Possible way to increase FPS? (hardware talk)

[Loyotaemi]

Ive been trying to figure out what exactly I need to upgrade in order to update my computer so it can run ENB'd skyrim better. I currently run performance ENBs on outside areas at 37-45 fps usually, but any other type of ENB Im squeezing at 30-34 fps on outside areas (Even 57 fps on the inside of areas on some of them!).

 

Can anyone help me understand what is holding me back?

 

My specs are this:

 

CPU: AMD FX 8350 OC'd at 4.67ghz

GPU: Nvidia 660 ti 2gb

Ram: DDR3 16gb 1600mhz.

Power Supply: 750w [80 plus gold]

Hard drive is a standard 1TB 7200 RPM HDD.

 

Note, I dont mind if you tell me its my CPU/GPU/Ram/ whatever holding me back. My point in this is that I want to make the right decision in terms of upgrade path, OR find a way to optimize what I have. criticism is what I want o_o.

 

If any info is needed outside this, yes. I have ran the 8350 at stock speed. the FPS didn't change from stock to OC from what I noticed.

 

edit: just realized this is probably the wrong subforum Im sorry. I wont repost tho but only because I can't delete now and I dont want to flood the forums with something like this.

[gvman3670]

Why not just try changing some settings on your machine instead of changing parts/hardware? Because it seems you should have more than enough horsepower to run whatever you want. You can disable background Windows programs, for instance, to free up more computing power and RAM.

[Loyotaemi]

I am willing to do either, But I guess I just assumed that my computer's hardware was the problem. Most of the time all I hear about are intel i5s and 700 series GPUS. . . any other suggestions then? I am going to try disabling things, like Aero and such.

[CGi]

Get an 4GB graphic card, as this is needed for HD textures + ENB effects.
if you got 3 1440p monitors, get a 6GB card.
if you use only 1 or 2 monitors in 1080p, 4GB is more then enough, because most games are 32bit and due to this can't use more then 3.1GB RAM and VRAM anyway.
Everyone who's offering cards with more and mentioning the power is just scamming you because a game with a resolution that needs more then 6GB can't be handled by any graphic card that's available atm, no matter if SLi or Crossfire or if 2 or 6 cards.

 

And while you're at it: Get seprate SSDs for the OS and games. Speeds up loading times greatly.

And ofc a 850 Watt gold cert PSU. Better safe then sorry. Seasonic recommended, if you can afford it.

[Galacticat42]

First thing I noticed on your hardware list is your CPU - iirc AMD FX series are all single cores. Skyrim (although a 32 bit game) does actually benefit from multi-core CPU's. Also, DirectX 11 is supported by Skyrim (though not fully taken advantage of as it's centered around DX9) and can make some of the effects and textures load and run faster. However, DX11 is only supported by Windows 7 and later.

[CGi]

The 8350 is an octa core and as Skyrim runs best on 2 cores (more are not really well utilized, no matter what the iNi is set to), this is more then enough.

And Skyrim runs solely on DX9.0a. if there are optimizations from DX11, then i never noticed them, as Skyrim uses only the DX9 APi which is not linked with DX11 as far as i know. But feel free to proove me wrong, because if i want to use the enhanced features of DX10 or 11, i got to use it's APi. So knowing how to use it from DX9 would be awesome.

[lidowxxx]

660ti is a quite potent card, its 2Gb video memory should be more than enough for any other games on the market, including vanilla skyrim, but not for heavily modded skyrim with ENB, especially if you want to install lots of HD textured mods, HD texture replacers. You can try to optimize your textures using texture optimizer on nexus, resize textures to 1k or something and it should reduce your video memory usage a lot, don't go overboard with HD textures mods, they will eat your video memory like breakfast. You can check your video memory usage with GPU-Z or skyrim performance monitor.

 

You can always tweak the ENB settings to have some performance gain, like turning off/lower things like  SSAO/DOF/detailed shadow/Bloom, some of them may give you a lot of FPS without losing much visual fidelity, in fact lowering some settings may not be noticeable to you at all, even if you compare them SIDE BY SIDE.

 

Of course overclocking your GPU is another option.

[mclericp]

It depends on what enb.

 

My r9 270 which is somewhat near the 660ti, struggles to perform except on performance versions of ENB like projectENB,seasons of skyrim, unbleak etc. K enb and Somber enb totally kills my GPU to a <10 FPS.

 

This is on Ultra setting 1080p with skyrim 2k, SFO, vivid and water.

 

If u want to run more than performance enb on 1080p with ultra setting and HD textures, GTX 760 or 770.

 

Or, simply remove heavy texture packs like Official bethsoft texture or Sk 2kHD I gain 10-15 FPS this way and i no longer get as many random ctds.

[Veladarius]

Use something like the Skyrim Performance Monitor and see what is hitting 100%. My bet is the graphics card as I hit 100% usage on my 7850 but only about 20% on my cpu (i5 quad). You can also drop the landscape textures to 1k and turn of AA and such.

[Glassklar]

You can take a look on this: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15123/?

For me it increases my Framerate on my old Intel Quad with GTX260.

Maybe it helps.

 

[CGi]

On my ATis HialgoBoost does not really deliver what's promissed as everytime it lowers the resolution the game starts to stutter. Even worse in Crossfire.

Hence why the XBONE got a chip to do this in hardware i guess.

So in the end i simply optimized all textures with DDSOpt (limiting all textures to 2048px) and got a massive performance boost. More performance was achived creating BSAs for mods with loose files, greatly reducing any previous stutter to 0.