Found some interesting ini tweaks

[Tykune]

So I was surfing the web and I found some curious ini tweaks, and wanted to get some feedback on what others thought about it. It is not anything I created, just found.

 

v3 New INI settings. Faster. Smoother. 

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Details of the new ini settings. I list only the settings I changed that have the most significant effect on performance and smoothness. 

Skyrim.ini: 

[General] 
iNumHWThreads=4 
iHWThread6=3 
iHWThread5=3 
iHWThread4=3 
iHWThread3=2 
iHWThread2=2 
iHWThread1=2 
iAIThread2HWThread=3 
iAIThread1HWThread=2 
iRenderingThread2HWThread=1 
iRenderingThread1HWThread=0 

bMultiThreadMovement=1 
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 
bUseThreadedBlood=1 
bUseThreadedMorpher=1 
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1 
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 
bUseThreadedTextures=1 
bUseThreadedMeshes=1 
bUseThreadedLOD=1 
bUseThreadedAI=1 
bUseHardDriveCache=0 

[HAVOK] 
iNumThreads=2 

The rationale for these changes come from the idea that the HWThread settings may be related to logical CPU affinity. For example, iNumHWThreads is known to specify the number of logical CPUs that Skyrim should see. I have the i5 750 so I set mine to 4. The other HWThread settings appear to assign specific jobs to each individual logical CPUs. For example, iRenderingThreadxHWThread settings each are assigned to logical CPUs 0 and 1. The other HWThread settings are equally divided between the remaining logical CPUs. What this hopefully means is I now have two logical CPUs dedicated to processing rendering data (geometry and stuff), and the other two logical CPUs dedicated to everything else. In my tests, the settings above are not only more effective than my original settings, but changeing them further either makes no difference or is worse. 

Speculation. If you have a different kind of processor like the i3 with hyperthreading for example, you'd set iNumHWThreads to 4, and the rest divided equally amongst the rest while still dedicating two logical CPUs to rendering work. If you have a dual core processor, you'd set iNumHWThreads to 2 then dedicate one logical CPU to the rendering work (both rendering settings to 0 for example), and the other for everything else. 

The iNumThreads=2 setting under [HAVOK] comes from the idea that I now have two logical CPUs doing non-rendering work. If I set it to 3 for example, then one of the rendering CPUs would have to do non-rendering work, and performance would probably suffer. 

The other UseMultiThreading settings simply make sure that they will take full advantage of the logical CPU assignments. 

I am only speculating on the true nature of these settings so if somebody could confirm or refute it, I'd be much obliged. But to give you an idea of how effective these changes truly are, fps now stays above 40 outside and stays firmly at 60 inside. Even at more than 3 years old, my rig can still kick some serious butt. With the right settings, of course. 

Incidentally, if you also play Fallout: New Vegas or Oblivion, these ini settings above will work just as well. 

[Kelmych]

You might want to look at the extensive Skyrim INI guide where these are discussed. Some of them don't seem to have any effect on the game (e.g., the iHWThreadx where x is a number between 1 and 6). If you have found that these do affect the game it would be very useful to know how and when they affect it.

[Tykune]

I haven't tried them yet, but I wasn't going to attempt it until I got my game stable enough to tell the difference. I just wanted people's opinion on it.

[Spock]

Skyrim is really single threaded, at least the cpu intensive stuff of rendering and game logic. It is not inherently favorible to outsource some tasks because the main thread might have to wait if this is not optimized. The additional threads do not really use the cores to their fullest, so there shouldn't be a problem adding havoc threads. It might be beneficial to set heavoc threads to physical cores-1 to help the main thread.