20-30 fps after STEP Guide (Macro stutters)

[Beamer]

Hello everyone, first I want to say I recently started playing Skyrim and love it. Then I found modding... At first I started with CoT, Immersive weapons and armors, Skyrim Unleashed and a few others and skyrim played fine with the occasional freeze when in a "inside" area (caves, houses etc). Besides that the game ran smoothly. I wanted to make skyrim look better so I followed the STEP guide then added CoT and a few others (alternate start and the sort). Sadly before even adding these other ones my fps seems stuck between 20-30 with hard drops to 5 randomly. I tried following the tips on the guide but to no avail. Also another weird thing that happens is when walking into a town or area with houses/walls details will start loading right in front of me which I don't recall happening before. I will take any help I can get as there are a few more item mods I want to install and to finally start another play through.

[Beamer]

I am likewise no expert, but I wouldn't even try getting big texture mods. Perhaps modding some misc. items, but going for mods like amidiaborn or Skyrim HD/Serious HD etc. isn't adviceable.

Ah guess I should uninstall all the big texture mods then. Thanks.

[GunerX]

Oh, shoot, I was way off. Dxt is which one, the lossy right? and 5, do you mean under the compression tab, setting it to 5 as opposed to any other number?

there is more than 1 DTX setting. The best (highest compression) is DTX1.

I am likewise no expert, but I wouldn't even try getting big texture mods. Perhaps modding some misc. items, but going for mods like amidiaborn or Skyrim HD/Serious HD etc. isn't adviceable.

just Optimize aMidianBorn stuff and it should be fine. The main things to stay away from are SDO (skyrim Distance overhaul), Skymills, SRO (skyrim realistic overhaul), and especially SkyFlora. (even with all of these optimized and compressed with ddsopt I cant run them with 1.5gb vram)

[CovertSlinky]

Ok, I am not finding that GunerX, please enlighten me. All I can find in ddsopt is dxtx lossy, as a dxt option.

[Aiyen]

I clarified it a little bit in the pm. 

For the rest of ya 

DDSopt cannot be told specifically which DXT compression to use in all cases.. it will always sort of decide for ya... at least i never found a way to force it. 

But in most vanilla cases it does not matter. 

 

Also if you are only using the base vanilla textures there is no point in running it with the aim reducing texture size. Only reason would be to fix a few mip map issues. 

[GunerX]

ddsopt might not offer it (i am not an expert with ddsopt) but there is another program that will compress it further down to dtx1.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13529/?

 

As you can see from the picture, it takes a DXT3 and compresses it down to a DXT1, some stuff stays at higher values such as DXT5, I don't know how it determines what should/can be compressed down further so it might not be safe to use on all mods (but then again ddsopt might also not be safe to use on certain mods, its all a gamble)

 

 

[CovertSlinky]

Ok, thank you for the pm Aiyen, and thanks for that extra info GunnerX, appreciate it.

[phazer11]

Guner if you have 3 GTX 480's and have the SLi bridges for them... why aren't you using those instead of the Radeons? IIRC the GTX 480 blows the Radeon 4870 out of the water, and that's without factoring in the SLi or the additional VRAM (1GB more). As for using the 512mb cards (or if you want a little more room on the 1.5GB cards for eye candy) then I'd have to recommend you look at the following.

alt3rn1ty's Vanilla Reduced Textures: Link

Gamwich's Bethesda Performance Texture Series: Link 1 and Link 2

 

You're already getting info about DDSOpt and you should definitely follow it as well. Just thought I'd add my $0.02

[CovertSlinky]

Guner if you have 3 GTX 480's and have the SLi bridges for them... why aren't you using those instead of the Radeons? IIRC the GTX 480 blows the Radeon 4870 out of the water, and that's without factoring in the SLi or the additional VRAM (1GB more). As for using the 512mb cards (or if you want a little more room on the 1.5GB cards for eye candy) then I'd have to recommend you look at the following.

alt3rn1ty's Vanilla Reduced Textures: Link

Gamwich's Bethesda Performance Texture Series: Link 1 and Link 2

 

You're already getting info about DDSOpt and you should definitely follow it as well. Just thought I'd add my $0.02

You are actually referring to two different people phazer. Guner does run his SLi GTX 480's, but beamer who is the OP, is the one who uses the AMD HD 4870's in CrossFire mode. And if I would have seen him make that statement, lol, there is NO way I would not have asked him the same exact question. That's like laying out two different options before you. On the one hand you have an ice cream cone, On the other hand you have a banana split with hot fudge and cashews and cherries and can't forget the sprinkles.... you get the point, lol.

[GunerX]

I have actually been doing extensive testing with the STEP core program in relation to Optimization using various programs, tweaks.

 

And I have managed to get the entire STEP Core to function (even the things I had previously turned off due to macro stutter) thanks to DDSopt tweaking.

 

Basically my MO looks bulky and cluttered because I have things like this:

 

Random Mod - uncompressed

Random Mod - basic compression

Random Mod - super compression

Random Mod - NIF Compression - Experimental (dont ask me about this one, I tried it on a few things and while I did not CTD the benefits do not outweight the problems that occur when doing it)

Random Mod2 - uncompressed

etc etc

 

 

And I have managed to gain back about 20 fps so far.

 

 

I highly suggest for anyone with low VRAM like me (or even lower VRAM like OP) to use all LOSSY DDSopt settings and change the constraints down to 1024x1024. EXCEPT FOR BODY TEXTURES!!! (STEP suggests keeping these at 2048x2048 and I have tested going further and it just looks bad....like really bad)

 

 

OP should do this on ALOT of mods and try running the game again to see if it helps.

Edited August 19, 2014 by GunerX

[phazer11]

Oh lol. Man I must have been out of it last night. Still the reduced texture packs I mentioned are good for those with 1GB or less to play with.

[Halde]

 

just Optimize aMidianBorn stuff and it should be fine. The main things to stay away from are SDO (skyrim Distance overhaul), Skymills, SRO (skyrim realistic overhaul), and especially SkyFlora. (even with all of these optimized and compressed with ddsopt I cant run them with 1.5gb vram)

 

 

I'm fairly certain that aMidianBorn is optimized as well as one can hope.

[phazer11]

 

I'm fairly certain that aMidianBorn is optimized as well as one can hope.

 

That's correct. He does in the cases of the individual mods (the ones with their own mod pages since the Book of Silence is mainly just the compilation) have alternate resolutions so you might use those pages instead.