Low GPU usage

[Lendova]

Hello guys!

 

Spent several hours to catch the causing issue but no luck so far.

 

With vanilla game, on the same spot I have a slight CPU bottleneck, but with around 90 fps.

All mods enabled, except ENB, ~40 fps and generally less than 50% GPU usage.

All mods+ENB, ~30 fps.

The "spot" :https://i.imgur.com/1hOGyjq.jpg

Not sure thats the proper way to have different result, but if I create a character fast and leave the starting place of alternate start, the performance is much better (~70fps on that spot) just until I close the game. On load game, the performance goes bad again.

 

Not checked much places but the issue is there anywhere, but not as brutal like here.

System: Win 11, Ryzen 5800X (PBO+CO), 32GB 3800MHz tuned memory, RX 5700XT

Tweaks: BethIni, SSE Display Tweaks, SSE Engine Fixes etc.

Tried to disable HDT, CBPC, Lux, DynDOLOD, grass and tree mods, SMIM so far.

I'm not expecting blazing fast framerates or full GPU usage everywhere, but a fluidish 50-60+ would be nice.

Load order:

Spoiler

Skyrim.esm
Update.esm
Dawnguard.esm
HearthFires.esm
Dragonborn.esm
ccBGSSSE001-Fish.esm
ccQDRSSE001-SurvivalMode.esl
ccBGSSSE037-Curios.esl
ccBGSSSE025-AdvDSGS.esm
Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch.esp
RSkyrimChildren.esm
Vanilla Script MicroOptimizations.esl
Treescale.esm
SurvivalControlPanel.esp
TrueHUD.esl
RealisticWaterTwo - Resources.esm
NorthernIce.esp
High Poly Head.esm
Expressive Facegen Morphs.esl
Schlongs of Skyrim - Core.esm
Vanilla Scripts Enhanced.esl
Resources - The Great Cities.esp
Lux - Resources.esp
Lux Orbis - Master plugin.esm
DynDOLOD.esm
SkyUI_SE.esp
Immersive Sounds - Compendium.esp
TrueStormsSE.esp
Obsidian Weathers.esp
SMIM-SE-Merged-All.esp
Immersive Wenches.esp
RaceMenu.esp
RaceMenuPlugin.esp
SkyHUD.esp
SOSRaceMenu.esp
XPMSE.esp
True Storms - Obsidian Weathers - Patch .esp
Aspens Ablaze.esp
Steel Fashions.esp
CBBE.esp
RaceMenuMorphsCBBE.esp
MatureSkinComplexions.esp
S3DRocks.esp
Immersive Weapons.esp
KSHairdosSMP.esp
Fashions of the Banditry.esp
HIMBO.esp
RaceMenuMorphsHIMBO.esp
Pocky Punk's Make Up Addon_females.esp
FMS_FemaleMakeupSuite.esp
Lamenthia's Marks of Beauty.esp
SFO_SkinFeatureOverlays.esp
FreckleMania2.esp
KaliliesBrows.esp
TheEyesOfBeauty.esp
Bijin Warmaidens.esp
High Poly NPC Overhaul - Resources.esp
High Poly NPC Overhaul - Skyrim Special Edition.esp
ForswornVarietyArmorPack.esp
COTN - Falkreath.esp
Lux Orbis.esp
COTN - Dawnstar.esp
The Great Cities - Minor Cities and Towns.esp
COTN - Morthal.esp
COTN Falkreath - TGC patch.esp
Folkvangr - Grass and Landscape Overhaul.esp
Cathedral - 3D Pine Grass.esp
Origins Of Forest - 3D Forest Grass.esp
COTN - Winterhold.esp
RSChildren.esp
RealisticRSChildren.esp
Headhunter - Bounties Redone.esp
Headhunter - Leveled Rewards.esp
COTN Dawnstar - The Great Cities - Minor Cities and Towns Patch.esp
HappyLittleTrees.esp
S3DLandscapes NextGenerationForests.esp
The Great Town of Karthwasten.esp
The Great Town of Shor's Stone.esp
The Great Village of Kynesgrove.esp
The Great Village of Old Hroldan.esp
Embers XD.esp
Embers XD - Fire Magick Add-On.esp
QW's Grass Patch 2.esp
Grass FPS Booster.esp
The Great Village of Mixwater Mill.esp
COTN Morthal - The Great Cities Patch.esp
Hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp
Hothtrooper44_Armor_Ecksstra.esp
Immersive Armors Weight Patch.esp
Lit Road Signs.esp
3BBB.esp
MCMHelper.esp
UIExtensions.esp
OBody.esp
Schlongs of Skyrim.esp
SOS - Smurf Average Addon.esp
SMP Wind MCM.esp
Xing SMP Hairs and Wigs - Dint999.esp
Xing SMP Hairs and Wigs - Fuse.esp
Xing SMP Hairs and Wigs - HHairstyles.esp
Bijin Wives.esp
Bijin NPCs.esp
SmoothCam.esp
Cloaks&Capes SMP.esp
FNIS.esp
Reanimated Detector.esp
EVGConditionalIdles.esp
Animated Ingredients.esp
AnimatedPoisons.esp
Animated Potions.esp
TaberuAnimation.esp
ImmersiveInteractions.esp
Immersive Equipping Animations.esp
ReadTheRoom.esp
TrueDirectionalMovement.esp
SurvivalModeImproved.esp
MBO.esp
COTN Dawnstar - Embers XD [XD ESP] Patch.esp
COTN Dawnstar - Immersive Wenches Patch.esp
COTN Morthal - Embers XD [XD ESP] Patch.esp
Lux Orbis - COTN Falkreath patch.esp
COTN Falkreath - Embers XD Patch.esp
COTN Falkreath - Grass Mods Patch.esp
Lux Orbis - COTN Winterhold patch.esp
Lux Orbis - CC Fish patch.esp
COTN Morthal - Immersive Wenches Patch.esp
Lux Orbis - Saints and Seducers patch.esp
Lux Orbis - COTN Morthal patch.esp
Lux Orbis - USSEP patch.esp
Lux Orbis - COTN Dawnstar patch.esp
COTN Morthal - CC - Fishing Patch.esp
COTN Falkreath - CC - Fishing Patch.esp
COTN Falkreath - Immersive Wenches Patch.esp
COTN Falkreath Addons.esp
COTN Winterhold - Embers XD [XD ESP] Patch.esp
COTN Winterhold - Immersive Wenches Patch.esp
Collygon - Niohoggr Warpaints.esp
WNB_WeatheredNordicBodypaints.esp
Immersive Citizens - AI Overhaul.esp
Immersive Wenches -Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul Patch-.esp
COTN Falkreath - Immersive Citizens patch.esp
COTN Dawnstar - Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul Patch.esp
COTN Morthal - Immersive Citizens Patch.esp
COTN Winterhold - Immersive Citizens Patch.esp
Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp
COTN Dawnstar - Alternate Start LAL Patch.esp
Lux Orbis - Alternate Start patch.esp
COTN Morthal - Alternate Start Patch.esp
COTN Falkreath - Alternate Start Patch.esp
COTN Winterhold - Alternate Start Patch.esp
RealisticWaterTwo.esp
Skyland Watercolor - Slow Green-RW2.esp
DynDOLOD.esp
Occlusion.esp

 

Thank you for your time and help!

[darkangel2041]

Did you try different area in your tests ? There isa problems with "draw calls" with AMD driver that is not fully optimized for older game (like skyrim). I had the same problem. I also wonder if the CPU bottleneck might increase the problem. For me, upgrading my GPU "solved" the problem. In the worst situation I was at 20fps and after I was at 40 fps. (old CPU 6700k, new 13600k, 6800XT).

[Lendova]

Around 50% GPU usage here. The issue is there in many or most of the places.

[traison]

33 minutes ago, Lendova said:

With vanilla game, on the same spot I have a slight CPU bottleneck, but with around 90 fps.

 

1. CPU bottleneck in a 15 year old game with a Ryzen 7 @ 3.8GHz? How did you come to this conclusion?
2. 90 fps? Physics break beyond 60 as far as I know. A side effect of consolitis, but I digress.

36 minutes ago, Lendova said:

All mods enabled, except ENB, ~40 fps and generally less than 50% GPU usage.

 

Skyrim is the kind of game where you can lose performance long before any relevant resource is maxed out. The papyrus engine for instance is exceptionally easy to clog up long before the thread it is running on is in any way "used up". This could be mainly because it has lots of silly fps-bound ("latent") methods such as Game.GetPlayer() and the vanilla scripts are absolutely full of calls to these.

 

I think where I'd start with this is in Process Explorer (Sysinternals/Microsoft). Try to spot a correlation between low fps and thread utilization. If there's an obvious link, look into the start address of that thread. Granted, beyond this point you'd need a debugger (and potentially a disassembler) and the skill to use one; it gets complicated fast right here.

 

Note that a thread is fully maxed out when its cpu utilization reaches 100%/logical cpu count, ie. 100%/8 = 12%.

[spoonsinger]

Just curious but when you said "without ENB" was that actually "without ENB" or did you have the ENB installed but just disabled it through the panel/.ini switch?

[Lendova]

1 hour ago, traison said:

 

1. CPU bottleneck in a 15 year old game with a Ryzen 7 @ 3.8GHz? How did you come to this conclusion?
2. 90 fps? Physics break beyond 60 as far as I know. A side effect of consolitis, but I digress.

1. Then what is the proper term, when you upgrade your CPU and the framerate goes up as well?

2. Skyrim SE and Fallout 4 have mod for it. Fallout 76 had the same issue, but its fixed by Bethesda a long time ago.

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

Skyrim is the kind of game where you can lose performance long before any relevant resource is maxed out. The papyrus engine for instance is exceptionally easy to clog up long before the thread it is running on is in any way "used up". This could be mainly because it has lots of silly fps-bound ("latent") methods such as Game.GetPlayer() and the vanilla scripts are absolutely full of calls to these.

Papyrus tweaks are installed. Have no clue how much it helps. But hese for example have no noticable effect:

• Max Operations Per Task (default: 500)
• The papyrus engine was designed to be able to run on a computer that was considered mediocre in 2011. This never got updated with SE. Hence papyrus is limited to 100 operations per task. On newer machines this number can be set much higher without any noticeable impact on framerate while having potentially much higher performance. Set to 0 to disable this tweak
• Speed up native calls (Formerly "Run Scripts On Main Thread")
• Scripts will only run in tasklets that aren't on the main thread most of the time, hence functions like "Game.GetPlayer" or "Formlist.GetAt" needing to be synced to framerate for thread safety. This experimental tweak speeds up most of those calls by syncing them to a spinlock instead of framerate, greatly improving script performance for most scripts. By default, only the read-only/getter functions are sped up this way (ex: "HasKeyword", "IsLoaded", "GetWornArmor", etc.) as they are much more safe than functions that alter the game in any way (ex: "EquipItem", "RemoveItem", "MoveTo", etc.) as those could have issues if ran multiple times in one frame.

1 hour ago, traison said:

I think where I'd start with this is in Process Explorer (Sysinternals/Microsoft). Try to spot a correlation between low fps and thread utilization. If there's an obvious link, look into the start address of that thread. Granted, beyond this point you'd need a debugger (and potentially a disassembler) and the skill to use one; it gets complicated fast right here.

 

Note that a thread is fully maxed out when its cpu utilization reaches 100%/logical cpu count, ie. 100%/8 = 12%.

The game almost always runs on the 6th core, below 50% utilization. Checked with the recommended Process Explorer.

 

1 hour ago, spoonsinger said:

Just curious but when you said "without ENB" was that actually "without ENB" or did you have the ENB installed but just disabled it through the panel/.ini switch?

Full uninstall. DLLs, inis, everything. (Visceral ENB with v.0347)

[traison]

Lets put it this way, even though this is most likely irrelevant, a hypotetical example: The total time spent performing an operation like Game.GetPlayer():

5% cpu.

95% waiting for the next frame.

 

Upgrading the cpu will always affect things, but you're not going to see the full 100% potential of it when threads are spending overwhelming amounts of times just waiting. But like I said, I wasn't suggesting your issues stem from the papyrus engine, I wast just saying Skyrim's performance goes to shit long before you're hitting any kind of real resource limitation. Also, I am aware of the fixes available. There's a fix for physics as well.

 

2 hours ago, Lendova said:

The game almost always runs on the 6th core, below 50% utilization.

 

So the way I'm reading this is that your overall cpu utilization is 50% but you're seeing a clear spike on logical core 6. That could indicate that you still have limitations on the cpu side. You'd potentiall need a debugger to figure out what that thread is doing. Could be AI/pathing, could be drawing, could be streaming world data, ...

[spoonsinger]

You have Occlusion.esp in you loadout at the bottom, which I don't personally know of however, have you tried?

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54907?tab=posts

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54998

 

(Note under requirements, there are other patches which you may or not need and it definitely needs a new game start to test. Welcome to Skyrim modding where most of your runs are up to Bleakfall Barrow - and if you get past that the nagging feeling that something is going to f-up 20hrs down the line)

 

Edit: Thought of a left of field idea. I don't know how quick your internet is but you could download from Steam the SSE version of Enderal, stick an ENB on it, (or not) - I think Rudy is on the Nexus for that. Then see if it's performing in a similar manner statistically. Basically Enderal is all mod, and thus different terrain structure and thus could give a base line on what mods you have may or may not be a problem. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by spoonsinger

[Lendova]

Smart Access Memory my fakkin god!

There is 2 option what you have to enable in bios in order to enable SAM for AMD VGA. Generally it gives 0-20% extra framerate for 6xxx cards and 0-12% for 5xxx cards. But in some rare cases, it creates a massive CPU bottleneck. Dirt Rally 2 suffers from this and Skyrim SE as well. Previously i had the same for Battlefield 4, but it works good now, my guess is a driver related issue for SAM.

So I just disabled above 4g decoding in bios and nothing else and my "30fps" at that demadning spot become "47fps". Now I see much higher or often 100% GPU usage.

[Lendova]

Smart Access Memory my fakkin god!

There is 2 option what you have to enable in bios in order to enable SAM for AMD VGA. Generally it gives 0-20% extra framerate for 6xxx cards and 0-12% for 5xxx cards. But in some rare cases, it creates a massive CPU bottleneck. Dirt Rally 2 suffers from this and Skyrim SE as well. Previously i had the same for Battlefield 4, but it works good now, my guess is a driver related issue for SAM.

So I just disabled above 4g decoding in bios and nothing else and my "30fps" at that demadning spot become "47fps". Now I see much higher or often 100% GPU usage.

[traison]

Well done, would not have gussed bios settings, not in the "top 10" at least.

[Lendova]

On 4/15/2023 at 7:11 PM, traison said:

Well done, would not have gussed bios settings, not in the "top 10" at least.

I did not found a single a single comment or topic about this smart access memory issue, atleast where they figured it out. So no shame in that.

Disabling in the driver is not enough, bios setting required.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Lendova