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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition PC performance thread

F

Fitz

Member
Does anyone have issues running the RTSS overlay with this? I'm having a hard time getting it to display consistently. I've been messing around with various game and RTSS settings but can't figure out how to get it working all the time, at one point it was showing but giving me really dodgy statistic numbers. (e.g. 2587284% for GPU usage)
Not sure how it's related but I'm not able to take screenshots either whilst the overlay isn't functioning. edit: It really is super temperamental, I just loaded up the game and the overlay was working fine, so I exited to desktop and reloaded, now it's stopped working again.

edit2: I have some idea of what the issue is now, for some reason MSI Afterburner isn't detecting the game (as a 3D application) initially, but a quick alt+tab out and back sorts that out and the overlay then works fine. Luckily not an issue now that borderless windowed mode is available. Still not sure why the issue has just started today, I did update my Nvidia drivers today (375.76) though, possibly related.
 
The Lamonster

The Lamonster

Member
I'm on Nvidia driver 368.81. Is it worth it to download the latest "game ready" driver for this?

I'd always rather not update my graphics driver, just wondering how big of a difference it is.


Also, how's the Steam beta patch working for people? How's the sound quality now?
 
S

sfried

Member
I currently have the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul, WICO Characters People Dawnguard and Wild Hunt Gears, SMIM SE, Verdant, and Realistic Water arranged in this particular load order.

I was wondering if SMIM should go before or after WICO?
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
"Updated some sound files to not use compression" So they did the lazy thing and just put the old sound effect files in, didn't they? Too lazy to just recompress all audio at non-shit levels, eh, Bethesda?

At least performance did increase, with God Rays off I never dip below 50 now. Hopefully the finished patch brings that up to 60
 
M

Mutagenic

Permanent Junior Member
Still can't get FoV changes to take effect. I'm saving and then marking the .ini files as read-only and still nothing.
 
T

Truant

Member
For some reason my performance tanks whenever I'm in the forest around Meeko's Shack (South-ish of Dragon Bridge). Anyone else have issues here? I'm getting a butter smooth 60 in all other areas.


Q9yLJuq.jpg
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Turns out I had to restart my PC because of driver shit, now the lowest it goes is 56 FPS and feels *way* smoother. Great :D. Game runs ridiculously well now compared to the original release which would slow down to the 40s whenever I looked in a specific direction, now this just does brief dips to 45 when it loads stuff, otherwise it's 56-60, god dam son.


FX6300 at 3.7Ghz and a 280X with the latest hotfix drivers.
 
C

c0Zm1c

Member
Truant said:
For some reason my performance tanks whenever I'm in the forest around Meeko's Shack (South-ish of Dragon Bridge). Anyone else have issues here? I'm getting a butter smooth 60 in all other areas.


Q9yLJuq.jpg
Click to expand...

It's fine for me, 60fps. I'm running the game at medium shadows and low God rays though.
 
K

KCroxtonJr

Member
Anyone else use a gamepad (DS4) and have an issue where the controls get COMPLETELY screwed up after changing the controller keybindings in game? After quitting the game and starting it back up, it just changes every single controller binding, journal gets mapped to dpad up, action button gets set to Y, take weapon out gets set to A, etc.

Everything was fine until today, have been using my own setup since launch. I've uninstalled all mods, verified integrity of game cache, deleted ini files and other files, verified again, I don't know what else to try other than a full clean reinstall of the entire game, but don't see how that will help as I checked the SSE folder and there are only the stock files, no left over mod files at all. Googling the issue hasn't helped at all either, all of the "fixes" have not worked.

Deleting the ControlMap_Custom file in the games directory reverts the controls back to normal, tried changing the controls and setting that file to read only, still messes the controls up on next start up.

Anybody think it could be an issue with Steam now supporting DS4 (it's what I'm using)? Any ideas on how to fix this?
 
Cute Dragon Here

Cute Dragon Here

Member
JaseC

I've been experimenting with memory overclocks lately, and as I thought about TechSpot's Fallout 4 benchmarks that showed noticeable performance improvements with faster DDR3 RAM compared to DDR3-1600 CL11, I went ahead and checked the game's performance at 1600 MHz (11-11-11-28) and 2400 MHz (11-13-13-35; I didn't tweak the timings at all, I just let the motherboard do its thing and found a stable overclock).

Seems like having a similar engine to Fallout 4 kind of predict things; using an uncapped framerate at Low preset on an overclocked GTX 970 at 1920x1080 (to remove as much GPU bottlenecking as possible), in Whiterun, I've noticed that when I'm staring down from the entrance to the inn, the frame rate improved from 125 to 135. The more important thing, though, at the well near the inn, looking down at the entrance, with lots more nearby NPCs, the frame rate appear to be increased from about 135 all the way up to 165.

Excessively high? Yes. But it probably does mean that high memory speeds might speed up internal processing so that you're less likely to encounter CPU-related issues. Even though most people are going to play the game with a frame rate cap at 60, I suspect having spare CPU time can only help when things get hectic, or you load it down with mods. It's always good to have headroom.
 
W

Widge

Member
Fitz said:
Does anyone have issues running the RTSS overlay with this? I'm having a hard time getting it to display consistently. I've been messing around with various game and RTSS settings but can't figure out how to get it working all the time, at one point it was showing but giving me really dodgy statistic numbers. (e.g. 2587284% for GPU usage)
Not sure how it's related but I'm not able to take screenshots either whilst the overlay isn't functioning. edit: It really is super temperamental, I just loaded up the game and the overlay was working fine, so I exited to desktop and reloaded, now it's stopped working again.

edit2: I have some idea of what the issue is now, for some reason MSI Afterburner isn't detecting the game (as a 3D application) initially, but a quick alt+tab out and back sorts that out and the overlay then works fine. Luckily not an issue now that borderless windowed mode is available. Still not sure why the issue has just started today, I did update my Nvidia drivers today (375.76) though, possibly related.
Click to expand...

My game has a habit of horribly lurching like a rubberband. When I played last, an alt-tab out and back again seemingly resolved that last time for me too.

Odd, but FFXIII was the opposite for me. If I ran from a fresh boot - fine, if I so even breathe at Chrome or something - horrible performance.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Noivern said:
JaseC

I've been experimenting with memory overclocks lately, and as I thought about TechSpot's Fallout 4 benchmarks that showed noticeable performance improvements with faster DDR3 RAM compared to DDR3-1600 CL11, I went ahead and checked the game's performance at 1600 MHz (11-11-11-28) and 2400 MHz (11-13-13-35; I didn't tweak the timings at all, I just let the motherboard do its thing and found a stable overclock).

Seems like having a similar engine to Fallout 4 kind of predict things; using an uncapped framerate at Low preset on an overclocked GTX 970 at 1920x1080 (to remove as much GPU bottlenecking as possible), in Whiterun, I've noticed that when I'm staring down from the entrance to the inn, the frame rate improved from 125 to 135. The more important thing, though, at the well near the inn, looking down at the entrance, with lots more nearby NPCs, the frame rate appear to be increased from about 135 all the way up to 165.

Excessively high? Yes. But it probably does mean that high memory speeds might speed up internal processing so that you're less likely to encounter CPU-related issues. Even though most people are going to play the game with a frame rate cap at 60, I suspect having spare CPU time can only help when things get hectic, or you load it down with mods. It's always good to have headroom.
Click to expand...

Yeah, faster RAM mitigates CPU-related bottlenecks, though of course the extent to which this is the case will vary game to game.
 
U

Unai

Member
Fitz said:
Does anyone have issues running the RTSS overlay with this? I'm having a hard time getting it to display consistently. I've been messing around with various game and RTSS settings but can't figure out how to get it working all the time, at one point it was showing but giving me really dodgy statistic numbers. (e.g. 2587284% for GPU usage)
Not sure how it's related but I'm not able to take screenshots either whilst the overlay isn't functioning. edit: It really is super temperamental, I just loaded up the game and the overlay was working fine, so I exited to desktop and reloaded, now it's stopped working again.

edit2: I have some idea of what the issue is now, for some reason MSI Afterburner isn't detecting the game (as a 3D application) initially, but a quick alt+tab out and back sorts that out and the overlay then works fine. Luckily not an issue now that borderless windowed mode is available. Still not sure why the issue has just started today, I did update my Nvidia drivers today (375.76) though, possibly related.
Click to expand...

I didn't test the overlay, but I remember that my RTSS frame rate limit is only applied if I open the Steam Overlay first. Probably the alt + tab you did would work too.
 
S

Sky87

Member
Looks like the patch is out of beta. I wonder if they fixed those NPC disappearing issues. Didn't that affect the patch?
 
Elven_Star

Elven_Star

Member
UnaiGamer said:
Turn off Deph of field.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Didn't know this is just DoF. It's way more aggressive than what I see in other games. I wish there were a way to turn it on and off with a hotkey or something. Looks great in some screenshots, but in actual gameplay it sucks.

Edit: I tried that, and it changed nothing! Guess it's my ReShade.
 
Z

zombipuppy

Member
Is there any chance there will be a Skyrim Configuration Tool available for SE? That was such a useful tool for the original.

With this updated engine, I can't seem to find an updated guide to help tweak .ini settings.
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Is there any way to tweak the post process effects added to make them less intense, my 280X can't handle it perfectly, but my CPU is more than up for the task of ultra settings, not that I see any difference between High/Ultra anyway in regards to shit that matters like LoD.

But I like the godrays, can you tweak them below the low setting? Because just having it set to Low brings my FPS down from 55-60 to 40-45, which is kind of unacceptable, since the 40s manage to feel worse than a locked 30, but since I'm so damn close to a locked 60 I figured I'd try to get it there
 
O

OraleeWey

Member
The new update makes my frame rate go from 60 to 75 and I have downloaded RivaTuner Statistics Server but it does not cap the framerate to 60fps. I can tell because the game looks choppy. Is there another way to cap the framerate from the .ini files maybe?
 
Z

zombipuppy

Member
OraleeWey said:
The new update makes my frame rate go from 60 to 75 and I have downloaded RivaTuner Statistics Server but it does not cap the framerate to 60fps. I can tell because the game looks choppy. Is there another way to cap the framerate from the .ini files maybe?
Click to expand...

If you are using an NVIDIA card, you can download NVIDIA Inspector. That tool will allow you to cap the framerate.
 
S

SnowTeeth

Banned
Not only am I stuck in the [beta] with no option to opt out, performance is now actually worse in 1.2 than it was before on my i72600 16GB 960 4GB

Thanks Bethesda.
 
E

Echoplx

Member
SnowTeeth said:
Not only am I stuck in the [beta] with no option to opt out, performance is now actually worse in 1.2 than it was before on my i72600 16GB 960 4GB

Thanks Bethesda.
Click to expand...

The beta is now the current stable version so it doesn't really matter but if you want to opt out manually you need to close steam and edit the "appmanifest_489830.acf" file in the steamapps folder with a text editor and remove this line

"betakey" "beta"
 
S

SnowTeeth

Banned
Echoplx said:
The beta is now the current stable version so it doesn't really matter but if you want to opt out manually you need to close steam and edit the "appmanifest_489830.acf" file in the steamapps folder with a text editor and remove this line

"betakey" "beta"
Click to expand...

I've already begun a fresh install anyhow, but thanks.
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Echoplx said:
The beta is now the current stable version so it doesn't really matter but if you want to opt out manually you need to close steam and edit the "appmanifest_489830.acf" file in the steamapps folder with a text editor and remove this line

"betakey" "beta"
Click to expand...

So that's why it hasn't downloaded any patches. Opting out did remove the [beta] though. Bethesda please :lol
 
S

sfried

Member
Just a heads up guys. 1.3 beta is out right now!

Notes:
Bethesda said:
Fixes

General stability and performance improvements
Fixed an issue where Slow Time effects weren't behaving properly
Better support for 144hz displays
Click to expand...
 
S

SlickVic

Member
Noticed a bizarre resolution issue outputting the game over HDMI from my laptop to the TV. Incidentally noticed today that when my TV switches inputs it usually display the resolution on the corner. When I started Skyrim it put the resolution at 1080i. When I quit the game and went back to desktop/Steam it would switch back to 1080p. I loaded up a few other games to see if this resolution/interlacing issue was happening across everything, but everything else stuck to 1080p so it seemed a problem specifically affecting Skyrim SE.

Wound up googling this and found 1 post regarding the issue on the Steam forums over here. I wound up not changing any drivers, but I followed their advice regarding setting a custom resolution in Display options of the 'Intel HD Graphics Control Panel' to 1920x1080p 60 Hz (oddly enough this is what the default settings had already been set to) and sure enough, when I loaded up the game this time my TV told me it was running 1080p. Obviously the picture looked significantly improved. Not sure if this issue was going on since the beginning or with a recent driver update but I didn't notice it until today.

Somewhat weird issue considering it seems related to the refresh rate on the Intel HD card rather than the nVidia dedicated GPU that's actually running the game. And from my tests only seemed to affect Skyrim Special Edition (didn't test the original game). Honestly don't think I would have ever figured this out unless I read that Steam post, since confusingly the default settings on the Intel HD panel were already set to 60pHz so didn't realize that was causing the issue.

Probably worth double checking if you're playing this with a laptop with both intel and nvidia GPU's and connecting to a TV to see that you're really getting 1080p and not 1080i.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
For future reference, Steam seemingly not opting out of the beta branch is just a tiny bug that can occur when the public build is identical and no download is triggered. I say "seemingly" as opting out does actually work, but the [beta] tag won't disappear until the client is restarted.
 
S

sfried

Member
I'm getting better performance numbers compared to using vanilla ENB plugin .dlls. Scenes stay a consistent 60fps with minor drops to 58fps with Verdant on (its new iMinGrassSize=60) default settings, but the big 47fps dips no longer appear unless I'm have ENB doing rendering.
 
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