Question about RAM, VRAM and ENBSeries for Skyrim

[Sacremas]

A friend of mine told me that Skyrim can't take advantage of more than 4 Gig RAM, and I'm inclined to believe him. However does this also apply to VRAM and ENBseries? Will having 8 gig RAM and 8 gig VRAM like I do be a waste with Skyrim, or can ENHost and the ENB take advantage of the extra RAM+VRAM?

Currently I am using latest RealVision ENB, and my VideoMemorySizeMb=14336 in enblocal.ini.

Thanks for any responses, and thanks for ENBseries!

[ENBSeries]

VideoMemorySizeMb=14336 is wrong, too big. Find out the size of shared video memory for your PC.
Skyrim itself can't use more than 4 gb ram, but with ENBoost enabled it may use up to 1 Tb or 128 Gb (don't remember now, see readme) ram for thouse resourses, which are normally placed in video memory, such as textures and models and they are mostly the only one cost a lot of ram in games.

[Grestorn]

I just installed a Titan X expecting Skyrim & ENB to use more than 4 GB VRAM. But actually I can't get it to use more than 4 GB.

Actually, when opening the In Game ENB panel (Shift-Enter) and opening the "Profile" section, I can see that the available memory seems to be cut of at 4 GB. Even if the available VRAM shows a much higher value, the first line, "available memory" never shows more than about 3 GB, even before the save game is actually loaded.

It seems to me that the ENBBoost itself, also being a 32bit app, is also limited to 4096 GB (ie. 2^32 Bytes).

Or am I missing something here?

[kingeric1992]

bad config?

Even if the available VRAM shows a much higher value, the first line, "available memory" never shows more than about 3 GB, even before the save game is actually loaded.

you mean "available video memory" never goes above 3g? or "total video memory"?

To my understanding, available vram is what's left of physical vram, total vram is determined by VideoMemorySizeMb= [enblocal.ini] if auto detect set to false.
for reference, available vram is around 3.5g with 16g total vram on my rig on main menu.

[ENBSeries]

Dx9 have limit for video memory size reporting, because it was developed much earlier than videocards with 2 gb vram existed. Better use specific tools to measure vram usage.

It seems to me that the ENBBoost itself, also being a 32bit app, is also limited to 4096 GB (ie. 2^32 Bytes).

enboost.exe spawning as many times as required and there is no way to use x64 process to share memory.

[Grestorn]

Thanks for answering!

I've never seen more than once ENBHost.exe instance running (checking with the Task Manager). Is there any option to control the multiple spawning?

I'm using MSI Afterburner to check VRAM usage. During preload, the memory usage grows until just above 4000 MB and then drops back to around 1000MB and starts growing again. In the game itself, you can see that the memory is capped at around 4500 MB, if this limit is reached, some memory is always cleared to make room for other textures - causing heavy stutter.

I tried to activate DisableDriverMemoryManager, it seemed to improve the situation a bit (the cap being raised to 4500 MB instead of 4096 MB), but that's it.
Enabling AutodetectVideoMemorySize will cause ENB to show only 4064 MB as available in it's panel.


This is my current enblocal.ini

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=false
InitProxyFunctions=true
ProxyLibrary=D:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\common\Skyrim\d3d9injFX.dll

[GLOBAL]
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false
UseDefferedRendering=true
IgnoreCreationKit=true

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
EnableOcclusionCulling=true
EnableZPrepass=true

[MULTIHEAD]
ForceVideoAdapterIndex=false
VideoAdapterIndex=0

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=false
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=true
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=64
VideoMemorySizeMb=8000
EnableCompression=false
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=false
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false

[ENGINE]
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true
MaxAnisotropy=16
ForceLodBias=false
LodBias=0.0
AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=false
EnableVSync=false
VSyncSkipNumFrames=0

[LIMITER]
WaitBusyRenderer=false
EnableFPSLimit=false
FPSLimit=10.0

[INPUT]
//shift
KeyCombination=16
//f12
KeyUseEffect=123
//home
KeyFPSLimit=36
//num / 106
KeyShowFPS=106
//print screen
KeyScreenshot=44
//enter
KeyEditor=13
//f4
KeyFreeVRAM=115

[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]
Enable=false
Quality=1
DesiredFPS=20.0

[ANTIALIASING]
EnableEdgeAA=false
EnableTemporalAA=false
EnableSubPixelAA=false
EnableTransparencyAA=false

[FIX]
FixGameBugs=true
FixParallaxBugs=true
FixParallaxTerrain=false
FixAliasedTextures=true
IgnoreInventory=true
FixTintGamma=true
RemoveBlur=false
FixSubSurfaceScattering=true
FixSkyReflection=true
FixCursorVisibility=true
FixLag=false

[Grestorn]

Additional question: When and how is the additional spawning of ENBhost.exe processes done?

I used the process monitor to monitor "process create" calls. I can see one call when TESV is starting:
10:07:33,4728210 TESV.exe 17236 Process Create D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Skyrim\enbhost.exe SUCCESS PID: 17248, Command line: enbseries_tesskyrim3026468

Is it supposed to start the additonal processes dynamically when the memory is needed or right at the start depending on the VideoMemorySize set in enblocal.ini?

[Grestorn]

I have to correct myself:

Additional enbhost.exe's DO spawn indeed. But only once the system memory of the first process exceeds 4 GB. Which sounds correct actually.

But the memory footprint of the process was never my problem: The texture memory in the GPU's video memory is. It seems that the amount of memory for textures etc. is capped at 4 GB, no matter how many enbhost.exe are running.

I can exceed the 4 GB threshold, however, by spending memory on the framebuffer. By using high resolutions, like 3620x2036, the VRAM usage goes up to 4.8 GB. Still, the problem with the textures remain: They keep being swapped out and reloaded, because I just more than 4 GB worth of textures in Whiterun for example.

[ENBSeries]

I can't answer, mod do not have limit for vram size and amount of textures in there.

[kingeric1992]

Don't know about titan x, but titan 6gb is out there for awhile, didn't see anyone with similar issue.
Also a friend of mine [DAHAKA ENB] is using 8gb 980m, never heard him saying anything. I'll ask him to post his config here.