Good Performance Hunting

[Mardread]

@baeldwine,

 

One of the issues that I ran into was with the new W.A.T.E.R. mod by opticshooter was my FPS dropping dramatically around water areas. This is most notable between Riverwood and Whiterun. I used to run the "High" version but have dumped it in favor of the "Medium" because it actually increased my FPS by a considerable amount.

 

Another little gem that I recently 'rediscovered' is Improved New Skyrim Shadows for Medium Range PC. Don't let the name fool you though, he has a pretty updated guide on shadow settings from low end to high end systems. By reducing my shadows from Ultra to High and following his setting recommendations, I regained some of my framerate back, but also improved the look of my shadows in the game. I was pretty pleased with this.

 

Lastly, I went through and restarted my Graphic settings with nVidia Inspector and have actually figured out a lot of things I did wrong with my previous settings, thus improving the look of the game while also increasing framerate. Most of these errors were within the .ini files themselves. I am just about finished with those settings and they have fixed many issues that I have seen, such as grainy reflective surfaces and the Ambient Occlusion anomalies (most notably in shadows and distant textures in dungeons) I was having with straight SMAA. I do believe the Sparse Grid was the best way to go for my system and I am very pleased with the new settings. The trick to using SGSSAA is to ensure your [Display] iBlurDeferredShadowMask=1 is set in SkyrimPrefs.ini. Then you can set your AA in game to either 4 or 2 (for lower systems). The AA is necessary to smooth out the edges.

 

So for Graphic performance with good quality:

• choose SGSSAA over SMAA in nVidia Inspector
• Set AA in Skyrim Settings to either 4 or 2 (2 will result in a more jagged appearance, but will be slightly easier on lower systems)
• Use High Shadows over Ultra Shadows (biggest FPS improvement ever)
• set iBlurDeferredShadowMask=1 or 0 to reduce shadow blur (side effect of SGSSAA) in SkyrimPrefs.ini
• Use 'Medium' textures over 'High' textures (especially important for GPU with 1GB or less VRAM)
• Stay away from mods that add additional texture content, such as Lush Trees, Beautiful Grass, Beautiful Whiterun, Better Villages, Riverwood Reduc, etc.

That is the best advice I can offer for trying to increase your FPS. Shadows are the key though. The biggest increase you will see is by decreasing your Shadow settings.

[venkman781]

Another little gem that I recently 'rediscovered' is Improved New Skyrim Shadows for Medium Range PC. Don't let the name fool you though, he has a pretty updated guide on shadow settings from low end to high end systems. By reducing my shadows from Ultra to High and following his setting recommendations, I regained some of my framerate back, but also improved the look of my shadows in the game. I was pretty pleased with this.

 

...

 

That is the best advice I can offer for trying to increase your FPS. Shadows are the key though. The biggest increase you will see is by decreasing your Shadow settings.

 

@Mardread - thanks for posting this link. I'm definitely in the camp of liking a bit more diffusion to the shadows, rather than really sharp outlines. Good info - perhaps worth a link in the INI tweaks section of the forum.

 

@z929669 -

re: DDSopt frequency. How often do you go back and re-DDSopt your textures folder? After getting a stable STEP setup? Or do you parse it out, package by package, then re-BAIN? I presume you have to go back and run it again after making any updates to texture mods? I'm trying to think about it from an order of operations/best practices perspective. Trying to avoid making more work for myself than necessary. I imagine the process is something along the lines of benchmark vanilla > add high res mods/shaders > benchmark > ddsopt > benchmark > tweak ini > benchmark...

[z929669]

@z929669 -

re: DDSopt frequency. How often do you go back and re-DDSopt your textures folder? After getting a stable STEP setup? Or do you parse it out, package by package, then re-BAIN? I presume you have to go back and run it again after making any updates to texture mods? I'm trying to think about it from an order of operations/best practices perspective. Trying to avoid making more work for myself than necessary. I imagine the process is something along the lines of benchmark vanilla > add high res mods/shaders > benchmark > ddsopt > benchmark > tweak ini > benchmark...

 

You are correct with respect to benchmarking procedure... whatever is more tedious and boring is probably the best practice

 

RE DDSopt'ing my textures, I always operate on my BAIN installers. Unextract > DDSopt > repack ... I am doing this with EVERY mod with textures in step, so I will have 2x BAINs of many packs in my installer list. I will test each independently, and then cumulatively to determine impact. Then I will likely run with the optimized textures and keep the pre-optimized versions around just in case I notice any errors in game as I play normally. Then I will troubleshoot.

 

It will take awhile, but I plan on beginning as soon as I finish transferring the WB and the updated DDSopt guides to the wiki. I will then create a table on the wiki to house the DDSopt results.

 

Wiki will also be a good place to keep all of the best tips/tricks/tweaks once we work them out in these forums.

[venkman781]

@z - Do you do run the vanilla BSAs and HD DLC bsas through any optimization, as well? Or just the STEP mods? I was tempted to unpack my texture BSAs into loose files, optimize them and load through WB...not sure if there's an advantage there or not, other than being able to control the texture overwrites more with more granularity...

[z929669]

@z - Do you do run the vanilla BSAs and HD DLC bsas through any optimization, as well? Or just the STEP mods? I was tempted to unpack my texture BSAs into loose files, optimize them and load through WB...not sure if there's an advantage there or not, other than being able to control the texture overwrites more with more granularity...

 

 

Yes, I do; however, you are probably going to benefit most using the optimized DLC pack by Vano. These are already DDSopt'ed. I still have testing to do with DDSopt on vanilla and Vano texture combinations

[venkman781]

Ah yes. I do use the DLC pack from Vano already. I like the approach of optimizing individual texture packages, then having both versions handy to plug and play as needed during benchmarking. I will most likely try DDSopt'ing a few of the larger texture mods first to see where I can get the most bang for the buck.

[Asimov]

Where is the option for

choose SGSSAA over SMAA in nVidia Inspector? I am a bit daft and can't find it.

[frihyland]

Its a rather involved process, please read the entire post of my previous link for how and why you might do it.

[Bealdwine]

Hate to raise the whole 'optimization' thing again ;) but every FPS is special... I missed the post about yet another optimizer until I tripped over it in the Wiki.

 

I have now run (but not yet game tested) SMCO and assume the same caveats apply as for Optimizer Textures? However it is incredibly fast and has the advantage of working with BSA files.

 

What is your opinion zMan?

 

[Addition] I've now tested in-game and there is a slight but definate degradation to the textures, they are very slightly less 'crisp'... however I did gain about 3 FPS overall (not much but when you are hovering around 14-16 FPS outdoors every little counts) and increasing my contrast setting alleviated this effect a little. More importantly the load times are noticably reduced and there is a negligable stutter and much smoother feel to movement. A trade-off I may have to accept for my limited PC rig.

[z929669]

Based on what I have learned in my conversations with Ethatron, this will be just another implementation of DDSopt-like functionality without the fine-tuning capabilities. Actually there is no doc that I can find in the download, nor are there any options at all really. It just runs on your entire data directory.

 

It also seems to be reducing textures (WRT file size) by about 35-40% overall, which tells me that it is likely stripping off the highest mip levels in addition to optimizing compression. I think that the 64-bit functionality is nice, and it looks like the author is adept at optimizing application performance (if not texture performance).

 

I'll play with it and get back to you :P

[Bealdwine]

Thanks zMan I'll be interested to hear your opinion. The modder does state that there are deliberately no optionals to apply in the program as (he believes) the default settings are the best optimization v. quality trade off.

 

I'm beginning to think that with a more limited PC rig a loss of 'top end' quality on dlc and mod textures is worth the price of being able to apply the improved textures and retain a playable game. The graphical improvements, while not as stunning as they could be, are still significant.

[Bealdwine]

[Note] Above mod/app name changed to SMCO (Skyrim Mods Complex Optimizer) now on version 1.2 including nif meshes optimization.

[z929669]

Did lots more reading on DDSopt late last night and looking into the two other options now available (OT & SMCO). Ran the former on vanilla last night, and although I have not tested extensively nor even recorded everything I looked at, I am sparing myself the headach and going with strict DDSopt recommendation, as it has the capabilities of the others with many, many more options and bundled features. If you download the other two, you will see that they essentially use the same Nvidia exe bundled within different 'wrappers', 'proprietary GUI'-- not sure of the appropriate term for this, sorry! Apparently, the base technology of all are the same, but the others, as Ethatron states are simply 'subsets' of DDSopt

 

I can achieve the same results as either using DDSopt and am working next to define mid to high performance-related reductions using the vanilla HD textures as a test case.

 

[Bealdwine]

I am sure you're right zMan, however my interest in these other apps is in their use by the less technically astute 'rim mod user.

 

If they actually DO offer performance benefits, especially for the more 'limited' PC setup then one or more deserve a recommendation.

 

However DDSopt is by it's very nature - "many, many more options and bundled features" - much more daunting for a novice to approach, especially IF a 'subset' of it's abilities are all that is really needed to achieve at least some worthwhile improvement. Whereas something like SMCO, with it's 'one touch' approach is much kinder on the general populace who are more concerned about what it does rather than how it does it.

 

If the base technology is the same, then the question is (in light of my previous point) are the 'quick fix' options - OT & SMCO - providing the correct settings to actually get that quality/performance trade-off right and will the majority of 'rimmers without 'uber' PC rigs benefit from their use?

 

Unfortunately just seeing a size reduction in the files is not enough and I hope to do some comparisons to check for visual degradation when I have time.

But if it came to the choice of -

 

'vanilla' graphics < 70% of Full-STEP gorgeousness < Full-STEP gorgeousness

 

I'm sure many, including myself, would be content with the middle option to keep the game playable.

[z929669]

I am sure you're right zMan, however my interest in these other apps is in their use by the less technically astute 'rim mod user.

 

If they actually DO offer performance benefits, especially for the more 'limited' PC setup then one or more deserve a recommendation.

 

However DDSopt is by it's very nature - "many, many more options and bundled features" - much more daunting for a novice to approach, especially IF a 'subset' of it's abilities are all that is really needed to achieve at least some worthwhile improvement. Whereas something like SMCO, with it's 'one touch' approach is much kinder on the general populace who are more concerned about what it does rather than how it does it.

 

If the base technology is the same, then the question is (in light of my previous point) are the 'quick fix' options - OT & SMCO - providing the correct settings to actually get that quality/performance trade-off right and will the majority of 'rimmers without 'uber' PC rigs benefit from their use?

 

Unfortunately just seeing a size reduction in the files is not enough and I hope to do some comparisons to check for visual degradation when I have time.

But if it came to the choice of -

 

'vanilla' graphics

 

I'm sure many, including myself, would be content with the middle option to keep the game playable.

 

Good points... SMCO has few options, and it seems like one can only run that on their installed SR textures. This would need to be tested on both hi STEP and low STEP full installs IMO in order to get accurate info that is reproducible. Tougher to test at the mod level though. OT has several options, so I think that one is going to be pretty mysterious like DDSopt. Doc sucks pretty badly on both.

 

Once I get STEP 2.1 installed, I will do the 'textures folder' thing with SMCO and DDSopt to get an idea of what the former is doing and measure the cost/benefit.