SKYRIMLE No shadows HUGE FPS boost!

[AngryEeyore]

Keeps the the lighting effects and ditches all the nasty blocky shadows.

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=16464

 

I just went from 20FPS to 60FPS. I am blown away that shadows eat that much of my GPU.

[frihyland]

@angry, shadows are entirely cpu bound

 

I just downloaded this to test, my gpu is far better than cpu so it will likely be a huge improvement.

 

 

I am hoping the the in development enb 110 (with post-processing shadows) in combination with this will revolutionize my skyrim experience.

[AngryEeyore]

I have been told otherwise. I think the shadows are GPU bound. I just switched my Skyrim folder out with an all high quality mods folder I had and I am able to get 40 FPS around Whiterun with a 1gb card while using this mod . This is with all the high resolution mods from the latest STEP guide.

[frihyland]

Please post your source for this information.

[Spiffyman]

Could it be possible to turn off game shadows and using only the enb 110 shadows? You'd lose distant shadows, but you might still get nice shadows from enb.

[stoppingby4now]

Could it be possible to turn off game shadows and using only the enb 110 shadows? You'd lose distant shadows, but you might still get nice shadows from enb.

 

ENB will only enhance the shadows that are produced by the game. If you turn off shadows, ENB will have nothing to work with.

[AngryEeyore]

Please post your source for this information.

 

 

https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1373515-so-i-thought-i-was-hitting-a-vram-wall/

[Spiffyman]

If it enhances the shadows, I guess there is no point on putting it on the low setting either then. You'd end up with a really low quality shadowing, even if it shadows by pixels then, I would think. Ah well... I'll just keep my high-setting shadows and be happy

[stoppingby4now]

Please post your source for this information.

https://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1373515-so-i-thought-i-was-hitting-a-vram-wall/

Of course shadows are rendered by the GPU, but that isn't the issue. The issue comes down to Bethesda's use of DirectX9, where the shadow volume is generated on the CPU, hence making shadows CPU intensive. You need DirectX10 to be able to offload the creation of the shadow volume to the GPU.

[stoppingby4now]

If it enhances the shadows, I guess there is no point on putting it on the low setting either then. You'd end up with a really low quality shadowing, even if it shadows by pixels then, I would think. Ah well... I'll just keep my high-setting shadows and be happy

 

You may still be able to reduce the quality, but we won't know until he releases it.

[frihyland]

Thanks for the link, it may be true because all the testing I have seen was done well before beth turned on the optimizations and I haven't seen any since. We will have to conduct our own tests to verify this.

 

It also jives with my own personal experience with pc games, but skyrim was created for console which I know nothing about, I do know that directx9 is not particularly gpu optimized so that may be the issue as well.

 

As it stands all the available performance data shows that GPU use goes down in heavily shadowed areas while CPU use goes up. If you have the time please post your cpu-z and gpu-z results for us to examine.

 

stopping

[Bealdwine]

I would love to gain this sort of FPS boost but checking the images it removes an awful lot of the 'atmosphere' from the game so I may test it, but think I'm unlikely to keep it.

[stoppingby4now]

The description for the mod says that anything that modifies light position or values will conflict. Something to keep in mind when using the mod (though the author says it doesn't conflict with RLwC, but haven't tried).

[ralsar]

I installed it with no problems so far. The performance gain is nice for those of us with lesser machines. But it is a sacrifice as shadows are a rather important part of immersion.