Idiotekque Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 (edited) I just installed The Wilds ENB, and I'm seeing a fairly noticeable drop in FPS. Obviously I understand that any ENB mod is going to drop your FPS, but I'd just like to know if the drops I'm seeing are... correct for my system? I'm running a Sager NP9370 notebook with an i7-3630QM 2.40 GHz, 8GB of RAM, and one 680M. My FPS seems to stay between 45-60 when I'm running without SSAO and DoF, anywhere from 42-27 with just the SSAO, and anywhere from 40-25 with both SSAO and DoF. Is this right? I also have all of the 2K texture packs installed (although I really can't notice them, which worries me). It would be nice to know if these numbers are on par with others running similar ENB mods on 680Ms. For the second best nVidia notebook graphics card setup it is, I fear I'm not getting the FPS I should. EDIT: I guess it's a bit more fluctuant than I said before. It's only when I'm in the vast open seeing lots of trees that it drops below 30 (I think). Maybe my fears aren't as warranted as I thought, I guess I'm just in the mindset that I paid for the best laptops graphics card around right now, so any slight discrepancy worries me. Oh well. Edited October 23, 2012 by Idiotekque Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acidzebra Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 EDIT: I guess it's a bit more fluctuant than I said before. It's only when I'm in the vast open seeing lots of trees that it drops below 30 (I think). Maybe my fears aren't as warranted as I thought, I guess I'm just in the mindset that I paid for the best laptops graphics card around right now, so any slight discrepancy worries me. Oh well. It also depends on any graphics settings in skyrim, any changes you may have made to skyrimprefs.ini but in general, the more trees/other objects the heavier the load that SSAO places on your system. The illumination at each point is a function of other geometry in the scene - the more (complex) geometry present, the more work your GPU has. all in all, it sounds about right, although I'm not perfectly up to date on modern laptop GPUs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoSxorpio Posted October 23, 2012 Share Posted October 23, 2012 Are you forcing AA?...don't, let the game do it. Are you forcing Super Sampling?...don't, let the game do it. Try lowering the AO Filter and Quality settings in the ENBseries.ini Try lowering your fShadowDistance in Skyrim.ini (3000-5000 seems decent enough for shadowing on trees) Try Disabling EnableSkyLighting & EnableDetailedShadow both will lower fps considerably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idiotekque Posted October 24, 2012 Author Share Posted October 24, 2012 (edited) I'm REALLY confused. When I first started messing with this ENB mod, no matter what I did, I was getting under 20 FPS. Even when I turned off the SSAO, I was getting under 30 FPS, and that's really not right for how powerful my card is. I played with settings, went around in circles trying to get it to run fast, and nothing worked. Then, after changing nothing from my last test, I started it up, and it started playing perfectly. SSAO on, it ran beautifully. 40-60 FPS indoors, 30-50 FPS outdoors. It ran awesome for the rest of the day. Then I turned off my computer, and I CANNOT get it to run over 20 FPS again. Even indoors in a tiny room with one torch (the Alternate Start mod starting room), I'm getting FPS as low as 14. Even when I turn SSAO off, I'm still getting 35 FPS tops. I don't understand what in the world is going on. The only thing that changed was turning my computer off. Now I'm playing with setting I never even touched in the ini files before and nothing is changing. This is so frustrating. I have the strongest notebook graphics card on the market right now. I don't understand why this is so impossible. :sad: EDIT: I read of people running this mod on considerably older and weaker graphics cards. I have a 4GB 680M. I don't understand why I would need to compromise on so many settings to get a steady FPS... EDIT 2: I tried running the game after uninstalled the ENB mod, and I was still only getting 27-37 in open areas with trees, and only a tiny bit better in snow storms. Obviously that is not the performance I should have been getting (notebookcheck's benchmark shows the 680M getting 50+ FPS average on ultra). Clearly my problem was/is deeper than the ENB. The ENB was giving me a hit on FPS, obviously, but it seems like the hit was correct, as in, the 5-15 FPS loss with SSAO and such should have been fine, but the FPS WITHOUT SSAO and such on was already way too low. I went into the task manager and turned off pretty much everything I thought I should turn off and I was still having problems, but I just installed Gamebooster and messed with things more, switched to gaming mode, and bam, I'm getting really good FPS again like I was yesterday. So some process or service was totally killing my performance. Now just to figure out what it was... EDIT 3: Finally figured out my problem. When I'm running on battery power, the FPS drops 20+ frames, and when I plug the notebook back into the wall, it jumps right back up. Never would have guessed that. I read something about someone with a similar issue where the GPU was being underclocked to 70% while the notebook was on battery power. Now I have to figure out how to fix this... Edited October 24, 2012 by Idiotekque Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonfire01 Posted October 25, 2012 Share Posted October 25, 2012 It's a Windows thing. Whenever the laptop is on battery power, the CPU is underclocked to save battery. To solve this, go to: Start -> control panel -> power management. Then set it to performance mode, or make a custom profile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idiotekque Posted October 26, 2012 Author Share Posted October 26, 2012 I've been doing so research on it, and unfortunately it's not that easy. The underclocking is controlled by Intel SpeedStep, and whatever SpeedStep says in the BIOS overrides your settings in control panel. The only way to disable SpeedStep is in the BIOS, but my Midern Sager OS doesn't have the option to disable it there. I'm looking into using Throttlestop to turn off SpeedStep, and have been told that it can make changes to the BIOS, so hopefully that works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoSxorpio Posted October 26, 2012 Share Posted October 26, 2012 Came back to catch up and OP has figured it out already...I would have asked about power settings (my first thought was coming back from standby mode) etc after the first reply. This might be helpful: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showpost.php?p=1525164&postcount=4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idiotekque Posted October 28, 2012 Author Share Posted October 28, 2012 Yeah, I'm a bit clueless about certain things. Problem solved though! (It's also nice, because I played a few levels on Battlefield 3 and was sure that they were just a bit too much for my system. I go back to them with the power cord plugged in... and wallah. Buttery smooth on ultra.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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