MO + SKSE = Lag and Lower Framerate!

[kornest]

Hi people, first of all let me introduce myself. I'am kornest! Pleasure 
After some time of playing skyrim in my PS3 I decided to buy it from steam to finally start playing with some mods.

Now, after some research (Nexus mod manager vs Mod Organizer) I decided to install MO and I applied 2 mods, both of them requiring SKSE to function propelly.
Here's my dillema now:
If i start Skyrim from Skyrim launcher or SKSE, the game plays very smoothly but without the mods activated (the ones who actually need SKSE to work), but for some reason if I start the game through MO in the option SKSE, the game runs with both mods activated but I get a framerate drop. I'am talking like 20 FPS instead of the 50FPS I get on starting Skyrim via the 1st way described.

Any help or tips for this?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post

[Miki]

Check your ini files. When you launch Skyrim by itself, it uses the ini files in your games folder (e.g. C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim). When you launch Skyrim from Mod Organizer, it uses the ini files in the profile folder (e.g. C:\Skyrim\ModOrganizer\profiles\[profile]). Even better, use BethINI to optimize both sets of ini files for optimal performance.

It cannot be a INI issue, I always modify the mod organizer ones and automatically copy paste them to my games/skyrim for my benchmarks.

I am going to check this BethINI program, thanks for the recommendation.

 

Take note of the comment #21 just further up the page. That is the author of the programme, @Tannin. I think it is a safe bet that he would know what is and isn't possible with regard to any portion of his code remaining active in memory.

Well, as I said, I did clean drivers installation already.I can do it again I guess and report.

 

I am still trying to see if it an external program that causes the issue.Are there any program that could help monitor the background processes behaviours while in game?

I saw a program once that said could disable useless backgrounds when in Skyrim, what is it called again?

[GrantSP]

There are many tools you could use to check on your running processes, Google will help you find one you want, but the point remains: those running processes are still active regardless of whether you start the game with MO or not. MO is not adding any load to your system and thus causing lag.

[Miki]

Oh well, I feel stupid because the very last thing I expected was a conflict with Vorpx (because nobody has ever had this problem when checking Ralf's forum).

 

I was doing my benchmarks inside my CV1.

I just ran 2 benchmarks without the oculus rift, on a 1080p screen (needed to boost ugrid to maximum and settings too because it's hard as hell to go below 60 on a 980ti with a vanilla game), and Skyrim Performance Monitor reported the exact same numbers between a game launched normally and launched through mod organizer.

 

So now it all comes down to why Vorpx Skyrim runs slower when launching through Mod Organizer.Sorry for the trouble, I will ask for Vorpx's maker directly, but still if anyone here has an idea I would be interested in it.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Miki

[GrantSP]

I've never heard of VorpX before so I can only speculate. If that software is trying to hook into the game executable and add features to it, that process may be slowing down due to MO first hooking the game to add the mods. Purely speculation on my part. The upshot is though any software that is running in the background, if it isn't absolutely necessary, should be disabled.

[Miki]

I've never heard of VorpX before so I can only speculate. If that software is trying to hook into the game executable and add features to it, that process may be slowing down due to MO first hooking the game to add the mods. Purely speculation on my part. The upshot is though any software that is running in the background, if it isn't absolutely necessary, should be disabled.

I am not knowledgeable enough to explain the functioning.It converts the displayed image into a suitable stereoscopic 3D image inside the oculus rift.

Basically, right now, the situation is that launching skse or the launcher normally will give me around 50 to 60 fps inside the rift.But launching the skse or launcher through MO (once again, we are talking about a vanilla MO with the same INI files) will give me 30 to 40, which isn't playable in virtual reality.

 

And as I said, benchmarks have shown that the drop in frame-rate only occurs inside the rift.So it is an issue between MO and Vorxp (or Oculus drivers).

 

I thought that knowing this would help me fix it but after again many hours of no results I am getting desperate.The only little thing I can find is that it seems that when using MO and Vorpx, the GPU usage is around 8% lower.But CPU remains the same.But 8% shouldn't explain such a huge difference in frames.

Edited September 29, 2016 by Miki

[Miki]

I’ve been checking lots of logs from MO or SKSE but found nothing.
I checked vorpx logs this time, and found differences when launching between skse only and when launching through MO.

 

Basically, I did find error lines (and other additional lines) from the log when using MO, that aren’t there otherwise if I don’t use MO to launch SKSE :

ERR: _IsWindowsVersionOrGreater Error: GetFileVersionInfo failed.
ERR: MultiMonitorGetConfig not supported in OS < Windows7

ERR: _IsWindowsVersionOrGreater Error: GetFileVersionInfo failed.
INF: D3D9 BufferGrabber initialized. Grab mode: 0 (when I don’t use MO it says Grab Mode: 1)

INF: SettingsUI: Init (this is the end line, it doesn’t appear when not launching through MO).

 

Vorpx maker did reply this :

"If the mod manger forces vorpX into grab mode 0, which is indeed slower, the solution to your issue is not using the mod manager.

I will take a look at it, but since this likely is some odd modification to your system config caused by the mod manager, I can’t promise that there will be any other solution than not using it.Judging from the errors in the logfile the mod manager seems to enforce Windows reporting a wrong version number for whatever reason.You could check whether you accidentally did set Windows XP/98 compatibilty mode for it. If you didn´t, apparently it does something similar on it´s own"

 

This is devastating news to be honest, because any mod manager that isn’t MO, is, to my frank opinion, pure garbage and should never be considered.From what I’ve read in their forum Nexus Mod Manager is barely working if at all since the new version…

 

Is MO the only manager that can keep the vanilla files intact and who don't have new mods overwrite older mods which is a nightmare?

Edited October 2, 2016 by Miki

[DoubleYou]

Have you tried version 2 of Mod Organizer? It hooks differently and could possibly make a difference.

[Miki]

Update on the situation : Ralf (Vorpx maker) fixed the issue for me

 

I am now using his temporary fix until the fix makes it into his next update.I immediately regained all my fps when using MO.

 

He doesn't want that temporary fix to be known right now, but basically it seems that MO, when launching Skyrim, messes with the DLL search paths (on my machine at least, probably not everyone) and stops Windows from finding that "vital" system DLL.Thus making Vorpx unable to find my Windows version and to launch itself into the right Grab mode, resulting in huge  loss of frames.

Edited October 2, 2016 by Miki