FPS drop with a GTX 980 Ti

[Nitro206]

Hi !

 

I've bought a 980 Ti a few months ago and now that I have such a powerful material, I was wondering if it could handle a modded Skyrim game.

 

In the past I was playing Skyrim modded with a GTX 560 and the game started to get unplayable with ENB and texture packs, (like 10 fps unplayable)

so I stopped playing for this reason (too hard to go back to vanilla skyrim after that)

 

With my new 980 Ti and the Skyrim remastered hype, I decided to go back to the game one more time.

 

I just downloaded the DLCs but my version ain't the remastered one though.

 

Sometimes I get some serious framerate drops, especially in towns like Whiterun or Solitude.

Here are all my mods :

 

http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/96948453a.jpg

 

I did Tes 5 Edit cleaning, LOOT order, Bash patched the game, but I don't think this has much to do with fps problems. So it should be about ENB, flora, models and textures.

 

 

 

But here is the problem.

I use Natural Lighting ENB, and it works greatly. I don't get too much fps drops, sometimes the game goes from 60 to 40 but nothing really bothering. In interiors, it's a constant 60 fps.

When I get in Whiterun, the game starts to get fps drops, and this really bothers me a lot.

 

I use JK Whiterun mod + Birds mod. Coupled with ENB, a 980 Ti should get any trouble with it. I mean, let's be honest here, one ENB, some new models and birds, is that all you need to put a freaking 980 Ti down ? i haven't even used any texture mods, 2K 4K or else...

 

The only texture replacement mods I used were for rocks or snow, I think I removed it actually.

 

I'm very disappointed of how easily the game can bow my config down on his knees, I know a bit about material now and I would love to say that it's because of my old i5 2500K- 3.3Ghz but I used the Skyrim performance monitor and it says that my GPU has been using 99% of its power at some point.

 

I got 6 freaking Gb of VRAM, WHAT THE HELL ?!!

 

Here is my config :

 

CPU : i5 2500K- 3.3Ghz

Graphic Card : Nvidia GTX 980 Ti

RAM : 12 Go DDR3

Hard Drive : Seagate SSD 500Go

 

 

Can someone explain me why do I get so much fps loss ??

 

 

My results when I get in Whiterun with Skyrim Performance Monitor :

 

 

http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/51416866a.jpg

 

 

From 60 fps to 30 28 fps.

 

And why does the game use 85% of my GPU but only 2,8Go of VRAM on all my 6 Gb ??

Edited November 26, 2016 by Nitro206

[NexusComa]

1st off Skyrim is like that ... 2nd not all mods are well made.

You should have the frame limiter set in your ENB and have vsync set as Skyrim will error without it in time.

[laiilaiiheii]

First you will need to make sure SKSE and enboost is setup correctly. This will help you with memory usage preventing crashes and eternal loading screens.

Skyrim can never go on par with your computer, not even with those installed though.

Skyrim has it's limits regardless of how beast your pc might be

Make sure you also try out running it without Jk whiterun.

Jk series are notorious to be heavy and drop fps. Maybe try out jk lite instead, see if it makes a difference.

[Nitro206]

Okay so I've downloaded ENBoost but it doesn't change anything. I've set my fram limiter/sync on True in the enblocal.ini

 

I have already changed my SKSE.ini files with this :

 

[Display]

iTintTextureResolution=2048

[General]

ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

[Memory]

DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768

ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

[NotPlacebo]

GiveFirstBornToSheson=1

And yes the JK is heavy on my setup, since places where the framerate drop to 22 go up to 40 when the mod is disabled. Still, 40 fps for a simple ENB added is stupid, Skyrim is an old unoptimized game though, that's for sure. I'll try the JK lite, thanks guys.

[thestigma]

Ok, let me set a few things straight.

 

PERFORMANCE (in cities especially):

You will never get good performance in certain areas of Skyrim - primarily city or large village areas. Once an area reaches a certain density of objects, model detail and shadows your performance will crash hard.

A certain place in Marharth overlooking the mine from the stairs - and whiterun overlooking the big tree from the top of the dragonreach stairs - are classic examples of these terrible FPS drops.

 

In short - these problems are engine limitations primarily and not a lack of hardware. Least of all a lack of GPU. A GTX 980 is actually quite overkill for Skyrim in general, and unless you run some very intensive filtering effects you will likely never be much limited in that area. while having really fast CPU and memory subsystems can make these game engine sinkholes a little less obvious by pure brute force - there is not much you can do to really avoid the problem. These areas will simply never run well on any hardware. The gameengine really wouldn't care if you quad-SLI'ed 1080s.

 

Aside from mod-makers manually optimizing areas to run better (by reducing detail density or using occlusion culling in smart ways) the only real fix to this problem is the special edition. It can run as much as twice the FPS in many of these "known problem areas", and that should put you close to or above the 60FPS limit on most decent hardware. (see gopher's special edition performance review on youtube).

Of course, until SKSE comes out for SE the mod selection will be limited, and this can take a few months. I'm sure you are aware. So right now you either have to live with some performance sinkholes primarily in cities - or live without a handful of essential mods. I'm choosing the former for now, although given enough time SE will inevitably be superior.

 

Also, you say you opted to install JK cities. Just understand that JK (full version) adds so much extra detail that it is adding a lot of extra strain on top of the already bad problems that exist in some areas of some cities.

Just be aware that you have chosen to add one of the mods that put the highest amount of extra strain on one of the already worst performing areas of the game. The resulting poor performance is inevitable.

The problem comes from the gameengine not being able to handle the density of detail and objects. You are now adding even more detail and objects to those scenes. That's why JK full can drop you 10-15 FPS easily in some areas where performance was bad to begin with.

You can't fix this (outside special edition) unless you run a less intensive version. Check out JK lite. It has half the performance detriment compared to vanilla and is functionally identical, just with slightly less clutter and fluff. Some alternative city mods are even lighter - but just don't expect any mod (or even vanilla) to run perfect everywhere. Even in vanilla, there are some places in cities (like those aforementioned whiterun stairs) that even the most powerful modern systems struggle to reach 60FPS on. It is not worth dropping all your mods and ENB effects to try to overcome this. It only happens in a few spesific areas. Just accept your framerate won't be perfect in some areas of cities or choose the special edition.

 

If using the special edition then go nuts - it can probably handle even JK full with satisfactory speed.

 

Note that 'm not saying JKs is bad (arguably it is one of the best city mods in terms of attention to detail detail). I'm just saying that the full version was not made with performance in mind.

 

VRAM:

VRAM usage is determined almost exclusively by textures. FPS and general performance has little or nothing to do with VRAM (unless you go over your limit). If you don't run texture packs you won't use your VRAM much (so you should use texture packs, because there is a low performance hit for a massive improvement in visuals). Stick primarily to 2K, but you can afford some 4K-2K mix packs too easily. 4K is usually just overkill though except for textures for extremely large objects. Usually can't see the difference even if you stick your nose right into the object... so use 4K textures sparingly even though you happen to have a lot of VRAM.

 

So - your system not using it's VRAM much in your situation is perfectly normal... you haven't given it anything more to use that memory on...

 

Finally, be aware that if you run windows 10 (or 8 also I think) you won't be able to use more than 4GB of your VRAM because of a stupid OS limitation with directX 9.

It's not a real big issue though. 4GB is more than enough to work with. You can for the most part install every 2K texture you can find, and even add a handful of 4K and still typically run below the limit. if you MUST have more you need windows 7 (or special edition, which uses DX11). As I said, it's not worth fretting over though... I use win10 myself. I have yet to feel limited in this area.

 

ENB, SKSE memory patch and stuff (your last post):

 

ENB will (with correct settings) offload Skyrim's memory useage.

Normally Skyrim can't use more than about 3.1GB memory, and without ENB that includes textures(!!). More than 3.1GB = crash...

ENB fixes this by essentially moving the texture memory out of the game - and feeding the game the memory when it needs it (using a small buffer).

This means that most of the 3.1GB can be used for actual game-stuff - and that is far more than you will ever need in practice (rarely goes above 2GB for me using ENB even with hundreds of mods and a large buffer allocation).

So in short - use ENB - even if you don't want any effects activated. it will make the game far far more stable. It is almost mandatory for a heavily modded game.

 

The memory patch for SKSE fixes some instability issues with memory allocation in general.

Always use either this or the preloader option for a more stable game (and read their instructions well to see you apply them correctly)

 

But - neither of these actually do anything at all to the problem you describe with low FPS.

Just to reiterate - you can't fix that issue aside from smartly optimized mods - or the special edition.

I advice against trying a lot of speculative fixes or ini "tweaks". They are often misunderstood by a lot of people and can hurt you more than they help or have unexpected issues down the road. They just can't solve the underlying main issue in this case.

 

Sorry for rambling.

Let me know if you need a clarification on anything else.

 

-Stigma