Source
r/skyrimmods•
Rattledagger

Benchmarking Ultimate Skyrim v4.0.6 and the advantages of PrivateProfileRedirector.

PC Classic - Discussion

In the https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/cjqs1f/vortex_10_release/ thread I some long load-times with the older v4.0.3-version of Ultimate Skyrim and multiple posters responded 76 seconds with MO2 seemed very long load-times off an SSD. One user, u/msp26 also asked if PrivateProfileRedirector was used, since this can decrease load-times.

To test if PrivateProfileRedirector does have a marked difference, I've just done a few benchmarks with the latest version of Ultimate Skyrim, v4.0.6. For anyone not familiar with Ultimate Skyrim, it's a mod-guide for original Skyrim where you can also use Automaton to download nearly all mods (if you've got a Nexus Premium account) and install all mods for you, or you can alternatively manually download and install some or all mods in the mod-guide. Even if you download mods manually you can still use Automaton to install them, and as part of installation Automaton also installs MO2 v2.1.6.

A few things must be handled manually, like installing SKSE, ENB etc. For the benchmarks I've followed the guide, except I didn't clean any master-files and I didn't include the customization of Automatic Variants but included all files. These two changes should be fairly irrelevant when it comes to startup-times. Also for Skyrim ini-files I used the medium-profile ones.

In all benchmarks I've timed how long it takes from clicking "run" until the menu shows-up in-game and I can start a new game or continue an old game. I also did test if where was any differences between continuing a game, but at least for me regardless of how fast or slow the game was to load where was no difference in time needed to load the save-game, meaning all used 17 seconds.

Now a little confusedly the first benchmarks using MO2 v2.1.6 was 59 seconds to start the game, but when I repeated these tests a couple hours later the times was suddenly 48 seconds. So either something was running in the background just after re-boot and influenced the first tests, or some optimizations happened in the back-ground decreasing the times.

For the benchmark-results, from slowest to fastest, all was for re-running the startup multiple times in a row:

  • 48 seconds - MO2 v2.1.6, this is the Ultimate Skyrim default.
  • 48 seconds - Vortex using USVFS as deployment-method.
  • 44 seconds - MO2 v2.2.0
  • 39 seconds - Vortex using hardlinking as deployment-method.
  • 37 seconds- MO2 v2.1.6 + PrivateProfileRedirector, or Vortex + USVFS + PrivateProfileRedirector
  • 35 seconds - MO2 v2.2.0 + PrivateProfileRedirector
  • 24 seconds - Vortex using hardlinking + PrivateProfileRedirector

As these results shows, using PrivateProfileRedirector has a significant impact on giving shorter load-times and this for installing a tiny mod with your mod manager of choice, but of course it's possible some extensive tests has revealed some incompabilities or something.

Changing from MO2 v2.1.6 to v2.2.0 also gives a small advantage with shorter startup-times + some other advantages, so I've no idea why Ultimate Skyrim is still using the older version in Automaton.

Vortex + USVFS now being roughly on par speed-wise to MO2 + USVFS is at least to me the most surprising result. Note, USVFS for Vortex does have some limitations, so in practice using hard-linking is the better option.

Vortex using hard-linking being the fastest isn't surprising. If includes 22 seconds to switch from blank profile to Ultimate Skyrim profile and 10 seconds to switch back to blank profile, if you start the game more than 3 times with the same profile using hard-linking is the fastest.

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As the results shows, PrivateProfileRedirector gives significantly shorter startup-times. So anyone know any reasons why PrivateProfileRedirector should not be used with Ultimate Skyrim?

Other benchmarks of Ultimate Skyrim with and without PrivateProfileRedirector would also be interesting.

Posted Aug 1, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC · edited

1720
Artaios21Winterhold•

I don't think there is any reason to not use PPR in general.

5
Kerber100•

There could be some undiscovered bugs. Though I really want to believe that's not true.

5
VivecsMangina•

Load order certainly matters.

I had issues with it when I loaded it last below all my other SKSE plugins. It needs to be as high up as you can manage.

3
RattledaggerOP•

In my benchmarks I loaded the mod last in MO2 and I'm not aware of any problems.

In Vortex and especially with hard-linked files any kind of "load order" for non-conflicting loose files should be irrelevant, since the order some non-conflicting files are added to a directory shouldn't matter.

1
VivecsMangina•

When I loaded the latest PPR where I loaded the last version, my game refused to load and I got an error saying that skse detected that one of my mods (BlockStealRedux) was based on an old version of skse or something like that, and the only way I could fix my game was to remove that mod and re run the Skyrim launcher to reset the error. Once I moved PPR to the top I could use that mod without issue.

Worth noting this was the LE version

1
I_Pirate_Your_Booty•

Tried ProfileRedirector makes no difference on my humongous load order. It still takes me about 2 minutes to finally be able playing Skyrim starting to count from the running the game through Mo2. It make make difference on minimal load orders but then they don't take a lot of time to start and load the save so what's the point of using private redirector?

3
Kerber100•

The point is that PPR speeds up the startup process but not always.

1
I_Pirate_Your_Booty•

By not always you mean sometimes the game will start faster but sometimes not? Randomly?

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Kerber100•

Not for every end user configuration. Different hardware, different mod setup, different... anything.

2
I_Pirate_Your_Booty•

If it doesn't help most configurations then it means the PPR is faulty or bugged.

1
RattledaggerOP•

Are you using HD or SSD?

As for "minimal load orders", Ultimate Skyrim is according to Vortex 279 active mods (including ProfileRediector), 32505 deployed files and 190 active plugins. Disk-usage is 25.9 GB.

1
I_Pirate_Your_Booty•

241 plugins, 447 ESL plugins, 769 active mod in mod plane. Last time I check it was 90 GB.

I don't use Ultimate Skyrim don't even know what it is. Vortex? I strongly advise to abandon this problematic tool and use something decent like Wrye Bash or MO2.

1
msp26Windhelm•

Yeah it's pretty good.

2
arcline111Markarth•

First of all, kudos for the benchmarking. I really like this type of thing as I think it's a great way to share and learn from each others experience.

I checked my MO1 managed mod list yesterday and saw I had PPR installed, but not active. So I activated it.

Launch game to main menu time was 3 seconds slower than without it. Also, in the main menu the only option was new game, no Continue option.

Went to the Posts section of PPR and in the first sticky it says: "It's discovered that MO1 does not compatible but at least the problem should not be as big for it since any call to a non existing file is already being optimized by MO1 itself. I will investigate further, but there doesn't seems to be anything I can do."

So, apparently it only works with MO2. Just sharing so people know this.

2
Al12rs•

Yes Mo1 already does something similar for ini files so the two things collide and Mo1 does not like that. Mo2 has a more generic VFS and does not hack the game functions like Mo1 did so redirector works perfectly there.

1
arcline111Markarth•

Just this morning I decided to finally move my game to MO2, so I'll give it a spin soon. Thanks.

1
arcline111Markarth•

Follow up: Ran it in MO2. Launch to main menu was 10 seconds slower that MO1, but 17 seconds faster than MO2 without PPR. Exiting an interior to world space I'd benchmarked previously with PPR was around 25% faster. So, I'd say it works with MO2, though nothing dramatic in my game. I'll be leaving it in though, every little bit helps :)

1
Al12rs•

Those results sound more like windows caching stuff in ram making some runs much quicker than others.
None the less we will be looking into performance optimizations for MO2 in the future. It's something I care about very much.

1
arcline111Markarth•

Thank you. We all care about performance :)

1