PC Upgrade for modded 21:9 skyrim.

[FMod]

I see now, your post could be read both ways.

 

It's not guaranteed to solve your specific problem, but it will improve your PC's performance and particularly smoothness in use.

[obobski]

Agree with everything FMod said, again. :cool:

 

Why 2 more sticks of RAM? Dual channel requires, generally speaking, a symmetric arrangement - so you'd want 2x8GB or 2x4GB or 2x8 + 2x4 or some other arrangement, but 1x8 or 3x8 or similar won't accomplish what you're after.

 

Agree with the fruitlessness of always waiting for "whats next on the horizon" - "X179" isn't even on a nearterm roadmap, since Broadwell-EP is coming to X99, and literally none of those 6/8-core CPUs have been worth purchasing for gaming for numerous generations (because quite frankly, nothing uses it).

[zax141]

Agree with everything FMod said, again. :cool:

 

Why 2 more sticks of RAM? Dual channel requires, generally speaking, a symmetric arrangement - so you'd want 2x8GB or 2x4GB or 2x8 + 2x4 or some other arrangement, but 1x8 or 3x8 or similar won't accomplish what you're after.

 

Agree with the fruitlessness of always waiting for "whats next on the horizon" - "X179" isn't even on a nearterm roadmap, since Broadwell-EP is coming to X99, and literally none of those 6/8-core CPUs have been worth purchasing for gaming for numerous generations (because quite frankly, nothing uses it).

its cheaper to grab a new kit rather than get one of the exact sticks I have.

[obobski]

 

its cheaper to grab a new kit rather than get one of the exact sticks I have.

 

 

Oh, that makes total sense then! :happy:

[zax141]

 

 

its cheaper to grab a new kit rather than get one of the exact sticks I have.

 

 

Oh, that makes total sense then! :happy:

 

Upgraded to 2x8gb sticks, ddr3, cas L 9, 2400MHZ clock, really rare chips to get so I got an extra stick to.

While not getting any increase of FPS, it's just ROCK solid now, no more stuttering, no fps drops when going into whiterun, and strangely the loading times have improved greatly.

[obobski]

 

Upgraded to 2x8gb sticks, ddr3, cas L 9, 2400MHZ clock, really rare chips to get so I got an extra stick to.

While not getting any increase of FPS, it's just ROCK solid now, no more stuttering, no fps drops when going into whiterun, and strangely the loading times have improved greatly.

 

 

Honestly sounds about right. You'll probably notice some other minor improvements here and there with other applications too. Do keep in mind: adding even more memory likely would go unnoticed for the majority of applications, though. Same goes for changes in memory clock, more or less.

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

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.

 

I would wait till winter and get 1080 ti or find cheap deal for 980 ti's after 1080 gets released this month. There will be lots of people trying to sell 2-3 month old cards after non reference versions will show up on the market. You probably could get 2 cards for 800$. Waiting till winter would be easier on your pocket, unless you can sell your old cards right now for a good price.

[zax141]

 

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.

 

I would wait till winter and get 1080 ti or find cheap deal for 980 ti's after 1080 gets released this month. There will be lots of people trying to sell 2-3 month old cards after non reference versions will show up on the market. You probably could get 2 cards for 800$. Waiting till winter would be easier on your pocket, unless you can sell your old cards right now for a good price.

 

with the release of the new 10XX cards I'll be waiting till mid next year, and just upgrading to x99 in the mean time.

[PillMonster]

You don't have anywhere near enough RAM. With 8GB VRAM you should have 16GB RAM minimum.

 

 

In W8.1/W10 the GPU and CPU share a unified address space. In a nutshell a piece of system memory is sliced off and used for GPU paging.

The reserved amount is usually about equal to total VRAM due to various reasons like lack of Dynamic Resource implementation in games etc....

 

So with 2x4GB GPU that's about 8GB of RAM lost to the GPU leaving approximately 0GB for everything else. Not literally ofc as OS lives in a virtual environment where pointers are used. :P

But the end result is at 4K in DX11 the pagefile is being thrashed by the GPU because there isn't any RAM left. But RAM is reserved for the GPU regardless of whether a game needs it or not.

(I say RAM speaking from a no pagefile POV where RAM=Address Space).

 

The only reason you haven't had a CTD is because your pagefile is enabled. Without it you'd have had a ton of low memory warnings.

As a band-aid you could try pulling one of your cards out.....may help a little...but prob not. lol

Edited May 14, 2016 by PillMonster

[PillMonster]

Edit; just updated to post this.. :tongue:

 

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.

ENB did not magically allow Skyrim to use up to 4GB. Any app can provided the LAA (Large Address Aware) flag is set.

 

The premium member who posted above is right (forget ur name sorry), the restriction comes with the platform.

A 32bit CPU can only access 4GB RAM. x86-64 the limit is 4GB per process, on x64 there is no 4GB limit.

 

Additional threads mean more work space, DX9 games are generally single threaded, so don't need memory.

Hence DX11 games are greedy little pigs when it comes to VRAM and RAM, because of multithreaded rendering. Deferred context is possibly the biggest hog.

 

 

I also read a comment earlier that SKSE prevents fragmentation in RAM by storing data in certain address blocks. If this were actually true SKSE would have direct access to RAM, which it doesn't.

No software does under Windows. Programs run run in a virtual environment, the CPU is the only part of the system which can access RAM.

 

When programs want data stored the data is passed to the CPU with a virtual address attached. It's called virtual because it's just an address, the CPU promises to store it somewhere in RAM.

So the CPU stores the bit of data somewhere in RAM and records the location along with the OS reference, usually via Translation Lookaside Buffer.

 

When that bit is needed again the CPU retrieves it from wherever it was stored translates the physical address back to a virtual address and gives it back. The CPU has full control.

Boris is good, but not that good. :wink:

 

 

 

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.

 

This is not correct btw.. Any time a pagefile is accessed Windows has already run out of RAM.

 

The pagefile's only job is to prevent the OS from crashing when Windows runs out of memory. It's a safety net, not a feature.

No matter what u may see on MSDN blogs from 2007 or around the net it is not required by the OS nor by any applications. It has no purpose except low memory situations, and the solution there is more RAM, not more pagefile. :wink:

 

 

PS; DX9 games don't "share" memory, because in DX9 GPU and CPU live in separate memory spaces. Data needed by both must reside in both RAM and VRAM then passed between the 2 using pointers.

With WDDM 1.3 & DX11.2 the address space is unified, CPU and GPU share read and write access so 2 copies aren't required.

Edited May 15, 2016 by PillMonster