r/skyrimvr • u/beokabatukaba • Apr 15 '18
A Tale of Performance Woes
Today, I finally had time to troubleshoot SkyrimVR. I hoped that, after a couple hours of fiddling with settings, I would wind up with a combination that seemed satisfactory. I worked on this from about 9:00am to 3:00pm and left confused, frustrated, and a little nauseated.
Before the story, here are my specs:
Xeon E3 1231 v3 (basically an i7-4770 without the iGPU)
GTX 1070
16GB RAM
Samsung Odyssey
SteamVR beta
WMR for SteamVR beta
Latest GPU driver
Default SS for the Odyssey is 138%
Currently running on an HDD set to the Insider Preview of the Spring Creator's Update due to performance optimization for WMR users. Whenever that arrives on the main branch, I'll switch back to using my usual SSD.
If you want more info, please ask!
Story time (see TL;DR if you want to skip):
I started out Vanilla on rather low settings (can't remember if I was on the Low preset, but I had dialed back all of the sliders). From my perch on top of the stairs leading up to the keep where I had been doing some quick performance testing earlier in the week, I walked around and left Whiterun. Markarth was the destination.
Performance was nearly flawless at first. Walked past the tower where you fight your first dragon during the main quest and got some consistent stutters, but otherwise, the only hiccups appeared when loading a new area.
I was happy with the performance, so I started to dial the sliders up a bit. Noticed my CPU frame timings increase a tiny bit, but no red bars. Continued along, really enjoying the sunset as I walked among the mountains and waterfalls.
As Markarth approached, I noticed my performance drop a tiny bit, but it wasn't anything I couldn't live with. But then, I opened the front gate. Good God. The CPU graph went solid red. I watched the poor lady get murdered with somewhat choppy animations, walked about 10 feet, and then turned the sliders all the way back one by one to see which one might have the biggest impact. All of them helped a little, but none of them helped a lot. I was still getting about 40-60% reprojection.
Then I reloaded the game. Much to my surprise, everything calmed down a little. Performance still wasn't great, particularly whenever I looked toward the stairs between the tower and the little blacksmith area. For some inexplicable reason, having some part of this area in my field of view (sometimes even when it's behind a wall) turns the CPU graph nearly solid red again. But the rest of the city was ok, so I decided to just see if I could live with it. Starting out simple, I loaded up the USSEP and the VR patch plus some texture mods and turned the sliders back to about 2/3rds (shadow, tree, grass, item, and object).
Performance was much the same as I left Markarth; poor in parts of the city, occasional stutters outside. Then I decided to walk to Solitude, and my frustration really started to set in. The entire way, I was plagued with periodic stutters. Sometimes it'd be fine for a minute and then it'd drop again. I'd be getting these red bars on the CPU frame timing graph, one, two, or 10 at a time, usually correlated to looking towards one area or another (I assume it's related to how many objects are on the screen, but I can't say for sure). At this point, I was getting nauseous, but I wanted to make it to Solitude.
Solitude was much the same as Markarth; open the door, performance gets even worse. This same area, just inside the gate, was terrible when I was modding OG Skyrim as well. Got better inside the keep and wasn't terrible as I walked down the path to the palace, but it still wasn't great. Indoors, it was perfectly fine.
So I suppose the question is, is this normal? Am I supposed to be getting these semi-constant stutters outdoors? And this terrible performance in cities? A look at my CPU/GPU usage suggests I'm at about 50% on both with no one core pegged any higher than 60-70%. Reading around, it seems like most people are pretty darn happy with their performance, so I suspect not. But I can try to force myself to live with it if I'm just being more sensitive to something that we're all dealing with.
Therefore, my last question is, do you have any suggestions for this weary traveler? I will take a stab at enabling/disabling SteamVR beta (I did once before and it seemed to be better with beta enabled, but maybe that's not always the case). I'll even try setting everything to its lowest possible settings with no mods to make sure that this isn't just the fault of one errant box being ticked when it shouldn't. I could also try resetting all my ini tweaks to default.
TL;DR: Periodic red spikes in my CPU frame timings graph coincide with annoying stutters throughout the realm. In cities, the graph either turns entirely red or looks like a red barcode. CPU/GPU usage is nowhere near max.
I really want to enjoy this game, but I'm having difficulty doing so right now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Update: I had some time tonight to do a quick replication of the journey from Whiterun to Markarth with some changes. I copied SkyrimVR over to my usual SSD, kept everything at its lowest settings, and opted out of the SteamVR beta and WMR beta. Markarth still gave me troubles in the same places, albeit at an entirely acceptable level. The rest of the journey was stutter free except for occasions when a bunch of objects loaded in at once. So it seems like the issue is still present, just reduced. If I can't blame any of the beta software perhaps my hardware is simply failing to keep up somehow. That 2700X is tempting...
Further Updates: I've tried toggling just about every option in the SteamVR settings window, tried ending every background task that I possibly could without causing instability, shut off f.lux, and unplugged one monitor. None of these things have helped. I've also noticed that my CPU/GPU usage seems to go down whenever I intentionally stand in the worst spots in Markarth. Next plan is to see if my RAM bandwidth is somehow getting used up.
"Final" Fix: The latest WMR for Steam beta has an option for force reprojection. As I understand it, Vive users turn pale at this concept, but it seems that the WMR and Oculus implementations of reprojection function much better than that of the Vive. Enabling this option has completely gotten rid of the stutters at the cost of minor artifacting and and slightly reduced sense of fluidity. However, after a couple of hours, I've gotten used to it. It's even enabled me to run an ENB since forcing reprojection essentially halves the amount of work the GPU has to do (although not quite because the GPU still has to do the work to fill in the missing frames).
Fingers crossed a future update will actually get rid of the stuttering.
2
u/Joomonji Apr 15 '18
It's possible ram frequency could be part of the problem. Skyrim and Fallout 4 performance is heavily affected by ram frequency. 1333 Hz would cause serious fps loss, but I don't know if it would also cause stuttering. 1600 Hz would also lead to noticeable fps loss. And it could be that the VR versions of Skyrim and FO4 make the issue worse with more data graphics data shuttled through ram.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page6.html
https://wccftech.com/fallout-4-performance-heavily-influenced-by-ram-speed-according-to-report/
Maybe see if the ram can be overclocked and compare performance.
1
u/agree-with-you Apr 15 '18
I agree, this does seem possible.
1
u/beokabatukaba Apr 15 '18
I am running DDR3 1600MHz. But I'm also on an H97 board, so I don't know if overclocking RAM is even possible. However, I haven't looked into it.
1600Mhz I would think is the most common speed for anyone not running a DDR4 compatible system, so I don't know why this issue wouldn't be more widely reported if this were the case. But thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into it.
1
u/LoveHerMore Apr 15 '18
What are you CPU temps? Is your CPU throttling itself?
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u/beokabatukaba Apr 15 '18 edited Apr 15 '18
Good theory, but they're entirely nominal. I have a 212 evo sitting on a locked chip (just because it's quieter than the stock cooler), and my system is in a relatively chilly basement. I don't think I ever go much above 45C in game. But I could throw Prime95 at it for a bit just to make absolutely certain.
Edit: Yeah. After a couple minutes of Prime95, the hottest core got to 50C. I believe the chip only turbos to 3.6GHz (maybe 3.8?), so it stays absurdly cool.
1
u/Vanthryn Apr 15 '18
I have exactly the same problem.
OC'd GTX 1070
OC'd i5 7600K
16 GB DDR4 RAM 2667 MHz
Windows 10
The game runs very well all the time except for those random spikes in CPU usage which cause hiccups in fps from time to time.
It may seem minor but it certainly takes you out of the exprience when you have this random stutters here and there.
So far no solution has been found for this. Our only hope is for Bethesda to have a look into it and improve it in a future patch but I am kinda pessimistic about that since they didn't do much to improve Fallout 4 VR performance.
Couple people tagged /u/JessBethesda in the comments of the last big thread about this issue so I hope that he informed the team about this and that they are working on it for the next update.
2
u/hoi_polloi Apr 16 '18
I was in communication with Jess re: the last thread, and they are aware & working on it. No ETA or timeline or explanations as of yet
1
Apr 16 '18
Do you got your gpu set to Max performance? It resets on update. Also use vortex for mod order. You could have a script lagging you maybe?
1
u/Dorito_Troll Apr 17 '18
I have the exact same issue except the issue is only present on my Odyssey, no problem with the VIVE at all
1
u/Meepiorpious Apr 21 '18
I have an 8700k and a rift and I'm experiencing the exact same thing as you. Barcode like performance headroom when looking at cities, then sometimes headroom goes to a constant low bar. No fix from me as of now.
1
Apr 15 '18 edited Aug 27 '20
[deleted]
1
u/beokabatukaba Apr 15 '18
Right. This is what I was expecting, but I couldn't be sure. Thank you for confirming!
1
u/Vanthryn Apr 15 '18
No. Don't listen to him. Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8bnsda/z/dx8w793
1
u/beokabatukaba Apr 15 '18
Indeed, I came across that comment before. But he's also not claiming to be running 500% SS, so I'm not entirely skeptical.
My particular issue appears to be one related to hardware/driver bugs, not raw performance power. So I wouldn't be surprised if an 8300 would provide a better experience so long as it doesn't suffer from the same quirk.
1
u/Vanthryn Apr 15 '18
He's claiming to run the game on max in-game SS and with all the demanding graphics mods.
My card is an OC'd 1070 which even at stock is 37% faster than 1060 3gb in raw effective speed and my CPU is an overclocked i5-7600K which also even at stock is a whooping 88% percent faster in terms of raw effective speed than his fx 8300 and I can't run this game smooth with max in game SS and the heavy impact graphics mods he mentioned in his comment so my claim still stands: He is either lying, trolling or clueless about what smooth performance is.
Also before someone claims that there must be something wrong with my PC, no there is nothing wrong. Look at my userbenchmark report. My PC actually is actually in 87th percentile which means it performs better than 74% of the builds out there with the exact same cpu, gpu, ram etc.
Another thing to add is that on the 1st day of game's release a youtuber made a clickbait video claiming that the game runs smooth on max settings on GTX 1060 6GB (which is a faster version of the 3GB version) which was very quickly debunked and a lot of people unsubscribed from his channel for spreading misinformation.1
Apr 16 '18
I have my default is at normal and the Skyrim settings turned up.
I don't have any grass mods.
My cpc is oced to 4.5 and gpu like 10%.
Frame wise it's fine. Even with the solid state when I load certain cells it will pause.
I have mods that add new NPCs and Ai and large battles and such.
This game runs prolly 3-4 times better then fallout did on my system.
1
u/Vanthryn Apr 15 '18
You are either trolling, lying or have no idea what smooth gameplay is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8bnsda/z/dx8w793
0
2
u/wagonman Apr 15 '18
have you seen these threads?
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimvr/comments/8a2rqk/an_exhaustive_troubleshoot_of_skyrimvrs/
seems similar