GUIDE ENB Guide

[oqhansoloqo]

aiyen and techangel - I like to use the chicken near the Sleeping Giant Inn as an example.  I stand back near the blacksmith's and look down the road at the chicken.  If iBlurDeferredShadowMask is set above 1 I notice a very obvious halo glow around the edge of the chicken's body which makes the chicken look holy or something when it stands in the shadows.  Objects should not be reflecting/emanating light like that - it just doesn't look right...  That's how it looks for some of us.  Maybe it doesn't do it with an ENB - I don't know because I don't use one currently.  I do use RLO Weathers though, if that makes any difference.  Maybe it is the darkened shadows of such a weather mod that makes the difference.  Maybe if I used vanilla lighting I wouldn't notice anything, but vanilla lighting is lousy, "muddy", and totally lacking in contrast - when there's no light it should be nearly pitch black, not just dim, otherwise sneaking feels retarded and the game is visually... *blah*.  Anyway, I may have tested a lot of it in the past to see the differences while choosing my game settings and mod preferences, but I don't remember...

[Aiyen]

This lack of contrast is also why you do not normally notice the issue without ENB or other mods that alter it. Increase in contrast directly make such things as halos worse for (what I think) obvious reasons. 

[oqhansoloqo]

Good - that's what I figured, which is why I proposed that idea.  :)

[oqhansoloqo]

Are you sure about the Enable Compression part under [Memory]? A friend of mine said it probably uses LZ to save RAM but he thinks LZ shouldn't work with VRAM. That would mean you should probably disable it at 8 gb ram.

I find improvement by disabling EnableCompression.  First of all, I have 4 GB VRAM and 8 GB RAM, so I have a high amount of VRAM as well as a decent amount of RAM.  I tried disabling the EnableCompression option and noticed that it drastically improved stutter issues - motion is much smoother for me.  It didn't appear to alter FPS when recorded by Skyrim Performance Monitor, but the improved visual affect that I notice with my eyes is very apparent.

Edited February 27, 2015 by oqhansoloqo

[cult77]

same here. Disabling enablecompression gives me less stutter.I have a 2gb vram and 8gb ram

[TechAngel85]

Disabling the compression wouldn't alter the FPS. However, you might see some increase in memory useage. The setting is one that is going to be different for everyone. As it's been stated many times, individual testing is required for ENBoost. No two systems will handle it exactly the same so only recommendations can be presented and then users must test for themselves from that point. I too have 4GB of VRAM and 8GB of system RAM. With compression enabled, I have no issues whatsoever. It could be possible that other parameters are set incorrectly which is causing the instability with compression. Testing is required. Here are my [MEMORY] setting for reference:

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=false
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=256
VideoMemorySizeMb=8192
EnableCompression=true
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

[oqhansoloqo]

I have ExpandSystemMemoryX64 set to true and VideoMemorySizeMb set to 10240.  Techangel, I know that you typically use baseline lower res textures which are usually about 1k, and I use 2k options.

 

Then after all that, I decided to raise ReservedMemorySizeMb up to 768, because it improved stutter in my setup further from lower values.  I think I might have tried a higher value than that and didn't really notice an improvement, so I stopped there.  It seemed to be better than 512 though.

 

EDIT: And I've spend many, many hours testing different configurations on my system.

Edited February 28, 2015 by oqhansoloqo

[TechAngel85]

And that is what user have to do. Different setups and system components will require different settings for ENBoost. It's a trial and error process through testing.

[oqhansoloqo]

I found an error with the guide info (highlighted yellow):

 

"While the preceding warning does not apply to everyone under all circumstances (me for example, running DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768), credible testing here on STEP supports the notion that setting EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=true can contribute to Skyrim CTD at startup when using sheson's memory patch. ~z929669 Talk 23:19, January 17, 2015 (EST)"

 

That should say "ExpandSystemMemoryX64" in that specific place instead.

[oqhansoloqo]

That reminds me... I read things wrong previously and should have disabled ExpandSystemMemoryX64...  So my setup should have had this "ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false".

Edited February 28, 2015 by oqhansoloqo

[TechAngel85]

That is Z's comment that will be deleted or incorporated into the text. I don't really know why he put it there as a comment.

[oqhansoloqo]

I wish the guide said more about "ForceBorderless" and "ForceBorderlessFullscreen".  It's hard to find good information about this doing an internet search.  The description about exactly what one each does is not very clear - feels like it expects the reader to already know what it's talking about.  Seems like two settings that should be easy to specify clearly, yet no one does.

 

When I do a search for information about this, it seems as though people talk about borderless window-mode and borderless fullscreen-mode interchangeably, as if they are the same exact thing - as an example...

Edited March 1, 2015 by oqhansoloqo

[TechAngel85]

I can probably add more to them, but they are fairly self explanatory....so I thought.

[oqhansoloqo]

I don't think they are self-explanatory.  Nor are the consequences memory-wise or stability-wise of using them.  After doing a lot of hunting for information around the internet, I find out that supposedly using windowed mode tends to reduce stutter with Bethesda games (for a lot of people), increase game stability (less CTDs), and can actually increase FPS by a slight amount if none (which is opposite of what most games would do if forced into a window versus fullscreen).  You also have to edit "bFull screen" in the main Skyrim or SkyrimPrefs (I forget which one) .ini file and make it "0" to actually make use of the ENB settings, otherwise setting either of those to "true" won't do anything (I think).

 

Another setting that is not very self-explanatory that can use more information is "EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks".  Why is it unsafe - unsafe in what way?  Will it damage your hardware, driver installation, your saved game, cause CTDs that merely close the program?  I'm guessing it can just cause CTDs in certain situations, and is not really "unsafe" to use... but the wording scares me without an explanation of the downsides to actually using it.  While I don't use this for Skyrim, I noticed that in Fallout New Vegas that it's the only main memory tool setting in enblocal.ini that doesn't cause major stutter issues in that game when I try to make use of enblocal.

Edited March 1, 2015 by oqhansoloqo

[TechAngel85]

I added some basic info to the the ForceBorderless parameter. I might hit up keithinhanoi for a more detail explanation on those two parameters. As far as having to set bFull screen=0, I don't think I've done this and I run in Windowed mode. The only experience is that the game seems to have to "re-render" the game scene when you Alt-Tab back into it. This could be because I, myself, have it set up incorrectly.

 

As for EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks, there isn't much more to say on the subject than what is in the description. If you want finer details, I'd suggest asking over on the ENB Dev threads.