TES Skyrim SE 0.310

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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

Did performance comparison for SSE and old Skyrim for my current laptop graphics Radeon 7670m based. 30fps for old game, 14 for new one with disabled all new features like sun rays and other things. Even with deferred mode enabled in the mod but no effects running (post processing only), old game is 23 fps. What is so special to use SSE, can somebody explain to me?
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

I always heard that AMD DirectX 11 drivers are very bad compared to Nvidia's DirectX 11 drivers... Nvidia invested a huge amount of resources into driver development and CPU optimization with DirectX 11 (and lots of game and engine specific hacks in the driver) which is why a 4.3 TFlop Nvidia GTX 1060 outperforms a 6.2 TFlop AMD RX 580 in almost all DX11 games but the RX 580 is faster in most DX12 and Vulkan games (which it should be since it has way more raw processing power). Basically AMD cards can't reach their full hardware potential in DX11 due to the driver and CPU usage issues, and AMD can't afford to match Nvidia's driver development strategy, which is why they created Mantle API and are now pushing Vulkan and DX12. So DX11 performance is forgotten by AMD, those games will always run poorly (relatively speaking). Probably old Skyrim runs better because AMD's DX9 performance is not that bad.

Because of this I'm guessing low end AMD hardware is probably the worst case for DX11 games like SSE, but on my Nvidia card SSE runs much faster than old Skyrim w/ENB. Old Skyrim with ENB = 3200x1800 @ 60fps with dips to 30-45 FPS in CPU bottlenecked areas, but SSE (max settings, no ENB) = 3840x2160 @ 60fps rock solid no dips anywhere (probably over 100fps without VSync/FPS limiter). For direct comparison if I run Old Skyrim w/ ENB at 3840x2160 only average around 40-45 FPS. Old Skyrim has CPU bottlenecks in city areas with many NPCs, but SSE doesn't have that issue for me. On old Skyrim at max settings without ENB, however, it runs faster than SSE on max settings, except in those CPU bottlenecked areas where it always slows down no matter what. (i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, 1080 Ti).

Of course could be some engine problems too, but most people I've seen say SSE runs better than old Skyrim, so I think it may just be driver problems.

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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

From what I have read, NVidia's D3D11 driver is only superior to AMD's when there are cores left idle by the game, which is the case for early-mid generation D3D11 games. In later games that make heavy use of parallelization, AMD comes out on top due to their recommendation of having a single core dedicated to the driver, with no game logic running on that same core.

In Direct3D 9, its a toss-up. NVidia looks good in synthetic benchmarks due to optimizations specifically for these non-real world, "hypothetical" benchmarks, like that instancing demo with the asteroids.

Direct3D 11 also has much better draw call performance, so AMD cards ought to perform much better like NVidia's do, supposing there was a significant CPU bottleneck with your system on the original Skyrim. Unfortunately, it's no Vulkan, but it's still better by, what, 2 times? 2.5 times faster?


@ENBSeries, the biggest reason to use SE over the original, is due to the engine having been reworked for 64bit support. Mods like Bruma and Skywind make the old Skyrim crash very quickly once in-game, due to memory limitations. Modifying the memory heaps helps, but that just makes the crashes and instability less frequent. Tale Of Two Wastelands faces the same issue with the New Vegas engine.

No idea why it performs worse than the original Skyrim. Only guess I can make is that NVidia worked with Bethesda again to implement shit shaders; the godrays in Skyrim SE use tessellation like in Fallout 4, right?
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

also AMD 7000 series newest drivers are 1 year older than SkyrimSE releasedate.
there are some rare locations where oldSkyrim outperforms SkyrimSE (mostly interior), but not by 100% margin. so it looks like what people said before.
@boris, you could try markarth. i know from tests that markarth is huge in performance bonus for SkyrimSE (with nvidia at least), 2x more fps

SkyrimSE:
much more stable, far less CTD (i didn't say "no CTD" lol), steady high performance across
more headroom for modding
ENB will run on Win8/10 without memory issues (remember the memory limit issue with nvidia/MS.. whatever it was? which makes oldSkrim with ENB unplayable for many people with huge modding)
SKSE alpha is released
personal thing: SkyWind and Skyblivion will be released somewhere 2018 and ported to SkyrimSE. (They use custom made 4k textures everywhere, btw).

btw, i think SkyrimSE did not have an update since about 9 month? which is good for modding i guess. one could think bethesda has drawn a final line and only if big shit happens would there be a new update. but who knows...
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

Skyrim SE will most likely get an update just like FO4 did in regards to the Creation Club if they continue their plan to roll it out for Skyrim SE.

For the most part Skyrim SE hasn't really taken off. For me there isn't much motivation to really move as its still the same game and even with SKSE in alpha SE will never have all the options for mods and ENB that classic does. Just little reason to move over to it.
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

SSE has ran much, much better than the DX9 version on my system. Not only at a higher framerate, but also more stably as well. I was also able to maintain that with a large number of mods adding many more objects. However, I have not gone to the effort of running the DX9 version in Windows 7 to get around the video memory limit, so that may be a major limiting factor.

Though, it's pointless if SSE can't even be extended to render AO before the lighting...
FiftyTifty wrote:words
I'd like to see what stats you based that on, seeing as I've heard of generally no cases where AMD performance exceeds Nvidia's when it comes to DX11 outside of AMD-backed games... Even the synthetic tests I've seen show them lagging behind outside Vulkan. Time and time again, the word from developers is that their DX11 driver is inefficient and their implementation works against the strengths of their cards.

Skyrim SE does not use the same godrays system as Fallout 4. IIRC from the debug strings it looks like it was reverse-engineered from one of Ubisoft's game/technical documents. It is also based on tessellation, but it works very differently to Nvidia's. (The same goes for a lot in SSE... the same things, implemented differently.)

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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

I'm not sure should i try improve mod for SSE or not. It's so much limiting or time consuming to make it any close to old skyrim mod... maybe put effort to Fallout 4 is better, because unique game. No idea what is more popular, i see that old skyrim version is not popular now.
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

So.. I've been a long time fan of what you have achieved with ENB and I decided to create an account to share some of my experiences with the special edition so far.

Personally I think that without ENB, SSE performs very well compared to old Skyrim. Overall performance is a LOT better and partly because it doesn't need the memory fixes crashes have reduced significantly (they are almost reduced to zero provided that mod authors convert their meshes properly). Modded gameplay also feels a lot smoother, there is less stuttering in exterior areas. I think this is the main reason some people prefer SSE over old Skyrim.

However, with ENB enabled SSE's performance really suffers. As you noticed yourself, fps drops are huge even if you don't have any effects enabled. The reason that I don't see many people reporting this -might- be because SSE's performance is overall a lot better, so it's harder to drop below 60 fps than in old Skyrim. I'm using a Nvidia card (GTX 970).

A good place to test this is the bridge just outside Riverwood, looking in the direction of Riverwood. With my (relatively) heavily modded setup, a combination of High/Ultra ini settings and without the SSE ENB files installed, my uncapped fps in this particular spot is about 65. If you don't use many mods this will probably be higher. Then with the exact same settings but with the default SSE ENB files installed this drops to 49 fps, even with all effects disabled. Add to this the effects that popular SSE ENB presets offer and it can even drop to the 30-40 range. There are several other spots that cause huge drops like this, ultimately leading to a stuttery experience.

Now in old Skyrim I would be perfectly fine with 40+ fps in exterior areas with ENB enabled, but because I'm spoiled by SSE performing so well without ENB and because the current SSE ENB doesn't offer as many effects as in old Skyrim, I chose to aim for smooth gameplay instead of optimal image quality. By adding a couple of colour correction effects and a single Lumasharpen shader via Reshade, fps stays above 60, even in problematic spots like Riverwood's bridge (~63 with Reshade vs ~65 without, whereas many other less troublesome areas easily reach 90-120 fps uncapped).

All in all I do still miss the 'ENB feeling' though, the image quality doesn't even come close to what could be achieved with ENB for old Skyrim. So while I feel that SSE's ENB is too performance heavy for the effects it offers at the moment, I'm still secretly hoping that it will be improved in the future. I realize that this is time consuming judging by your comments Boris, but at least know that it will be appreciated :) Also, SSE might see an increase in popularity again now that SKSE64 is released in an Alpha state.

Finally, a small tip for increasing SSE's performance in general.. try SSE Fixes by meh321. It's mainly for people that have a lot of plugins, but it might help even if you don't have many mods installed. Its effects are especially noticeable in Riften. Also, uncapping fps in SSE's ini files by adding bLockFramerate=0 to [Display] in Skyrim.ini & setting iVSyncPresentInterval to 0 under [Display] in Skyrimprefs.ini might help, provided you then limit fps to 60 via ENB/Driver etc.

Not sure if this is helpful in any way, but I felt like sharing it. Cheers

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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

The next elder scroll series is far away and even though fallout 4 is a new unique game compared to sse it doesn't have the same replay value plus it has a huge limitation with object culling that makes it impossible to shape the world without unbaking the meshes and crippling the performance. The number of people that play fallout will fall, sse will be going strong until the next series. Boris people were asked on reddit what is missing from the game and they said "proper enb support".
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Re: TES Skyrim SE 0.310

boris, i don't know what you basically get back for the time invested in these things, but here are my thoughts.
Next TES still 5 years away. DX9 TES (with issues on win8/10) will be even worse in popularity until then.
Skywind and Skyblivion release with SSE port > popularity (for both enb versions i guess)
SSE = same count of mods/year as oldSkyrim (counting all the ported mods, but without SKSE support until now, it's pretty good i think)

But base game is still the same.
So popularity may also depend on big mods, and maybe only for 1-2 month when one releases (like skywind or Beyond Bruma mods, which will have more bigger mods to come)

I think FO4 already has good ENB support. What else is there to do with ENB?
Also many die hard bethesda fans played FO4 only once, because it is boring (not my opinion, but theirs, just saying)
SSE ENB is missing the most basic features, let's say even ambient/direct light control, to let the game look a lot better than the original SSE. Therefore people don't see the need to use SSE ENB at the moment.

I know this is all a bit one-sided. But aside from "still the same base game", i honestly don't see why you won't get something back by investing in SSE. Also if you think about how many "easy or basic" features are still missing.
But i know you said, shaders in SSE are a big f... mess. And some features are not possible.

Hope that helps a bit.
On a personal note, i would be glad about more SSE support. I deleted all my Skyrim stuff, because old version doesn't run on Win10 without issues or SSE ENB has no features.
And my SSD was full, lol
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