PC Upgrade for modded 21:9 skyrim.

[zax141]

Hey guys, My pc has been running alittle slow for skyrim with my new monitor.

I used to run a 1440p monitor, which is now my secondary monitor.

 

This is my current part list, I built this rig back in late 2014.

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($569.00 @ PC Force)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake NiC C5 99.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($120.00)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming GT ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($349.95 @ Computer Lounge)
Memory: Kingston Savage 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($96.52 @ Wiseguys)
Storage: Crucial MX200 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($142.82 @ Wiseguys)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($85.00 @ PC Force)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB FTW ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($996.00 @ Paradigm PCs)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB FTW ACX 2.0 Video Card (2-Way SLI) ($996.00 @ Paradigm PCs)
Case: Corsair 900D ATX Full Tower Case ($599.86 @ Wiseguys)
Power Supply: Corsair 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($369.95 @ Computer Lounge)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM (64-bit) ($245.00 @ 1stWave Technologies)
Total: $4570.10

 

 

Now Over the past 5 months I've been having issues running games at 3440x1440.

Witcher 3

Skyrim

Mass effect 3 @ (6880x2880)

 

But anyway I'm mainly looking at a new GPU to run modded skyrim.

It seems that 4gb vram is not enough for my needs.

I was either looking at 2 R9 Nano's or 2 GTX 980 TI's, I really won't be doing any work on it for atleast 3 months as I'm moving house, but I just want to have a bit more imput before I go out and buy a new GPU.

[FMod]

4 GB VRAM will never be insufficient for Skyrim, it's incapable of using even the full 4 GB:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/863242/geforce-drivers/-request-remove-4gb-limit-of-vram-for-dx9-games/1/

It takes heavy alterations to even make it use most of that.

 

Several sites have been testing VRAM consumption and almost nothing seems to be able to get pushed past 4 GB even in 4K. VRAM isn't your bottleneck.

 

Mass Effect 3 is a complete joke in terms of hardware requirements. You can do max settings at 1080p on a good onboard, and a single card like 980 gives stable 60 fps (more with vsync off) in 4K. Even in this high a resolution, the only issue it might give you is microstutter. Microstutter is an issue with SLI/CFX setups, not with insufficient performance.

 

With the games you're listing, even at high resolution, there shouldn't be a need to upgrade. Especially since the new generation of GPU is coming out in just a month, and more by early 2017.

[ClockworkBlack]

What framerates are you getting at 1440p? A lot of stuttering and issues you are having could be because of SLI itself. Skyrim is not very friendly with SLI (especially with ENB's running). Try turning off SLI and see if it helps at all.

FMod, all DirectX 11+ games designed with 4k in mind are capable of pushing past 4gb VRAM. With heavy modding and Realvision ENB installed in Skyrim at 4k I get 4gb of VRAM usage on my 980TI. VRAM usage is subjective according to the card, architecture, and game. You can't say "games don't use more than 4gb VRAM" because that's not true. It depends on how the architecture of the GPU manages the rendering.

Edit: One more thing thing, if you do plan on upgrading your GPU, you should wait for Pascal to come out. Its supposed to come out sometime in June/July so you can have a better idea if you want to jump on that bandwagon or not then.

[FMod]

I didn't say they aren't theoretically capable of doing that. Rather that they almost never do, and then just barely: http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/89/much-vram-need-1080p-1440p-4k/index.html

That's for DX11 games. Skyrim is a DX9 game and is incapable of accessing VRAM at 4 GB or more. This is according to ENB's creator, without whom it can't even use 4 GB. ME3 is also a DX9 game.

 

Also, in the event that a game is sending more data the display driver's way than the GPU has VRAM available, it doesn't crash and burn, it doesn't come to a screeching halt. The usage is prioritized so the immediately needed data is stored in VRAM and the less-needed data is stored in system RAM. The performance penalty is proportional to the fraction of the data in system RAM, it's not an instant acute effect.

 

Such mixed storage has been the norm for a dozen generations. It's only with the spread of DDR3 in the early 2010s (giving near-unlimited memory to cheap cards, forcing the high end to keep up) that it became common for video cards to carry more memory than the games played on them actually use. It's good that they do, but you don't "run out" of VRAM the way you can with system memory.

 

In short, given that the performance problems occur in Skyrim and ME3, which can't access over 4 GB, and in Witcher 3, which can but doesn't, the amount of VRAM isn't the culprit here.

 

 

Speaking of system RAM, I'd normally assume that 1x8GB is a mistake and the OP just neglected to include the quantity. But then the sig also lists 8GB. If you're indeed using just one RAM module, FIX THIS by adding a second identical one - 8GB isn't enough for your system and a single module would run at only half the speed that two modules would. I can't be sure if this is the issue, it's unlikely, but it might be.

Aside from that, make sure to create a small (64 to 2048 MB) swap file on your SSD, report if it grows over 1 GB.

[obobski]

Agree with FMod - you aren't going to be using more than 4 GB of memory for Skyrim or ME3, they simply can't do it (and I'll see your "ENB's creator" and rise you Microsoft and the DirectX development team, who stipulate the same thing; its not a DirectX 9 limit, per se, its a limit of Win32 applications - *theoretically* a 64-bit DirectX 9 application could use >4GB of memory, but I'm not aware of any such applications (all of the 64-bit games I'm aware of use DirectX 11 (and note that "use DirectX 11" can still mean "only implement SM4.0/DDI10"))). Upgrading to GTX 980 Ti wouldn't do much, if anything, for performance (CPU bounded-ness, especially with multi-GPU scaling, is also a very real thing), and Fury Nano would likely be a step backwards (especially if they're throttling heavily depending on case airflow and load).

 

 

What is meant by "is having issues" with these games? Low frame-rates? (according to what) Stutter? Crashes?

 

I don't remember Mass Effect 3 having problems with CrossFire (I admittedly don't have a modern SLI machine in rotation to compare with, but IME usually if a game hates one multi-GPU implementation, it hates all multi-GPU implementations), but Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were not so great when it came to dual and triple GPUs. The system requirements on ME3 are, as FMod pointed out, extremely modest by contemporary standards - I played that game fully maxed on an HD 4890 when it first came out, and never saw a hint of lag; GeForce 7950s can run the first two without any grief, and probably can extend that to #3 as well (I've just never tried it, or seen it benchmarked). It may also be having issues if you're running with DSR (despite nVidia and AMD's claims that "its always compatible" - it isn't always compatible, and I've seen it cause trouble with other Unreal 3 based games; just food for thought).

 

Skyrim will work to a tolerable degree with multi-GPU, but the performance scaling is usually not awesome (not that you really can/should be going over 60 FPS); you might give this a look: http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:NVIDIA_Inspector

 

Witcher 3 is a demanding game and it isn't surprising to see it have performance issues if you're demanding full max ultra at 3880x1440 (http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1947-witcher-3-pc-graphics-card-fps-benchmark - "4K" likely means UltraHD (3840x2160) here, but simply put, this game is not going to run "nice" full max ultra at very high resolutions no matter how much money you throw at it today).

 

 

100% agree with FMod on the memory situation - dual channel memory is more or less the standard, and 8GB of total memory may also be causing you trouble with performance - 16GB in 2x8GB would be an overall worthwhile upgrade, especially as cheap as memory has gotten.

[zax141]

Agree with FMod - you aren't going to be using more than 4 GB of memory for Skyrim or ME3, they simply can't do it (and I'll see your "ENB's creator" and rise you Microsoft and the DirectX development team, who stipulate the same thing; its not a DirectX 9 limit, per se, its a limit of Win32 applications - *theoretically* a 64-bit DirectX 9 application could use >4GB of memory, but I'm not aware of any such applications (all of the 64-bit games I'm aware of use DirectX 11 (and note that "use DirectX 11" can still mean "only implement SM4.0/DDI10"))). Upgrading to GTX 980 Ti wouldn't do much, if anything, for performance (CPU bounded-ness, especially with multi-GPU scaling, is also a very real thing), and Fury Nano would likely be a step backwards (especially if they're throttling heavily depending on case airflow and load).

 

 

What is meant by "is having issues" with these games? Low frame-rates? (according to what) Stutter? Crashes?

 

I don't remember Mass Effect 3 having problems with CrossFire (I admittedly don't have a modern SLI machine in rotation to compare with, but IME usually if a game hates one multi-GPU implementation, it hates all multi-GPU implementations), but Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were not so great when it came to dual and triple GPUs. The system requirements on ME3 are, as FMod pointed out, extremely modest by contemporary standards - I played that game fully maxed on an HD 4890 when it first came out, and never saw a hint of lag; GeForce 7950s can run the first two without any grief, and probably can extend that to #3 as well (I've just never tried it, or seen it benchmarked). It may also be having issues if you're running with DSR (despite nVidia and AMD's claims that "its always compatible" - it isn't always compatible, and I've seen it cause trouble with other Unreal 3 based games; just food for thought).

 

Skyrim will work to a tolerable degree with multi-GPU, but the performance scaling is usually not awesome (not that you really can/should be going over 60 FPS); you might give this a look: http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:NVIDIA_Inspector

 

Witcher 3 is a demanding game and it isn't surprising to see it have performance issues if you're demanding full max ultra at 3880x1440 (http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/1947-witcher-3-pc-graphics-card-fps-benchmark - "4K" likely means UltraHD (3840x2160) here, but simply put, this game is not going to run "nice" full max ultra at very high resolutions no matter how much money you throw at it today).

 

 

100% agree with FMod on the memory situation - dual channel memory is more or less the standard, and 8GB of total memory may also be causing you trouble with performance - 16GB in 2x8GB would be an overall worthwhile upgrade, especially as cheap as memory has gotten.

Well, thank you for basically summing it up, I've not been a gamer for very long. I used to play mainly xbox original games, only had a 360 for ME.

But I understand that the best upgrade would be ram.

 

Also just to address other things, ME3 was running heavily texture modded and would only get around 40-45fps which is playable but for ME I'd expect it to run alot better.

both my monitors are overclocked to 80Hz, which is why I would like over 60.

With the witcher I was able to get over 70 fps most of the time, but I had major stuttering which I disabled SLI for and it still stuttered and had a fair bit of screen tearing.

 

And as far as skyrim, with SLI disabled I would get at max 34frames @ 3440x1440.

now with SLI enabled I can keep a steady 50FPS, but it stuttered and froze every now and again.

Now my game is HEAVILY modded, a ENB, 238 Plugins, and about 70 Texture replaces and HD texture mods.

 

Also I don't know if this is very relevant, I work for a computer store, a little one.

But I had the chance to test out a pair of r9 290's and Mass effect ran great with them.

[obobski]

The problems in ME1 and ME2 with CrossFire are only at certain points - it "works" for the most part, there's just some areas that experience corruption (and I'm not sure how to describe them accurately without lots and lots of spoilers), and it seemed to crash more frequently than without CrossFire enabled. I don't recall ME3 having similar bumps with CrossFire, but I also haven't played it as extensively on multi-GPU systems. Something I thought of though: all of the ME games are Vert- so you're really better off running at 1280x1024 (any 5:4 resolution really, it will give you the largest viewport; 21:9 is giving you the smallest possible viewport). On Skyrim I also had another thought - when I tried Oblivion years ago at a wider-than-16:9 resolution (3744x900 on three monitors) the performance took a significant nosedive, even though a similar resolution (pixel-count wise) at 16:10 ran just fine (we're talking from like ~100 FPS to like ~20 FPS). I don't have a good explanation for that phenomenon and I don't know if it applies to Skyrim either, but its something to think about - try putting your monitor into a 16:9 or 16:10 resolution and see if the performance dramatically improves. You don't want Skyrim running >60 FPS - it will cause problems with the physics (this is documented in numerous places); leave its factory vsync on (or, if you're using ENB that has other directions for frame-limiting, follow those).

 

Something else: your signature reports a GTX 750 card in the system as well; having all three of those cards with a Z97 likely is significantly bottlenecking everything (since you only get a total of 16 lanes). There is also likely little-to-no benefit (it may actually even be a bottleneck) to having the 750 run PhysX as opposed to having the 980s do everything themselves. Can you clarify on how this is configured?

Edited May 2, 2016 by obobski

[zax141]

The problems in ME1 and ME2 with CrossFire are only at certain points - it "works" for the most part, there's just some areas that experience corruption (and I'm not sure how to describe them accurately without lots and lots of spoilers), and it seemed to crash more frequently than without CrossFire enabled. I don't recall ME3 having similar bumps with CrossFire, but I also haven't played it as extensively on multi-GPU systems. Something I thought of though: all of the ME games are Vert- so you're really better off running at 1280x1024 (any 5:4 resolution really, it will give you the largest viewport; 21:9 is giving you the smallest possible viewport). On Skyrim I also had another thought - when I tried Oblivion years ago at a wider-than-16:9 resolution (3744x900 on three monitors) the performance took a significant nosedive, even though a similar resolution (pixel-count wise) at 16:10 ran just fine (we're talking from like ~100 FPS to like ~20 FPS). I don't have a good explanation for that phenomenon and I don't know if it applies to Skyrim either, but its something to think about - try putting your monitor into a 16:9 or 16:10 resolution and see if the performance dramatically improves. You don't want Skyrim running >60 FPS - it will cause problems with the physics (this is documented in numerous places); leave its factory vsync on (or, if you're using ENB that has other directions for frame-limiting, follow those).

 

Something else: your signature reports a GTX 750 card in the system as well; having all three of those cards with a Z97 likely is significantly bottlenecking everything (since you only get a total of 16 lanes). There is also likely little-to-no benefit (it may actually even be a bottleneck) to having the 750 run PhysX as opposed to having the 980s do everything themselves. Can you clarify on how this is configured?

Ah yes the sig is outdated, back when I ran 1 980 it was really really useful to have the 750 taking the load off when playing borderlands 2 at 8k (DSR)

I got around 9FPS boost, but at this point I have the 750 sitting in my media rig, because of the second 980.

 

Also I was able to get some configuration set out for skyrim... and some how I am managing a steady 60FPS.

and for some reason, dropping res was making no difference.

No matter if it was 4k using DSR, or on my native 1080p TV it still ran at less than preferable framerates.

 

I still intend to upgrade my ram, but I'm waiting for the x179 platform before I do anything else.

 

Anyway thanks for the imput guys!

[FMod]

You've been considering a $1,000+ upgrade that would make little difference, but are putting off a $50 memory stick to wait for a chipset that hasn't even been promised yet?

 

You can wait forever, there will always be something new on the horizon, sometimes it is time to wait. But if you're missing one of your socks, you don't put off getting a new pair till your new suit is finished so you can match the colors.

 

 

8 GB is generally sufficient for a gaming PC, but it's inadequate for sharing 4 GB of it with VRAM (in DX9) and then pushing it with texture mods. Windows doesn't run out of memory, it uses pagefiles to extend its virtual memory space, but performance problems are likely if actively used data has to be paged. Fix this before you look any further.

[zax141]

You've been considering a $1,000+ upgrade that would make little difference, but are putting off a $50 memory stick to wait for a chipset that hasn't even been promised yet?

 

You can wait forever, there will always be something new on the horizon, sometimes it is time to wait. But if you're missing one of your socks, you don't put off getting a new pair till your new suit is finished so you can match the colors.

 

 

8 GB is generally sufficient for a gaming PC, but it's inadequate for sharing 4 GB of it with VRAM (in DX9) and then pushing it with texture mods. Windows doesn't run out of memory, it uses pagefiles to extend its virtual memory space, but performance problems are likely if actively used data has to be paged. Fix this before you look any further.

No I said I was going to get the ram, and hold off on anything else until the next platform comes out.

Infact I've already ordered 2 more 8gb sticks.