[Skyrim SE] Huge FPS drop on high end PC with ENB

[lordefe]

Hello, I have been looking online for many solutions to my issue but so far no luck.

I've been playing modded Skyrim SE for a while now, regurarly getting 120FPS+ with my mods. I decided to install an ENB and am using the Pi-cho preset. The framerate dropped to around 50. I disabled all mods, and went into vanilla with only the ENB with said preset and SKSE, same result. I have ready many posts about this and tried everything. First I went into the enblocal.ini and disabled framerate lock, as well as VSync. I did the same with the Nvidia graphics control panel, and the Skyrimprefs.ini, disabiling VSync everywhere. I tried a differnt preset, iiENB, and got the same result. I am wondering if this is just because my system cannot handle it or I am doing something wrong. I have in my mind a high end PC with these specifications:

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card 11GB Vram
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8MHz processor
24 GB of RAM
120Hz display with 4k resolution

I tried looking to the sky at got an incrased framerate of 95~100 FPS. I am playing on 4k so it is taxing, but I think the system specifications is good enough to run with ENB at greater than 50FPS. If required I can post my ini files or mod list for further detail.

I appreciate the help.

[ENBSeries]

As i see you already tried to check if it's vsync issue. But still worth to keep in mind this could be a culprit and only way to understand if it happens is by how fps behave, mostly stick to certain frame rate and jump down or up much higher at some camera angles or as usual in any game smoothly changes. If you are sure it's not syncing problem, turn off effects one by one till see which consume the most performance. Often people use depth of field shaders in their presets which have abnormally high performance cost or set too high quality for ssao/ssil. As reference of performance UseEffect=false is what is maximum you can get with the mod installed, if it's still around 50 fps, then vsync. When you swapped presets but didnt get positive result, then should try delete files of previous preset, maybe some of them left, f.e. in the enbseries folder. When i had gtx1060 and faked 4k resolution by supersampling in skyrim le, performance was around the same, but that's for much slower videocard and with some issue of the le verison which makes any use of defer drop 20 fps each time, so your videocard should be much better performing. Another thing, you can try tools to monitor frequencies of gpu and cpu, maybe something wrong with this, throttling or power management errors.

[lordefe]

Thank you very much for the reply, it is excellent to get prompt help.

Unfortunately, I have tried pretty much everything in the time that has elapsed and still no solution. I switched ‘UseEffect’ to ‘false’ and got 120~160FPS, rarely going below 120. As soon as I turn on the effects from any preset (I tried a couple more) it goes straight to 56, stays there rarely increasing. I am unsure exactly what to look for in GPU frequencies, but I got an average clock frequency of 1750MHz with the preset effects enabled. Then 1950MHz with them disabled, but ENB still on. Temperature was on average 86C with the effects on and 71C with them off. I have only ENB and preset installed, turned off all mods.

I have tripled checked that I have VSync off everywhere, NVidia control panel, Skyrim Inis, Enblocal inis, etc. Is there any other way in the system to force VSync off? I just can’t help but feel that a drop from 120FPS to 56FPS with any preset on an RTX3080 cannot be due to simple performance cost.

Thank you for your time.

[ENBSeries]

I dont know what else to recommend except what told already. Are you sure there is no effect which causing it? Even if all in the [effects] category is disabled. The only one thing comes to mind is SLI, but doubt you have it.