Titan Pascal Vs VorpX Skyrim

[Fredthehound]

And finally…

And so, dear reader, we come to the end. Challenge Accepted, handled like a boss and all the other internet memes those young’ins on TeH YooToobZ say to sound all 1337 and stuff.

So is it worth committing the utterly insane and financially irresponsible act of buying a $1200 E-penis to play a near 5 year old video game?

HELL YES!! ..Well, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m kinky like that. The fact that it blows through Fallout and Oblivion with wanton abandon and with Skyrim Remastered coming in October, it’s 100% worth it for me. We all have our outlandish hobbies. $500 APIECE golf clubs. Old cars. Hookers and blow…Your mileage may vary.

If you want to play VR games at the pinnacle, you really have only two options. Titans or 1080s. Singularly or in SLI. If you are content with ‘normal’ VR games, Anything in the AMD R9-390 range oR higher will make you completely happy. Those games make something like the Titan a ‘Want’ rather than a ‘Need’.

The Bethesda games are not a ‘Want’ as far as the Titan is concerned. They make it a ‘Need” because there is really no comparison between the two. As I have said all along, here and elsewhere, it’s a question of power. Yea it corrupts absolutely. but if you want to stand back and watch the sun set over Solitude with a fully fleshed out landscape that wouldn’t be out of place in a Frank Frazetta painting, you really do not have a choice.

Many of us old timers have been waiting to experience the dream of VR realized since the 80s and we aren’t getting any younger. In a couple years, the Titan X Pascal will be old news and at best, midrange performance by the standard of the day. It will command a couple hundred bucks on the used market and thats just the reality of bleeding edge tech and short shelf lives.

But today it exists. And it will power that VR dream to reality. Bottom line? If you can afford the ticket, it’s the ultimate ride. Your call.

[Fredthehound]

Added Titan info:

For those wondering, the Titan overclocks like a beast. With voltage unlocked and on air, I am seeing a -sustained- 2035mhz running Skyrim in VorpX using the fans ramped up to full at over 60 deg., a +235 on the core and +600 on the memory. Voltage and thermal limits full up in Afterburner.

GPU boost 3 is a whole different animal when it comes to overclocking. It appears that the extra voltage will not improve what you can ultimately reach for top speed, but it stabilized the clock under whatever maximum GPU Boost will allow. And a 600mhz boost on core and memory over base clock is phenomenal. On air it’s nothing short of a miracle.

Not having the card jumping around works wonders for smoothing out the actual gameplay and is likely why that sense of microstutter is gone. And that stutter was something I was never able to totally eliminate on my 390/Crossfire setup. Score one more for the single card solution and confirming that one more powerful card is a REALLY good idea.

[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.

[Fredthehound]

Are you launching through Steam? I’m launching via SKSE forskyrim and F4se foe Fallout 4 straight from desktop. Maybe Steam’s launcher and VorpX arent on speaking terms?

Hey Ralf? Any idea there?

[SRBorick]

Thanks for the very fast reply…

Yes to your question regarding steam. 90% of my games go through Steam, the other 10% through either Origin access or Uplay.

[SRBorick]

Doing a bit of experimenting…

Tried Optimizing Arma III and got the following vorpx Config error msg:

Writing config file failed:

The ArmaA3.cfg file is where it’s suppose to be, but vorpX isn’t able to write to it. Checked Properties and there is no indication that the .cfg file is write protected.

[Fredthehound]

First thing I’d try is going direct to the launcher/game on your drive and seeing if it will let VorpX hook from there. I first launch Steam VR, then VorpX, then Sky or F4 all from the desktop.

I don’t think there really SHOULD be a difference, however if nothing else, it will eliminate that possibility.

[Fredthehound]

Try running as administrator and opening up the permissions for your games directory. Seeif that makes a difference.

[RobLocksley]

Really enjoyed reading more VorpX experience with Nvidias new hardware.

When I have used ENB in the past I only go with the Boost tech since much of the shaders override the games specifically written environment ones and thus will not give you those unique shaders created for some locations (guess there could be some kind of exclusion list written for which ‘cells’ are not to be processed).

Anywho…. If you could get the injector ENB working one might wonder how much you could push, as all/much the gfx data will not be part of the 32bit limitations (the 32bit part will get more space to breathe thus not taxing the programming).

I don’t know when I will get the Oculus rift since for the moment I am on a hiatus from most gameplay – so I don’t feel inclined to put all the money down for both Titan and Oculus, I’d rather buy a new synth as I’m back into music production again.

Thank you for your indepth testing :)

[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 …

[Fredthehound]

Quick update. DID IT!!!

Thank you for reigniting the fire under my ass to chase down the Injector thing. Because I just made it work. Still needs to be tweaked a lot but it took markarth up into the 30FPS range and over…it fluctuates depending on where you are looking a lot … and outdoors is now back very consistently in the 40s-45. With the return of smoothness. At least a lot MORE than there was.

The Titan is showing no more than 53% use with the ENBoost active and is holding 2025mhz solid at about 55 deg. CPU use is also in the 40-50% range, so again, it looks like the code of Skyrim just can’t deal with it fast enough. The Titan isn’t remotely working hard.

Once I get this tweaked, I’ll do another post with the settings for ENBocal.ini. Ultimately my not getting it to work before may have been user error on my part

[Fredthehound]

OK folks, here’s the deal on ENBoost. It works. It’s stable. It does a couple strange things like flashing out to the ‘grid room’ and back on rare occasion for no reason I can yet determine. And it helped me get a majority of 45FPS at 1920×1440…but I had to back off some things to get there. However, the increased rez helps a lot.

First, Upscaling had to come down to 1.2. AA and Anio set at x4 and x8 respectively. Ambient occlusion off.

I had tried upping my 4790K to 4.8Ghz which helped very noticeably, but it became unstable and BSOD/clock errored so back to 4.7. As I am currently on a single 110mm AIO cooler that has thusfar been a champ, the 10 deg jump wasn’t shocking getting this close to the edge…but there is no way to up the voltage to try stabilizing 4.8 and keep it cool enough as is. A 240mm rad might be enough to do it with good fans or push/pull/both.

It seems the key to smoothness is keeping that GPU clock stable at all costs. So Liquid cooling will be in my future whether or not it helps ultimate top speed.

As for ENBoost…
http://enbdev.com/mod_tesskyrim_v0308.htm

Instructions that work in VorpX
http://wiki.step-project.com/ENBoost

ENBlocal.ini file setting tweaks I have made
Note that VRAM settings graphics card VRAM dependent. Some settings go against the STEP recommendations but work for me in this setup. YMMV.

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=false
InitProxyFunctions=true
ProxyLibrary=other_d3d9.dll

[GLOBAL]
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true
UseDefferedRendering=false
IgnoreCreationKit=true

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
EnableOcclusionCulling=true

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=false
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=256
VideoMemorySizeMb=12288
EnableCompression=false
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

[THREADS]
DataSyncMode=3
PriorityMode=2
EnableUnsafeFixes=false

[MULTIHEAD]
ForceVideoAdapterIndex=false
VideoAdapterIndex=0

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=true
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=true

[ENGINE]
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=false
MaxAnisotropy=16
ForceLodBias=false
LodBias=0.0
AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=false
EnableVSync=false
VSyncSkipNumFrames=0

[LIMITER]
WaitBusyRenderer=false
EnableFPSLimit=false
FPSLimit=10.0

[INPUT]
//shift
KeyCombination=16
//f12
KeyUseEffect=123
//home
KeyFPSLimit=36
//num / 106
KeyShowFPS=106
//print screen
KeyScreenshot=44
//enter
KeyEditor=13
//f4
KeyFreeVRAM=115
//B
KeyBruteForce=66

[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]
Enable=false
Quality=1
DesiredFPS=20.0

[ANTIALIASING]
EnableEdgeAA=false
EnableTemporalAA=false
EnableSubPixelAA=false

[FIX]
FixGameBugs=true
FixParallaxBugs=true
FixParallaxTerrain=false
FixAliasedTextures=true
IgnoreInventory=true
FixTintGamma=true
RemoveBlur=false
FixSubSurfaceScattering=true
FixSkyReflection=true
FixCursorVisibility=true
FixLag=false

[LONGEXPOSURE]
EnableLongExposureMode=false
Time=1.0
BlendMax=0.0

—————————

The higher supersampling settings/AA/Ansio induce stuttering. Not 100% sure the definitive source of that as I am forcing AA/Ansio in the drivers, not skyrim and the CPU/GPU is still far from maxing out…at least as far as Afterburner is reporting. Could/likely be a CPU bind on I/O. VorpX itself shouldn’t really care one way or the other if I understand its functionality correctly. However, getting this far at all, and the level of improvement so far are about 1000 times more that I think anyone could have imagined anyway.

[RobLocksley]

Very nice!
I got liquid cooling and I would say it’s the best thing I did to my computer; had it on a few builds the last ten years or so. Now it is ‘only’ on the cpu and gpu, don’t see the need to cool other parts, besides in restricts flow.

If it is not a total fail I will be getting Deep Mind 12 when Behringer releases that Synth. Just got the Korg Minilogue a month ago and I really like it (I know not all are sold on the sound though).

Interesting that 1920×1440 gives such an impact, one wonders what is happening with the pixels when oversampling makes such a huge difference on a lower rez display.

Good luck in all your endeavours :D

[Fredthehound]

I had my 390s tweaked to hell and back on water and the AIO on the CPU was original when I built my system. Love that H20! I see Gamers nexus did a hybrid cooler on a Titan. The 2 build vids are up now and the bench should be in a day or so.

The Overclock forum guys still havent reported back on full block installs but with the ultimate voltage being locked down I doubt there will be much improvement over an AIO/Hybrid until it is cut loose.

That DM12 looks cool as hell. Hopefully Midas will up Behringers quality. I have had good luck overall with them but I only went with the known ‘good’ stuff like the ADA and patchbays. Their Vamp bass rack is great as well for the price.

[Fredthehound]

Made a very interesting discovery.

There are a few guys now reporting that 2100 on water is the upper limit until the full voltage is unlocked, but the cooler the card, the more stable the clock gets.

What is interesting is that leaving the memory clock at stock gives enough voltage to the card to get my install of Skyrim completely playable with the supersampling back up to 2. and the AA/Ansio/AO back up full. I have no explanation for this as my clocks are now only about 2050ish. I bumped the overclock on core back to +235, but the top speed did not rise enough to explain the result.

Outdoors it is over 40 and mostly 43-45fps. The WRF/FWR run holds that with only a couple dips under 40. Dragonreach stairs are at worst, a momentary flash to 34 (draw calls most likely.

Markarth however is a bear. The lighting mod really comes into play there as do all the particle effects and heading down the stairs/toward the exit from the Jarl’s place sees under 30fps consistently.

Overall, backing that memory clock down had a tremendous positive impact. I ran through these areas several times, rebooting on purpose between to ensure ‘clean’ runs.

Like I say…no explanation. I am not seeing THAT kind of benefit reflected in changes to the numbers Afterburner is showing me. But it’s there. Full up AA/Supersampling/AO/Ansio at 1920×1440. I’d be happier if I knew WHY this is happening, however I am not gonna question a miracle while I sort it out.

If I had to guess, I’d have to say that the FPS is solely a product of backing the memory down to stock speed and that would be in alignment with the reported effect, however that is a LOT of added load, as I say, to reap such an observed benefit. The drivers are still the same ones from the last few days. The fan speed is still ramped up where it was.

This GPUBoost3 is a very strange animal indeed.

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