TES Skyrim 0.241

[jrista]

Version updated, download again
Increased performance of water displacement (parallax occlusion mapping).



Stuttering is not happen because of ENBSeries, it's drivers+game. Mouse movement by one axis is frame rate dependent (f*ng bugthesda) and i can't fix that. SLI is unsupported absolutely by my mod and i won't rely on it's performance difference between versions, for me nothing changed by fps when sun rays disabled and didn't anything which may affect performance seriously, for single card of course.
To optimize or not - this is not the topic of discussion, mod is always optimized (except first releases of some new effects) if compare to other games, if they have similar effects. More than that, optimization is one of my powerful sides as developer. Amount of features is too high by standarts of any games and this implanted to already awful slow game.

Good to hear about optimization!

I also totally understand if the stutter issue is a bethesda issue. I used to have much higher frame rates, but with my FPS (without v-sync) hovering below 30fps, or just above, I guess I can see why it's occurring with the latest versions of ENB, and not the older versions...the older versions simply didn't have as much graphics stuff, and my frame rate isn't impacted as much.

[ENBSeries]

I repeat, version 0.236 not differ from 0.241 by anything performance consuming, except volumetric rays. Ask other users without SLI and they proove my words.

[jrista]

Witcher 2 game is far more superior by all means.

Yeah, Witcher 2 has some pretty nice graphics by default. Witcher 3 has amazing graphics. I really wish Bethesda would write a new engine from scratch, instead of constantly limping along their old one. They should hire Boris, he'd make an awesome TES: VI engine!

I repeat, version 0.236 not differ from 0.241 by anything performance consuming, except volumetric rays. Ask other users without SLI and they proove my words.

I dunno. I went through all the topics on each version in the Download forum, and I read a lot of people saying there was a 1-2fps performance hit for one feature or another. Given that I've lost about 8fps, it seems there has been a cumulative performance drop between 0.236 and 0.241. I haven't done anything with my game's configuration since I last updated ENB, and I had a consistent 30fps v-synced frame rate, where as now, with 0.241, I have a consistent 20fps v-synced (or around 22-23 without v-sync, but with the stutter.)

Anyway, as I said, it isn't a huge issue, especially if you already intended to optimize the volumetric lighting feature. It sounds like you already optimized water displacement. So, I'm happy!

[Darkstorne]

Witcher 2 game is far more superior by all means.

Except it's impossible to get anisotropic filtering working properly without using the Ubersampling option. It's strange that they made such an amazing engine, that's better than Skyrim in almost every single way, yet they still screwed up something as basic as AF

Thanks for explaining optimization, Boris. I definitely get much better performance with SLI enabled, so I'll stick to using it for now. But my next GPU purchase will be one single, big card, rather than two small ones

[rwillia157]

Guess I could write a long story about optimization... but it all boils down to that I am quite happy with the current levels, and while I would not mind more, then it is not something that is super vital in my point of view. Most of it comes down to people not utilizing the best performance/quality settings for their machines anyways.
Heck from grass tweaks alone you can get up to 10 FPS with a quite small visual impact.
Using silly LOD mods that force in more models to be rendered, and mods that add a ton of new stuff to be rendered all eat up even more.

Trust me, the issue is not for lack of trying more optimal settings. I have all the performance tweaks I can stand without visibly reducing quality. I eliminated all LOD mods a long time ago (for stability reasons, as it happened to be.) I've compressed all my textures, eliminated texture packs I can live without. I've disabled ENB DOF (I did that a while ago, actually, kind of interferes with gameplay, and gains me about 4-5fps, although guess I could reduce the DOF quality and maybe gain 1-2fps and still be able to use it...not that that would solve my 20fps problem). I used to play with SSAO/SSIL at a much higher level, and was still able to attain 30fps+. I've reduced SSAO to 60% of my scree now, well below the 80% it used to be, in order to maintain the performance I am getting now, and I am still at 20fps most of the time. I've been on a long-term march towards lower quality in order to maintain the playability of the game with each new version of ENB. I know that there is a cost to the visuals...but I think the per-visual cost could be reduced to maybe 1/4fps each, rather than 1-2fps each.

I applaud all the new graphics features, but personally, I don't think they can remain unoptimized forever. I'm ok if Boris doesn't bother optimizing until he is done adding all the graphics features he wants to, but I don't think optimization should be foregone entirely. It should be done at some point, because each and every new graphics feature is sucking frame rate down by 1-2 fps. Add another several new graphics features, and I'll be stuck playing the game at 50% SSAO and 15-20fps...and that really bums me out, especially if I could be back up to around 30fps if some optimization was done.

I totally understand that optimization is the ugly, boring, gritty part of coding. I'd hate it too. In the long run, though, it's what will polish off ENB in the end, and make it not only a means to make Skyrim utterly beautiful, but also keep it playable for a lot of users as well. Not everyone wants ENB just for the sake of screen archery, in which case 15fps isn't an issue to start with. All I am saying is, I'm putting my vote in for optimization to occur at some point. Doesn't necessarily have to be right now, but it would be great if it was done before Boris calls it quits on Skyrim ENB entirely.

You must really be doing something off. check out my system specs in my sig. Much less than your reported specs. using a fully featured configurtion for enb, tons of textures replaced and still 35-45 fps out doors and 50-60+(with vsync disabled) indoors. Are you using lots of scripted mods? They can really slow down a system.

[jrista]

You must really be doing something off. check out my system specs in my sig. Much less than your reported specs. using a fully featured configurtion for enb, tons of textures replaced and still 35-45 fps out doors and 50-60+(with vsync disabled) indoors. Are you using lots of scripted mods? They can really slow down a system.

Hmm, am I reading something wrong? Just to make sure:

Crossfire (2x) R7950 OC
16Gb RAM
AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T BE

All three of those sound better than my hardware. I think I may have a higher overclock than you do on your CPU, but I think your CPU overall is faster/more capable at its base clock anyway (my i7 920 is a really old CPU). You also have more ram (I have 12Gb). I also have to point out, since it is not obvious, I have had to underclock my 760's via a Skyrim profile in the driver in order for the game to run stable, so I lose about 4-6fps at least because of that right off the bat. (I've contacted EVGA about it, and all they could offer is that the card, even though it is officially sold as an overclocked model, is not guaranteed to be stable, and therefor undeclocking is the appropriate course of action. Bleh.)

So, I don't know that I have better reported specs. With v-sync disabled, I still get pretty high frame rates indoors...it is generally outside that my performance tanks. I am not using many scripted mods. I actually recently spent a couple months testing every mod combination I had, and I eliminated all of the scripted mods I had (Wet & Cold, Footprints, Frostfall, and a whole host of others.) I do have some mods that increase spawn points, I use CoT, etc. but overall, my load order is pretty benign (mostly graphics, armors, weapons...couple immersion mods...and I think I only have 180 mods.)

I am also very certain it was the update to 0.241 that caused the hit. Now, since I use v-sync, I am either running at 20fps or 30fps or 60fps, but nothing inbetween. I used to run at 30fps most of the time, now I run at 20fps most of the time (seems to be around 22-23fps with v-sync off.) I don't play much without v-sync anymore because of that stutter, so I am honestly not sure if I could get something inbetween 30fps and 60fps in certain areas...it might indeed be possible, I would have to give it a try (I only tested without v-sync in one area), but it would probably give me a headach. ;P

[ENBSeries]

Listen, 30 fps vs 20 fps is difference between 33 and 50 ms, so you blame me for 17 ms loss in performance after updating from 0.236 to 0.240? It's how much cost ssao for me on old gf9600gt card, not funny. Disable SLI and compare two versions. Disable clouds shadows and sun rays and compare two versions.

[rwillia157]

[quote="jrista"] Hmm, am I reading something wrong? Just to make sure:

Crossfire (2x) R7950 OC
16Gb RAM
AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T BE

No not crossfire just single card, the twin refers to the GPU cooler not two of them. yes more RAM and I am not as familar with Intel chips but I thought almost all of the I7 outperformed the Phenom II class chips. Also my OC is only 300 MHZ on my CPU.

As boris said, SLI and Crossfire don't play well with skyrim in general not to mention with ENB

[jrista]

Hmm, am I reading something wrong? Just to make sure:

Crossfire (2x) R7950 OC
16Gb RAM
AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T BE

No not crossfire just single card, the twin refers to the GPU cooler not two of them. yes more RAM and I am not as familar with Intel chips but I thought almost all of the I7 outperformed the Phenom II class chips. Also my OC is only 300 MHZ on my CPU.

As boris said, SLI and Crossfire don't play well with skyrim in general not to mention with ENB

I am certain it is not SLI. I get almost double the performance with SLI than without, which is why I use it (if I disable SLI right now, the game runs at about 14fps.) I have been using SLI for about five months now, and I've never seen either Skyrim nor ENB have any apparent issues with it. The game only supports alternate frame rendering (AFR), but that doesn't bother me one bit.

Listen, 30 fps vs 20 fps is difference between 33 and 50 ms, so you blame me for 17 ms loss in performance after updating from 0.236 to 0.240? It's how much cost ssao for me on old gf9600gt card, not funny. Disable SLI and compare two versions. Disable clouds shadows and sun rays and compare two versions.

Disabling cloud shadows results in a non-vsync 24fps +stutter, (still 20fps with v-sync.) As far as I can tell, the sun rays stuff isn't doing anything on my config yet...I'll mess with it more and see if there is a difference in fps.

Just to throw this at you in a different perspective, 50ms is a 51% slower "per-frame render time" than 33ms. It may only be 17ms in absolute terms, but in relative terms, it is actually fairly significant (in my case, it would be more like 31-32fps vs. 22-23fps, so the actual relative performance difference I am experiencing is 44.4/31.7, or a 40% difference.) I am not "blaming" you for anything...just reporting my experiences (which, at lest until now, was what you always seemed to ask for...) I mean no offense.

[Darkstorne]

He's right though, there's definitely something else going on there. I have worse specs than you, but get better performance:

2GB GTX 560 Ti x2 in SLI
i7 2600k @3.8ghz
16GB 1600mhz RAM

I cap my framerate at 40fps with the ENB limiter (it could go higher, up to 60fps at times, but I hate games with fluctuating frame rates. I prefer to cap it at 40fps so it's consistent), and in high-stress areas it can drop as low as 30fps. I've never seen it drop into the 20's.

Which ENB effects do you use? I've learned that the frame rate killers are Depth of Field, Reflections, and the Displacement setting under Water effects. Disable those effects and see if that helps. Make sure none of the quality levels (for any effect) are lower than 1. Set some of them to 2 for better performance (with shadows, you can increase the blur radius to compensate for blockier details). Also, make sure SourceScale and SizeTextureScale of SSAO are fairly low (Try lowering them to 0.35 each).