Low performance when playing skyrim (with mods)

[Austinlele]

  On 3/22/2016 at 4:22 AM, CthulhuCthulhu said:

Edited the post above yours, make sure to read it and try it out, ENBoost is your best shot in CPU-intensive areas.

 

I read your edit and agree with you that ENBoost may help, in the past I went through the enblocal.ini file and made some changes to increase performance. Changes I made were the ones recommended by Realvision ENB (they claim the tweaks take the place of ENBoost) However, I will add the official ENBoost file from nexus and make sure that i have used all available tweaks from the ENBoost mod description on nexus. My stutter isn't very bad anymore due to some change i had made last night (not sure exactly what, but perhaps it was forcing on triple buffering through nvidia control panel)

 

I still think there is some incompatibility or some badly set settings that are causing this slowdown. I may just bite the bullet and do a complete restart / reinstall of everything (minus the OS, I'm stuck with that..) to see what my performance is at vanilla. Then I can slowly add mods and tweaks to see what may be causing the problem. I was really hoping to avoid going that very time consuming route :smile:.

 

I'm also going to try exiting steam and MSI afterburner to see if that helps.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Austinlele

[Amethystumn]

I honestly think this is the most reliable source of information other than the creator, Boris, himself.

 

ENBoost - S.T.E.P Project Wiki Guide

 

*Edit, I also run Skyrim in Window'd borderless mode. It seems to be more stable and the frames don't seem to be as low or to stutter as much now. Maybe you can try that as well.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Amethystumn

[Austinlele]

  On 3/23/2016 at 12:40 AM, Amethystumn said:

I honestly think this is the most reliable source of information other than the creator, Boris, himself.

 

ENBoost - S.T.E.P Project Wiki Guide

 

*Edit, I also run Skyrim in Window'd borderless mode. It seems to be more stable and the frames don't seem to be as low or to stutter as much now. Maybe you can try that as well.

 

Hello Amethystumn,

 

Thanks again for your input on this issue. I went on ahead and downloaded Boris's ENBoost file and used that to overwrite my old enb ini. I also followed his instructions on the nexus concerning certain settings. I got a performance boost of around 7-10 fps in Whiterun, that brought the FPS to about 45.... BUT what I found was his new ini file actually turned off all enb graphical enhancements :sad:.... So in reality the change did not help. I went into the file changed the 2 lines that re-enable enb graphics (currently set to: UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false, UseDefferedRendering=true) now I am back to my original FPS of about 35-50 in 'heavy' cities and forests.

 

One thing is i set: ReservedMemorySizeMb=512 and VideoMemorySizeMb=6000, I now am getting my old stutter back (only when moving and every ~5 seconds it seems) and no boost to performance. So perhaps i need to tweak those some more to get smooth play.

 

Something i did got my RAM usage to shoot up from around 3200 all the way to 5000+ but this did not come with any performance boost.

 

I will try running in a windowed fullscreen to see what happens, but when i tried that in the past i found it nullified Nvidia's control panel settings. Worth looking into more though!

 

In summary, I have not been able to figure out why I am getting sub 45 FPS in cities and <= 60 FPS in heavy forests / high npc areas. I will most likely end up reinstalling everything (minus the OS) and take notes on performance from pure vanilla and then as I add back in the enb and mods. I am feeling there is a high chance that the issue is either my cpu or just skyrim engine limitations. There is a slight chance that some weird settings or scripts are bogging everything down though.

 

What I ask now is can someone comment on my mod list and the load order, does anything stick out? Am I suffocating my CPU in heavy script calls? Also, how can i get skyrim to run without v-sync, I want to see how high the FPS get for a benchmark (this will not be for playing the game haha). I tried setting iPresentInterval = 0 in the skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini in my documents, but no dice. ENB and nvidia vsync was set to false / no as well

Edited March 23, 2016 by Austinlele

[Tadream]

If you use Windows 10, you do know there's a 4GB VRAM memory limit in DX9?

Windows 7 doesn't have this and is probably why it's working fine with the other poster.

[Austinlele]

  On 3/23/2016 at 10:10 PM, Tadream said:

If you use Windows 10, you do know there's a 4GB VRAM memory limit in DX9?

Windows 7 doesn't have this and is probably why it's working fine with the other poster.

 

Hi Tadream,

 

Ha, no I did not know that there was such a low limit for VRAM under Windows 10! Thank you for letting me know. That could be cause for alarm once I install many more texture mods but right now my VRAM hardly exceeds 2500 MB.

[Amethystumn]

If you are able to I would go back to windows 7 lol. My new pc will be running on Windows 7.

 

You could be drowning your cpu in scripts, it's possible... if you have decided you didn't want a few mods that have scripts in them in the past you should probably start a new save or use this; Savegame Script Scalpel to get rid of the scripts that are left over from deleted mods.

[Austinlele]

  On 3/23/2016 at 11:30 PM, Amethystumn said:

If you are able to I would go back to windows 7 lol. My new pc will be running on Windows 7.

 

You could be drowning your cpu in scripts, it's possible... if you have decided you didn't want a few mods that have scripts in them in the past you should probably start a new save or use this; Savegame Script Scalpel to get rid of the scripts that are left over from deleted mods.

 

Hello there,

 

I might have a vista and windows 8 disc somewhere around here hah, both of those are less than ideal though right? Found upgrade discs for Vista, 7, and 8.1. Is the process to dual boot Windows 10 and the older version possible with upgrade discs? If so, does that provide full system performance more or less?

 

So I did go ahead and set Skyrim back down to barebones vanilla (using this restore method: http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Troubleshooting#Restore_Vanilla_Skyrim). I then started a fresh new game and went through the intro. What I found is my FPS go anywhere from 40 - 200... after using "coc riverwood" and not moving, i get around 43 FPS. Kinda baffling but it must be the OS and/or CPU doing crazy things.... Really unfortunate!

 

EDIT: Could anyone running Skyrim on Windows 10 confirm or deny that my system is an outlier??

Edited March 24, 2016 by Austinlele

[Amethystumn]

windows 7, not Vista, Windows 7. :P

 

Vista is like the incomplete beta version of Windows 7, I'm pretty sure.

 

I'm actually not that technical so I don't really understand about the dual boot windows 10 and stuff.

 

No windows 10. Only Windows 7 :P

 

Did you try using the SAvegame Script Scalpel?

[jones177]

Hi

 

I will be blunt.

 

It is your CPU.

 

Basically Skyrim dose not like the AMD 8 core design. Skyrim Likes individual strong cores found in i5s & i7s. The 8320 has a lot of very weak cores. To be honest there are i3s the can run rings around your CPU in this game.

In SPM you will only see about 30% usage. It is the strength of that 30% that counts.

Back when the game came out I used the same i7 I am using now with a GTX 570. Without vsync I averaged 120fps. When I updated to a 670, 680 & 970 I only got an average of 3fps with each upgrade. Since I bought these cards for the vram I was not unhappy with the result. I bought the 980 & 980 ti so I could maintain frame rate at higher resolutions & ENB.

 

You don't need to be running at 60fps to have a nice smooth enjoyable game. All you have to do is run fast enough to keep scripts from backing up. I used the mod "Convenient Horses" to test this. With it I found that my game needs to be running at 39-40fps to stay good. This is a big deal to me because my goal was to run ENB at 4k screen resolution & I could only get 30fps with my ENb/lighting/weather setup. I have now achieved that goal so I am one happy camper.

 

The 980 ti can be really hard to configure. The vanilla ini setup I used for the 970 & 980 caused stutter & my ENB ini setup that I used for the 970 & 980 was unplayable with the 980 ti. I took 3 weeks going through the Skyrim inis & ENb inis in the S.T.E.P. guide to get it running right. I also found that it runs smoother with ENB than it dose in vanilla.

The good news for me now is it really likes the latest ENB (.305) version. It didn't like .279 at all.

 

With the right CPU the 980 ti can easily run Skyrim at 60fps with heavy ENB at 1080. I ran 60fps with RealVison at 1440. I play Fallout 4 at 60fps at 4k & it looks beyond belief good. It is literally the best GPU I have ever purchased & the only GPU that has lived up to the hype.

 

Later

[Austinlele]

  On 3/24/2016 at 4:02 AM, Amethystumn said:

 

I'm actually not that technical so I don't really understand about the dual boot windows 10 and stuff.

 

No windows 10. Only Windows 7 :tongue:

 

Did you try using the SAvegame Script Scalpel?

 

I think that running a dual boot on separate drives should work out okay and get me the same functionality / performance as any old single boot setup. Booting into Windows 7 at start up should not really differ from your setup whether Windows 10 is also a bootable OS. (as far as i know so far) This isn't confirmed as i need to look into dual boots more.

 

I did not try the save scalpel because I ended up creating a completely new save. There was nothing to shave off at that point :tongue: Thank you for the suggestions!

 

  On 3/24/2016 at 2:35 PM, jones177 said:

Hi

 

I will be blunt.

 

It is your CPU.

 

Basically Skyrim dose not like the AMD 8 core design. Skyrim Likes individual strong cores found in i5s & i7s. The 8320 has a lot of very weak cores. To be honest there are i3s the can run rings around your CPU in this game.

In SPM you will only see about 30% usage. It is the strength of that 30% that counts.

Back when the game came out I used the same i7 I am using now with a GTX 570. Without vsync I averaged 120fps. When I updated to a 670, 680 & 970 I only got an average of 3fps with each upgrade. Since I bought these cards for the vram I was not unhappy with the result. I bought the 980 & 980 ti so I could maintain frame rate at higher resolutions & ENB.

 

You don't need to be running at 60fps to have a nice smooth enjoyable game. All you have to do is run fast enough to keep scripts from backing up. I used the mod "Convenient Horses" to test this. With it I found that my game needs to be running at 39-40fps to stay good. This is a big deal to me because my goal was to run ENB at 4k screen resolution & I could only get 30fps with my ENb/lighting/weather setup. I have now achieved that goal so I am one happy camper.

 

The 980 ti can be really hard to configure. The vanilla ini setup I used for the 970 & 980 caused stutter & my ENB ini setup that I used for the 970 & 980 was unplayable with the 980 ti. I took 3 weeks going through the Skyrim inis & ENb inis in the S.T.E.P. guide to get it running right. I also found that it runs smoother with ENB than it dose in vanilla.

The good news for me now is it really likes the latest ENB (.305) version. It didn't like .279 at all.

 

With the right CPU the 980 ti can easily run Skyrim at 60fps with heavy ENB at 1080. I ran 60fps with RealVison at 1440. I play Fallout 4 at 60fps at 4k & it looks beyond belief good. It is literally the best GPU I have ever purchased & the only GPU that has lived up to the hype.

 

Later

 

Thank you for the input, I can appreciate a straight up answer like this haha. Way to be blunt and to the point.

 

This helps me nail down why I am getting semi-low performance. My goal isn't necessarily to have 60 FPS at all times, I would rather have a solid limit set and not have the system dip below that (if the limit is 45+ that's fine). I want smooth and stable gameplay with an ENB and mods, I should be able to get that with the 980 TI @ 1080P if you are able to get 60 FPS @ 1440P ha.

 

This discussion is helpful for getting my system in a better balance, so that the CPU and GPU compliment each other. From what I have heard it sounds like my CPU is definitely the bottleneck for Skyrim. In the back of my mind I have always known my CPU is the next system component due for an upgrade so I think that's what I'll do. I think the problem is the CPU bottleneck isn't as apparent with other modern games I have played (Witcher 3 and MGSV all ran on 'ultra' @ 60 FPS) BUT I would expect to see an improvement in stutter and less dips below 60 with a nice new Intel CPU across the board.

 

Until getting a new CPU I will have to deal with the performance I get. I will look into the dual boot for windows 7, to find out about a possible performance boost in Skyrim and possibly other DX9 games.

 

Would you be up for sharing some of the settings you changed in your INI files for the 980 TI setup? That may come in handy for me and others as well. If you missed it - I am running the vivid weathers mod / enb with Boris's ENB version .305 like you. I get a lot of stutter and would love to rid myself of that :smile:

Edited March 24, 2016 by Austinlele