions given in this post https://forum.step-project.com/topic/4393-hardware-antialiasing-detected-some-effects-disabled-despite-settings/And will check my Nvidia settings. At the moment I use the GForce Experience preset for Skyrim. Maybe should I use a more custom preset (like disabling AA in the Nvidia settings) 

[Aiyen]

Under miscellaneous of my preset (Skylight ENB) I provide two guides. Take the installation guide and then chapter two will help you set everything up properly for any ENB preset out there. Will also save me the trouble of asking for ini files and telling you how they should be setup! 

 

There are more indepth guides out there on how to do stuff, but I try to keep it at a "play the game" level of detail. If you want full technical details there are threads here on the forums that will provide all of that "fun" stuff.  

 

If you find anything unclear then just ask and I will try to help out! 

[ManuZorch]

ThanksBeing myself a dev, yet in a completely different area, and also a former technical documentation writer, let me congrat you once again, and tell you I know the amount of work all this means ^^I think your Skylight Main installation guide will make it perfectly from hardware settings to enb settings

[ManuZorch]

I tried you suggested settings and the situation remains quite identical

 

I also disabled AA and VSync in my Nvidia GPU settings and now ENB loads fine with no "Hardware antialiasing detected..." messageIndoors, the FPS rate is consistent and often reaches 60 (as i have vsync enabled in ENB)Outdoors there are still stuttering and FPS drops problems, especially when rotating, otherwise the FPS rate is around 35-40I think i will try some tweaks I found on other posts, like applying the VRAM+RAM-2048=VideoMemorySizeMb formula to see if it provides any enhancement (seeing if sharing graphics with RAM can help)I was also wondering if there might be a way to tweak the "view distance" (i remember this setting in Morrowind) to reduce the amount of texture to load outdoors

Maybe should i try setting the ForceLodBias=true & LodBias=X?

 

[Aiyen]

First start with the grass density and draw distance. It is the most intensive parameter after shadows. 

iMinGrassSize in skyrim.ini and the fadedistance in skyrimprefs.ini all under Grass. 

 

In skyrimprefs.ini then try to set anything that have shadowmapresolution in the name to 1024 and then work from there. 

 

If that still produce stuttering then I will need the enbseries.ini file you are using and then I can come with a few suggestions based on that. 

[Aiyen]

No problem. Happy to help out! 

 

Another quick way to alter performance is to change anything that says "quality" in enbseries.ini. It is normally a value between -1 and 4 all depending, with higher numbers meaning less quality. Most effects look quite good using just medium settings, and only a few really need high. You can tweak those further. When you are done you just press the save bottom in the gui and then hit reapply and it will refresh the shaders with the new settings. 

[ManuZorch]

OKFor instance when I have:

[bLOOM]

Quality=0It means it is set to something like very high? Can I safely change it to 1 for example, or 2?

[Aiyen]

In most case you will see the benefit in FPS instantly. However some like the SSAO values need a reapply before they take effect, so in general it is best to always just reapply. 

 

A few of them have almost no performance impact... like the bloom value so that you can leave on highest settings. 

 

In general you can always safely adjust the quality parameters until you have the performance you require... a fact that many people seem to forget thinking that performance heavy presets are like that and cant be changed. It is not different from opening options and adjusting the video details quality settings. Before the days of the GUI it was more of a pain to adjust since you had to go out of the game and adjust ini files manually. 

 

That said then there are a few performance related values you cannot alter ingame since they are set at runtime! 

Under SSAO and Reflection find these variables 

SizeScale

SourceTexturesScale

 

And set them to 0.65 (size) and 0.5 (source) respectively. This will give you the best quality/performance ratio. The values determine the size of the texture used to apply the reflections and SSAO, the higher the value is the heavier the cost, but also the more detailed and smooth the effects become.

Edit: For reflection you can just put in 0.5 in both without much visual loss.. you could perhaps even go lower if you wanted. But diminishing returns and all that. 

[kamskii]

 

Altering grass settings wasn't enough After struggling with many different settings, I finally reached an acceptable compromise between performance & graphic quality I downgraded a number of graphic quality settings in skyrimprefs regarding grass, textures, shadows (moving from ultra to high) and reduced the draw distance of several types of objects

+ Followed your guide to set AA to be handled by ENB only in skyrimprefs + Modified settings in enblocal.ini with the following figures

ReservedMemorySizeMb=768

VideoMemorySizeMb=2048

&

ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true

MaxAnisotropy=8

ForceLodBias=true

LodBias=0.5 With this I reach around 50FPS outdoors quite consistently with rare & very light stuttering occuring I'll keep fine tuning the game from now to try to reach the best compromise Thank you for all your help

 

Plz, can u upload your skyrimprefs.ini text or whole file. I have the same pc setting like yours (i5, 8gb ram, 560ti le 1280mb). Im trying to up my fps for all my weekends and can't get further then 40-45 fps without disabling UseDefferedRendering.(dona want change enb effects https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50065/?)

my memory section:

[MEMORY]

ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true

ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true

DisableDriverMemoryManager=false

DisablePreloadToVRAM=false

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false

ReservedMemorySizeMb=512

VideoMemorySizeMb=7424

EnableCompression=true

AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

 

lol thx, its not necessary now, i boost game for 5-10 fps by set shadow quality at skyrim settings to hight from ultra and increase smoothnes of shadows at enb settings..as a result i have performance boost without lost in quality.

 

P.S.: DOF of this enb setting is so clearly beautiful so i dont need any AA, exept FXAA (its make borders less blocking) and AnisotropicFiltering, that set to 8. And ofcourse it was necessary for me to disable AmbientOcclusion, cause its too hungry for performance. As a result, i have stable 40-50 fps in huge action scene like a field view from hight point of citys and up to 60 in interiors. I played with balanced HD DLC textures, Skyrim HD 2k textures and aMidianBorn's packs that overrides dlcs tex, modlist index end at number 113  :: , ELFX SMIM and many optional retexturings are included. I want to say that it possible to play moded skyrim with enb setting even with 1gb videocard, but its required a HUUUUUGE custom work on every ini files of the game to make it stable and playable.

Edited December 21, 2014 by kamskii