moho25 Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 I'm not sure if this is the best place on the Nexus for this post, but because this will hopefully lead to some talk of ENB and other lighting mods, I thought I'd put it here. I wanted to get some feedback from other modders/players regarding the high drop in frame rates that comes along with enabling amibent occlusion in Skyrim. I'm getting back into the game after a 1 year absence, and have been plugging along with finding and managing new mods. The last time I played Skyrim there still wasn't support for AO in the nVidia graphics drivers, so I didn't use it. However, after updating my drivers (relatively recently) and doing a large amount of testing on vanilla Skyrim yesterday, followed by a little bit this morning, I figured out that having AO set to performance on my system results in an enormous 15-20 fps drop. No other graphics or ini setting comes even close to the amount of impact this setting has on my system. To explain a bit more: I started my testing with full ultra Skyrim launcher settings (shadows at high), uGrids=7 + highly modified inis, High DLC tex pack, AF=8x, AA=4x + 2xSS transparency, TF=HQ, AO=performance and no mods. Game was stable and smooth and framerates fluctuated a bit but were generally at 30-35 fps. After reverting to vanilla inis, turning the game down to medium, and turning off or down almost all of the graphics settings (except AO), my unmodded game could only get up to a consistent 35-40 fps. BUT. Once I turned off AO, it was like I flipped a switch....60 fps everywhere around and outside Whiterun. So, considering I am planning on modding my game even more heavily than previously, I'm a bit concerned. Especially since I'd really like to keep the AO on because it does make things look so much better, lol. Is there an ENB that handles the AO in a less taxing manner that would give me similar results without the drop I see running it through my card? Are there other options for adjusting this setting that make it less taxing that I might not be aware of, getting back into the game after a year-long absence? FYI -- My system isn't crazy-awesome, but it's solid, and I can run most games on ultra with good frame rates and no lag/stuttering. Win7-64, i7 2630qm, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 560m (1.5GB DDR5 VRAM), 1920x1080 screen resolution. Looking forward to hearing some input :] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LargeStyle Posted January 30, 2013 Share Posted January 30, 2013 I too have found nVidia driver based SSAO very taxing on my system and it's not really using the best AO system anyways. The very latest ENBseries has optimised SSAO code than looks and runs better than nVidias version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moho25 Posted January 31, 2013 Author Share Posted January 31, 2013 I too have found nVidia driver based SSAO very taxing on my system and it's not really using the best AO system anyways. The very latest ENBseries has optimised SSAO code than looks and runs better than nVidias version. Well, that's a bit encouraging. Thanks for responding. I was running Skyrim Enhanced Shaders until I stopped playing early last year -- but I never adjusted my nVidia settings. If I run a new ENB, something like TrueVision or Seasons of Skyrim, Does that mean I should turn off the various nVidia settings if running ENBs of that nature? Or only the AO? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LargeStyle Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 If I run a new ENB, something like TrueVision or Seasons of Skyrim, Does that mean I should turn off the various nVidia settings if running ENBs of that nature? Or only the AO? I guess that really depends on which nVidia settings you've adjusted then! Seriously though, although I've not experimented with nVidias driver profile settings for Skyrim that much, I imagine ENB can provide the best general techniques for rendering AO and Anisotropic Filtering. I've read recently that ENBs AA method isn't as efficient as other software or even hardware AA methods, and it also currently causes conflicts with ENB AO and reflection, so ENB is probably best left off here. Bear in mind though that Boris (ENB creator) has only just released certain ENB versions for Skyrim within the past few weeks if not days, so there'll be a limited amount of ENB presets out there that'll truely be based on the latest version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennn Posted January 31, 2013 Share Posted January 31, 2013 Strange, as Nvidia's performance AO only loses me about 5 fps. Quality loses me 20 fps though, and performance is unbearable. ENB's AO is even heavier though, at least on my rig. (Specs in sig) ENB's AO looks much better than Nvidia's, but I lose upwards of 25 fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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