Fixed my fps & nearby blur problems; stuff I found

[dikr]

Disclaimer: Most stuff might be very obvious to experienced players & tweakers and I wouldn't call myself an expert on hardware and tweaking at all, but it can't be bad to inform those with similar issues as I had as it might help some of them. If you have additional tips, feel free to add them!


Problem: Annoyingly low fps with a modified game on a little higher than recommended system, especially in busy settlements and Boston area.

 

System: Win 10 / NVidia GTX 970 / Intel i7 / 16GB Ram / SSD / no HD Texture pack installed

I've done a lot of reading and trial and error in the past days because my fps was struggling since I discovered the NAC mod which works together with ENB's to add a lot of atmosphere and control to your game's environment, (to both exteriors and interiors).

 

I like NAC so much that I really didn't want to play without it anymore. Downside was a hefty fps hit on my regular installation. Not exactly sure if NAC was the cause of it but it seemed to coincide with my performance issue as well as upgrading my game to the latest version. I think it was a case of 'one big addition too much' along with ENB & an environment overhaul. The game also started to feel pretty laggy outside of Boston.


Stuff I found:

- Environment (green) overhauls that break the precombined meshes of the vanilla game can be a huge resource hog. I have played with Regrowth for ages and love it dearly, but removing it and replacing it with Another Green Mod gave me a very noticeable fps boost, as it seems it doesn't break precombined meshes (that much?) and doesn't change as much landscape in populated areas while being very similar to Regrowth in the amount of quality foliage and green stuff it adds.

- NVidia has a very insightful guide on game settings, what they do and how much of an impact on performance & graphics various settings have. (Also valuable info for ATI users). To me that was an eye opener and it allowed me to squeeze a couple more FPS out of my system here and there by lowering settings that don't impact the graphics as much as I thought they would.

- There's a nice guide on steam on fps optimization too; some of the suggested ini tweaks and nexus mods helped me get a little more performance.

 

- While changing ini, game and Nvidia settings, I had an annoying bug happen where some nearby textures, starting at 10 feet or so, like roads and workshop items became very blurry / lores. Spend hours to retrace all my changes and after almost giving up on it, I eventually solved it by resetting my general Nvidia control panel settings to default before changing them again. Can't tell you what the specific offending setting was but it seemed to be something it wasn't supposed to do in any case.


So currently my system is tanking the game again. I do get occasional very short drops to around 30ish in Boston and on cell changes but mostly it runs around the 60 limit set by ENB. Most importantly, it feels smooth and responsive again without a big loss in graphics, but with a landscape overhaul, Enhanced Vanilla ENB and NAC installed, as well as pretty far viewing distances and a high level of detail.

Cheers,

Dikr

Edited September 24, 2018 by dikr