Object Detail Fade giving me a huge performance hit?

[evilcannon]

First of all, here are my specs:

 

i5-3570k

Radeon 7950

8GB DDR3 ram

WD 1tb HDD

 

Alright, so here is my issue. I noticed I was getting a fairly low frame rate in certain areas (mostly towns). So, I decided to mess around with the launcher settings until I discovered which setting gave me the biggest hit. I lowered absolutely everything and increased it one by one. After conducting the "test" I saw only one setting that was causing me lag, which was the "Object Fade" setting. I can literally lower every single setting, but if that one is high at all it will cause me to go down to 30-40 FPS in towns. I thought maybe it was normal or perhaps it was an AMD issue. However, I looked around and even saw some benchmarks of other peoples systems with and without the object fade raised, and they had less than a 1-2 FPS decrease when maxing it out; yet I get a 20-30FPS decrease whenever raising it above 3.

 

Does anyone else have this issue? I have tried using different catalyst versions but to no avail. I tried 12.7,12.8 and am now on 12.9 beta and the issue is still not resolved. I don't have issues in any other game really; so I'm not sure if its an issue to my GPU exclusively...

[bootaka]

Your CPU is a bit faster than my 1st gen Phenom II Black, but the rest of my system is Identical. I'm using the 12.10 CCC atm, it seems to work fine when I enable and disable the Distant Object Fade. Seems like you're talking about the Distant Object Detail as well? Having that set high, is a slight performance hit for me in general, but in towns, where there is a lot of distance, distant objects, and NPCs doing their things, you can expect some system taxing going on. Most of which is CPU intensive. Although I would think you would be handle it a bit better with that CPU. My CPU is my bottleneck, yet I run with 30-45fps in most towns, 48-60fps in open areas, usually capped at 60fps indoors, with every HD texture, enhanced mesh thinger mabobbers I can get my hands on, and a maxed ENB to rub it all together. With the ENB off I gain 8-12 fps, but it looks so pretty!

 

What settings are you running in CCC and in Skyrim?

 

Mine are something like;

 

Skyrim:

16:9

1920x1080

AA = OFF (I'm using SMAA for AA)

AF = 16x

Detail = Ultra with shadows on High and no Object Fade

 

In my Skyrim.ini, I increased the cell load are by adding larger cell buffer zones, just saying as a reference, my game is actually loading more than the default cell area, lowering my performance slightly. But keep this in mind if you get your fps figured out!

 

uExterior Cell Buffer=64

uInterior Cell Buffer=32

uGridsToLoad=7

iLargeIntRefCount=999999

 

CCC: 12.10

AA = OFF (I've found no major improvement, visually, turning this on or off compared to SMAA, with hardly any of the performance hit)

AF = 16x

VidSYNC = Always on

Tessellation Optimized (not that I know if it has anything to do with Skyrim!)

Texture Filtering Quality = Quality (was suggested leaving this alone do to ENB conflits, if not I would have it on High Quality)

Surface Format Enabled

 

Even with all the mods I have installed, I know I can squeeze a few more fps here and there if I continue poking stuff, but I'll still be CPU limited. You on the other hand, I'm no expert, but your i5 uses the Ivy Bridge? Where my Phenom II is still 1st gen, from what I've read you should be 40%-60% faster with that CPU over what I'm using. Which should make a world of difference.

 

*edit, I guess it would help to know which version of the r7950 you have as well? Mine is the MSI Twin Frozr, and depending on which 7950 you have, AMD released new Reference Card BIOS for these cards not too long ago. These cards actually come with a dial BIOS setup, meaning you can flash to nearly any of the 7950 flavors, and if you break it, flip the switch next to the X-Fire connecter and back to factory settings. But I still think you should be performing better the way you're sitting now.

Edited November 1, 2012 by bootaka