Question regarding what components effect which aspect of gaming?

[XylimirGaming]

Hello,

 

So recently I have been adding a bunch of mods to my Skyrim game as I would like to play it again but I've already played the crap out of it in its original form. My game currently locks in around 52 FPS and won't component would be causing this? My initial instinct was that it was the CPU since its having to process all those extra entities. Is this correct? I plan on upgrading to a 980ti at the end of this year and am looking into possibly upgrading my CPU as well. Would upgrading my CPU provide higher framerates in this situation? I know usually CPU upgrades only provide a few frames but clearly this is a special situation that is bringing my computer down to a crawl. Also, if i were to upgrade my CPU, what would be the best CPU to upgrade to? I would prefer to stay on the LGA1150 platform so I don't have to buy a new motherboard as well, unless I could make huge gains by switching to a specific CPU on a different socket. 

 

I have done some monitoring in and out of these high density modded areas and have noticed that my CPU usage jumps around from 60-90% usage, maybe occasionally spiking to almost 100 when I am looking around rapidly. This is initially why I suspect this could be the bottleneck. Is there a way to measure GPU usage? Currently I can only observe via EVGA Precision X that the fans ramp up to 80-90% speed. My ram sits around 6.9 GB usage so even though I play on expanding to 16GB as well, I don't think this is the issue.

 

My build:

CPU: Intel i5 4670 k

Motherboard: ASUS Gryphon Z97 LGA1150 DDR3 mATX

RAM: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR

Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 60GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  

Main Drive Currently Being Used For Skyrim: Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 7200RPM 64MB CacheSATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"  

PSU: Cooler Master i600 - 600W Power Supply with 80 PLUS Bronze 

GPU:EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card

 

Any help, insight, explanation, or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!

[Glenwing]

Hello,

 

So recently I have been adding a bunch of mods to my Skyrim game as I would like to play it again but I've already played the crap out of it in its original form. My game currently locks in around 52 FPS and won't component would be causing this? My initial instinct was that it was the CPU since its having to process all those extra entities. Is this correct? I plan on upgrading to a 980ti at the end of this year and am looking into possibly upgrading my CPU as well. Would upgrading my CPU provide higher framerates in this situation? I know usually CPU upgrades only provide a few frames but clearly this is a special situation that is bringing my computer down to a crawl. Also, if i were to upgrade my CPU, what would be the best CPU to upgrade to? I would prefer to stay on the LGA1150 platform so I don't have to buy a new motherboard as well, unless I could make huge gains by switching to a specific CPU on a different socket. 

 

I have done some monitoring in and out of these high density modded areas and have noticed that my CPU usage jumps around from 60-90% usage, maybe occasionally spiking to almost 100 when I am looking around rapidly. This is initially why I suspect this could be the bottleneck. Is there a way to measure GPU usage? Currently I can only observe via EVGA Precision X that the fans ramp up to 80-90% speed. My ram sits around 6.9 GB usage so even though I play on expanding to 16GB as well, I don't think this is the issue.

 

My build:

CPU: Intel i5 4670 k

Motherboard: ASUS Gryphon Z97 LGA1150 DDR3 mATX

RAM: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR

Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 60GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  

Main Drive Currently Being Used For Skyrim: Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 7200RPM 64MB CacheSATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"  

PSU: Cooler Master i600 - 600W Power Supply with 80 PLUS Bronze 

GPU:EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card

 

Any help, insight, explanation, or suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!!

Try using GPUShark to monitor your GPU load.

 

HWiNFO is a great all around monitoring utility too and would be much better, though it takes quite a bit of time to customize it to an organized and readable overview.

 

[Frankie]

Skyrim mods like to eat VRAM, so I would guess that you are hitting the 3GB VRAM limit on the 780.

[TheMechEngineer]

If you're playing at a high enough resolution, you might be running out of VRAM.

[XylimirGaming]

Sorry I should have mentioned that I am playing at 1080p. I do have a lottt of mods running though. (Over 100, many of which are graphical mods)

These are my current plans for the upgrade: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zGfJ3C

I will do a test with GPUShark now.

I'm guessing that the 980ti's 6GB of VRAM would help out a lot in this regard if that is the case..

Thanks for the amazingly quick replies!

[Frankie]

Sorry I should have mentioned that I am playing at 1080p. I do have a lottt of mods running though. (Over 100, many of which are graphical mods)

These are my current plans for the upgrade: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zGfJ3C

I will do a test with GPUShark now.

I'm guessing that the 980ti's 6GB of VRAM would help out a lot in this regard if that is the case..

Thanks for the amazingly quick replies!

 

If you're running over 100 mods and many of them are graphical mods, then you're most definitely hitting the VRAM limit. Are you sometimes experiencing stuttering by any chance ?

[XylimirGaming]

I'm not really experiencing stuttering, and it's really only one mod in one area that causes this low 20-30. It is the 7K Better Whiterun - City Under Construction - BETA mod. (This is not counting some custom player homes as some of them take it to the extreme with items and its nearly unplayable inside some of them) I maintain 50ish fps when this mod is off. The 50 fps is completely playable for me. I only ask this as although this is way in the future I would reallly like to be able to play this modded skyrim with the oculus rift when it comes out next spring. I know I will need high fps (higher than 52) for this to work and I plan on upgrading my computer this Christmas season in preparation for this rift. I ran GPU shark and took screenshots of the results along with task manager and evga precision x (sorry theyre actual pictures and not screenshots, I couldn't take a 3 screen screenshot when in the game)

When running around and looking around quickly in this dense area (where I get the 20-30fps) I was getting results like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7igrsMuc2UVbWtqYmJzRFJydms/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7igrsMuc2UVdWFJTTdvZUo4UDg/view?usp=sharing

 

I am not sure how my VRAM can be exceeding the available ha... But I guess thats why I'm on here asking for help ha..

 

When I am just standing around in this area I get numbers like these:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7igrsMuc2UVZUZ3RjkycmxBZE0/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7igrsMuc2UVdktYMERJYTVtTmM/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7igrsMuc2UVYlBONTlSa0NlYWc/view?usp=sharing

[XylimirGaming]

And if anyone needed this information as well, here is my mod list:

Skyrim.esm

Update.esm

Dawnguard.esm

HearthFires.esm

Dragonborn.esm

ClimatesOfTamriel.esm

AOM.esm

ApachiiHair.esm

moonpath.esm

LevelersTower.esm

AmethystHollowsMaster.esm

RiverHelm.esm

MagicDuel.esm

HighResTexturePack01.esp

HighResTexturePack02.esp

HighResTexturePack03.esp

immersive roads.esp

SkyFalls + SkyMills.esp

SDO Full-LOD - Waterfall Effects.esp

Skyrim Flora Overhaul.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Interiors.esp

RealisticWaterTwo.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Exteriors.esp

SDO Full-LOD - The Morthal Swamp Light.esp

fallentreebridges.esp

SDO Full-LOD - Whiterun Trundra Creeks.esp

SDO Full-LOD - Giant Campfires.esp

Watercolor_for_ENB_RWT.esp

Skyrim Particle Patch for ENB - Flame Atronach Fix.esp

ClimatesOfTamriel-Dragonborn-Patch.esp

ClimatesOfTamriel-Dawnguard-Patch.esp

ClimatesOfTamriel-Sound.esp

ClimatesOfTamriel-Sound-Dawnguard-Patch.esp

CoT-WeatherPatch.esp

TrueStorms.esp

TrueStorms-CoT-WeatherPatch.esp

Supreme Storms - Cot Version.esp

CoT-WeatherPatch_Snow-40.esp

CoT-WeatherPatch_SupStorms.esp

CoT-WeatherPatch_NL3.esp

CoT-WeatherPatch_DB.esp

TrueStorms-SupremeStorms-CoT.esp

mintylightningmod.esp

MintyLightningMod_COT_Patch.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Minor Cities and Town Interiors.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dungeons.esp

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dawnguard Interiors.esp

Purewaters.esp

SMIM-Merged-All.esp

dD - Enhanced Blood Main.esp

dD-Dragonborn-Dawnguard-EBT Patch.esp

DeadlySpellImpacts.esp

SkyUI.esp

Tytanis.esp

AOM.esp

isilNarsil.esp

Orlong's Hearth vdot9.esp

Whiterun Ferns.esp

BlackSacramentArmor.esp

BlackSacramentDBReplacer.esp

BetterRiften.esp

Cloaks - Dawnguard.esp

Dragon Falls Manor.esp

VariousGuardReplacer.esp

moonpath_questdata.esp

BetterQuestObjectives.esp

Blink - Standalone.esp

elvenwood.esp

armored-horses.esp

Phenderix's Magic Evolved.esp

Elementalist.esp

UFO - Dawnguard AddOn.esp

UFO - Heartfire AddOn.esp

UFO - Ultimate Follower Overhaul.esp

Uncle Sheo.esp

WheezesDungeonPack1.esp

AmazingFollowerTweaks.esp

dovahkiinrelax.esp

DragonsDiversified.esp

hobbithouse.esp

Nirn Falls Manor.esp

RiversideLodge.esp

Apocalypse - The Spell Package.esp

Dr_Bandolier.esp

Chesko_WearableLantern.esp

AmethystHollowsUpdate.esp

BecomeKingOfRiverHelm.esp

BFFAnimalCompanions.esp

ribeable-broom.esp

SoS - Civilization.esp

SoS - The Dungeons.esp

SoS - The Wilds.esp

TAVESolitude.esp

WhiterunREVISION.esp

WhiterunFortified.esp

RRBetterWhiterunInt.esp