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OK, back to the madness.
If you have played any of the Bethesda games, you are familiar with ‘pop-in’. Textures and objects suddenly appearing in the distance. It is distracting as hell and really takes you out of the immersion. The only way we had for a long time to minimize it was max out draw distances but it really didn’t help much.
Then came the Ugrids to load ini tweaks that forced drawing to a larger area but was brutal on memory and cpu/GPU usage. Most computers simply crashed or ran unplayably.
Finially, a modder going by ‘Sheson’ created DybDOLOD, a near miracle. In a nutshell, it dynamically loads resources/objects/trees/landscape etc. at far greater distances and resolutions than the stock game, and you can tailor it for the detail level you want without totally slaughtering your framerates.
When standing on a very high cliff and looking down into Falkreath, the stock game gives at best, a very low rez image of the town and a few trees. Most of the detail of the landscape between is simply not there.
When doing the same with DyndOLOD, you see it all. Or damn near all. It substitutes 2d images at the greater distances, called billboards, that transition into the actual 3D objects when you are in range. This is far easier on resources than Ugrids tweaking and almost eliminates pop in entirely.
So aside from the obvious advantages, why is this beneficial to us in VR?
Well, we already learned that the combo of Skyrim Flora Overhaul, High rez textures and ELFX will kill even a Titan’s framerate in VorpX. The main advantage of SFO is that in addition to straight beauty, it fills empty spaces with things. There is so much foliage in many areas that you simply cannot see that far and the stock load distances aren’t as big a problem as they may otherwise be.
However with DynDOLOD, The barren areas in the distance are no longer barren. There are things there for you to see, even peripherally and that makes ALL the difference to how you perceive the world. It looks more natural, has massively reduced pop in and your framerates are not nearly hit as hard as SFO hits them even when you crank up it’s detail. But you don’t HAVE to max it out to see an enormous improvement. Low or Medium works spectacularly well.
And whats better, you can now use improved versions of the stock resolution textures and still result in a net gain to the overall visual quality of the game. Which means better framerates.
In playing with the Vivid Landscapes 512 BSA textures …
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49344/?…and DunDOLOD on Medium settings…
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59721/?…along with the ELFX lighting and weather mods, My framerates are bouncing on 45 the vast majority of the time and it is visually stunning to look at. You CAN see the loss of detail when you are looking for it. But in actually PLAYING the game instead of inspecting it, all you see is a vast improvement in visuals, responsiveness and framerate. In short, exactly the purpose of this exercise to begin with.
It should be pointed out that DynDOLOD is not the simple ‘point and click one button’ install many mods are. This one takes a bit of work. On the page linked above, there are several tutorial videos that do a great job of hand holding.
My first attempt was botched, but the second worked great. Once you do it a couple times and understand the process, it is actually pretty simple and within the ability of anyone remotely familiar with Windows. Don’t let it intimidate you. It is very, very worth the hour or so you’ll spend and Skyrim has never looked better.
Up next: Final thoughts.
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
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#1S.T.E.P. Guide:Skyrim Configuration Settings
http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Skyrim_Configuration_SettingsNexus 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.
I went ahead and gave a shot at prerendering frames in the control panel. With 2 prerendered, it was still displaying that glitch although less of it and framerates dropped a couple. At 3 prerendered it almost eliminated it but took GPU use to the high 80s and dropped the framerate significantly. Well it was worth a shot to learn from if nothing else. So Safest is where it will sit.
The fortunate thing is there is only one or two impactful mods to go. But right now, if someone wanted to, they could stop right here and have a 100% playable Skyrim in the 43-45FPS range with no other tweaks, that looks an order of magnitude better than the stock game.
Hi Ralf, Thanks for the explanation.
I tried turning to safer and fast but I started getting stutter/kickbacks…sort of like reversing itself a couple frames then resuming the normal flow. The FPS counter was still at 44-45 at the time/when it was happening. GPU use was still in the low 70s and CPU was in the 60s. Could be Skyrim’s code is right at the edge now. On the other hand now that I think of it, it was in an area that is a cell load/switch and there was some normal texture pop in. I’ll be installing a dynamic loader mod soon so I’ll try it again after I do and see if there’s a correlation.
I’ll also try changing the prerendered frames in Nvidia control panel and see if that makes a difference. It definitely pushed the framerate up to a 45-45.5 while it was on safer/fast though.
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.
Part 3 – Skyrim Flora Overhaul.
OK, now that we have the basics in place and vastly upgraded textures, it’s time to start going for the real eye candy. Skyrim in it’s normal form is a pretty sparse place and to be fair, thats geographically accurate to a degree. But since we are in a place with the forementioned talking dragons and knee-arrowed former adventurers, a few extra trees isn’t gonna break the illusion of ‘reality’ for anyone outside those stalwart loremongers that haZ sadZ every time someone installs a CBBE mod.
Skyrim Flora Overhaul (SFO adds a LOT of new trees, plants, grass and variety thereof. It transforms vanilla Skyrim into a more fleshed out place. This is both good and bad. Good because it’s nice to look at. Bad because that performance comes at a relative cost. On lower end machines running on a normal monitor, SFO can make a game unplayable because it simply adds so much more ‘stuff’ for the computer to render. When you add things like lighting mods/ENBs, all that ‘stuff’ then casts shadows. Which have to be rendered as well. So adding SFO can quickly spiral out of control and have a devastating impact.
SFO comes in several flavors and can be found on the nexus page here, including the assorted add-ons and details…
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/141/?For this install I’ll be using the ‘Regular’ version because it is not as brutal as the latest build and I have to consider what effect the upcoming lighting and weather mods will result in. No other mods you make to Skyrim in VR will have the level of impact that SFO and a lighting/weather mod will. An ENB WOULD, but they are currently not usable. The only other thing we can use that would be so damaging to framerates is the Static Mesh Improvement Mod (SMIM) which massively increases the polygon count of the meshes/models. It is a fantastic mod and I use it for regular modding, but at VR resolution, the increase in detail just is not worth the performance cost.
So… whats the result of adding SFO? To be honest, I was really surprised at the impact this mod, on it’s own, had to frame rates. Almost nothing as it turns out. It would seem, at least as far as the Titan is concerned, it’s not much of an issue until the forementioned lighting and weather mods come into play.
On the WRF run, framerates stayed at/in the same roughly 44-45FPS range with occasional dips to 42-43. In the vast majority of the run, the framerate sat in the mid 44s. So effectively I lost about 1FPS. With 2.0 upscaling, x8 AA and x16 AO still enabled. Now Skyrim is looking VERY good, gameplay is still smooth as silk and the CheeZburger Cat haZ his happy. As do I.
There are now more trees, bigger trees in more places, more and different ferns/plants/flowers and grasses and Skyrim is more lush overall and less desolate/barren. Think more like Upstate New York/Adirondack mountains or the Alaskan wilderness than arctic circle/Tundra.
The Titan is starting to do some work as reflected in Afterburner with GPU use now in the 60% range and seeing a blip/high spike to the 80s on one occasion. CPU rose a bit as well, but overall, there’s a ton of headroom yet to take advantage of.
And that, dear reader, will be the topic of the next entry. Now that we have seen our first ‘negative’ in performance, how do we mitigate it knowing full well that the weather and lighting mods are going to ALSO lower our framerates? We HAVE to stay within a playable rate. there is zero point in modding Skyrim to the point of screen archery if it’s going to mean we can’t enjoy playing it.
Thats where the heavy voodoo comes into play. INI file tweaking, for starters. There is a lot of performance tweaks to make and it never hurts to offer up the PCMR prayer to Lord Gaben of the Steam Empire. “May our framerates be high and our temperatures low!”
Hi Ralf,
No problem, glad to do it! Thank YOU for creating the tool that makes it possible.
Got a question. Throughout this so far, I run with the VprpX frameate counter on so I can see in realtime whats going on. Regardless of where the framerate is, the Direct rate shows 89.6 with no fluctuation. Could this be a bug between vorpX and the new Nvidia drivers?
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 ;)
My pleasure!
I like to say that some guys spend a bloody fortune on golf clubs and that I have other hobbies ;) I’m a writer/journalist (well was-retired now) so part of it is staying in practice, but mostly it’s what you said. We all wonder about things like this but no one will touch it. Why I’ll never understand because VorpX works damn well. Skyrim and Fallout (the 2 games I mod/play) are mind warping in VR and the reason I bought in to VR to begin with.
In all likelihood, it’s because most of the game/tech media is like any other media. Profit driven… and getting in depth with VorpX in any particular game isn’t financially viable to the publishers. They figure that most people will never buy a rig that can run something like modded Skyrim and in that they are correct.
However, most people will never buy a Ferrari either but put a Ferrari in an web article and the hits flow like water. Which goes to show you why most ‘journalists’ and editor/publishers suck. They cant grasp the blatantly obvious… and are too lazy to actually follow up on it when they do.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)