edx Posted January 30, 2019 Posted January 30, 2019 Hey I just wanted to have a discussion about SLI (or crossfire) and Radeon cards. General information: I want to just talk about Skyrim LE because I know it's got worse performance in general and limitation's because of the 32 bit engine, I'm guessing if you have a set-up that can run heavily modded LE then it should be fine for SE as well. So just to be clear I JUST want to talk about LE. My current spec's: i7 4770, 4 core running at 3.8 GHz GTX 970, 4096 MB GDDR5 at 1253 MHz boost clock 8 gigs of ram I'm running the game on an SSD Okay so what I want to talk about, I would say I'm an 'advanced modder' I can build a modlist of 500+ mod's and it be stable. The thing is, with an ENB, even with 2k texture I can easily hit my VRAM limit. This is fine and I understand, don't think I'm complaining because i'm not. I want to upgrade my PC so I can use any mod's I want, I want as little limitation's as I can. I've see video's on youtube with people with 2080 ti and fast processors and they don't get impressive FPS tbh.. As I want to upgrade my PC just for Skyrim then I don't want to just get the most expensive hardware but hardware that will give you the most FPS for Skyrim. So I want to talk about the best hardware I can get/upgrade for Skyrim LE. Let me know what you think and if you would change anything. SSD So I am running my game on an SSD so I should be getting alright load speed's but I guess uploading to the fastest SSD you can will help. This would be a great upgrade from my 128GB M.2 but not needed 500GB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD, Read 3400MB/s, Write 2300MB/s - Silent £ 141.60 CPU When I play I really go over 30% usage on any of my cores. This makes me think that my CPU should be fine and I shouldn't upgrade. I'm going to wait until I've got a new GPU (so my GPU is no a bottle neck) and then see if I would get better performance from a 5GHz CPU. Memory (RAM) Ill probably buy 8 more gigs of RAM but I don't think it's needed... I've been told Skyrim doesn't use more than 4 anyway. GPU Okay so this is the big one saying it's my main bottleneck. Like I said before I've seen people with 2080 ti not getting great performance and I've seen people on LE and SE use 11 gig's of VRAM on 1080 ti and 2080 ti. I don't personally think these are the best card's for Skyrim, I think that you want a card with more than 11 gigs of VRAM with fast clock speed's. But not like a nvidia quadro. There is a new graphic's card coming out, the Radeon vii. It's got 16GB of memory at 1,800MHz. For 550 pounds I think this is the best or one of the best GPU's for Skyrim, please let me know your opinion. I would also like to know how crossfire is with skyrim? Would it be worth getting two of the Radeon vii's for skyrim?
Pauduan Posted January 30, 2019 Posted January 30, 2019 The reason CPU is at 30% is because you're maxing out what the game engine can actually use. You will get more performance from a CPU with faster speeds, as thread/core count isn't what this game runs well on. So for example you'll get better performance from a 8350k at 5GHz than a 4770 at stock speeds. 16GB RAM makes a pretty big difference from 8GB, and the fastest possible speeds/lowest possible latency are desired. There is 5-6fps difference between 2400MHz and 3200MHz in my setup at the same timings. The game feels a lot smoother with the higher memory bandwidth. And with ENB in use, the game can occupy more than 4GB of memory. The enblocal.ini file has a setting to get the game to use more than the 32-bit limit (3.2GB). The AMD architecture isn't the best thing out there for LE, specially when using ENBs. I have run both the 580 and 1060, the 1060 ran better and smoother. The 580 is very good too and is probably overall the better GPU, but for this game the nVidia won out. You can forget Crossfire for Skyrim. I don't know what the present status is but it was a mess the last time I tried it. I have two 1080s in SLI and it just about manages 60fps outdoors with a big mod stack, 4k textures and Rudy ENB running full tilt (2560x1600 res, so about 10% more than 1440p). The single card setup is smoother than the two, but overall fps tanks quite a lot. I have yet to see more than 6GB of VRAM used, so even 8GB is fine. The video where 9+GB was being used doesn't look any better than my setup (it looks a lot worse because of YouTube compression so...). As for the Radeon 7, wait till it launches - there's only a week left. As cards move forward the support for and performance with DX9 is less of a concern, so you will not know what you're getting into unless you just have cash to burn and buy it anyway. If you do, post back with your experience. IMO the best hardware you can get for LE at the moment is a 1080Ti, if you can find one used. Best price to performance ratio, and unless you run 4k resolution the 2080Ti will get you no additional performance. Remember the Bugseda games are all Havok-locked to 60fps. I've seen it behave till about 75, then it goes bonkers. Regardless of anything else, your first limitation with LE is the engine itself.
edx Posted January 30, 2019 Author Posted January 30, 2019 9 minutes ago, Pauduan said: The reason CPU is at 30% is because you're maxing out what the game engine can actually use. You will get more performance from a CPU with faster speeds, as thread/core count isn't what this game runs well on. So for example you'll get better performance from a 8350k at 5GHz than a 4770 at stock speeds. 16GB RAM makes a pretty big difference from 8GB, and the fastest possible speeds/lowest possible latency are desired. There is 5-6fps difference between 2400MHz and 3200MHz in my setup at the same timings. The game feels a lot smoother with the higher memory bandwidth. And with ENB in use, the game can occupy more than 4GB of memory. The enblocal.ini file has a setting to get the game to use more than the 32-bit limit (3.2GB). The AMD architecture isn't the best thing out there for LE, specially when using ENBs. I have run both the 580 and 1060, the 1060 ran better and smoother. The 580 is very good too and is probably overall the better GPU, but for this game the nVidia won out. You can forget Crossfire for Skyrim. I don't know what the present status is but it was a mess the last time I tried it. I have two 1080s in SLI and it just about manages 60fps outdoors with a big mod stack, 4k textures and Rudy ENB running full tilt (2560x1600 res, so about 10% more than 1440p). The single card setup is smoother than the two, but overall fps tanks quite a lot. I have yet to see more than 6GB of VRAM used, so even 8GB is fine. The video where 9+GB was being used doesn't look any better than my setup (it looks a lot worse because of YouTube compression so...). As for the Radeon 7, wait till it launches - there's only a week left. As cards move forward the support for and performance with DX9 is less of a concern, so you will not know what you're getting into unless you just have cash to burn and buy it anyway. If you do, post back with your experience. IMO the best hardware you can get for LE at the moment is a 1080Ti, if you can find one used. Best price to performance ratio, and unless you run 4k resolution the 2080Ti will get you no additional performance. Remember the Bugseda games are all Havok-locked to 60fps. I've seen it behave till about 75, then it goes bonkers. Regardless of anything else, your first limitation with LE is the engine itself. Thanks for the reply. When I upgrade I'll come back and give an update. I think we agree that the best upgrades are these A CPU at 5GHz, The fastest RAM I can get and run the game on an SSD With GPU's though the reason I'm really thinking about the Radeon vii is because the 550ish pricetag is in my price range and I'm not going to but a second hand GPU. I cannot think of any card better than the Radeon vii for Skyrim in that price range. And I know you can keep the VRAM down but I want to use ANY mod's I want and I don't want to get a 11GB card and hit that limit. I would be more comfortable with the 16GB of VRAM even if I don't use it all.
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