ENB Mod or Multiple Followers Mod

[rkatt]

It seems that with my current hardware setup (Core i5-4670k, 16GB RAM, GTX 780 Ti w/3GB VRAM) I can only run an ENB mod or have multiple followers but not both, I mean, I can use both but not without a bunch of stuttering when I turn 360 degrees. Is this typical for others? ENB makes the game look really impressive but at the same time I want to have multiple followers without all that annoying stuttering everytime I turn around in the game; so I'm thinking about uninstalling ENB. Any thoughts? Have others given up on ENB in favor of performance?

[JimboUK]

I would always take gameplay over eye candy and if you think multiple followers adds to the gameplay then I'd dump the ENB, it's not like Skyrim looks terrible without it. I play New Vegas with a small army behind me, I wouldn't trade that for any eye candy.

[rkatt]

I even did a clean install of Skyrim and installed only 1k texture mods. Of course I don't know what size the textures are in the follower mods; they could by 8k for all I know (not to mention they all seem to have Apachii hair). Maybe I should try out a texture optimizer on my follower mods.

 

Are there any good follower mods that don't max out your VRAM?

Edited March 12, 2014 by rkatt

[JimboUK]

It's not so much VRAM it's that the game is horribly CPU bound, it's not as bad as the Fallout games, Oblivion or Morrowind but it still has a problem. If you want to reduce VRAM use then lower the distance settings and that sort of thing but at the end of the day none of us can have it all and we have to make choices. You can do an experiment to see if it the CPU, make a save, spawn a ton of enemies and see what your frame rate does, now open the console and do TFC 1, that stops the scripts running but everything is still being rendered, I bet under TFC 1 your frame rate will jump up. I did a similar experiment in Fallout, I spawned 200 npcs and the frame rate dropped so low it looked like a Powerpoint presentation, it was a case of seconds per frame rather than frames per second, enabling TFC 1 saw it jump up to over 40 frames a second.

[rkatt]

  On 3/12/2014 at 1:19 PM, jim_uk said:

It's not so much VRAM it's that the game is horribly CPU bound, it's not as bad as the Fallout games, Oblivion or Morrowind but it still has a problem. If you want to reduce VRAM use then lower the distance settings and that sort of thing but at the end of the day none of us can have it all and we have to make choices. You can do an experiment to see if it the CPU, make a save, spawn a ton of enemies and see what your frame rate does, now open the console and do TFC 1, that stops the scripts running but everything is still being rendered, I bet under TFC 1 your frame rate will jump up. I did a similar experiment in Fallout, I spawned 200 npcs and the frame rate dropped so low it looked like a Powerpoint presentation, it was a case of seconds per frame rather than frames per second, enabling TFC 1 saw it jump up to over 40 frames a second.

I tried unparking the cores on my CPU but it didn't seem to make a difference. I thought 'TFC 1' froze the game, well almost, water still flows (I think).

 

I suppose you are right, I can't have it all. I thought I would be able to considering my hardware specs but alas it's not my hardware that is the limiter, it's the game itself.

 

Maybe I'll try uninstalling mods that use scripts.

Edited March 12, 2014 by rkatt

[JimboUK]

It freezes everything by stopping scripts apparently. My specs aren't hugely different to yours, the game is poorly optimised and there's only so much we can do ourselves. If you're using a heavy depth of field with the ENB you could reduce the draw distance a little and get away with it, the DOF hides all sorts of nastiness in the distance.

[rkatt]

  On 3/12/2014 at 1:36 PM, jim_uk said:

It freezes everything by stopping scripts apparently. My specs aren't hugely different to yours, the game is poorly optimised and there's only so much we can do ourselves. If you're using a heavy depth of field with the ENB you could reduce the draw distance a little and get away with it, the DOF hides all sorts of nastiness in the distance.

DOF = blur effect, correct? I do have that enabled, I've read that it drops FPS a lot. Maybe if I disable LOD mods I might see a performance gain?

Edited March 12, 2014 by rkatt

[PetPet]

You have a very good video card so I don't see why you can't do both. My "not nearly as good" PC (3930k and GTX 570 2.5G VRAM ver) can generally handle 2~3 followers with "performance ver" (with OC and DoF turned off of course) of certain ENB preset (RealVision and those released by the TrueVision author), and I am running a few script heavy mods without FPS issues (60-ish in most case, 30-ish under the most stressed situations). Have you turned off hyper-threading and optimized (e.g., using Texture optimizer) your texture folder?

[rkatt]

  On 3/12/2014 at 4:13 PM, PetPet said:

You have a very good video card so I don't see why you can't do both. My "not nearly as good" PC (3930k and GTX 570 2.5G VRAM ver) can generally handle 2~3 followers with "performance ver" (with OC and DoF turned off of course) of certain ENB preset (RealVision and those released by the TrueVision author), and I am running a few script heavy mods without FPS issues (60-ish in most case, 30-ish under the most stressed situations). Have you turned off hyper-threading and optimized (e.g., using Texture optimizer) your texture folder?

RealVision is the ENB I'm using; I'm not using the performance version nor do I have the blur effect disabled. No, I haven't tried disabling hyper-threading. Do you think that will make the difference? I read somewhere else to leave the memory clocked at stock speed, not the 1600MHz profile. I've never used texture optimizer; I need to figure out how to use that tool.

Edited March 12, 2014 by rkatt

[PetPet]

Since I am not running Win8, disabling HT made a huge difference in my case (hexa core). As you and jim_uk discussed, Skyrim engine is hardly optimized for multi-core processors anyway. In my case, I used "Duke Patrick's Combat", which is known to have major script lag issues (though current version is much better). However, I will suggest try run a benchmark test (multiple mods come with script latency tests, e.g., "horse commands" got one) with and without HT enabled.

 

Can't comment on memory speed since it is too system dependant. Since you were not mentioning CTD / crashes, whatever you are using should be fine.

 

In many cases, massive stutters could be a a sign of running out of VRAM (even for your 3G). Try troubleshoot that by using "Skyrim Performance Monitor" to track your main & VRam usage. If your (V)RAM is low...optimized textures / BSA can help...a lot.

 

As far as I can tell, your system can do more and all it needs is just a bit of performance tuning.

 

Good luck.

 

P.S. one final note, script lags and low FPS (w stutters) could be totally different problems...I can have very good FPS but with FrostFall screaming at me about lagging scripts all day long...