How can I minimise the SkyrimVR.exe window?

[Nubje]

On other VR games the .exe windows are adjustable, and minimising them increases the performance significantly. But for Skyrim and Fallout VR, it won't let me.

To my surprise, I haven't really seen anyone else mention this, as it does actually make a big difference.
Do you guys just play with the window size on default?

[WRONGTURN]

I just turn my tv ( monitor ) off. I don't need it in vr

[hster]

I couldn't find anything so I just drag the window to the bottom of the screen so only the top of the title bar shows. I was quite surprised that in some areas like whiterun, I get a 25% boost- i.e. 60fps instead of 40fps.

[Nubje]

Originally posted by hster:

I couldn't find anything so I just drag the window to the bottom of the screen so only the top of the title bar shows. I was quite surprised that in some areas like whiterun, I get a 25% boost- i.e. 60fps instead of 40fps.

hmm really?
i think i will give that a try.
will respond again after confirming.

[Wizard]

Originally posted by hster:

I couldn't find anything so I just drag the window to the bottom of the screen so only the top of the title bar shows. I was quite surprised that in some areas like whiterun, I get a 25% boost- i.e. 60fps instead of 40fps.

I do the same.

[IanL]

My understanding is that no additional rendering is done in order to produce the mirror window, its simply taken from one side of the two VR images, as a video feed if you like, and then upscaled/downscaled by the GPU to produce the final mirror resolution which doesn't tend to use much resource other than GPU memory.

Therefore, unless your GPU is struggling generally (95% or higher utilization) or is low on video memory then you shouldn't really notice any difference in performance by minimising the mirror window.

[hster]

This might be different on laptops? I have an Alienware 17 r4 (4k screen) with an 1080ti (on an AGA) and the gpu is doing barely 80% even with 2.0 SS now that I've uninstalled the enb. The task manager shows that the internal GPU Intel HD 530 is doing the work displaying the mirror (30-40%) which I presume is causing the bottleneck. When I drag it below so it doesn't display, the internal GPU goes back down to 15% and my fps shoots up. I can easily reproduce it by displaying the mirror again and the workload of the internal GPU shoots back up and the fps goes down.

The fps gain is hugely noticeable in demanding areas.

[IanL]

That's interesting. Have you tried disabling your motherboard GPU chip, as if it's processing the mirror output then your main GPU is having to pass the rendered image accross an external bus to it. Maybe this is what's causing the frame drops as otherwise it would all be done on the same GPU.

[hster]

No I wouldnt' disable the motherboard gpu chip since I would need a separate monitor. It was the case with my 1070 soddered onto the motherboard not just my AGA that it would copy the stream to the integrated chip. But anyway it is a good fps booster in my limited laptop/Alienware case and I'm totally happy I chanced on it.

[Nubje]

Originally posted by hster:

This might be different on laptops? I have an Alienware 17 r4 (4k screen) with an 1080ti (on an AGA) and the gpu is doing barely 80% even with 2.0 SS now that I've uninstalled the enb. The task manager shows that the internal GPU Intel HD 530 is doing the work displaying the mirror (30-40%) which I presume is causing the bottleneck. When I drag it below so it doesn't display, the internal GPU goes back down to 15% and my fps shoots up. I can easily reproduce it by displaying the mirror again and the workload of the internal GPU shoots back up and the fps goes down.

The fps gain is hugely noticeable in demanding areas.

tried ur suggestion today. unfortunately it didn't make a difference performance-wise.

[Despiser]

If the gpu has to render screen separately I’m really surprised devs would not have an option to disable it given that it would have to do twice the work on already demanding work load

[XmisterC]

I've been meaning to pitch in an answer here for a few weeks but keep getting side-tracked...

The display mirror that you see on your monitor is an exact replica of one eye from the HMD - that's why it is in the odd portrait resolution. As it's an exact copy, your GPU doesn't need to spend any resources to render it. Well, a tiny bit is needed to send the copied signal down another port but this amount is negligible.

The reason you guys are experiencing performance loss is because of Windows Aero, which has to render everything you see under the Skyrim window, at the same time as the game is rendering the game. This is more than likely why people are seeing additional load on their on-board GPUs too as Windows will use that for Aero (I think)

I agree with Ianl that disabling the internal GPU and running everything on the discrete GPU is a good idea but it is not always possible to do this.

For everyone else try this:

Download Bilago's INI Editing Tool here:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16242


Use the search bar to find the line;

bFull Screen = 0

and change the value to =1

This will take the portrait mirror image and stretch it out to whatever your monitors resolution is set at. It looks horrible as it's all warped but what it also does is cover up the entire screen, thus allowing Windows Aero to have an easier time without the desktop to render - this should fix any performance issues relating to the mirror window.


As a side note: I'd disable any on-board GPU in your BIOS if you can as those GPU cores are on the same chip as your CPU and your cooling will need to cool the heat from both. Disabling the on-board GPU should allow higher and longer sustained boost clocks from you CPU (in theory)

Report back any findings here for the benefit of future users.

Good luck.

[DiverX]

Originally posted by Nubje:

Originally posted by hster:

I couldn't find anything so I just drag the window to the bottom of the screen so only the top of the title bar shows. I was quite surprised that in some areas like whiterun, I get a 25% boost- i.e. 60fps instead of 40fps.

hmm really?
i think i will give that a try.
will respond again after confirming.

Well, turning the TV/monitor OFF or lowering the window in tv wont do any benefits at all in regards to performance, its because the computer is still sending the images/graphics to tv/monitor.
Some VR games like ONWARD has a setting that you can choose the quality/res of image to be displayed on TV/monitor, but even this has no effect on FPS, to me it looks true what some states "the image displayed on TV/monitor is just a screen shot of the already rendered image, so there are no drawbacks", as i mentioned, I never seen any real benefits in lowering quality image to send to tv. People used to think that its another full hd render needed to be done, but it is not the case...