Skyrim Realvision Performance

[Andrew Leeseberg]

I have recently upgraded to a gtx 980 for my gaming computer and installed the real-vision ENB for skyrim along with all of the recommended mods. But I am still having frame drops bellow 30 fps when out in the open world. My question is that can this be the cause of my admittedly poor CPU the FX 4130. I intend to upgrade to a FX 8350 soon, will I see a dramatic improvement in performance in skyrim?

 

[HEXiT]

your problem is you have paired an enthusiast grade gpu with an entry level cpu.
the 4130 is a quad core but also a dual module so is the equivalence of an intel dual core. and is still about 10% down on performance in comparison or a core to module basis.
not only that skyrim isnt particularly well written and has issues regardless of which cpu/gpu you throw at it. my old i7 had issues and couldnt maintain a solid 30 outside in some locations. i added all the patches and community patches to fix a lot of stuff but the core game itself never really did perform well under load.

the upgrade to the 8 series will help.
but go for the 8370 slightly better power consumption as the 8350 with all the performance.
i think its about $10 cheaper with some retailers.

 

[busterzperson]

For a 980, nothing less than an i5 will be sufficient to un-bottleneck the processor. If you go with an AMD chip you will have to overclock it to the moon to get decent one-or-two threaded performance out of it. Going from the 4130 @ 3.8Ghz to the 8350 @ 4.0Ghz will be hardly noticeable in skyrim. I would look into an Intel chip if I were you. The new Devil's Canyon pentium would be an excellent budget option with room to drop-in an i5 or i7 when you have the $$.

I have both AMD and Intel based rigs, and my 4.2Ghz i5 absolutely stomps my 4.7Ghz FX-6300 when it comes to gaming.

 

[md1032]

I’ve been using Realvision ENB in Skyrim for over a year now, and it’s pretty much the only thing on my computer that can really give it a thorough workout. Realvision ENB is an older cocktail of mods, but still a good one. I believe there is a newer cocktail made by the same guy called “Purevision ENB” that is a bit simpler and may run better for you.

My system consists of an i5-4670k overclocked to 4.4 Ghz, and two GTX 670’s in SLI. Graphically, our rigs should perform similarly, with your card being slightly more powerful than both of mine put together, with the added advantage of the extra video RAM over my 2 GB, which is a big-time limitation of my system in this game.

The first thing you need to double check is everything in the actual game settings. Open the actual game launcher instead of launching the game through SKSE. Go into Options. Make sure Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering are both “Off”. Go into Advanced and ensure FXAA is unchecked. ENB has AA and AF built-in.

The second thing I would consider doing is making any performance-based adjustments to your mods that you can. Download lower-resolution versions of your texture packs, for example. Use “performance” instead of “quality” version of the various mods you’re using when applicable. Unfortunately not many mods have options like this, but some do. This is lengthy, but necessary due to the aforementioned CPU restriction you have. According to CPU boss, your processor’s about 75% slower than mine in terms of single-core performance, and that’s at stock speeds. I have a 22% overclock. You do the math…this is why gamers these days usually opt for Intel processors, even though they are more expensive than AMD’s.

The third thing I would try is reducing the draw distance for certain objects, again using the Skyrim launcher. Go into Options, Advanced, and then go to the “View Distance” tab. Change “Distant Object Detail” to medium and drag everything but “Actor Fade” to about halfway. Reduce Shadow Detail from Ultra to High. Under Water, uncheck all reflections. Close the launcher and open Skyrim and see if the problem is alleviated.

If after all that you can’t seem to make any headway, you can try to use ENB’s built-in adaptive quality settings. I’ve already made a lot of modifications to my ENB file and would be happy to send you a copy of my enbseries.ini if you PM me an e-mail address for me to send it to. So put a healing spell or something on both hands, press SHIFT+ENTER to open the ENB console, and start messing with the settings. You can try changing the global adaptive quality in the top left box for example, or changing bloom or depth of field in the bottom left box.

That should be enough to get you started. Let us know how you make out. Honestly, this game doesn’t really stress my system too much, even with my ultra-powerful CPU I rarely see a single core go above 50%, so I think you should be able to run this mod cocktail well.

In the meantime, enjoy some comparison shots I cooked up today showing the differences between Realvision ENB and stock vanilla “Ultra High” settings Skyrim.

Spoiler

Markarth at night (1)



Markarth at night (2)



Whiterun during the day, showing the depth of field effect and what it adds to the game.









Some of the same shots at night






A snowy area (this really highlights how washed out the colors are on the vanilla version)