Installation of Special K

There is something on your end that is preventing you from running Special K as intended. Unfortunately I have run out of ideas at this point, of what it could be. There is so much that I do to my Windows in order to prevent stuff like this from happening, it’s too much to list.

yes I understand, Ill keep thinking what could be the issue. But its not only me so there is something here

Defender seems to have no problem with SKIF.exe. Even tried to execute with defender disabled but still no luck.

I`m checking processes in task manager cant figure out something that blocks it

This is the thing, I have successfully run it. Which means the software does work. What it could be, is that it needs something, or the lack of something in order to work as intended - this is why I state the problem lies on your end to see what needs to happen in order for it to function. I don’t have Nvidia software (aside from just the plain old drivers) or anything else that might interfere with Special K running in the background. Unfortunately at this point, MY knowledge in figuring this out is limited without knowing how you’ve set up your Windows or what your system looks like. Maybe ping Aemony for some further QA?

yes already tried that, no luck yet. Reinstall all in one redist, no riva tuner or geforce experience enabled. it still closes

I tried running SKIF 0.6.9 putting the files at the same folder I had SKIM and the Steam profiles from the Steam installation and it also crashed on start, putting the folder from the zip (Special K) inside the My mods folder without the old Special K files either from SKIM or the old profiles and it opened just fine (though it lost all recorded data of the profiles)

Oh, and another thing before trying it I opened Special K on Steam stopped the services there and disabled it at login to start the one from the download (don’t know if it wouldn’t conflict having almost the same thing trying to run twice)

@Ahmlet, @ZazikWorldT H I S.

Unfortunately it was the first thing that i had done.
My system:
Ryzen 5 2600
RX 470
16gb
Windows 10 1909 Home with all latest updates
I also tried uninstalling video drivers and running without background applications

Hmm… it must still be some reliance on Steam, I think, that causes it to crash for some reason… @Kaldaien, do you have any idea why SKIF v0.6.9 still crashes on launch for some?

Hello everyone, cheers from Venezuela, I was wondering if this mod/addon may help with games with old engine such Torch Light II?

What brings me to Kaldaien mod which is Special K i guess
is this article of Torch Light II where they recomend Special K pack:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Torchlight

So for this reason I was wondering if by modding or Copy SpecialK32.dll to Torch Light II folder and then renaming the specialk32.dll to actually d3d9.dll, may bring some good performance or something, cause im tiring of tried everything to run this game properly without fps drops x.x

Thanks in advance, sorry if sound like a noob ^^,

PD: I got torchlight II via Epic-game

Well, the section that mentions Special K on that game page is on how to mute the game when its in the background. So Special K isn’t mentioned in any performance gain scenarios, so it’s doubtful you’ll find those.

Special K itself rarely introduces major performance gains, and it’s doubtful it will do it here either, especially as Torchlight is a DirectX 9 game so it can’t use Special K’s more advance features like its texture cache.

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If it’s D3D9 you can always try throwing in DXVK (Which now includes D9VK and D3D9 support.) helps on both AMD and NVIDIA GPU systems but DXVK is still being updated and improved on and on Windows neither NVIDIA nor AMD currently support the absolutely latest Vulkan runtime and extensions in the general release drivers although it’s not a huge issue now that both vendors do Vulkan 1.2 support up to at least 1.2.133.0 at least. :slight_smile:
(The NVIDIA Vulkan drivers for development should be nearly fully up to par with the VLK SDK though but are based on a older 451.x core branch in turn so you lose several other recent fixes and updates.)

SpecialK’s many more recent advancements are mainly geared towards D3D11 since well lets see a bit after Tales of Berseria plus some updates and fixes there and there as far as I can recall at least.

EDIT: DXVK is also not 100% Windows supportive but works as it’s primarily geared towards Linux through Wine and Proton and getting games running there through wrapping D3D calls into Vulkan but it can still give a surprising performance boost on Windows so it’s worth testing if the game doesn’t restrict or error out because Windows lets you do various unsupported or non-optimal or non-standard deviations from recommended coding practices and some other oddities.
(Bundling system files into the game folder as a common thing although not always a breaking issue.)

DXVK itself.

https://git.froggi.es/doitsujin/dxvk/-/jobs
This one has compiled builds with the latest build based on code from around three weeks ago when the build bot then had some issues and started timing out far as I can tell but it’s not missing that much.
(There’s a bunch of additional work for D3D9 over the release version and such that might be handy.)

EDIT: Yeah that is very much a frog.

EDIT: Sekiro example, think AMD resolved the frequent stutters and frame-rate drops in later drivers here but it’s a solid example for performance and even under D3D11 although it can be very situational.
https://imgur.com/a/Hh6Xv6w

https://imgur.com/a/qjI3X8n
Borderlands 2 pre-sequel and D3D9 results.

(Both from: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ek9zvd/potential_fix_for_sekiros_performance_issues_with/ )

Usually you’d expect a performance hit from introducing a additional wrapper and more of a CPU limitation although D3D9 being single threaded can actually see a net gain in many cases.

Somehow even on NVIDIA the two newest Assassin’s Creed games also come up frequently as examples where DXVK just somehow works and helps improve performance and frame time stability or the framerate smoothness. :slight_smile:

That’s a lengthier write-up but that’s what the utility is what it does and what it can be beneficial to use it with, AMD 5700 XT user here so I ended up utilizing it to work around earlier driver problems primarily with the performance benefit as a neat secondary gain although after further reading it works well on NVIDIA too in several cases with D3D9 likely stemming from how the API on it’s own is single threaded and poor at utilizing and scaling above this at least to my knowledge.

Some early D3D9 games attempted to scale into dual core CPU systems after all so it can’t be outright terrible even if it’s dated though D3D10 and especially D3D11 would improve on this and add additional implementations and utilities. (D3D11 though uses some of it via optional requirements and extended feature sets, D3D12 and Vulkan improves on this even further but the tech is above most of my limited knowledge level for any more in-depth detail on the specifics.)

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Effectively I suppose the summing it up bit is simple enough.
Want to use the newer OS improvements and hardware to it’s fullest you’d need to get rid of these earlier limited API’s and their bottlenecks which in this case is done through a wrapper into a more modern and sometimes more compatible model.

Support and compatibility for DXVK itself is still improving and Windows support is well it’s there but a bit of a secondary and more of a unsupported functionality although from a persona experience with using it (In almost anything that isn’t natively supporting DX12 or Vulkan at this point, ha ha. ) well it’s been really useful. :slight_smile:
(Driver situation has improved but it can still give a decent uplift to performance, was surprised to read it worked equally well for NVIDIA systems too in some of these games.)

EDIT: Think that covers that little bit well enough, SpecialK can be pretty effective too but focuses more on D3D11.x and utilizing functionality from this API and extended features in 11.1 to 11.4 I believe it is along with the shared DXGI core of D3D10+ in Vista and newer OS’s.

Actually not too sure how much of these newer features apply to D3D9 although many parts of SpecialK do still apply but I think some of the key improvements like the flip model support for presentation (Present interval / vsync.) and the framerate limiter might be dependent on D3D11 enhancements.

Otherwise those would be what I would recommend utilizing.

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Woah i’m very new at this, so you are telling me that, I can improve my fps in Torch Light II running that DXVK stuff? cause on my GTX 1060 6gb +ryzen 5 1600, the game has like a cpu bound one core goes to 100% tried already removing affinities, high priority to the game itself, removing dead corpses, antialising, shadows, particles, and still terrible fps went from 120 to 50-40, even if i set fps cap to 58 (cause monitor is 60hz) in battles fps went from 58 to 40 and to 13 if there are 30-40 monsters in the screen.

Gosh I want to play games smooth, my only escape to this situation of my country Venezuela, is to paly games and avoid a bit the reality while I try to get my passport

This mean a lot to me, your helps guys.
also thanks to Aemony for his comment.

I will attach here a picture of the RivaTunerStatistic while running the game;

If you see the gpu percentage is like 4% on EVA GTX 1060 6gb and during normal battles with 5-6 monster spamming skills it up to 7-8% and when there are like 30-40 monsters the maximum is like 11% gpu usage

And while not moving with no monster around you can see the cpu 1 core is 40% but as soon i enter in a battle with 4-5 mob it goes to 68% one core, and if there 10 monsters like not spamming at all, like 10 archers for example cpu goes to 85-90% one core.

PD: I apologies for my poor English grammar.
PD: If you want i can record a short video of 20 sec and do my best to upload here, cause my upload is less than 20 KB/s XD
https://imgur.com/SkY0CYy

Threading, CPU’s couldn’t breach the 5 Ghz barrier and while efficiency has gone up the since the early 2000’s development went in a different direction so where a single core was limited several cores could still see scaling and performance gains though for the general consumer market and desktop computer hardware and also gaming progress used to be pretty slow.

Dual core started in the early 2000’s with games such as Crysis and Stalker as known examples of heavily CPU bound titles even on modern hardware as development was primarily single core driven although dual core was supported but limited.

Quad cores dominated until I believe AMD’s attempt with the Bulldozer and FX CPU’s but couldn’t quite match Intel in terms of performance and marketshare although the Zen series has made some waves now.

Intel also had hexa and above as more premium and higher priced hardware until more recently so the shift from 6 to 8 (hexa core to octa core.) has progressed faster than how long lasting the practice to scale to around 4 (quad) CPU cores was. :slight_smile:
(Likely that the shift from X360 and PS3 to XBox One and PS4 made a difference.)

Microsoft also improved on limitations in D3D9 with D3D10 and newer though it’s D3D12 and Vulkan that are built with multi-threaded rendering and additional GPU and CPU improvements in mind.

There are additional API bottlenecks and possible limitations but for Torchlight and it’s sequel and hopefully not Torchlight 3 (Still in early access I believe.) I would expect performance to be hindered by CPU performance and scaling limitations. :slight_smile:

This can also result in the GPU performance suffering as the graphics card might downclock to a lower speed as the 3D workload isn’t heavy enough for it to boost up to full clock states or a lower CPU activity might result in a lower GPU clock speed.

Lower CPU activity might also see boosting speeds lower or not used at all or only one core is actually doing anything and the rest are sleeping (Though Ryzen spreads it out a bit for how the scheduler works from my memory of how this is intended to work.) so there’s a bottleneck and a performance impact from neither the CPU nor GPU being able to operate to their full capacity.

Not the best at explanations or describing these things in better detail but due to these limits older games even on more modern hardware often hit a performance limit or even sees performance problems potentially also very varied framerates and resulting rough frame times and uneven frame pacing say something like stuttering or hitching unless the user caps the framerate from spiking to very high values which then frequently drops to much lower ones.

Leveraging the advantages of multi-threading and utilizing this on both CPU and GPU is how DXVK can when it works make a significant improvement to minimum and average performance although occasionally with a hit to maximum framerate though in some cases it’s a net gain.

Actually on the note of D3D9 Persona 4 recently released on PC ended up using this API for some unknown reason (D3D9 is sorta out of date by this point.) so DXVK could increase performance by almost 2x if not more though in many cases the game was undemanding enough to where this didn’t make too much of a importance.
(But the game had a couple of instances where it ran into limits owing to using a lot of draw calls even above what D3D11 is generally expected to be able to handle in some situations.)

Hmm how to sum it up or put it more simply, it’s a bit like bridging the issue or circumventing the problem it’s not quite as elegant as a native implementation but good enough to where it can still make a good improvement though there are occasions where DXVK or other third party utilities in general will be more limited. (Anti cheat solutions as a very good general advice is something you don’t want to try to use it with.)

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Well that’s a bit of text there.

Removal of GPU and CPU performance bottlenecks and limitations from wrapping the API from a older model to a newer one thus (potentially) increasing performance and overall smoothness as framerate and frame time consistency improves.

Worth a try but results can vary from one game to another and compatibility isn’t quite perfect (Plus potential Windows or game specific issues or such problems.) but it’s about trying to leverage more of modern GPU and CPU hardware and getting scaling to improve instead of being a limitation for older games even with much more recent hardware in the system. :slight_smile:
(Which while faster can’t be utilized to full effect by these older designs or the graphics API.)

EDIT: Hmm I should look into spoiler tags as well to try and minimize these posts as to not detract from the topics primary discussion around SpecialK and install help or information, might delete the bigger posts I made in a few days perhaps if that’s not possible.

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Is amazing how deep you go, when you explain things, are you enthusiast :O? quite amazing.
Thing is yes, I’m running Windows 10, but seems like this (dxvk) is made for Linux? or i’m wrong :o?

also in case this works for Windows, do you have any recommendation or guide to install or apply the dxxvk to this game?

Oh sorry for Offtopic :’(
I just wanted to find ways to improve old games engine on newer hardware, especially for users like me running os Windows 10

Thats why I though special K may do the trick, but didn’t know that exist also mods/addons or programs like dxvk?

So thanks anyway =(

DXVK is a Direct3D-to-Vulkan wrapper implemented as Windows DLL files (which Wine/Proton in Linux would load).

What this basically means is that Windows users only need to download the latest dxvk archive from https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases/latest, extract it using an archive manager like 7zip/WinRAR/etc, and move the appropriate DLL file(s) to the game folder based on the architecture of the game.

For Torchlight, that would be the d3d9.dll file contained in the x32 folder of the DXVK archive (as the game is using Direct3D 9 and is 32-bit).

Whether there’s a noticeable performance benefit of using DXVK or not is up in the air, but there’s no harm in trying it out.

Personally I use DXVK for League of Legends as well, as that is the only way I can use G-Sync on my monitor while playing the game in borderless window mode.

Edit: It bares to mention that Windows isn’t really supported by DXVK, but it handles most games I throw at it just fine so the unofficial nature only really matters when it comes to the rare times there’s an issue or two that only Windows users experience.

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