Skyrim Realvision ENB FPS Spikes (flicker)

[fitsu]

Hi, bit of an odd issue here... I've recently got the mod all setup and I'm having FPS spikes when I run around.

The odd part is, no matter how low I limit my FPS it will always spike. For instance, without a limiter it runs at 50fps and when I run around it will occasionally spike down to 43 causing the game to flicker. If I were to limit my FPS to 40, it would spike down to 33, 30 spikes down to 23 and so on so it doesn't seem to be a simple case of lowering settings to get higher FPS. It doesn't happen when in combat or standing still, just when exploring so I assume it has something to do with it loading in more assets as I run around? I'm not really an expert ^^ anyone who could help with this?

My Specs are:

64-bit Windows 7
990FX
GTX 970
AMD FX 8350
16GB 1333MHz Ram

Edited October 19, 2015 by fitsu

[SMB92]

There are a few things that cause this, most of which can only be resolved by better hardware but even then its somewhat inevitable. If you are running of an SSD youll probably find its not "loading" problems, but you will always get this from your cpu. Skyrim is severely bottlenecked by cpu. 8350 isnt that great but the high clocks will help.

 

Best you can do is read every optimization guide and try to get as close to the best of both worlds as possible, by that i mean performance vs visuals. I can tell you the 970 should be ample for the graphics side, but i would be willing to put money down that tour cpu is spiking because of the bottlenecked renderer.

[fitsu]

There are a few things that cause this, most of which can only be resolved by better hardware but even then its somewhat inevitable. If you are running of an SSD youll probably find its not "loading" problems, but you will always get this from your cpu. Skyrim is severely bottlenecked by cpu. 8350 isnt that great but the high clocks will help.

 

Best you can do is read every optimization guide and try to get as close to the best of both worlds as possible, by that i mean performance vs visuals. I can tell you the 970 should be ample for the graphics side, but i would be willing to put money down that tour cpu is spiking because of the bottlenecked renderer.

I tried turning down all the settings in the options for ENB RealVision which raised my FPS to around 70, yet still as I explored I got lag spikes. The spikes always happened in same spots, and only when exploring (combat etc. is completely smooth) so I guess it's when I pass these spots and it loads new assets that I get the lag. I'm running the game of an HDD atm not an SSD, do you expect that it's just a case of the HDD struggling to keep up when I explore due to the size of the HD textures?

 

Would there be any way to test if it's my HDD causing the stutter?

Edited October 19, 2015 by fitsu

[SMB92]

There is a way to test it by just looking at disk activity in task manager/resource monitor, just keep it open while you play and if you get a spike quickly save and exit and being it up. Although the better way would be to use Skyrim Performance Monitor really.

 

Id say youd be getting a bit of both cpu lag and hdd lag as tou plod along, if you replaced your hdd with an ssd youd still get some spikes due to the limited renderer of directx9 which unfortunately is Skyrims single biggest shortcoming (and all other bethesda games). If fo4 is dx9 then its likely you wont see me posting anything anymore....

[fitsu]

Ok, I downloaded Skyrim Peformance Monitor. Each time you see my GPU % Drop is when the game stutters... Now if I had to be honest, this is just a bunch of lines to me I have no real idea what it's telling me, any thoughts?

http://s24.postimg.org/a8dckq2d1/Skyrim_Monitor.jpg

free upload image

 

Thank you for helping :)

Edited October 19, 2015 by fitsu

[SMB92]

Well seems your gpu dropped some frames and/or was waiting for them from cpu. The cpu graph doesnt fluctuate much because these cpus have so many cofes although in at least one instance it rose a bit before a drop. A lot of the gpu drops indicate loading screens also. Most of your spikes would have been when the red line was highest.

 

Its evident your game is loading enough into the memory of your hdd that it isnt causing much activity there as i thought. The only way you might combat this is to buy a better cpu which unfortunately is only Intel right now, but even then you still have to balance it out. The more objects in a scene, the more rendering and processing of things like texture info the cpu needs to do.

 

When im back at my pc i will copy some multi threading tweaks here for you, but they dont a whole lot so dont expect any miracles.

[soupdragon1234]

I've got to admit I'm somewhat sceptical about the CPU lag theory. I can't seem to find my old benchmarks but with Unigine valley my R9 390 was definitely bottlenecked by my old i7 920 and swapping it for an i5 4690k there was a big jump in benchmark performance. In Skyrim however, no improvement whatsoever the same lags in the same places with certain mods - and its definitely a renderer lag too many objects in the draw distance. I'm sure its exactly as you say a DX9 render limitation but throwing lots of CPU grunt at it doesn't seem to make any noticeable difference. I'm going to try cranking up the i5 till the pips squeal but I doubt it'll make any significant difference on Skyrim, no doubt Unigine will show it's usual perfomance boost, but thats DX11 not DX9. :geek:

 

And looking at that performance graph above CPU is at maximum 39% utilised... not exactly over stressed. :ermm:

 

 

Itd take a 5 million MIP capable single core (well we want a cpu with 4 of those) to get a perfect 60 fps with decent enough distant detail and objects.

 

Not with DX9/GameBryo, you'd need better render capability than that. :mellow:

 

You can see a major bottleneck in cpu playing at 4k. I can up mine to 4k and get 35fps mostly but lots of spikes, and i see that cpu usage has gone down to just 20% because the first thread is overloaded.

 

Only a TitanX/980TI Sli will lift 4K resolutions off the floor. 4K may set a lower limit, but the upper limit is all DX9/Gamebryo.

 

Lets put this another way, this is a benchmark everyone can try: install JK's Whiterun only. Go to the gatehouse above Whiterun's entrance look out from the left gate up the street into the city. What are your framerates there? Mine are 25-30fps looking out at this area. Doesn't matter if I turn on ENB or turn it off, the fps is the same. It was exactly the same with my old hardware too. Resolution @ 1920x1080 (1080p) I'm willing to bet everyone will be more or less the same give or take a few fps, if you get a lower framerate its down to your hardware, but the upper limit would not appear to hardware related. In my experience. :pinch:

Edited October 19, 2015 by soupdragon1234

[SMB92]

Itd take a 5 million MIP capable single core (well we want a cpu with 4 of those) to get a perfect 60 fps with decent enough distant detail and objects.

 

In ENB, open the ENB menu in game. Expand profiler and go to a heavy area. Have a look at the number of draw calls and triangle count. Itll start dropping off fps after a certain number. Watxh what happens when you turn around in said heavy area. Also the sudden approaxh if a high triangle area causes such spikes.

 

All you can do is optimize for your hardware and balance effects for modicrum. Even my 4.65ghz 3960x has spikes, ive just got them to play out smoothly.

 

You can see a major bottleneck in cpu playing at 4k. I can up mine to 4k and get 35fps mostly but lots of spikes, and i see that cpu usage has gone down to just 20% because the first thread is overloaded.

 

Piss poor decisions by Bethesda have us this mess. Well im sure they had their reasons....