4 FPS drop from Bijin Warmaidens?

[Piranha91]

I'm trying to get a good load order set up for smooth gameplay with minimal stutter. I'm first trying to add gameplay, location, companion, and NPC mods - after this I will add texture and graphical overhauls to the extent that my system (Xeon x5650, r9 290x 4GB) will allow. This is in contrast to my previous load orders where I maxed out the graphics first, then added gameplay mods, and then suffered through stutters and poor framerate. Therefore, I'm trying to weed out unessential gameplay mods that cause an FPS hit.

 

Right now, the only graphics mods in my load order are the unofficial HD texture packs, ELFX, and the performance version of RealVision ENB for ELFX, which I consider essential. I've been walking around the game world looking for regions that cause my FPS to dip down from 60 FPS so that I can test gameplay mods and see if they incur any further performance penalty. I identified a certain view of Whiterun which brings me down to 54 FPS (the companions are off in the near distance after killing the giant):

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/enb%202015_05_16%2011_27_09_95_zps3hgbwfkg.png

 

However, as soon as I add the latest version of Bijin Warmaidens, the FPS dips to 50:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y76/Danja91/enb%202015_05_16%2011_01_40_89_zpsewwqwz1r.png

 

Is it really possible that having to render a different texture for Aela and Ria can incur a 7.5% hit to my framerate on a 290x? Is it possible that something is improperly installed or configured? I really like this mod but 4 FPS for 2 NPCs is quite a bit when I haven't even started adding texture packs, SMIM, and other performance-heavy mods to the mix.

 

Thanks for any advice!

Edited May 17, 2015 by Danja91

[DrNewcenstein]

From what little I've dabbled with it while trying to figure out why it doesn't work with my Improved Housecarls and Hirelings mod, I've found that Warmaidens uses custom directories. As well, IIRC, it includes custom head and body meshes which are also in custom directories, as well as their textures, and their custom ApachiiSky hairs (though I'm not 100% on the hairs being included). It also depends on the texture resolution. If you can, set up a dual-monitor display and use the other to track what's being taxed, the CPU or the GPU. If it's the GPU, you might need to tweak its performance, or if Warmaiden's uses 2K textures, you might need to drop down to 1K.