Performance and CPU usage

[Penrutet]

Hey, sorry if this has been discussed somewhere before, couldn't find it with the search function.

 

So, for a long time now I've been testing mods and different settings in order to achieve a constant 60fps in Skyrim. Normally, 60fps aren't a must for me but in Skyrim I just can't play with a value lower than that. Texturewise, there's nothing really that I can't install, ENBs on the other hand eat too much performance for my taste. However (this is going to sound really nitpicky :P ), there are two locations in Skyrim where even in vanilla 60fps are hard to achieve. I'm talking about the top of the stairs in Whiterun and the worst culprit: Markarth. 

 

When setting the launcher on Ultra and playing just vanilla Skyrim, I get about 50-55 fps in that Whiterun location and in Markarth when standing with your back to Cidhna Mine it even drops to 40. I've monitored my CPU and GPU load (I even checked the individual Core load for the CPU) and they never even once went above 85%. So a bottleneck should be out of the question. 

 

Reducing shadow quality to High brings ~ 60 fps in Whiterun, however in that Markarth location it's still under 50. 

 

Only when setting shadow quality on medium can I get 60 fps in both locations, even though it can still drop to around 55 in some instances in Markarth. 

 

I know that shadows are mainly handled by the CPU in Skyrim (at least I think so), however a CPU bottleneck seems unlikely according to my performance tests. So why the performance drop? Is it just bad game optimization and Bethesda's fault? 

 

It would be really awesome if some of you could test these two locations with a vanilla Skyrim on Ultra and with different shadow settings - shouldn't be a problem with Mod Organizer profiles - and write down your specs and your fps. Just stand on the top of the stairs leading to Dragonsreach in Whiterun and look down on the city and in Markarth stand right outside Cidhna Mine and look up. 

 

My specs: GTX 770 4GB / i5 2500k @ 3.3Ghz (I'm doing an overclock right now so it's actually at 4.0Ghz)

 

Whiterun: Shadow quality ultra = > 50 fps | Shadow quality high = 60 fps | Shadow quality medium = 60 fps

Markarth: Shadow quality ultra = 40 fps | Shadow quality high = 45 fps | Shadow quality medium = 55 - 60 fps

 

Cheers,

Penrutet

         

[TechAngel85]

No need to test that really. It's well known that shadows are one of the main performance killers in Skyrim and there's not much you can do about it other than lower the settings as you've found out. You can tweak the SkyrimPrefs.ini to gain a bit more fine control; however, shadows are always going to be an issue if you want to maintain 60FPS. I have a really good quality IPS monitor and a GTX 760. I rarely drop below 40FPS anywhere in the game and it's always smooth.

[Penrutet]

I see. While I have your attention, are your fps very stable or do they fluctuate? The reason I'm asking and why I care so much about 60 fps is whenever my frames drop to around 50 (rarely happens but still) it feels as if I'm stuttering even though it shouldn't. Am I just very sensitive or is it normal that 50 fps suddenly feel a lot choppier when you're used to 60. I would love to achieve this 'smoothness' which you mentioned, whithout capping my frames if possible. :D

[TechAngel85]

What are your enblocal.ini [MEMORY] settings?

[Penrutet]

 

ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=false
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=512
VideoMemorySizeMb=10240
EnableCompression=true
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

 

Edited December 13, 2014 by Penrutet

[TechAngel85]

Same as mine, so that shouldn't be causing an issue. I personally do not notice any stutter when the framerate drops down. It could be a system specific issue.

[GrantSP]

If I may add something here.

In my researching of this phenomenon, it isn't the highest value of FPS that you need to worry about, it's the fluctuation between them.

You state you can't play unless the game is at 60FPS but I would argue that it is only when you suffer a sudden change of frame-rate that you would even know what FPS you are running at.

Taking the most intensive area in the game world and if you limited your FPS to the maximum you can get at that location then when you pass through you wouldn't notice a thing because there would be no change and your eyes/mind wouldn't have to make the adjustment.

 

So if the best you can reach at the most intensive location is 50FPS, setting that as your limit would avoid the drop and hence no stutter.

 

Of course this is because I am on a machine that can't consistently get above 30FPS so I'm biased but the reasoning is true.

I'm not one of those wackos that claim the eye can't register anything above 30FPS, that's just bollocks. All I'm saying is maybe it is just the sudden drop that is a concern.

 

Feel free to completely refute anything I have said, I'm all for learning new things.

[Penrutet]

Thanks for the input GrantSP ;) (oh and thanks TechAngel for the help as well) 

 

Well, what you say is partly true. I have tried capping my frames to 40 or 50 and this did help me achieve much smoother gameplay. However, I just can't really play Skyrim without my 60 fps. :P This is of course highly subjective. 

 

I googled a bit further on this phenomenon and one thing that might be responsible is my monitor (60hz refresh rate). Someone with a similar issue claimed that he never had this kind of trouble with a 120hz monitor but I'm not planning on buying a new one anytime soon.

 

In the meantime, I have found this ominous ini tweak: iFPSClamp=60. Putting this into my skyrim.ini as well as capping my fps at 60 in my enblocal.ini seems to have solved this stuttering that's occuring when going below 60 frames. Apparently, what this tweak does is capping the whole world movement to your framerate. If your frames are way below 60 this results in a sort of slow motion but since my fps only ever dip to 50 (and almost exclusively in Markarth) it doesn't show at all. 

 

Normally I'm quite skeptical towards these ini tweak that I find outside of STEP in the vastness of the internet but this one seems to work for now. Did anyone ever make a bad experience with this? 

[hishutup]

For me Compression cause some wicked stutter, try disabling it.

 

Personally I found that setting ReservedMemorySizeMb and VideoMemorySizeMb fairly low helped me out. Mine are 128 and 4096 respectively.

That being said, your results may vary.

[Vulgar1]

You could try changing ReservedMemorySizeMb to 1024 in ENBlocal.

There are mods that completely remove shadows but that's no fun.

Finding a balance between quality shadows and  consistant FPS is the trick but a hard one to pull off.

Eventually you have to favor one for the other.

One nifty trick is messing around with the iBlurDeferredShadowMask= value. It's normally at around 3 but can go as high as at least 10 (I've seen someone recommend 15 but that's just crazy talk).

By changing this you can kind of compensate for lowering the othe shadow values. It blurs the shadow edges making them more smooth and seemingly faded out.

Or you can take a gander at Ewi's INIs.

If you made changes with Nvidia INspector I'd just retore them to default and apply and then follow everything else in the STEP guide.

There are futher instructions and advice specifaically in the ENB guide that make any changes in Nvidia INspector redundant.

For instance the ENB guide and Boris recommend using enblocal.ini for Anistropic Filtering. Everyone who uses ENB boost should do this.

I have mine set at 16x and it works way better than using the drivers.

The ENB guide also recommend SMAA for anti-aliasing and setting it as a proxy in ENB local. It also goes into detail on the various AA types listed under Anti Aliasing in the enblocal.ini.

If using SMAA you shouldn't use Temporal or Transparency AA with SMAA. You can use Edge and Subpixel AA with SMAA, however Edge and SMAA together has a pretty large perfomance impact.

I've tested all this stuff out and this is what works for me.

Restored default settings in Nvidia INspector.

SMAA with SubPixelAA with the other three set to false.

I just started using Ewi's INIs and its working great. I made some minor tweaks such as the ones in the STEP guide that weren't already made.

I haven't raised the iblurdeferredshadow setting yet but I'm going to test it at 5 or 6. When my INIs were a mess I had it at ten. The shadows looked good but I had some crashes due to other edits (papyrus, etc.)

Anyway sorry for the wall of text, I just thought I should get this information out because it may be useful. Then again I could be completely wrong.