Why can people with worse specs get better performance?

[MsMadison]

I'll start by throwing out my specs:

 

GPU: Raedon RX 480 8gb

 

CPU: FX 8350 4.0ghz

 

16gb RAM

 

1920x1080

 

I've seen people with worse and similar set ups pull off some amazing modded skyrims with ENBs. However when I throw on an ENB my FPS is always dropped to the 30s. Even with just plain base vanilla Skyrim my FPS just tanks.

 

And yes I have used Enbseries and Enblocal to make sure my FPS is not being capped. Is there something i'm missing or just not getting here?

[Laura]

Depends on a lot of things.

Like grass density and draw distance.

 

Keep fiddling around.

Maybe even change ENBs.

Some ENBs will never run well.

Some have barely an impact.

[myuhinny]

If you have them turned on turn off the high res texture packs from beth.

[RW311]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6491/?

 

This might help to see what is being taxed the most when game is running, then checking ini settings and make sure nothing is set wrong.

[johntrine]

if i put my specs here people would wonder how i played modded skyrim.... fuck it. here is my specs.

nvidia gt 520

intel i-5 2nd gen

4 gb ram

1400x700

 

my suggestion for modding? compress the mods using https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/

and fiddle with settings... a lot.

also i never used enb. i used this to remove light sources https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/86140

and this to change brightness https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/13049

hope this helps

[JaySean]

I always use this guide https://rd.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76373 maybe it can help you.

 

my specs:

 

Nvidia GTX 1080

Intel I7 7700k

32GB Ram

1920x1080

[Gameplayer]

2 hours ago, MsMadison said:

I'll start by throwing out my specs:

 

GPU: Raedon RX 480 8gb

 

CPU: FX 8350 4.0ghz

 

16gb RAM

 

1920x1080

 

I've seen people with worse and similar set ups pull off some amazing modded skyrims with ENBs. However when I throw on an ENB my FPS is always dropped to the 30s. Even with just plain base vanilla Skyrim my FPS just tanks.

 

And yes I have used Enbseries and Enblocal to make sure my FPS is not being capped. Is there something i'm missing or just not getting here?

You could do all of that stuff that posters above me just listed....

 

Sure it might be a little better.

 

OR

 

Instead of following a 1,000 step program you could just follow my 1 step program to getting back massive amounts of FPS.

 

You could just realize the following,

 

The people that build ENBpresets typically have got a few things going on,

1) They themselves have a high end gaming rig with ideal components that especially means that at the time they had a high end video card(s) such as the 980TI or TitanX, seriously seen more than a few make that claim...Heck some of them play at 45 FPS on lesser cards and think that's fine.

 

2) They want to move their Preset and feel like they are a big deal so that means when they are pushing a graphics enhancement file they have all the settings in the ENBPreset at the max level.  This is of course what we the end-user should be most aware of and if we want to use their presets have to understand how to modify for our gameplay.

 

___________________________________________

 

FIXING the problem directly! HERE

 

Now lets fix this!

 

Open your Skyrim Directory,

C:\Steam something something yada yada Skyrim\  The one with the EXE file!

 

In there you will find, a file called "Enbseries.ini"

 

Using Notepad or Notepad++, open the file.

Hit the CTRL-F keys, or use the search function in the tab bar...

Look for Quality,

Now understand that quality -2 that's minus 2, or negative 2....

-2 is the maximum setting and 2 is the lowest setting...Ok it should be confusing that's just how it is...You can set -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2.

 

Doing it in Notepad++ will allow you to find everyone of them rapidly and change them to something more suitable for you.

 

After setting them to say 2, that's positive 2...You will find that your FPS is massively improved, if your old possible FPS put you way over 60 FPS (PRE ENB FPS) than you should pick back up 20 or 30 FPS just by fixing this in your ENBseries.ini 

 

The improvement in gameplay performance doing this is ALWAYS MASSIVE...

 

This fix should literally have its own upload or sticky somewhere cause it always comes up over and over again.

 

My Specs,

 

Two w5580 Processors,

EVGA SR2 Classifiied Motherboard,

12 Gigs of Ram

EVGA Gold 1,000 Watt PSU

1 Gig Solid State Drive (eh don't remember branding)

EVGA 1060 6 Gig SC

 

So sure some people might say my computer is an antique or cant or shouldn't run games at high speeds or WTF ever but nah man its just fine, also its basically a super computer in its guts from 2009 so what evers man it runs games just fine.

 

Skyrim with ENB 60 FPS at all times...

I've tweaked the crap out of a ton of settings besides like max draw distances in the games core INI files, just don't have Ugrids over default 5 and everything is fine.

 

Runs Fallout 4 great too.

 

[nagothm]

Use Nifscan to detect problems with the meshes that are in your game and spend some time correcting them.  There are a lot more than you would think.

Use TES5Edit to detect problems and conflicts with your esms/esps and spend some time correcting them.  Clean your mods.

Use crashfixes

check out the mods you use, look for compatibility issues (Read their descriptions and comment pages) and make changes in your mods if needed.

Use loot for your load order

And for the love of Mara be very very careful about what changes if any you decide to make to your ini file.  90% of the suggestions I have tried over the years made my performance worse.  Less is more when it comes to the ini

 

I use 160 esps (It would be a lot more but I have combined quite a few mods) in my current setup including a lot of script heavy mods.  I use ENB. Inside town or out I rarely drop below 58 fps and I think I have had one crash in the last few months, and that was because I kept playing with sliders in Racemenu and overloaded the memory.

 

Intel i7-7700 4.2ghz

16GB Ram

Radeon R9280 3GB

[Randlocher]

Maybe a stupid tip, but for me the solution to all problems is usually the deactivation of the antivirus program. I have a pretty good PC and my game only runs smoothly when the stupid antivirus program is disabled.

[MsMadison]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

 

@Gameplayer Your method actually fixed every issue I had. After hours of browsing Nexus and ENB forums that was the first actual solution I found. Kudos to you, that really deserved to stickied somewhere. ^^

[Punga]

It's actually because when playing, they press harder on their keyboard keys. 

[yatol]

The recommended specs have taken quite a jump as well. Here’s 2011:

• Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
• Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
• 4GB System RAM
• 6GB free HDD space
• DirectX 9 compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI video card with 1GB of RAM (Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or higher; ATI Radeon 4890 or higher).

And here’s the Special Edition:

• Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit Version)
• Intel i5-2400/AMD FX-8320.
• 8GB of ram.
• 12 GB free HDD space
• NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB /AMD R9 290 4GB

sse need more ram than skyrim because the 1k texture of textures.bsa are 2k in sse textures.bsa (mods are better than that)

the rest can be ignored (you don't need a stronger cpu to load a few plants add here or there)

 

that's for vanilla skyrim, with mods, it's another story

 

if you use uncompressed 8k texture for body, you need 450 more mb for that, so the video card with 1gb of ram, it's no longer enought

if you use ugrid 15, instead of rendering 5*5 and the rest is crappy lods, you render 15*15, cpu have much more stuff to load, same for gpu

if you use mods like frostfall, wet&cold, autounequipammo... cpu have more stuff to load on npc

same with obis, sic, high level ennemies... (more choice, more time to pick one of them)

if you use immersive armors, npcs can get less performance friendly armors, you need more ram, and with tbbp, more cpu (4 more bones to move around)

etc etc

 

if you don't want to crush your performance, you check what you install

not because some mods are performance hungry, nothing can be done about it

 

you use fair skin, follower x use fair skin, that's stupid, if there's a version that use skinnaked, use that

follower y use mature skin, the msn, sk and s aren't what you are using? why not give skinnaked msn, sk and s to armor matureskin or whatever it's called?

many use xpms? who have a use for those hairs bones (not even used by hdt hairs), tail bones (unless you play a nord with a khajit body), vampire wings bone (just edit the vampire race if you want a vamipre that look like your char...)? it have a performance impact

draugr2 it's draugr1 with another armor, delete the draugr body from those armors, replace armor draugrnude sbp with another one (for the npc to keep that with draugrarmorx), and the performance waste drop

water eat a lot of fps, much more with better textures, meshes are animated, this could be reduced by adding new water meshes, smaller (got tfc near whiterun, under the ground, compare the river size to the meshe size)

instead of giving flag islod to waterfalls of windmills to not load the static lod, why not make an animated lod to waste less performance?

etc etc