Looking for an explanation on skyrim performance

[R3volve]

Hey guys,
I have been using VorpX on the occulus CV1 for a few months now, and let me just say that I absolutely love it.
But there is something that frustrates me to no end.

What I am looking for today, is someone to try and explain the intricacies of the way the game is rendered for the VorpX versus without it, that can account for the massive FPS difference.

Let me tell you what I witness.

I load into the game, strap on my occulus, and get 18-20 fps in the middle of riverwood.
I quit the game, kill vorpx, launch the game again and standing in the same spot, I have 125 fps.

Now I understand that when you run in Geometry mode you are literally rendering the game twice, doubling the load. And on top of that there are software inefficiencies in the game that there is simply nothing anyone can do anything about. Such as the gpu waiting for info from the CPU which is waiting for another line of code to finish processing and blah blah blah. That kind of stuff explains why my GPU and none of my CPU cores get maxed out, or even use 50% of their capability.

If someone can explain it in a way to someone who only has a distant vague understanding of how this stuff works that would go a long way to stymie my frustration.
Also, any advice on how to eek out some extra frames taking these limitations into account would be welcome as well.

I play on a GTX 1080, and a i7 4790k

Thanks

EDIT: I should mention that reducing / increasing the resolution has no impact on my FPS.

[moarveer]

Maybe this helps to config Skyrim in vorpx https://www.vorpx.com/forums/topic/titan-pascal-vs-vorpx-skyrim/

[R3volve]

moarveer wrote:

Maybe this helps to config Skyrim in vorpx https://www.vorpx.com/forums/topic/titan-pascal-vs-vorpx-skyrim/

I did look over that previously, but its not really relevant to what I am asking. Even with zero mods installed I have the same massive gap in fps with and without vorpx.

The mods barely make any impact at all. If I run a clean vanilla game I will get only 1-2 frames more than I do with 120 mods turned on.

[Ralf]

GPU and CPU having to wait for each other at several occasions is the main reason for both not being fully used. The frame rate drop you see is too extreme though. Typically you should expect 50-60% for geometry 3d rendering and then another 15-20% for the direct mode thread rendering/syncing. In your 120fps mono example that should yield something around 40fps (120*0.4*0.8) worst case.

If you experience something dramatically worse with a modded Skyrim, please try an unmodded game without any .ini tweaks besides the ones the vorpX game optimizer applies. Also do not use the “Ultra” quality setting. Try “High” or even “Medium”.

DirectX (especially DX9) can only handle a certain amount of draw calls efficiently. Skyrim itself already uses many of those, stereo rendering doubles them and the “Ultra” quality setting, mods or popular quality enhancing .ini tweaks (uGridsToLoad etc.) may finally be too much in some areas of the game with much geometry to render.

Also check for any hi-res texture packs you may use and get rid of them. Those might not get disabled by disabling mods. Since vorpX requires a fair amount of additional GPU memory, hi-res textures can cause a severe performance drop on anything but the latest high end graphics cards if textures have to be swapped in and out of the GPU each frame.

[R3volve]

Ralf, you are a magician you know that?
I ran the game without going through mod organizer and I was easily getting 45fps where I was previously getting 18-20.
I don’t really get it though. I removed all the mods in MO, wiped the ini’s clean and copied them from the vanilla ini files. It should have been a pure vanilla game, but even that was running at the low 18-20 fps range. I will reinstall MO and see if I can get it back up and running.

[Author]

Posts