Search Results for 'Get Even'

[Fredthehound]

I think I’m going to have to chase those rumors of a working injector because last night I finialy managed to get my Vive to display 1920×1440 and I about shat myself. Oh my GOD does this look incredible.

Unfortunately it took me to 20FPS in Markarth and most other towns and cities. Outside it will stay in the 40s but the smoothness is gone. I even backed off to x4/x8 AA/Anio and down to 1.5 upscaling and only gained a few FPS. ENBoost MIGHT be able to help enough to smooth it out enough to play at lower framerates.

I wish there was someone local I could borrow another TXP off for a day to see if this is simply a code limit or of more raw power could overcome the rez boost and VorpX’s overhead because after seeing what I just saw, I’m seriously trying to figure out how to come up with another 1200 bucks. Which is one hell of a $$$ bet to make. But oh so very tempting.

It’s funny you mention synths/music….my other favorite thing in the world. The Integra 7 in my rack has been feeling really neglected the last couple months. I really need to get back to that but this Titan showing me all these beautiful things makes it damn hard …

[SRBorick]

I just recently purchased Vorpx because, like you I’m a crazed fanatic when it comes to computer hardware and purchased a TXP a week or so ago. I’m totally in agreement with everything you’ve stated and already have my eye out for a second TXP. Simply amazing and worth every penny.

Now for the not so good news. Vorpx, for me, is not working :-(

Most of my “entertainment” (TXP owner’s word for “GAMEING”) software is on steam and following the advice of making adjustments in game, I can’t even get a game to load!

I have all the usual, many which others are reporting working for them, but turn Vorpx on… nothing loads, turn Vorpx off… and everything loads as usual.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

[Ralf]

I’m probably the wrong man to ask in regard to whether it’s unsettling or not since I’m practically immune to VR sickness – I can even play Descent with vorpX without getting sick – but for me it’s just an artistic visualization of whatever one might really experience when a space ship accelerates to light speed. You can always switch to EdgePeek mode though in cockpit view, which might sense anyway since there is no free look while flying.

[sponge101]

Has anyone managed to hit 2560×2048-5:4? My t.v. is only 1080p so I’ve been trying the Nvidia and CRU tool but can’t get past 2048×1536. I even tried editing the Rockstar setting.xml file but no luck. Things would look so clear at this res.

[Fredthehound]

Part 5: Sacrifices must be made!

You’ve added higher rez textures. You beefed up the flora. You improved Skyrim’s outdated memory and core/thread management. The game looks fantastic and you are ready for MOAR!!! Now it’s time to add Framekiller #3. The lighting and weather mods.

There’s just one problem. You find that when you add a lighting/weather mod like Enhanced Lighting and FX, http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/27043/? your framerate heads into the toilet and you start crashing like a Boss. WHAT VILE SORCERY IS THIS!?!?!?! THIS MOD SUCKS!!!

No, it doesn’t and Unfortunately it’s the sorcery of simple math. You have hit the limits of the mighty Titan, at least as far as Skyrim’s ability to use it is concerned. With three of the most intensive GPU hogs (By their powers combined!) we can use, added to Skyrim’s kludged 32 bit code and the processing overhead VorpX places on the system, You done sailed into the perfect modding storm. Talos frowns on your Shennanigans and Clavicus Vile revels in your suffering.

Now what? Once you’ve seen the glory, there’s no going back. You’ll always know how good it looked and be miserable playing at lesser visuals knowing what could be. Actually, you’ve only seen ‘part’ of the glory.

(Puts on Matrix hat) Neo, what if I told you that I currently have 106 mods loaded up, Skyrim looks better than I have ever seen it, there’s no crashing involved and I’m still pulling 43-45FPS in all but the traditional trouble areas? This is the art of compromise and balance. Give some here to gain some there. Pay attention to the things that matter, etc.

Here’s what I discovered. Skyrim’s code, more than anything else is your real limiter. Not the GPU. Not the CPU. Although they certainly play a part. Yet when I was back to a slow, stuttering mess, the absolute worst I saw in Afterburner’s monitors was the Titan spiking once into the 80% use range and the CPU into the 70s. The Titan COULD handle a lot more mods. VorpX could process them just fine.But 32 bit DX9 Skyrim CANNOT.

First is the memory cap. With the HD textures, SFO and ELFX, I hit the 4 gig memory cap during heavy weather events and crashed. and even without the weather events going on, Skyrim simply was not processing the data it need to at the rate it needed to through/with VorpX.

Now is this a VorpX issue? No, because flipping over to Fallout 4 in Geometry mode with ALL the sliders maxed out and weather/lighting/flora mods and textures running, the Titan cruises at that 45FPS without a problem. The major difference is 32 bit DX9 vs 64 bit DX11 and far older and more inefficient coding.

Yea so what do we do now?

You mod smarter so that terrible and Mighty Talos, he who is both man and DIVINE! (hat tip to Heimsker) will haZ a happy.

Remember back to what I refered to earlier. What matters to you most? Do you need 2048 rez textures? or even 1024? Do you need a massive increase in the variety of flora to fill the spaces as you look across Tamriel or just better versions of whats already there? Are you satisfied with the stock weather or do you want more storm in your life? And what combo of the above will get Talos to his happy place?

You might notice that I left out lighting. Because IMO, that one isn’t negotiable. Skyrim’s stock lighting works, but it washes everything out. Nothing is ever truly dark in Skyrim, day or night, north or south, mountaintop or deepest dungeon. It’s at worst, eternal twilight. For me, that’s a ‘must fix’ at the cost of anything else because properly lit, even lower rez textures look a lot better.

Up next: DynDoLod

[rtoast]

I’ve found several references on these forums of people managing to get geo3D working by renaming the .exe file to DXHRDC.exe but it seems like even though the in-game vorpx menu allows geo 3D to be selected, it doesn’t seem to do anything.

Does anyone have information on why this trick no longer works? (Or if it still does and it’s just a problem on my end.

Also, I’ve tried several other popular exe names (udk, arma2 etc) to no avail. I believe the game runs on the chrome engine, used in the dead island games (I also tried renaming to the dead island games’ exe’s) and some of the call of juarez games. But DXHRDC.exe seems to be the only one that allows for geo3D even though it isn’t actually functional.

If anyone’s got any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

[gorflick]

Hello, i just bought vorpx and i dont get to make Skyrim work
I ran Skyrim with everything to minimun, 800×600, low graphics, no AA, in game i used Z-Normal instead geometry, and it shows me i have 30fps at start, no matter what i do it always tell me i have 30fps even when i choose higher resolution and high graphics. Also set crystal image to low with no changes at all.
I have a 6600k cpu overclocked to 4.4k and a graphic card sapphire r9 390 nitro with latest drivers

[Fredthehound]

Part 4: INI files

First, go to your C drive and in documents/my games/skyrim, you’ll find skyrim.ini and skyrimPrefs.ini (depending on your system, the .ini extention may or may not be shown. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Back them up now.
——-

Once thats done, welcome yourself to either agony or extacy because you’ll either help your cause considerably or hose your game to the point you’ll be glad you made a backup to revert to.

When you open Skyrim and see the options tag, the screen that lets you set low/med/high/ultra detail etc. is editing these files. It’s a dumbed down front end for them. All direct editing of the files does is bypass that and give you the keys to the kingdom. And thats why you can really hose things. Using the panel, the worst you’ll do is make something ugly or slow. With direct editing, you can prevent the game from working at all.

Fortunately, Skyrim has been around long enough that many people already learned the hard way what NOT to do and what works in different situations. The answers can be found in the links below.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Tweak Guide
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide#1

S.T.E.P. Guide:Skyrim Configuration Settings
http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Skyrim_Configuration_Settings

Nexus Skyrim INI Tweaks
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/articles/1153/?

First, let me save you some time and just say, Do all the listed edits given on the Nexus ini page. The most important of them all is the Multithread/Havok edits. They will suddenly open up a lot of headroom for you as Skyrim is now able to use more core/threads. But don’t think you will suddenly be able to max everything. At best, you will get more smoothness, less pop in and a few FPS. Which your future mods will be eating into, consuming entirely and asking for seconds. This goes back to my earlier comments about building a foundation and attending to the details. What I’m doing here is simply giving a general view/direction to learn from and pointing you to it as again, explaining all these in detail isn’t the point of this post and would take tens of thousands of words to do. that info has already been posted at the links above so no point in repeating it.

Read the STEP and Nvidia guides once you have the basics down as you want to get further into customizing your game. For sane modders, the STEP guide is the Bible. It is the result of many people working to have the most stable and enjoyable Skyrim experience possible. The guide will not steer you wrong.

However, everyone is different. Some, like me, will put up with a lot to achieve certain goals with the game. For me it is max detail at max FPS. I’ll deal with lower framerates and even occasional instability because I don’t get VR/motion sick and I want to see how far the game can be pushed/how well it can look and play at the same time. But for many, thats the opposite of what they want. They simply want a stable game that looks better than Bethesda delivered and that stock settings can provide. As I said before, it’s all about tradeoffs and only you can decide which ones you are willing to make.

So far, the Titan X Pascal has performed like a champ and handled some real framekillers that few believed could be employed with VR/VorpX. But it has it’s limits. Even when overclocked as far as locked voltage and air cooling will allow. Yes, it is a monster. No there is nothing faster -atleast without SLI- but modded Skyrim has humbled every card to date and the Titan is no different. It just lets you pretend you’re Capt. Kirk and boldly go where no man has gone before. Including green chicks if you count Orcs…

We now come to the point of deciding which tradeoffs to make.

Right now, we have the game looking far better than the Bethesda version. We have a pretty consistent and smooth game that can be played and enjoyed all day long. And for many, thats the end of the road in a thusfar painless process. If you skip my ranting and simply install the mods thus far and make the basic ini changes from the Nexus page, you’ll spend less than an hour of your life and take massive advantage of what the new Titan can give you. And it just gave you a LOT you could have never done without it.

Or you can come to the Dark Side, Luke. Screw Kirk and his green women. There’s pain ahead. Untold misery. Crashing. Black screens. countless hours pissed away. Headaches. Frustration…

…God how I love it so.

Up next, Making changes.

[rtoast]

So Dying Light isn’t on the supported games list, but I do know that at some point the game had built-in oculus support at one point that you could enable via the video.scr file situated in the game’s folder in your documents directory. This support was later dropped during the switch to newer runtimes and patches as far as I can tell.

I know this game in particular is sort of one of those “holy grail” games that a lot of people would love to support in VR, given the 1st person open world and parkour nature of it. So I’ve been trying to get it in a playable enough state with vorpx.

One of my biggest problems was getting the FOV manipulated. Apparently, you used to be able to change it by editing that same video.scr file, but no matter what I did, the game just wouldn’t adhere to any changes I’d make to that file (despite tons of evidence online that this was how it was done). The game would just load up normally, ignoring said changes, and upon quitting out and checking that file, it would be reset to all the default values (yes, I even tried changing the file attributes to read-only, and still no go).

However, I stumbled into a new way to alter the FOV which works surprisingly well in game (not a lot of problems with the character’s hands being off screen or anything like in some games).

The value you need to change is in the data0.pak file in the game’s directory (I’m using steam). Use a program like 7zip to access the .pak file, and inside is a file called “default_levels.xml”
In there is an FOV value which can be changed!
As a warning however, by modifying this file the game will warn you that you have modded the game and thus will not be allowed to play with others online unless they also have the same modifications.

So where I’m at now with Dying Light is that I’ve got everything set up and ready for some actual vorpx settings/profiles, but the problem I currently have is that it doesn’t seem like there is any 3D effect whatsoever. Vorpx allows the standard z-modes (adaptive and regular) but it doesn’t appear that they have any actual effect on the visuals. It’s basically still 2D, blown up into your headset, with a working aspect ratio.

If anyone else can figure out the last hurdle here it’d be much appreciated!

p.s. If anyone on here remembers what Dying Light was like back when it offered the internally supported oculus mode, could you describe what it was like? Did it actually have a pretty functional VR/3D aspect to it? If so, it’s a shame that such support had been lost with the updates/patches.

[Fredthehound]

Actually before getting to the INI stuff/while I’m in rant mode and thinking about this, I feel that man has ruled the world as a stumbling dem… Oh wait. Wrong rant…
Skyrim modding for VR… Oh yea!

I’m far from the first to say it but the truth is that modding Skyrim is all about compromises. That is doubly true for VR. I aluded to it earlier but the engine of skyrim simply cannot be forced to do a lot of things we’d like it to do. And perhaps the new Remaster on DX 11 will open a lot of them up, but it will still take raw power. It’s just that the raw power will be actually usable.

My Crossfired 390s left a lot of power on the table. together, they have the same TFLOPs as a 1080, but a 108 will leave them in the dust in any game or benchmark, so what gives?

Coding. In the case of Skyrim, thats the old engine code never being designed for the things we have managed to come up with since. Things like a Titan X or scripted weather mods or even efficient use of multi-core/Hyperthreaded processors.

Last summer I had a relative, an old code monkey from back in the punch card days out here in AZ from back east on vacation. I was showing him the crap we go through to make Skyrim do what it does and he was just dumbstruck that pwople have extended this software this far and that it works at all, much less works well when done right.

It’s kind of like VorpX itself in a way. We have something that can turn regular games into 100% playable VR games. Thats black magic stuff when you really think about it. Games like Skyrim or Fallout or Doom or any other game on the compatability list sere NEVER designed for what Ralf made them do. SO hats off to you sir ;)

As for Skyrim and the Creation engine, think of the INI tweaks in general like taking your car to a skilled mechanic. He can adjust a few things and suddenly your car drives, runs etc. a lot better than when you dropped it off. He didn’t bolt on a Turbo kit and a bottle of Nitrous Oxide. He simply tightened a few things, changed the plugs and rotated the tires, but the whole car just works and feels better.

Maybe, if you’re really lucky, he’ll find something that the factory botched pretty badly and with some duct tape and bailing wire, he can work a small wonder. And in our case, the Bethesda ‘factory’ badly botched the multi threading/multicore utilization and thanks to updated code and INI tweaks, we can improve on whats there significantly. It’s not a panacea, but it will help performance/framerates/loading/smoothness CONSIDERABLY. Which will soon matter a LOT.

A friend of mine I grew up with had a father who was an old racer from back in the 50s-70s that used to preach on the details when building his vehicles. None of them ever had the biggest engine etc., but the guy had a ton of trophies all over his house. His vehicles weren’t the prettiest things. But they won. Often.

It comes down to that whole building a house on sand idea. Do it and you’re gonna have a bad day. But build your foundation right/well, and you aren’t going to have those issues. And thats something to keep in mind as we move ahead in this insanity because its those little things that are going to enable us to make this game do things Todd Howard never intended. Thats not new. Skyrim modders have done it for years.

What they have NOT done is many of these things in VR, which as we know, is a more demanding environment. So lets see what happens when we try.

[Fredthehound]

OK folks, Part 2.

Before we get started, let me explain a couple things that are important to understand when modding skyrim, regardless of what CPU or graphics card you have. the Creation engine, running DX9, was old when Skyrim released and was a kludge of sorts based on the old Gamebryo. Without getting into detail, lets just generalize and say it has issues. Memory management being among them. And many of the problems encountered modding Skyrim, and that includes VR modding, stem from those.

Fortunately there are fixes/workarounds out there for many of them. Skyrim could not be modded without them to the degree it is. They all address one or more issues and some are the literal basis of many a mod besides. These are must installs even if you do not mod Skyrim because they deal with problems that need dealing with, mods or not. I’ll provide the links and you can read up on them from there because there is no point in me rewriting War and Peace…which is what a thorough explaination here would result in …and this ain’t that kinda’ article ;)

Skyrim Script Extender / SKSE / SKSE-Shishon’s Memory Patch
http://skse.silverlock.org/

Bug Fixes
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76747/?

Crash Fixes
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72725/?

USLEEP – Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Patch
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71214/?

They are the American Express of Modding. Don’t leave home without’em. (Yes, I’m that old ;)

There is one more ‘essential’ that unfortunately we cannot use in VR. ENBoost. This is a memory manager and more that unfortunately VorpX cannot use…at least in theory. There is a version…the ‘Injector’ version, that supposedly work but success stories are unicorns. So for now, I’ll leave discussion on that out. Hopefully at some point, someone will sort it out because it is a great program and solves many, many issues.
———————————–

OK. So with the memory patches and assorted fixes in place, we move to the meat of the issue. Skyrim 2K texture pack / Lite version.

From the Nexus page:

“Explanation FULL/LITE:
FULL – All the textures are at the maximum resolution. Average is around 4x the official HD DLC.
LITE – All the textures are at 50% of the FULL Version. Average is around 2x the official HD DLC.”
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/607/? ”

While twice the rez of the official texture pack, the lite version of this one is actually less heavy on resources than the official version, looks better and is pretty damn nice to look at. But surely something that much more detailed than the stock textures HAS to be a framerate killer right? RIGHT????

Well lest we forget, we installed better memory management above. And because of those few changes and fixes, Skyrim is now a very different animal than it used to be. Normal rules have been altered a bit. Remember that in bone stock trim, I was seeing solid 43-45FPS on the WRF/FRW runs. The only dips below that were on cell loads and changes which CANNOT be totally eliminated.
———

Whiterun/Riverwood/Falkreath (WRF run) and back:

No change in minimum framerates. In fact, thanks to those managers and fixes, the framerate counter was most often 44-45.5. It got FASTER. Not slower. Faster. Ever so slightly, but it’s there. Now consider this is still at 8xAA, 16x AO and 2.0 upscaling. This included day/evening, night and sun/rain.

And it ‘felt’ more responsive. It was smooth before. As I said. This is now a different animal altogether. The CPU and GPU are still just casually cruising along with no effort on their part.

——————————–

OK now how does it look? Well, as you’d expect, it looks considerably better. It’s not yet at Witcher 3 levels because no lighting or weather mods are in yet, but there is no mistaking a significant visual boost. And at ZERO FPS cost and quite literally, for 20 min of modding, including downloading the files.

Next up will be the killer. Skyrim Flora Overhaul. I will be using the ‘regular version rather than the newest because the regular is hard enough on the system. In VR, the full/new version is too intensive to deal with, even for a Titan. However, the regular version is a sight to behold and transforms the game into something far more ‘realistic’ looking.

OK, thats it for now. Time for bed ;)

[Fredthehound]

Hi all,

As promised, This thread will be dedicated to giving you the rundown of my experience with the new Titan X Pascal and Skyrim/Fallout. Expect it to go on for a while as there are a ton of variables to cover.

——–
Computer:
i7 4790K @4.7Ghz on water
240GB x2 Kingston HyperX Savage SSDs in Raid 0
16 gig of 2400mhz Gskill Trident DDR3 ram
Titan X Pascal overclocked +230/+500
HTC Vive
Process Lasso software using Bitsum Highest Performance preset
——–

I’ll start by saying that if you saw the other thread about the 1080, you’ll already know that the Titan Pascal can handle a metric ton of mods IN GEOMETRY MODE and return smooth, playable framerates at an enjoyable level – depending on your tolerance. But to be clear, this card running in the upper 30FPS range feels smoother by far than my old Crossfire 390s running in the 40s. No microstutter is a beautiful thing. The best part is you’ll rarely see under 40FPS even with a ton of mods on the TXP (Titan X Pascal) if you mod smart.

Now to begin with, I loaded a fresh and bone stock install of Skyrim. No ini tweaking, nothing. 100% stock install as Todd Howard intended. No updates beyond those baked into the Steam install. No Nexus patches. Just vanilla/stock Skyrim. With all sliders maxed in non VR at 1920×1080, FRAPS never moved off 60FPS no matter where I went or what I did. Glued. Not really surprising as my 390s would do the same thing. But thats the baseline.

For most testing, I’ll be using my normal three areas. Whiterun/Dragonreach, Whiterun to Riverwood and the forest outside Falkreath. I find they are the most demanding on the system with a ton of draw calls and it makes for a semi-repeatable benchmark. Leave Whiterun, go to Falkreath via Riverwood and you have three of the most CPU/GPU demanding areas of the vanilla game.

To get the basics out of the way, I’ll condense. Bone stock install. No ini tweaks. Geometry mode. Skyrim set in it’s launcher/config to “High” (not ‘ULTRA”) preset. VorpX set to the standard/recommended/Optimizer settings.

With that out of the way, Ill condense a bit more. I’ll refer to the Whiterun (top of Dragonreach stairs)/Riverwood/Falkreath run as WRF henceforth. Or FRW when reversing the run from Falkreath to Whiterun.

With the above settings in place, day or night, WRF or FRW, you get 43-45FPS. And it is smooth like butter.

If you increase the Ambient Occlusion to 16 from the setting of 8 that High provides, you get 43-45FPS. If you Supersample/increase internal resolution to 2.0, while at 16 AO, you get 43-45FPS. The only time you will see a different FPS is on a cell change or a load screen. The Titan, and the CPU, are just cruising with no effort.

————————————-

OK so that’s the baseline. If you are crazy enough to go buy a Titan, that’s what you’ll see for FPS playing bone stock Skyrim with no mods and no performance tweaking.

Why not start with Ultra? A couple reasons. One, as Ralf pointed out, the 1080/Titan will handle geometry mode on High settings in different games if you don’t get crazy. And another, because ‘Ultra’ Shadows/draw distances will immediately destroy your framerate and make the game unplayable. (well fix the draw distance problem with a mod a bit later down the road).

So basing everything off of High and moving up as we go along makes more sense to me and it will give those unfamiliar with modding a look at what Skyrim/VorpX can do with a Titan powering it. Ultra Shadow/draw distances combined with the almost non existent multithreading of the vanilla game will ruin your day in VorpX. On a monitor, FRAPS never leaves 60FPS on fully maxed settings no matter what. But it doesn’t take a Titan to pull that trick off. An old R9-290 will do it all day long. But VR is a different animal and modding in it throws conventional wisdom out the window. You basically HAVE to mod your way around issues like this. And you can.

Next up:

Before the weather and lighting mods, the first place most people go is higher rez texture packs. But while the Titan has VRAM to spare, Skyrim’s 32 bit DX9 code, combined with Windows 10’s 4 gig hard limit on it means that 4K textures are best left to the details that make the most difference…Bodies/Armor. And believe me, a supersampled 2K texture at x16 AO is VERY nice to look at even at the standard VorpX/Vive resolutions. In most cases, 4K textures are a waste. Personally, I would rather have 4K people and armor since those are what you see and interact with. The better those look, the easier it is to buy that a world full of talking dragons and plagues of knee-arrowed former adventures and less than photoreal textures is almost ‘real’. And thats what VR is all about in the first place.

For the next test, I’ll be installing the 2K ‘LITE” texture pack from the Nexus, followed by the known FPS killer. Skyrim Flora Overhaul. Conventional wisdom says these should show a very noticeable impact, especially considering that 2.0 upscaling is in effect. But lets see what happens to the framerate before we get into the Ini files to counter it with heavier voodoo.

Stay tuned.

[Karlor]

Come on guy…. WHAT GAME?… WHAT MOD?.. Handy info to include when your asking for help lol…
Anyway dunsky here ya go:
I figure your meaning a bethesda title as you mention an unofficial patch? Anyway chances are you have an ENB type game hooking mod that isn’t working with vorpx. If you can(and even know what I’m talking about) you can set up proxy dlls for such programs. Also if your using a controller your going to need to map the buttons to mouse key board style(super easy but then again maybe not for some peoples kids). Also just a good idea to completely disable all mods and do a fresh install before setting up for VR. I know its a pain in the ass but that’s they way to get it done right. Also you can add mods after but be sure if its an old Bethesda title to patch it up memory wise(some titles have as many as 4 memory expanders).

[YamiBoBo]

In regards to the second issue of black boarder being visable as if turning away from the image; I’m also getting this issue except mine is happening when I have headtracking on. It does correct itself but it is very distracting to have black boarders appear as I turn my head around. I’ve tried recording it but failed miserably. Even if I could it wouldn’t look exactly the same unless viewing it through a headset. But while attempting to record I turned on the mirror window function and did notice a strange phenomenom when moving my headset about. I’ve taken screenshots of it as best I could, they are not 100% accurate as I had difficulty even taken screenshots of Vorpx but I managed to get images that reasonably represent what I’m trying to describe if not a little exaggerated.

I’m pretty sure this wobble of the position of the views for each eye is causing the black border effect. I apologise if this is a simple issue I am new to using VorpX. But any help with it would be greatly appreciated.

[Fredthehound]

Hi all,

Well, first impressions are in. The card is a monster as expected. But there are some very strange goings on in the numbers that are going to take some figuring out because I’m not sure what to make of them. And not just in Skyrim.

Time Spy, the benchmark, returned a 15 FPS framerate so something is seriously amiss right off the bat.

On the other hand, Fallout 4 on a conventional monitor, with every setting it has maxed just freaking glued itself to 60FPS. Now for Skyrim…

First, in the worst case scenario, with all the mods piled on that I had listed above and more (for testing purposes), I went from a low of 17FPS to a low of 33 FPS on the Dragonreach stairs.

Outside is far better with 40-45 FPS being fairly common but upper 30s to lower 40s being the majority. And it looks beyond glorious. It is also a lot smoother at those framerates than you’d expect. Dare I say playable if your tolerance is high.

None of that is surprising considering the Time Spy strangeness. What IS surprising is that SHADOWS have such an impact. Even this beast of a card cannot overcome the Bethesda coding for shadows as it sits. If you back the shadow detail way off, it becomes very playable even with all those HD mods. But of course you lose a ton of the atmosphere they provide.

Further confusion sets in because the GPU never spiked higher than about 65% usage and the CPU was cruising in the 40% range the whole time. So I don’t think it’s draw calls that can be pointed to exclusively here. Even spinning it’s wheels with whatever is going on, I still saw a boost of significant proportions.

Lastly, I am not sure I can trust the numbers I DO have because although recognizing it as a Titan X Pascal, Afterburner may not be reporting correctly. Even overclocking +150 and diming the power target/temp threshold, the card never boosted above 1750 and all the reports are those settings will get you in the 1900+ range.

So as for my first impression. Was it worth it? Trust me. I just saw Skyrim like I have never seen it before. It was worth it. Now, it’s a matter of learning what this card likes and what it doesnt. And what exactly is going on/going wrong. With that 15 FPS in Time Spy, none of this current Skyrim performance should be trusted.

Also consider that as a rank noob to Nvidia, I have a lot to learn there so I’m just going with basic settings/and the standard (so far) overclock that the forums have discussed.

Lastly, consider that this is on an install of Skyrim whose ini files etc. were optimized for AMD/Crossfire and that could certainly be in play here as well. In fact, it’s a certainty.

So, what I’m going to do is a ground-up fresh install and document my experiences with it on a separate thread I’ll post once I get the basics together.

And start researching why the hell Time Spy is at 15FPS.