Skyrim with enb; good fps, but poor performance

[NoiR]

Hi all.

First off, thanks for your amazing work with the enb series! Makes the pc gaming world that much more beautiful for all of us!

Now, my problem is this:
When I try to run Skyrim with ENB series, I get a decent playable framerate. The problem is that while the FPS is quite good and also constant according to ENB fps counter, I still get jerky movement on my screen. It looks like the game is clipping out some frames. This is most notable in interiors, like Dragonsreach thorne room for example. I know my rig can't handle all the bells and whistles ENB comes with, but that is not the issue here I think. I've left out SSAO and DOF for example, but the result still stays the same. If I turn off the ENB with shift+F12 I still get the jerky movement, but it seems to help a bit. If I uninstall ENB, the "frame clipping" effect goes away. Only enb that was smooth for me was very early version, I think it was the 1.8 with HDR in Nexus or something.

Here is some solutions I've already tried, but they did not help at all:
Different Nvidia drivers, beta and WHQL
Disabling all my other mods
Taking down all the Skyrim graphical settings in launcher to their minimum (My god how crappy the game looks like this, but the frame clipping still exist!)
Trying different versions of ENB series and different setups found on Nexus (only very early version seems to do the trick, as mentioned above)
Trying different driver settings in Nvidia control panel and inspector
Trying different settings in SkyrimPrefs.ini (like iPresentInterval etc.)
Trying to let Skyrim make a new clean SkyrimPrefs.ini on game startup
Some other solution I might have missed

If anyone could give my any pointers how to troubleshoot this problem I'd be grateful! Even if it means that you have to tell me "man, it's your crappy rig" It just makes me wonder, because framerate is good; around 25-35 outside and 50 interiors and while I drag down all the game details in settings the problem still exists... I'm lost here Oh, well... back to "Realistic Lighting with Customization" I guess.

This is some of what my PC has eaten:
Core2Duo 8500 (ok this one is old and is definitely bottlenecking my GFX card)
4gt RAM
GTX 560 CuII Top

Cheers
NoiR

[mindflux]

I feel your pain. Luckily there's one easy solution: use a frame-limiter. You can use the one built in ENB, the controls are right there in enbseries.ini under [LIMITER]. A good idea is to test in a reasonably demanting location with the FPS counter activated (toggle with Shift+* in the numpad) and set the limiter to a framerate your rig can more or less maintain without stuttering. I myself have a C2D E6550 + GTX560 and use 40, but a lot depends on your game and graphics card settings.

[ENBSeries]

It's all because of bad multithreading code of the game, as mindflux said, frame limiter will help.

[NoiR]

Hi.

Thanks for your advice guys. Will try out the framerate limitter when I get home today!

Cheers
NoiR

[Unreal Warfare]

If anyone could give my any pointers how to troubleshoot this problem I'd be grateful! Even if it means that you have to tell me "man, it's your crappy rig"

Mate, I've seen people with i7's and dual 580's cry because they couldn't run a config without stuttering that I could with a Phenom 965BE and a HD6870 (I laughed).

So no, it's not your rig.

What I would suggest is trying out some of the texture compression tools if you're using downloaded textures. That might help improve performance a bit as it will decrease the amount of VRAM you're using. Of course, make a backup of your textures folder before doing this.

You'll also find alot of custom code and effects can have a rather significant hit on performance (like Effect text files, Depth of Field, Injfx Shaders, HD6's Custom Effect.FX file, SSAO, Indirect Lighting). So you can try experimenting with removing/disabling some of those effects.

Also if you have Shadows on Ultra, don't. Set them to high (unless you intend to be a screenshot artist, of which most will break their game the best they can just for that one uber screenshot). Ultra is simply not worth the performance hit (upto 30FPS for me in some places, just for Ultra Shadows alone)

[NoiR]

Tried the FPS limitter and that really did the trick! No more stuttering with enb. Had to limit fps to 30, which is by some(ones) standards quite low, but it's enough for me. Experiencing some "mouse lag" with the limitter, but that's bearable compared to the terrible stutters. I remember reading there's no way around the mouse lag caused by the fps limitter, right? Also did put the shadows on High and gained a few frames by that. Don't need to compress any textures yet, cause 1g VRAM seems to handle the mods I have atm. Been quite cautious installing ultra high res textures and stuff and when available I use the 1024 versions.

Thanks for all the help guys!

Cheers
NoiR