Strong Computer - Many mods - 30 FPS

[WickedCat]

Hello guys,

 

I am looking for answers to specifically increase my FPS and reduce stuttering while moving the camera around.

 

My computer:

• MOBO: ASUSTeK P8Z77-V LX
• CPU: i5 3570K Core Speed: 4.2GHz
• Memory: 16GB DDR3 951MHz
• GPU: GTX 780 3072MBytes Core 32MHz
• SSD: Samsung 940 Pro 256GB (Win7 and Skyrim+mods)
• HDD: Seagate 7200 RPM (10 years old)
• Cache: L1 32KB, L2 256KB, L3 6MB

 

It was a very powerful computer 1 or 2 years ago, but still remains solid today.

 

I'm running Skyrim with Mod Organizer (closed when I run Skyrim), and the bare minimum with it while playing, no random applications.

I have SkyRe Reproccer as well as Dual Sheath Redux Reproccer.

I used LOOT and TES5Edit, that I added myself in MO, to clean all the esm.

 

I have around 200 mods running, it's heavily scripted with all the NPC mods. Also I have several Parallax 4k and a lot of texture packs in 2k, 4k.

My Skyrim is running with Real Vision ENB and I added a few city mods.

 

As an example of the worst performances I am getting:

30 FPS on the bridge of Riverwood, while looking at the village (between 30-50 while running in Riverwood)

20 FPS while moving the camera around in the Whiterun exterior city, added by Expanded Towns and Cities

 

My average while playing normally, without searching for the worst performances and spots: 35-45 FPS.

No problem whatsoever in the interiors.

 

I never used any Textures Optimizer.

 

I am wondering if I am using double textures for the same content, same for Parallax.

Basically, maybe if I remove 1 texture package, I would see no difference and get better performance.

I am unaware if multiple mods replace the same textures.

 

 

If needed, I can provide more information, such as my 4 ini.

 

My Mods List:

 

Animals

• SkyTEST + Spider Quieter Footsteps
• Birds of Skyrim
• 83Willows 101BugsHD Butterfly
• More Village Animals
• Beast Skeletons
• Immersive Creatures
• Deadly Dragons
• Elemental Dragons + Dragon don't kill NPC Patch
• Dragon Remains

 

Animations

• Realistic Ragdolls and Force
• Dual Sheath Redux + USKP Patch
• Animations + UKSP Patch
• Lifelike Idle Animations
• Immersive Animations
• HDT Physics Extension
• Skyrim Hair Physics Project
• Momo Acrobatic Jump
• Feminine Running and Sprinting Animation
• FNIS + 5.5 Fix
• New Animation - One Handed Sword
• New Animation - Two Handed Sword
• New Animation - Magic Casting
• XPMSE Skeleton for RSChildren

 

Audio

• No Sneak Attack Sound
• Audio Overhaul 2
• Sounds of Skyrim - The Wilds + Climates of Tamriel Patch
• Sounds of Skyrim - The Dungeons + Climates of Tamriel Patch
• Sounds of Skyrim - Civilization + Climates of Tamriel Patch
• Underwater SFX Fix
• Better Bards

Body

• CharGen Extension
• RS Children Overhaul + UKSP Patch
• Character Creation Overhaul + 1.4.0 beta
• ApachiiSkyHair 1.6 Full + ApachiHelmetWig 1.0 + ApachiSkyHairFemale 1.5 + ApachiSkyHairMale 1.2
• ApachiiSkyHair Natural Retexture 2.3 + Update 2.4 + High Contrast
• HN66 Long Eye Lashes
• Brows High Resolution 3.1
• CBBE
• BodySlide 2
• Remodeled Armor for CBBE BodySlide HDT
• Fitness Body
• SkySight Ultra Male + Ultra Orc Name Patch
• Ponytail Hairstyle

 

Cities

• Open Cities + patch
• Winterhold Expanded Ruins
• Expanded Towns and Cities + Light in Riverwood Inn + Patches
• Dawn of Skyrim + Update
• Provincial Courier Service
• Skyrim Sewers 4

 

Clothing

• Sabre Backpack

ENB

• RealVision ENB V279b

Followers

• Amazing Follower Tweaks + Interesting NPCs Fix
• Skyrim Beautiful Followers
• BTRH Waifu
• Followers Can Relax + Serana Added + AFT Patch
• My Home Is Your Home
• Follower Commentary Overhaul
• Better Stealth AI For Followers
• Toccata
• Seranaholic + Seranaholic Textures Update
• Vivace Follower + Vivave Fix Hair Clipping
• Chaconne Follower 1.3 + Update
• RK Followers + RK Followers Presets
• Bijin Wives
• Bijin Warmaidens
• Dine With Followers + Update v 1.1

 

Gameplay

• Balanced Magic
• ASIS
• Trade Routes

 

Homes

• Hunters Cabin of Riverwoord
• Breezehome Fully Upgradable + ELFX Patch + Open Cities Patch

 

Horses

• Oblivious Horses

 

Immersion

• Wet and Cold
• 2K Road Snow Footprints
• Frostfall
• Realistic Needs and Diseases + USKP Patch + Patches
• Collect Water From Wells
• Herbal Tea + Realistic Needs and Diseases Patch
• Babettes Feast - Improved Cooking
• Destructible Bottles + Sound
• iNeed
• Immersive Patrols Unaggressive
• Tourring Carriages
• Immersive Interiors + ELFX Patch
• Improved Sneak Detection
• Equipping Overhaul
• No Snow Under The Roof
• Dead Body Collision
• Realistic Room Rental - Enhanced
• Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul
• Guard Dialogue Overhaul
• Get Snowy + Wet and Cold Patch
• ENB Water on Horse Trough and Blacksmith Forge for Realistic Water 2
• Actual Windows - Farmhouses 1.02
• Fast travel Timescale
• Consistent Older People
• Immersive Questing
• No Empty Tag on Empty Containers
• Lore-Based Loading Screens
• Helmet Toggle
• Realistic Boat Bobbing
• Skyrim Heart Rate
• Improved Weapon Impact on Metal and Rock
• Campfire
• Life In Prison
• Expanded Jail Cells
• Vinis Crime Gold
• Horse Stabling

 

Lightning

• ELFX 2.0 + SMIM + Dawnguard + DragonBorn

 

Meshes

• SMIM

 

New Lands

• Falskaar
• Jaggarsfeld + Patch
• Wyrmstooth

 

NPC

• Inconsequential NPCs + Cutting Room Floor Patch
• Interesting NPCs + Update 3.10 + Dawnguard Patch + Winterhold Patch
• Travellers of Skyrim
• Adventurers and Travellers
• HD Teeth + HD Normal Map
• No More Ugly Bronze Shine
• Inhabitants of Skyrim Version 1 Apachi Hair to all + UKSP and Version 1 Patch

 

Overhauls

• SkyRe
• Reprocessor Patches SkyRe
• Unofficial Skyrim Redone Patch USKRP
• Weapons and Armor Fixes Remade
• Reprocessor Automated SkyRe Patch Generator
• Updated Reprocessor Automated SkyRe Patch Generator
• Khajiit Speak + Interesting NPC Patch
• Skyrim Winter Overhaul + DynDOLOD Patch
• DynDOLOD
• Project Parallax Remastered HD2K + SMIM Patch + StoneWall Update + ENB Parallax Config

 

Others

• Double Torch Radius
• Cutting Room Floor + RSChildren Patch
• Undeath
• Unofficial Skyrim Patch
• Unofficial Dragonborn Patch
• Unofficial Dawnguard Patch
• Unofficial Hearthfire Patch
• The Paarthurnax Dilemma
• Thieves Guild Requirement
• Rustic SoulGems
• Random Alternative Start
• Alternate Start

 

Textures

• Deadly Spell Impacts
• Immersive Armors
• Book Covers
• Optimized Skyrim Textures Base Game + Dragonborn + Dawnguard + Hearthfires
• Ruins Clutter Improved
• Cinematic Fire FX 2
• SkyFalls and SkyMills
• Skyrim HD 2K Textures Dungeons + Landscapes + Misc + Riften + Towns
• Vivid Landscapes - All in One - 4K
• aMidianBorn Caves and Mines 2K
• Real Roads for Skyrim + Dawnguard and DragonBorn Patch
• Skyrim Flora Overhaul + 2.3b update
• TreesHD Skyrim Variation Ultra
• Natural Grass Texture Floor
• 4K Parallax Treebark
• HD Ivy 4K Edition
• Rugnarok 2K
• Realistic Water 2 for ENB Textures
• Watercolor for ENB and Realistic Water 2 Realistic Needs and Diseases Version
• Pure Water Legendary 5.0
• AOF Detailed Mountains
• Dust Effects
• Better Embers
• Skyrim Parallax Terrain (Pineforrest, Riverbededge, Rivermud, Snow01, Snow02)
• Terrain Parallax Textures (Coast Beach, PineForest02)
• Improved NPC Clothing - High Res
• Enhanced Blood Textures
• Weapon Retexture Project

 

Tools

• Mod Organizer
• SkyUI
• SKSE
• Cell Stabilizer
• SSME
• Memory Blocks Log
• One Tweak

 

User Interface

• A Quality World Map
• Categorized Favorite Menu
• Race Menu
• Less Intrusive HUD
• Immersive HUD
• A Matter of Time
• Skyrim Skill Interface + SSIRT Patches
• Extended UI

 

Utilities

• Auto Unequip Ammo
• Acquisitive Soul Gems

 

Vampires

• Better Vampires

 

Weapons

• Real Bows
• Heavy Armory + Dawnguard Patch

 

Weather

• Wonders of Weather
• Real Shelter + Real Shelter Rain Overhaul + ETaC Patch
• Climates of Tamriel 3.1 + DragonBorn Patch + Sounds + Dawnguard Patch
• Supreme Storms for Climates of Tamriel 3.1
• Climates of Tamriel - Weather Patch
• True Storms - thunder and Rain Redone
• Real Clouds

 

Werewolves

• Heart of The Beast - Werewolf Sounds and Texture Overhaul + All Sounds
• Bloodmoon Rising
• Werewolf Aftermath Equipper

Edited September 6, 2015 by WickedCat

[darkdream12]

Are you using windows 10? if so you might want to get a borderless window mod and try, that helped me stop a lot of the stuttering.

 

EDIT: Sorry i miss the win7 part lol, but you might wanna try the borderless window mod anyways that might help. Also on the nvidia control panel try to set the power management to Prefer max performance, and if you are using only one monitor change the multi display to Single display

Edited September 7, 2015 by darkdream12

[WickedCat]

Hey, thanks for your answer.

 

I'm indeed on Win7.

As you suggested, I changed the power management to Prefer maximum performance, under my TES5 program settings in the nVidia control panel.

 

Also, I'm already using a borderless window mod, One Tweak, under "Tools" in my mods list in the first message.

 

I noticed that the Expanded Towns and Cities mod (ETaC) lowers my fps by roughly 20% (from 40 to 32 for example, when looking at the exact same direction).

I knew ETaC mod was very greedy on CPU (or GPU) because of all the meshes it's adding (the buildings and such). But I definitely want that mod on.

 

The textures look incredibly accurate, all around, the rocks, the grass, the wooden pieces. But maybe there is a couple of mods that replace textures, actually already replaced by other mods.

Or maybe the 4k packages are too much for the human eye, and a 2k would make no difference whatsoever, but a noticeable performance boost.

 

I have no idea about that, I'm just assuming.

[jones177]

Your frame rate looks about right with your hardware & mods.

First you need to run Skyrim Performance Monitor to see how much vram you are using. If you are using all your vram the game will be doing a lot swapping between ram & vram & that may slow you down & cause stutter. It is best to check just to get it out of the way. It is easy to test, just switch off your 2k pack & see if you get an improvement.

Next switch off SMIM & test. SMIM can give a cpu hit around the areas you mentioned. I removed SMIM from my load list because of the fps drops. Clutter mods give cpu hits as well.

Skyrim Flora Overhaul can cause loss of fps. Again switch off & test. I only use to if I am running Skyrim vanilla(4k) then I have plenty of fps to use on fluff.

There are a few things you can switch off & on in the enblocal & ebnseries inis to improve frame rate & remove stutter. Use these links to check. http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBseries_INI I don't use DoF.

 

I have learned over the years that all stutter can tweaked out unless it is an I/O stutter. Most HDs are designed to read small amounts of data fast. Only a few are designed to read large amounts of data fast. When you replace your HD ,look for one that that has a high random-access times & Burst Read speed. These HD are mainly designed for video editing. Examples are WD 4tb Black & Seagate Barracuda 3tb. These HDs can still out perform budget SSDs at write burst speed tests. This type of info only comes into play with modded open world games & simms. I mainly use this site for HD & SSD reviews & testing. http://techreport.com/storage/

 

Later

[Nazgren]

My old 780 TI couldn't handle 4K textures, so not sure what you hope to achieve with the basic 780. 3GB VRAM just won't cut it at 4K I'm afraid.

[Boombro]

My old 780 TI couldn't handle 4K textures, so not sure what you hope to achieve with the basic 780. 3GB VRAM just won't cut it at 4K I'm afraid.

This.

4k and enb is very heavy.

[WickedCat]

Hey, thanks for your answers to you all.

I will do those tests and check for the ini tweaks this evening.

 

I really believed my 780 was a monster in my computer. I mean, it was 600 euros 2 years ago, just below the Titan, it was really considered a giant monster of GPU back then, for real it was.

Maybe I will build another computer later this year but only if I can't get my mods list working without any stutters.

I mean, you can feel it when your FPS goes below 40, it's not smooth and comfortable. 40 FPS minimum is my personal limit, below I'm not satisfied gameplay-wise.

 

I thought about setting up a RamDisk to load a few mods instantly out of it.

I can make a RamDisk of about 11 to 12GB, so I can load a few heavy mods onto it.

ETaC, SMIM, Parallax, Textures 4k, some heavy scripted mods in my lists as well, if you can tell me which ones.

 

What do you think about it ? Can it be done ?

[Nazgren]

I felt exactly the same way when I bought my 780 TI and expected it to make a mockery of anything I threw at it. How wrong I was. So I upgraded again after 2 years and never looked back. I diddent want to take any chances so I bought a card that I knew for a fact could deal with anything and everything, loving my superclocked Titan X. If you want to go to 4K with ENB then your gonna need to upgrade your GPU, storing the textures on your ram won't help, it just makes it a little bit quicker in transferring them to your GPU. ENB does it already. If your currently loaded texture files exceed 3GB thenn your going to lag, and 3GB is very little. I only really use SMC and one or two others currently and I exceed 6GB VRAM. I don't think you have any other choice then to upgrade GPU or go to 2K textures I'm afraid. There's no way around a lack of VRAM, only to get a better GPU or to use less of it. Edited September 7, 2015 by Nazgren

[Moksha8088]

Why both Skyrim Beautiful Followers and Bijin Warmaidens?

[vram1974]

Number one causes of lag (based on my findings):

 

1. Loading too many textures (2k-4k textures) without enough VRAM

2. Loading too many script heavy mods on weak Papyrus engine

3. Displaying too much grass (increase iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure until stuttering stops)

 

Granted, I only have a 2GB video card but my world changed the day I admitted I couldn't run 2K textures and lowered everything to 1K. I went from stutter and lag to 60 fps WITH a nice ENB.