Hey everyone. Been having a problem with MGE XE. It's too good! haha, but seriously, I have a big problem with too low of framerate, and I'm not sure how to fix it. I've been following a modding guide by Knots, who has responded to my questions at his forum, so I'm hoping that by opening the topic here, more eyes will yield more ideas!

My problem is that, for my specs, I'm experiencing very very low FPS. My specs are as follows:

MGE XE 0.8
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
graphics card is ASUS EAH 4870 Dark Knight
NOT steam version install
I don't know what an svn revision is, so I'm assuming I am not running with one.
Also, my processor is a quad core 2.4ghz, overclocked to 3.0ghz

I am pretty sure my graphics card can more than handle the guide I have been using (http://www.somethingfornobody.com/2011/morrowind-modding-guide/). My framerate, after tweaking distant land settings and resolution, AA, etc. remains at a pretty steady 14fps in Seyda Neen at start, 10 in Pelagiad, 16ish in Balmorra, and about 18-20 in the wilderness. I'm pretty sure my computer should be able to do way better than that. Per the modding guide, I am using a grass program as well as various trees for the continent. I am also, however, not sure if these are good fps rates, or what the range of fps rates are.

So... any ideas anyone?

The thing you have to keep in mind is, Morrowind's code was... "poorly optimized," if I recall correctly. It's very CPU-intensive, and doesn't use multithreading (thus multi-core processors and powerful GFX cards aren't nearly as effective as you'd think, since MW would only be firing on one cylinder, so to speak. 10-20FPS is about standard in that regard, from what I remember.

On the other paw, I've been out of the loop for a long time and it's completely possible I'm wrong about everything. But that's the Morrowind I remember playing.

EDIT: What I'm trying to say is, it's not your GFX card's fault, just MW being MW. The low framerate is more likely due to CPU usage (or, lack of optimization in that regard), and "normal."

Disable:
Vality's AI for Vurt's AI.esp
Vality's BC for Vurt's BC.esp

See if it improves the performance.
(regenerate distant land)

I have disabled EVERY grass and trees mod in my loadout. Basically no matter how many settings I turn off, the framerate is the same. Is 17-20fps normal for this game? Am I worrying over what should be fine? I would prefer around 30fps, but if that's unattainable, please tell me. I know the game is CPU intensive, but the fact that I get the same framerates with most things disabled as I do with most maxed leads me to believe some setting is wrong somewhere.

I have MGE XE draw distance at 10 cells, morrowind overhaul sounds and graphics, AF 16x AA 4x, And the only time i come close to going under the 30 fps mark is when i am in a huge grassy area with tons of trees, so yes it is possible to get amazing performance even with the game fully modded. In my experience the animated grass is what really affects frame rates the most.

Specs

I7 2600k overclocked to 4.7ghz
2x GTX 560 Ti in SLI
128 GB SATA III SSD
8 GB G.skill ram

Another thing is that MGE XE defaults to a draw distance of 20 cells. Cut that back to 9 or 10 and see if that helps.

wich shaders do you use?
i know that the DoF and SSAO shaders have a impact on performance wich is to heavy for my rig (q6600, gtx260, 6gb).
i disabled the DoF shader and use the SSAO FAST for outdoor and SSAO QUALITY for indoors.

overall my frames are at ~17-25 and i use no texture/mesh replacers at all ...

good to hear that iam not the only one struggling for better performance.

What are your exact distant land settings? Number of cells? Distant statics sizes and distances? It's very easy to get low framerates by setting some things higher than needed.

I have found that for me, using distant land at alll will reduce my fps into the mid teens, even if I only have it on 1 cell, so I get the water and grass. Keep in mind that Im on a macbook using bootcamp.

If anybody wants some personalized performance help, pm me and i will do my best, like i said it took forever for me to get the performance i have (scroll up) I already pm'ed you btw voila.

Is this only a problem when playing Morrowind or do other games suffer from it as well? If the latter is the case, maybe you have some sort of power-saving enabled for your cpu. Quite a few motherboard vendors tend to have those and unless the user is aware of it, it may just keep his performance down, especially in Morrowind where the CPU is almost always the bottle-neck.

MGE XE is strange in the fact that any small option can change the framerates dramatically. Doesn't take much. Even things you think would probably help frame rates sometimes don't. I remember when i had AA turned off in MGE XE i lost a ton of frame rate for some reason.

Here's what I said on SFN Forums over at the http://www.somethingfornobody.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19.



This should give a bit more context for you guys. A lot of you are assuming his hardware just plain isn't up to the mods in my guide, but that just isn't correct. The ATI Radeon 4870 should handle the settings in my guide at around 40fps provided he is playing at a resolution at or around 1280x768 and his distant land is set to around 12 cells. I know this for a fact because I have set an "IRL" friend up with Morrowind who has specifications nearly identical to this persons.

OP stated that he followed http://www.somethingfornobody.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19&start=10#p264 on getting good FPS out of MGE XE. That post was written based on what I learned setting MW up for another an "IRL" friend with a system much worse than his (ATI 4850 1gb, AMD Athlon II x2 2.7ghz). If that hardware can get good FPS with those settings, there is no reason why OP can't get good FPS with those settings. That is why this is a mystery.

Delete

Even with shadows enabled, the optimizations Hrn made in XE serve to sufficiently counter-balance the FPS hit shadows would have otherwise made. In all of the tests and surveys I have done, people had better framerates in XE vs MGE 0178.

I really don't understand how your reply is relevant to my post, either. I didn't say "MGE XE should have no framerate hit" what I am saying is that I am familiar with OP's hardware and there is no reason he shouldn't be getting playable FPS with the settings I suggested in that post on SFN.

Hey everyone. First of all, thanks for all the views and replays. I'm currently away from my desktop and out of town, but I'll try to provide as much information at the moment as is possible.

1) This problem seems to be unique to Morrowind. I can run Crysis on max settings with only moderate FPS decrease, and I have not encountered a game that is more unplayable than my current incarnation of Morrowind at this time.

2) OldFashionedGuy: Thank you for offering to take a personal interest in my problem! A wealth of knowledge is something I'd gladly take advantage of, so when I get home tomorrow, I'll pm you my detailed stats. (The biggest difference I can see at the moment is that your CPU is much better than mine. I know MGE XE draws from that more than the GPU, but I still think we can get my performance better).

3) I saw a post about what shaders I'm using. I have been using the default shaders listed in the guide I've been following: (in load order) 1. SSAO Fast; 2. Depth of Field; 3. Sunshafts; 4. Underwater Effects; 5. Underwater Effects (interiors) 6. Bloom Soft; 7. HDR.
That is a direct copy and paste from the guide I'm following.

4) some random things I happen to know off hand... Since I've been reading up on anything Knots has posted, I know my default settings. Testing-wise, I'm using 10.00cells, and some pretty underwhelming settings. I think I'm running the game currently at 1024x768. Those numbers might be wrong, I'm not a resolution expert. But I know the ratio is 5:3. Mesh detail at medium, grass at 75%. All these settings vary; as I have said before, I can basically max every setting and still get the same FPS.

5) An important note, I'm sure. I compared my morrowind FPS with and without MGE XE; I get on average around 40fps in all areas without running MGE XE, so I can be fairly confident in declaring that the problem lies somewhere within my computer's interaction with MGE XE.

*Special shout out to Knots. Thanks for following my problems here, too. I appreciate your, and everyone's help!

As I said in my message, I'll be sure to update this tomorrow when I get home.

Its just morrowind and MGE. I have a decent ish system myself, Q6600 @ 3ghz, 4GB ram, nvidia 260 oc.
If I run morrowind without MGE I get 40-60fps. Install either MGE and it goes straight to 25-35. I can also run Crysis on max at a happy 55 avg fps

I'm sure there's a lot you can do to optimise it but its playable in my opinion.

Are you sure you aren't forcing anything in your card's driver software like AA? You can check by running AMD Vision Control Center. It might still be Catalyst Control Center is you have older drivers (in which case, update!)

I currently don't have any program controlling my video card... No CCC or any control program that I can find. My drivers are up to date, however. Although I don't think AMD Vision Control Center would work since I have an ATI card. The program that used to work was Smart Doctor, but I don't ever remember seeing settings for AA on there...

MGE XE gives me seemingly a locked framerate of 5, no matter what I do with its options. Vanilla MGE works fine (adjusting options helps framerate to be in the acceptable 15-25 range for Morrowind).

I chalk it up to MGE XE not working well with my laptop's video card.

Just installed CCC via the ATI driver program... all settings are checked as 'determine by program', so that should be fine.

Another quick update. I did some tinkering, and it seems the distant land as a whole is what is causing my framerate drop. I tested a bunch of different formulas or removing shaders, removing certain mods, reducing resolution, AA, etc... I get approx. 35-40 fps at the lowest with distant land turned off. So I'm going to assume that my low CPU speed is what is hurting my performance when I turn on distant land. I have it overclocked to 3.0 ghz... anyone know a lot about overclocking? I'm sure I could get it higher.

Before over clocking any more you might want to check your temps. But to be honest, I doubt it would make any difference. I have a fairly hefty PC, over clocked to 3ghz (Q6600, 4GB Ram, nvidia260) and I generally play with distant land on at about 8, statics at 50 all standard XE shaders loaded and I get anything from 15 - 30 fps. Its just an old game. Even without MGE atall I rarely get above 40fps

My i7 2600k is at 4.8GHz and it doesn't make that much of difference. If you can OC, go for it, but don't expect miracles to come of it.

MrVoila, overclocking really depends on your Processor, your motherboard, your ram, and your cooling. You don't want to have load temps near the upper eighties/above for a daily use rig, and you don't want to feed too much voltage into your processor (regardless of temperature) because damage could still occur. http://www.overclockers.com/ place has a lot of good info if you're interesting in Overclocking, but remember, don't expect miracles.

Edit: 3.0GHz should be fine for Morrowind, even a modded install, but it also depends on your CPU type/architecture (A 3.0GHz Pentium 4 is not as good as a 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo, and that's not as good as a 3.0GHz i72600k).

Bit of a long shot and it's just from personal experience. Turn off the character high detail shadows in the Morrowind ini settings portion of MGE XE. If it's already turned off then I can't think of any other suggestion.

Although it'd be handy to know what resolution you're running at. If you're trying to run it at 1440x900+ then it's no wonder it's crawling. Drop the resolution and you'll claw back the frame rate.