follower's AI really cost that much CPU power??

[moophat]

Hi guys,

Normally i don't post much in these forum, and since i'm not of any help to other people i always try to dig around and solve problems all by myself first. But this time after trying all possible solutions - to the point that almost ruined my motherboard - i'm still seriously stuck with this issue. So any help/clue is appreciated.

 

My spec is as follow:

Mainboard ASUS P5Q SE

CPU E7600 running at 3.84GHz (normally i ran it at 3.5 but i raise the clock a bit specially for Skyrim, going over 4.0 almost ruined my motherboard)

4GB RAM bus 1066 (Gskill)

VGA ASUS HD7770-DC-1GD5-V2 ( OC up to 1120/1250 MHz does not help at all).

SSD Gskill Phoenix III 120GB

 

It's not what you would can an decent system, especially with all the ivy,sandy CPU out there. But after days and days of tweaking i managed to make skyrim run at almost constant 40fps with my own custom enb, SSAO/SSIL, CoT and all. Worst case scenario, even when i enter a square crowded with NPC from both Interesting NPCs and Populated cities, it'll only drop to around 28, minor stuttering, still totally moveable.

 

The problem ONLY arise when i use multiple follower (>2),.Any kind of combat, or something like just looking back to see how they are doing, would literally CRIPPLE my game. By cripple i don't mean normal stuttering, normal fps dropping or complete freezing. The FPS would drop straight to 0, stay there for around 5-30sec then raise again (sometime even back to 3-4x fps) then back to 0 again. The only certain way out of this is ctrl+alt+del and ternimnate TESV process , because pressing ESC to exit the game sometimes does not work, and sometime even after the combat/looking back events is over - things remain the same!. I can't imagine how follower can create such impact, because even if i make a platoon of guards, companions, citizens..etc.. go after my head, the fps during combat/looking events would only drop a bit.

 

Funniest thing is, using HWinfo + EVGA precision to observe CPU & GPU load, i think during those freezing period both processor was only around 50-90%, which mean nothing was fully loaded.

 

Some test i have tried so far:

- Weak VGA? Underclock/overclock VGA, run the game with/without ENB, run ENB with/without ForceFakeVideoCard and with/without SSAO: nothing change, seem like it's not something graphical-related.

- Shadow? I recall reading somewhre that skyrim/enb let CPU handle shadows, so i reduced shadows quality to almost nothing: no help at all except a minor fps boost.

- Change followers? Event though it seem that i have less minor stuttering when i'm going with "vanilla" followers like lydia alone than when travelling with custom followers, but fighting with >2 vanilla followers create the same cripple effect.

- Too many mods? The same amount of mods (around 100) create no problem if i just travel alone or with 1 follower. Even if i disable everything except customer follower and UFO/AFT, nothing really change.

- Disk performance? Well awared of the fact that i don't have much Vram and high-res texture can create major stuttering, i even move the game from HDD to Gskill SSD as mentioned above. Also i always re-run Textures Optimizer after installing anything that include some texture. So i think it's not disk-related problem.

- Temperature - Power? I can have OCCT, Prime95 and Furmark rape my system all night long without a single BSOD or anything goes beyond 60'C/140'F , so i think the source is not here, either.

 

The only clue i have found so far is that using EFF seem to create "less" cripple effect than UFO or AFT, reduce about 50% of the freezing period. But the thing was not receive any improvement since August, so i'm stuck again.

 

If you have reached this point, thanks for reading the whole thing. It's a bit long because i want to provide as much info as possible.

Edited January 7, 2013 by moophat

[moophat]

A minor side note: we don't have much chance to buy game CD/DVD in my place, so most of the time i buy/active the titles i love from steam/origin but keep using the pirated version, for convenient's sake. It's not something to brag about, i just hate having all my games managed by game clients like steam. If anyone think my performance issue may come from this, please let me knows so i can clean the disk a little beforehand for steam installation:) Edited January 7, 2013 by moophat

[moophat]

Anyone?

[FiftyTifty]

What I've done (And I have a 965 BE, mind you), is disabled the shadows completely. Major FPS boost, and there are mods that modify the lighting in Skyrim to compensate for the lack of shadows.

 

It really sounds like a driver problem to me. That, or you have some hardcore background processes.

 

Try updating your drivers and/or turning off your AV, shutting down any unneeded programs, etc.

[moophat]

Since i don't have a decent rig, turning off all background process (manually + gamebooster) has became some kind of natural reflex, event when i log in to ancient games like CS and warcraft. And AMD driver indeed seem a bit buggy, but i have already tried 3 different driver versions - newest stable one 12.07 - newest offical one 12.10 and newest beta 12.11 before moving the game to SSD. The only difference is that 12.07 seem to have better average fps T__T

 

Anyways, thx for your idea.Can you name the mod that help improve shadow for me? I'm using relighting + Climate of Tamriel + ENB. Indeed i found shadow processing annoying. Try lowering the setting and they'll give us crappy quality, but higher setting really cost a lot of fps.

Edited January 9, 2013 by moophat

[FiftyTifty]

Eh. I turned shadows off an' gotthis mod to compensate the lack of shadows by modifying Skyrim's lighting system.

 

Not worth the performance loss to have shadows that don't make you cringe, and it just ain't worth having shadows if they make you cringe. So I got rid of them.

[moophat]

I think i found the culpirt : http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/13529

It messed up my .bsa and even my meshes, textures somehow. And since the files are mismatched, seem like wrye bash did not remove them from data directory. Manually removed all the messed up files , installed everything again and only usđ the old texture optimizer it did the trick. Constant 4x fps event with a squad of companions on my back now. Not that somebody care though xD

 

BTW, your suggestion seem amazing FiftyTifty, i'm trying it right now and the fps boost seem to worth the sacrifice, thanks a lot.

Edited January 10, 2013 by moophat

[Rooker75]

Whatever the problem, I doubt it's the followers. Your system is more powerful than mine and I've run around with over a dozen followers using the UFO mod.