I'm fairly sure keeping to x87 and avoiding extensions is not unexpected behaviour for games or middlewares in particular. PhysX is another famous example.

True, however the demands of this game on PC hardware pretty much eliminate the tiny fraction of computers out there without SSE (I actually can't think of a build which would have Windows XP with DirectX9 support, 256MB vid memory, without SSE). So while it may be a common practice, it doesn't make logical sense to skip this in the optimization stage.

I tested this thing, and i don't notice any performance increases. And i have massive stutterings when i move the mouse, both cities and land. I don't know why. It's because i am using 5.50gb of graphical mods ? I've removed the mods, and the game runs fine without stutterings.

Agreed generalnmx. Maybe they didn't expect to be CPU limited. If it weren't so costly to maintain two paths it would be nice to have an executable for modern rigs separate from the general 'maximum compatibility' exe.

There's one way of testing and it's...

Voila!

Use 5.49GB of mods instead. This fixes CPU optimization, not much to do with nvde textures and what not. Go to the center of a city and try it out again.

I have some archives with mods, and updates. The last updates is textures5.0 (the name i've given to the archive) and if i play the game with textures4.0 i have no stutters. I've must add something that makes the game stutter.. but no, i've added only some clutter textures, and some other minor stuff. My cpu is at 3.8ghz i5, and 8gb ram.

The strange thing is, if i turn down the shadow resolution to 2048, it runs ok.

Your problem is mostly likely GPU limited, specifically you're overloading your Video Memory. You need to switch those textures down a tad, like 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 instead of 4096x4096. "Skyrim HD - 2K Textures" can kill most machines on Ultra settings (even High) by eating up all your VRAM if you use the "Full" package. I use "Lite" myself as I play on 2560x1600. Other things that will eat your VRAM: Anti-Aliasing (Skyrim can use FXAA and MSAA, while MSAA is the normal, unefficient method) and Ansiotropic Filtering. It's all about balancing these options if you want to use a ton of HD textures on cards with less than 2GB-3GB VRAM.

Right...once again, Video Memory (VRAM) is the most likely culplrit.

Yes, but the problem with that is he doesn't know if the stuttering was fixed by this mod or by disabling all of the graphics mods.

I think you are right, played 2 min. the game, then switched to msi afterburner, and viola the game with the heavy mods that i use, eats all my vram memory )))


But, again i've removed just for test the landscape and the armor folders from the textures mod, and the game still eats all my vram memory, but i have no stutterings, nothing, full smooth playgame.

The game uses all of the SSE2 instructions anyway -- just not where it would actually benefit the performance, namely in the loops that are called ten thousands of times per second. This means, it isn't some kind of compatibility scheme for older PCs: it won't run on pre-Pentium 4 hardware (i.e. CPUs manufactured before the year 2001) even with the original executables. Furthermore, systems that don't meet the minimum system requirements officially aren't supported anyway.

Bethesda either simply was lazy or wanted to boost hardware sales. The plugin does no miracles here. It is a very crude demo of a much larger speedup that could be achieved with practically zero effort: Changing the compiler flags. TESV has very obviously never been run in a code profiler. All the critical bottlenecks had been found within minutes and all the replacement code has been handcrafted within a day by a single person without access to the game's source code -- just by anolyzing the binary code.

OMG! What in the flying [censored]?!?! THANK YOU!

Went to one of the major FPS killers in Markarth, near the castle, looking over the blacksmithing area: 31FPS without this mod, 41FPS with it.

Another area, a little bit outside Riverwood and facing the direction of the town: 34FPS without the mod, 42FPS with it.

After going crazy with Skyrim for over a month I'm pretty much done with the game at the moment, but this is getting bookmarked and looked into the second I decide to play again. Great work.

Phenom 2 X4 @ 3.5GHz
8GB DDR3
Nvidia GTX 570

You must give yourself credit -- I certainly would have to brush up on several things, assembly included, to do what you did. Just the fact it occurred to you is a feat in itself. Just like it was a feat this was somehow missed by seasoned Bethesda programmers.

At the very least you paved the way for not only Bethesda, but other programmers to disassemble the code as you did and see if there can be further improvements which can be placed in "TESVAL.dll" and other plugins. Perhaps improvements that will lend themselves to console owners...not as likely, but who knows with an engine like this.

This had a really noticable effect on FPS for me. Made the game feel REALLY smooth now - despite a load of high-res texture mods in place. Impressive work. Well done.

I just tried it and got about an extra 10 fps at least. Works like a charm so far. Thanks!!

Edit: FPS were measured using afterburner's osd fps monitoring, and I've never seen numbers this high before.

Thanks it works and easy to use 25% increase in fps. Thanks.

Quick question - is SKSE or this mod in any way tied to Skyrim version? I'm using Skyim as it was installed, never updated it. Just a preference thing, got no use for Steam.

Yes it is. You are being left behind.

Ah well. So be it

I guess in about a month or so we will get an official Bethesda patch doing the same thing

Turns out there is a use for Steam; to get a 40% or so FPS increase . . .

True dat

I see, thanks and.. weird. I can't see the business case for being lazy or boosting hardware sales.

Really awesome, removed a lot (if not all) of the choppiness in the major cities and a few other problem areas!

Now to get some MORE graphical mods.

Just to add something for those who do not use any SKSE plugins, the folders SKSE and Plugins do not exist in the Data directory and will have to be added in order to get this to work.

Simply create a new folder in the Data directory and re-name it SKSE. Then create another new folder in the SKSE directory and re-name it Plugins.
Once done just extract or copy the TESVAL.dll file into the Data/SKSE/Plugins folder and you will be good to go.

If these folders do not exist then you will get an "Appcrash" when starting the game from the SKSE launcher.