Need advice on where my Skyrim performance is bottle-necking

[persist3nce]

So this is my current set-up:

 

 

256GB SSD

 

920W PSU

 

i7 920 Bloomfield at 2.8GHz (QPI 2.4GHz)

 

8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM at 7-7-7-21-180-2T (Northbridge 2.8 GHz)

 

Radeon HD 7850 HIS 2GB 256-bit GDDR5

 

EVGA E758-A1 3-Way SLI (x16/x16/x8) LGA 1366 Intel X58

 

 

Here is a pastebin of my mod load-out (Note: I am NOT looking for criticism of my mod selection, number of mods or load order, just giving an idea of what I do with Skyrim): http://pastebin.com/hLgCkust

 

As you can see, the majority of my mods focus on HD textures and effects like SMIMM, WATER, Flora Overhaul, etc. Most of the irritating lag/slow-down/choppiness I notice is in big cities like Whiterun and Markarth.

 

So my question is, what should I upgrade first to start fishing for some more FPS? Money isn't really a big deal here. I think my bottle-neck is VRAM, but I could be wrong hence why I'm asking you guys. The video card I'm considering buying is basically identical to the current card (from HIS, and similar model), but it has 4GB of VRAM instead of 2, faster memory clock rate, and 1000MHz on the card as compared to 850MHz.

 

So what do you guys think?

Edited June 25, 2013 by persist3nce

[Phalanx108]

VRAM is fine.

 

Check CPU, the 920 is a bit old now.

[persist3nce]

VRAM is fine.

 

Check CPU, the 920 is a bit old now.

I wasn't aware Skyrim really bottle-necked on CPU, and a lot of what I've read says even my old 920 is still mondo over-kill for 99% of games/programs. Are you thinking more along the lines of inferior/slow L2/L3 cache? I could see that hindering speed of textures loading.

[persist3nce]

Update: ASUS' GPU Tweak shows my VRAM maxing in Whiterun which is where I stutter hardcore (Yes I run 2k textures for everything, and Whiterun extended/overhaul), this might not mean much, not sure if there's a texture plateau where busy areas will eat up all your VRAM no matter how much you have.

[Rennn]

Stutter is typically related to VRAM. Unfortunately, past 2GB it becomes less efficient in Skyrim, as it's a 32-bit application and some of the 4GB limit is taken by WIndows and Skyrim's use of system RAM.

 

I would advise you to get rid of the less noticeable HD textures. A 3GB card is not generally worth the upgrade from 2GB for any game except Skyrim, and a 4GB card won't even help you in Skyrim.

 

 

For future reference, Skyrim can indeed bottleneck on the CPU. It's actually debatable whether it performs better on a dual-core or a quad-core. When it detects a quad-core, it attempts to offload minor tasks to the other two cores, which on faster CPUs actually takes more time than just running it all on 2 cores. Regardless, your CPU should be overkilling Skyrim. Probably 80% of the time when someone has stutter in Skyrim, it's because of VRAM.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Rennn

[Beriallord]

Your CPU could be the bottleneck in Skyrim. Try disabling shadows on grass, and that will get you some FPS without really taking away too much immersion. Skyrim is more CPU intensive than most games. Because it uses the CPU to render the shadows. In most games shadows are done by the GPU. This is especially the case if you got mods that put more grass + larger grass. You could be rendering a whole lot more shadows.

 

Also how high are those texture packs? Are you using an ENB pack? A single 7850 might not cut it for some ENB packs. Turn off SSAO if you're using an ENB pack.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Beriallord

[JimboUK]

The 920 is still plenty fast enough, those running a ton of eye candy are doing so with high end cards, the 7850 isn't a high end card.

[Roguespear]

The card I would recommend would be the nVidia GTX 780 if you can afford it, it is basically a scaled down Titan with the Titan's brand new redesigned cooler Newegg price 649.00 us. 3 gigs of vram but their top line gpu. The titan is the fastest single gpu video card available right now.