GTX 1080s in use yet? (Skyrim/Fallout)

[Fredthehound]

Hi all,

I, and at least a couple others I know of, are curious about 1080s (and the new Titan once it ships). Is anyone here actually using a 1080 or 1080 SLI setup with Skyrim or Fallout 4 yet?

What are your Geometry mode framerates like? Stuttering? Issues? Supersampling? Granted, it’s a pretty specialized/expensive rig so I’m not expecting a ton of replies but I figured I’d ask. Reason being, I was originally going to jump on the 1080SLI wagon but their scarcity gave me time to think and consider waiting on a TI. Of course with the Titan about to release a TI may not be offered at all.

I have the Notify me thing set with Nvidia and will (barring something financially disastrous in the meantime) be committing a wanton act of wallet sodomy, but I’d love to hear about anyones 1080 experiences regardless.

And yes, you all will get a full report on the Titan’s VR performance in Sky and F4 if/hopefully when I get it.

[Sphere]

I need a lot more money before I consider upgrading to a Pascal Titan. That and I also need to get a waterblock for the card too, so the cost will be up there. $1200 USD when converted to AUD, won’t be the same when sold here. I expect the card to be definitely over $2000 here in Australia. That’s a good chunk of money. You could buy a good laptop with that money. On top of that cost is the waterblock that I mentioned before.

I am also curious about this topic, and would like to see what others have experienced.

[Ralf]

I have a 1080 here and would say it’s absolutely the right graphics card for vorpX. Compared to a Rift/Vive minimum specs GPU (GTX970) you get a healthy performance boost of about 60-90% depending on the game. Some games lean more towards being limited by CPU speed with vorpX, others are purely GPU bound, hence the varying performance gain.

With a 1080 even recent games are comfortably playable in Geometry 3D. Fallout 4 for example mostly runs at a framerate I would consider playable with only slightly reduced graphics settings (“High” instead of “Ultra”) at a good looking resolution (1600×1200). Pretty much the same for Skyrim.

Don’t expect wonders (i.e. every latest game running at full 90fps with G3D), but a 1080 definitely helps tremendously.

[Fredthehound]

Thanks Ralf,

Just ordered the Titan so we’ll see just how far it will go. I’m really looking forward to that 1600×1200 and some upscaling.

PS: I have spent some time now in Fallout 4 and I’m actually shocked at how well everything works and looks even in Z adaptive with settings a couple clicks down.

[TCPcitizn]

Hey Fred
Would you mind testing Skyrim out with an ENB for me once you get your new card? I’m also thinking of getting the *new* Titan X. I’ll be interested to know if a stable 45 FPS can be reached with this new technology along side an ENB.

[Fredthehound]

As far as I know, ENBs won’t work with VorpX because of the d3d9.dll conflicting with how VorpX works.

I have heard that the injector version works but I tried it with my current setup and had no luck. Crashed to desktop. But that may have been user error on my part. But if anyone knows a way to make it work with VorpX, I’ll be glad to try it for you.

[maximus2k16]

I’m running a 980 SLi setup with a Intel i7 5930k and I’m getting 50 – 60 frames on average, which is plenty enough for a smooth enough gaming experience with these settings on Fallout 4

Geometry 3D
1600 x 900
Full detail settings
Virtual Cinema Mode

I don’t think Vorpx is quite cut out yet for pushing the image straight to the headset, still too many FOV/resolution shortcomings, and you really don’t need the much sought after 90fps for a smooth experience. I find that around 45fps is enough for a good experience, absolute minimal of 30fps. So for me unless i want much higher resolutions, i dont think im gonna go for the 1080 just yet. Though Fallout 4 does look great at 3840 x 2160 in Virtual Cinema Mode..

[Fredthehound]

The Titan arrived, now to install it and see what it will do.

Before taking my 390s out, I loaded up the 2k high rez texture pack/Lite, Vivid landscapes (All in one BSA 2048) and the Regular version of Skyrim Flora overhaul, cranked the supersampling to 2.0, Antialiasing x8, Ansiotropic filtering x16 and maxed all Skyrim’s sliders INCLUDING shadows.

17 fps of GLORIOUS looking stuttering mess. So thats the low baseline. We’ll see what the new toy will do to improve that.

Two things of note: First, I tried the full SFO and 2K texturepacks and quickly hit the memory issue. Without being able to use ENBoost, there was no choice but to go to lower rez textures. So if anyone figures out that injector thing, please let me know.

Second, as this is my first Nvidia refrence style card and I’m used to huge fanned AMD stuff like the Strix…I thought the titan would be bigger. It’s a cute little thing really ;)

[Ralf]

You definitely need to remove some of the more memory intense mods, especially extra large HD textures. vorpX requires a fair amount of extra GPU memory due to stereo rendering and the additional direct mode renderer involved. Since 32bit applications have a 4GB GPU memory limit regardless of actual memory installed on the card, you will hit the limit fast if you use mods/texture packs that consume a lot of memory.

Due to the relatively low resolution of the headset screen hires textures are of limited use anyway, so getting rid of those dosn’t hurt too much. In general I would highly recommend to start with an unmodded game (which is what is used for tests here) and then add mods one by one afterwards to easily see what hurts performance most.

Just in case: DO NOT use supersampling through the Oculus debug tool or something similar with vorpX. vorpX does this anyway internally. 2x supersampling on top of that with a faked screen DPI setting results in extremely large final render textures (~6000×8000!) without any real gain in image quality. The next vorpX version will have a max cap for this to avoid such problems, but that isn’t available in the current version.

The resolution that really counts for vorpX is the actual game resolution! In Skyrim and a handful of other games you can conveniently upscale it in the vorpX ingame menu beyond what your monitor allows (“Internal Resolution Upscale”).

[Fredthehound]

Hi Ralf,

I understand that (the memory limit) and thats why I wanted to hit it on purpose/to find out where it was with something resembling this level of loadout.

But here’s the thing. With the lite version of the 2K texture pack, the flora overhaul and the other mods I listed, I wasn’t having any memory issues at all. I ran all over skyrim in day and night, in rain and fog and the only issue was a lack of horsepower and framerates in the 17-30 range. Which I certainly understand. VorpX itself performed 100% fine and was not doing anything bad.

On the Supersampling, yes, I am using 2.0 on VorpX’s internal upscaler and nothing on the Vive (I’m on Vive, not Rift) besides that.

I’m getting the drivers in now so I’ll have the first impression/comparison in a couple hours for everyone, but as far as the level of load I was putting on VorpX in that last test of my 390s, your child did pretty damn well for itself. the only issue, like I say, was one of horsepower. VorpX was flawless.

[Fredthehound]

Oops, I forgot to add this…

The difference is staggering once you upscale those HD textures to 2.0 and the Vive, even at the default actual screen rez, will show you a much better picture than you might expect. The text for one is a huge amount clearer, but the natural antialiasing that happens also smooths out a lot of things.

Prior to all this, I was running between 0 and 1.5 at various points trying things out/looking for the best performance/compromise. But I can easily see an improvement at 2.0.

But it slaughtered the framerate as expected once all things were in play.

[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.

[Fredthehound]

Ralf/all,

Just a quick update as I find myself lost in a whole new world and not wanting to leave ;)

With the Titan Overclocked +230/500, I am able to maintain 40-45FPS in most areas and gameplay ‘feels’ smooth down into the mid-upper 30FPS range. This is still on unoptimized .inis and with that crap ton of HD graphics mods I listed before.
the sob-40 areas are those traditional trouble spots. Whiterun/Dragonreach etc.

Yes folks. It works. VorpX can handle it. You CAN run HD textures but it takes massive power. It’s the brute force thing.

When I reload. I’ll specifically test without Skyrim Flora Overhaul because I’ll bet the farm that that is the mod causing the most intense usage and slowing things down, then re add it to see the difference.

(It appears that although CPU use is far from pegged…running under 50% load most of the time… it’s probably bottlenecking on pure frequency. A CPU with a bigger cache (I’m on a 4790 @4.7Ghz) would help a lot I think as long as it could clock high. Unfortunately Broadwell-E and 4.7GHZ arent exactly friendly.)

And considering the load, that’s not totally unexpected. We;ll see what I discover going forward. The benchmarks coming in from the tech sites show little difference between 1080 and 1440P performance in a number of games so it’s probably the case here.

I have to sort out why Windows isn’t seeing my Vive in Display, so I can’t change my rez to something higher to test that idea. Might need to do a reinstall of the Vive, although it works fine aside from that.

I was never able to find an answer for, or explain the 15 fps I saw in Time Spy. It seems to have been a glitch/ anomaly as now, everything is benching normally there.

The grand adventure continues!

[Author]

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