SSE Pushing GPU to 100%

[ravenwing21]

Now that Vortex is in public beta I decided to switch over and make a new build for Special Edition after stubbornly sticking to Oldrim for the last couple years. Lucky me, I discover that, for some reason, my computer cannot seem to run SSE at all. I don't have the newest computer in the world, but I've been able to player newer, supposedly more demanding games - like Shadow of War, Injustice 2, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider - on at least decent settings.

 

My specs:

GTX 760 2G@6kHz

16G DDR3 RAM

i7 4770k CPU @3.5gHz

Samsung SSD

 

I started off with the modded build, and found (via task manager) that my GPU usage was hovering between 80-90% on the main menu and hitting 100% the moment I loaded into the starting cell of Live Another Life. I was able to create a character but once I was in-game it crashes after about one minute. My RAM and CPU usage aren't anywhere near taxed like the GPU is, and what's even stranger is that my FPS is perfectly fine. This build included SSE Engine Fixes, and I have V-Sync forced on in the Nvidia Control Panel. My drivers are up-to-date, and I'm not currently using an ENB or ReShade or any other post-processing effects.

 

My second attempt was to purge my build and see how vanilla SSE ran, but much to my horror that made absolutely no difference. So I started fiddling with the settings via the launcher, and found that that doesn't make any difference either - even with the vanilla game on the lowest graphics settings, my GPU is still nearly maxing out just on the main menu. There's no way the game is that demanding, there must be something wrong somewhere. I've done a little bit of research and haven't found much talk of people having this same problem, so I'm hoping someone here will have some insight -

 

What would cause VANILLA SSE to push my decent graphics card to its absolute limit on minimal settings?

[QuagaarWarrior]

If I had to guess I would say the 2gb VRAM is the limiting factor here. SSE requires quite a bit more from your GPU than Oldrim did.

[jones177]

When I tested Oldrim vanilla, It used 1.7gbs vram. With SE I got 4.8gbs vram.

 

Now that my game is modded it uses up to 7gbs vram.

 

My modded Oldrim game uses only 3.5gbs vram max and looks about the same as this one.

 

The best cards to play this game at 1080p are the GTX 980 or a GTX 1060 6gb or better.

 

You can use less but you will get more performance issues and more CTDs.

 

Later

[Pippboss]

SSE will eat up all the Vram you have if you give it enough rope. It will also eat all the system RAM you have. I just recently switched from an R7 370 2gb to a GTX1060 (6gb) and its night and day. Now I'm getting good FPS. I can run at max settings with ENB setup, a ton of new texture mods, grass mods and for 1st time in my SSE history I've been able to run JK's without issue.

Get some afterburner in your life and set it up so it shows you some useful information like VRAM usage RAM usage etc. You should be able to mod the game but be aware of what retextures you do use. The impact on performance can be a show stopper.

Edited October 28, 2018 by Pippboss