Nearox

Ah okay. Well do let us know what the cause is (and a possible solution) when you found it.

LOOT should work fine with REGS. CJ2311 has added special LOOT rules for mods that need it, make sure you did not miss any of those instructions. Also I've seen reprots of people that LOOT sometimes changes the load order even though nothing changed in your mod list. That said, it is used by STEP and it should work fine with REGS. If you get a CTD at startup it means you are missing a master. Does MO not give you a working for any esp?

congratz :)

I would also consider other cards in your price class by the way. In particular the r7 265, which is faster than the 7850 and the gtx 750 for a small price increase (10 euro more in my country). I have always found this (bi) monthly review pretty good: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-3.html As well as these performance benchamrks https://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2014-vga-charts/benchmarks,175.html

Hmm if you put it like that, you're right :) But judging from my system (i5 2500k @ 4.3ghz, 16gb ram, ssd, quality mb, clean win7 install) where else would the bottleneck be except from the GPU? I can totally understand that a new generation GPU with 2GB VRAM will run much smoother than mine. If it isn't the VRAM then would it then be the gpu bandwith or the chipset? To continue from that (sorry OP we're slighty diverging from the topic here I guess), all the ddsopting/optimizing I have to do to run a decent game (essentially everything in my regs-srle-enb guide for medium systems) would be more related to reducing bandwith and/or gpu load and not so much to purely reducing vram load? Just trying to understand the underlying technicalities a bit better, because reducing vram load does seem to be the primary way for me to increase playability.

Well I start new games like 10x a day :P

Any news on this? Can't wait for an update :)

That would be best yeah. You can also try to troubleshoot by installing MFG Console, going to a location with interior light issues, point at the light that is causing it and see which esp is potentially causing issues. Cause what you have sounds like an esp conflict. Btw personally I always completely remove a mod from the list to ensure there are no elements left of a previous version.

I added The Honored Dead to my install. From what I've seen so far, I can recommend it :)

When you updated ELFX to 2.0, did you completely remove the previous version from MO or did you 'merge' the new with the old?

It's not extreme when it is fact :P In my experience even a full STEP Core nowadays @ 1080p is constantly nearing the max vram on my gpu... You don't need 4k textures to fill up 2gb vram. Using a mixture of 2k and 1k will do just that already.... While I realize that when vram readings says it is near the max it does not mean that all is actually used, I do know that default SRLE requires more than 2gb (even though the vram reading in SPM is same as with STEP Core) due to stuttering originating from constant offloading vram to ram. This is with ENB graphics off but ENbBoost on, of course. After DDSopting and general optimization and I can get it to run without stutter, even though the vram reading is still virtually the same as it, obviously, cannot read higher than the max 2gb. Hell, the #1 limitation I have encountered since I started modding Skyrim (was a latecomer, about a year ago) is VRAM. I have found it to be an incredible annoyance to work around, so in that sense I consider it a serious limitation. @Breems: This is a good place to get an indication of what a modded Skyrim needs, but for building your case as a whole there is a pretty helpful group of people at reddit which can give you lots of good advise. https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc . Furthermore I agree with Techangel85, a gtx 760 is a good choice. Take the 4GB version imho.

Nope hasn't occurred to me. Since its included in srle you can be pretty sure the fault is not with the mod itself. Do you have other mods affecting lighting?

Definitely get a 3gb or preferably 4gb card you will not regret it. 2gb will seriously limit your skyrim modding options.

Immersive Compass - iCompass (by SilentResident) Don't think I need to say more... I have been waiting for a mod/feature like this for ages. This is just pure awesomeness for anyone who likes discovery and a sense of exploration, imho. 100% compatible with iHud, moreHUD and many others. Seems to work fine with my SRLE install. In the words of the author: I complete agree with that statement in the short timespan (1h) that I played with this mod. What the iCompass does:Removes the Discovered (Known) Location Markers from being displayed on the compass.Removes the Undiscovered (Unknown) Location Markers from being displayed on the compass. What the iCompass does NOT:It does not remove the N, S, W and E directions from being displayed on the Compass.It does not hide the compass itself. (but the iHUD mod does that, and it is very compatible with iCompass)It does not change the compass' size to make it bigger or thicker. (but the A Thinner Compass mod can do that, and it is very compatible with iCompass)It does not hide the player's custom map markers from the compass. (but the Less Intrusive HUD mod can do that, and it is very compatible with iCompass)It does not remove the enemy's red dots from being displayed on the compass. (but the No enemies on compass mod can do that, and it is very compatible with iCompass)It does not hide the Shout cooldown from the compass. The iCompass, unlike most of the HUD mods out there, does not modify the hudmenu.swf and hudmenu.gfx files at all. It uses an .esp file method instead of directly editing these files. Because of the sublime nature of the iCompass mod, the players can -finally!- use more than one HUD mods that modify the compass at the same time, without getting any conflicts or errors in their games! Until now, it was impossible for the players to use more than one HUD mods in their games, because most of the HUD mods out there, were using the method of editing the hudmenu.swf and hudmenu.gfx files directly, which was the cause of conflicts between these HUD mods. But worry no more! With the iCompass, which make changes to the Compass only via a simple .esp plugin, the players are given greater flexibility in modifying their HUDs without getting any conflicts between different HUD mods! iCompass ensures full compatibility with any other HUD mods out there.

Ah right. That is oversight from me. Neither of them should be there. There is no malehead_msn by Better Males for argonians and the body for argonians is replaced by Forgotten Argonian Roots. In fact all argonians diffus and normals are covered by FAR & Argonian Female Refine. So there is no need to ddsopt either of those 2 files. I removed argonianmalebody_msn for that reason some time ago. No idea why I put argonianmalemalehead_msn.dds in there :P Thanks for pointing it out.

Ah I forgot to include the compression in the guide, thanks for that. Updated with 2 new mods, made changes to ENB to reflect new vividian version and srle instructions and edited a few other mod tweaks.

ETaC is the biggest performance hit for the simple reason that it expands already performance-intensive areas of vanilla such as falkreath and dawnstar. The ETaC textures are (as noted) 1k x .5k mostly and do not contribute significantly to VRAM use. Personally I have recently stopped using etac - complete and now instead have modular etac for the smaller towns (riverwood, ivarstead etc.) only. @ Halde: Generally speaking it would be bad. However, CJ2311 has fixed the navmesh of thedomain.esp in the CK. If there is 1 deleted navmesh left it will not be harmful to your stability. Just make sure you are using the replace esp included in the REGS Patch Isntaller.

Working on it as we speak. There's not that much to add or change though. It currently runs stable at a maximum of 1.9 - 1.95 gb VRAM @ 1080p, which is the intended goal, as opposed to default SRLE/REGS whcih requires nearly 3gb vram @ 1080p. I will be adding one or two mods (that are not in SRLE or REGS) to further optimize the game.

Well, I used Ewis's INIs for a while until I found out that IMHO they are actually not that good. And certainly not based on solid foundations. Also EWI changes a lot about shadows, lod, lighting, z-fighting and a whole bunch of other stuff. You can of course experiment yourself whether you prefer EWI or STEP/SRLE INIs but EWIs settings 1) lack proper descriptions and choice explanations 2) are not conform some of the more elaborate tweak/stability guides on Nexus 3) have not gone through the rigorous testing here at STEP 4) he continuous to change settings with every new version. In short, STEP INI = safe and generally works for nearly everyone, EWI INI = more risk for instability and higher chance for incompatibility with certain ENBs. Nowadays with ENBoost and Memory Patch (now in skse) it has been proven that INI settings are not the primary cause of the instability that many people experienced. Rather it was Skyrim's handling of memory which was the root issue and it has largely been fixed. Ini settings only serve to enhance performance or quality, but not stability. That's just my view on EWIs INIs. This guide gives some pretty good explanations of the various INI settings - though I would still recommend the STEP/SRLE settings where applicable: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55921/?

Use patches from STEP as well as the ones provided by REGS. Basically you keep STEP (core or extended doesnt matter) the way it is intended and you build REGS right on top of it. If a mod is already in STEP (like e.g. Cutting Room Floor) but also in REGS then you can keep it as it was in STEP unless the REGS install instructions differ from STEP or unless REGS gives you special instructions.

I would not recommend to do any ini tweaks other than the ones mentioned by STEP and/or SRLE (they are nearly identical). Less = more. None of the hardware thread tweaks for instance have ever been widely proven to work. Would recommened to follow Aiyen's advise and regenrate vanilla INIs, change them according to either STEP or SRLE and stick with it. The only variable you may want to change/add is iMinGrassSize=xx under GRASS section of Skyrim.ini. Where XX is a value between 20 ( default) and 60 (you can even go higher but there will be little grass left). Putting that at 40 or 50 can save a lot of FPS in dense grass areas, especially if you are using SFO.

Ah I skimmed over your earlier question, darkside. Even though changing some ini settings can help a bit, there are certain areas when looking at certain angles where there is a big fps drop for basically everyone. This is often the case, as you observed yourself, where there are seemingly few objects loaded on your screen but the ones not in your view are however loaded. Not much you can do about it, except for brute forcing by having one (or two) powerful GPU.

Yes, always download the REGS Patch Installer even if you only installed 1 mod. It's an installer with many replacer esp and compatibiltiy patches. It will give you numerous options depending on your mod choices.

I concur with darkside, try to disable one or both of those settings. Before that though, revert to normal quality of Vividian ENB instead of high quality and see if it makes a difference.

There's a replacer esp for TheDomain.esp in the REGS patch installer, I think you may have missed it :) Also Falkreath has always been, just like Dawnstar, a pretty unstable area - even in vanilla. That said ever since the memory patch (now included in skse) I havent crashed there regularly anymore. There's no reproducible CTD in the pack though (at least you're the first one to report it). Did you install all the relevant patches from ETaC? Just select any of the ETaC patches that conform your mod list. And if that doesn't help, check if you are not overloading on VRAM/GPU. This is very well a possibility depending on your GPU, texture packs and enblocal.ini configuration.