Vortex acting really slow recently

[Tannin42]

We need a bit more details to investigate this.

First of all: is there a pattern to the slowdowns, e.g. is Vortex showing notifications (e.g. Deploying) every time the slowdowns happen or is there an activity indicator (that spinning icon) on the mods or plugins tab when it happens?

How many mods do you have installed? Could you switch to a different game where you have fewer/no mods installed and see if the performance problem exists there as well?

Could you open the windows task manager and monitor the Vortex processes? How is the cpu and memory utilization while the slow down occurs?

Is there another process that has high CPU load while Vortex is slow? It could be for example that an anti virus tool blocks Vortex every time it deploys a file so that the AV can scan the file - this can considerably slow down deployment.

 

Then, could you try disabling extensions (Extensions tab if you have advanced mode enabled), especially "gamebryo plugin management", "gamebryo savegame management", "gamebryo test settings", "fnis integration", "mod highlight" and "mod dependency management" and see if that improves performance? If it does, please figure out which of the plugins it is.

[StriderOfTheWest]

In my case the worst slowdowns happen when I adjust the conflict rules (with 300 mods enabled)
I don't have any other CPU intensive tasks going while encountering this.
Also sorting is slow (700 mods to sort)

[Tannin42]

How many rules do you have approximately?

[nymaen]

How many rules do you have approximately?

How can a get an answer to the total number of rules?

 

I was able to greatly increase performance by ensuring I was only downloading or only installing/enabling. If I tried to download and install (different mods) at the same time, performance was very bad. Most of the delay is during the pre-deployment step where the app is looking for changes in the game directory.

[nymaen]

Did experiment, disabled all listed extensions, and re-enabled them one at a time. Definiitely the dependency manager plugin.

 

I also disabled virus scanning int eh vortex and skyrim directories, to eliminate that as a cause.

 

I have ~ 370 mods right now.

 

Any other info I can provide?

[sonicmitch]

Using Task Manager
when starting Vortex, there are 4 spawned tasks using a total of 460MB.

The Plugins has a rotating arrow circle for about 30 secs. before anything is accessible.

150 plugins not all deployed

135 Mods deployed

 

Step by step

Download and install small new mod

Hit enable....CPU at 30% Memory Jump to 700MB

System completely non-responsive.

CPU sits at 15%, after 45 seconds system responds, CPU down to 0%, memory drops to 425Mb.

Reinstall

Memory at 728MB, CPU 14%m No disk activity, 45 sec CPU 0% Memory 454Mb

 

I have an MSI GT75 Titan i9, 32GB RAM, NVDIA GeForce GTX 1080,

 

When I first installed Vortex, it was lighting fast. But after hitting about 120 plugins, it ground to a halt.

 

 

Hit DIsable, memory 900Mb, CPU 35%, rolling circle on MODS, non-responsive

45 secs - CPU 0, Memory 512, responsive finally memory levels at 468Mb.

[Tannin42]

@nymaen and @StriderOfTheWest

Thanks for your feedback. There is no feature inside vortex to give you a rule count but just give me a ballpark number, is it 10? 50? 100? more?

Only the "sorting mods" and "pre-deploy" phases of deployment are actually CPU intensive.

How long "sorting mods" takes depends directly on the number of rules, so having unnecessary rules (rules between mods that don't have a file conflict) will cause unnecessary slowdown.

The "pre-deploy" step should only take time if you have the fnis automation enabled and it will take more time the more animation mods you have installed.

If this is your problem you may want to disable the automation for now and go back to running fnis manually.

 

Using Task Manager

when starting Vortex, there are 4 spawned tasks using a total of 460MB.

The Plugins has a rotating arrow circle for about 30 secs. before anything is accessible.

150 plugins not all deployed

135 Mods deployed

30 seconds is a lot. How many rules do you have set up for plugins?

 

Step by step

Download and install small new mod

Hit enable....CPU at 30% Memory Jump to 700MB

System completely non-responsive.

Wait, your "system" is non-responsive? The entire system, not just Vortex? Because Vortex itself will only utilize one or two CPU cores and the disk, so Vortex alone can't actually slow down a system with an i9 process.

Also, do you have automatic deployment set up in Settings? Just for verification, please disable automatic deployment and then see if enabling a mod still causes the slow down.

If not, click the deploy button manually and verify that that's the step that takes so long. Also, if it is the deployment step, please let us know which "phase" is taking so long, whether it is "pre-deployment events" like nymaen says or a specific mod.

 

 

In general: It's not unusual for deployment of a lot of mods to take a minute or two, the fact that Vortex is unresponsive during that time is what irritates me.

If you want to avoid the deployment every time you enable/disable a mod you can do that in settings and then manually deploy only once before you start playing.

[nymaen]

I am still adding more mods. I have around 400 or so now, and will likely have close to 600 by the time I am done. As for the count of rules, it depends on how you define a "rule". If when I add a mod, it conflicts with 3 other mods, does creating 3 "load after" rules count as three rules? If so, then I probably have 300 - 500 rules right now.

 

I think FINS is the wrong thing to look at, I have no animation mods in play yet.

 

I just discovered groups. I will look at that. I believe that could greatly reduce the number of rules I need. I have several global texture replacers (Noble Skyrim, Skyrim realstic overhaul, etc), plus some for specific terrains (magestic mountsin, 3D trees, etc), then specific areas (4k Whiterun, Solitude docks), then clutter mods, and weapon mods, and armor mods. As I go from global to specific mods, there tend to be lots of collisions. So a weapon mod might conflict with a global, a global weapon, and then a guild weapon, etc. So I end up with several rules. Putting these mods into groups would likely greatly reduce the number of rules.

 

Is there a good way to blanket remove groups of rules (like can I select 10 mods and say remove all rules) so I can start over?

 

I saw this link for groups : https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6646776-loot-groups/

 

If there is a better place to go and learn how to manage my dependencies, please let me know. I am new to Vortex, and may be making mistakes.

 

There is a real problem with downloads and installing/enabling mods conflicting with each other. Last night, Is topped using Vortex to download mods. I would download a group at a time manually. Then drag-n-drop them into the downloads area. Then install them one at a time by going to the mods list and clicking "Enable". This would install and enable in one step. This made life much better for me because it got rid of the download<->deployment interference. Plus it let me skip an additional deploy by installing and enabling in one step. This may help others.

 

Is there a way to export my Vortex mod configuration to show you the number of mods and rules I have in place?

[Rattledagger]

I just discovered groups. I will look at that. I believe that could greatly reduce the number of rules I need.

 

If you means Groups under Plugins-tab, while you can remove all plugin "load after…"-rules and use groups instead, these groups has nothing to do with the "load after…" rules you're creating on the mods-tab.

[nymaen]

Ugh...there is no concept of groups for mods... well that sucks.