Besidilo

It's best if you take the screenshots of your Mods and Installers tabs, as most of us will not be running pure STEP due to mod testing.

Thank you for the help. :)However I decided to re-install Vanilla and use only WB as mod manager. Basically the order thing in Installer Tab works like ESPs order in Mod Tab, isn't it? Higher archive overrides lower one, so if I want to use STD instead of SHD at some point during my gameplay it's just a matter of changing its priority in the list? Yes, mod are prioritised by their order in the installers tab. But the BSA/loose files rule still applies.

And yet the word "guide" is totally absent in the whole Description page of the "mod". I can see how it's confusing to people who stumble upon it by chance or by having it recommended by other players. My concern was not the description of the download file, but the actual content of it. I really think it deters a lot of people from downloading and endorsing the project, plus there will be a large group of users who'll simply give up after downloading a page with a link to another page. It really isn't the best solution and I'm not the only person that has raised this issue in the past. I appreciate that. I was merely suggesting not to get casual users' hopes up about it since the project would require a lot of work and issues such as Nexus disallowing you to provide automated downloads (however retarded it is, since that's how NMM or MO work anyway) might put a halt to it at any point. Then you've got modders like Starac who get offended by being put among other, "inferior" modders.

I haven't seen any indication that it affects Kepler cards at all. Besides, for the card to get fried, it would have to be running at very high temps already. GTX 660 is not even close to the ballpark Fermi is at.

Actually, I've looked at the STEP page on Nexus and the OP is right, the word "guide" is not mentioned anywhere. In fact, if I haven't been following the guide since its early conception by The Compiler, I would have no clue what it is from just eyeing up the description on Skyrim Nexus today. It really does seem a bit unclear when the core features listed make it look like a total overhaul. Whether it's bad wording or an intentional thing, doesn't probably change how the guide is perceived by new users. I also thought making the download a single pdf page linking to the Wiki guide was a bad idea and I raised my concerns months about it months ago. A periodical release of a proper PDF guide was discussed but I don't know what happened to the idea of bringing it back in that form. Either way, directly linking to the Wiki guide would be a good idea. Nexus is terribly slow and unreliable these days and having to go through the trouble of downloading a small pdf file just to find the actual page for STEP doesn't sound like the best way to market this otherwise brilliant guide. The idea of Automatic STEP has been around as long as this forum. I really don't think it's happening, so maybe it's best not to talk about it unless something empirical is in the works (the early projects were far from any kind of release last time I checked, and such program would need to be maintained on daily basis).

Run BOSS and delete your Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini config files. Then launch the game through the launcher to recreate them properly. This is the likely cause of your issues. Missing assets in the save games. Also, what's your VRAM usage like in the game?

SFO 1.79 conflicts with a number of mods too, so I imagine a lot of users installing mods beyond STEP would opt for the Basic version anyway.

I've never seen a real need for those tweaks. Don't get me wrong, Z-fighting was and still is a slight issue, but in the ideal world, you'd want to counter that with no clipping or performance and stability issues. Unfortunately, the ini tweaks can not guarantee either. So I've got a fresh install with some basic STEP mods set up. Should I proceed with fully installing STEP 2.2.5 or is it best if I take the changes from the OP here into account?

I treat that argument from the practical point of view. The current generation of games doesn't utilise near anywhere near that amount of VRAM at sub-1080p resolution today. Even with 2GB VRAM you have a fairly decent buffer for using deferred anti-aliasing methods, such as SGSSAA with GeForce cards and then some for the high resolution textures. I've struggled with becoming limited by 2GB VRAM at 2560x1440 in Skyrim. With 3GB VRAM it's simply not an issue any more. Increasing the resolution of textures would result in a RAM-related crash sooner than me running into a VRAM wall. Now, what the future brings, is another issue entirely. Whilst we might be surprised by the quality of textures, I can almost guarantee that said GTX 660 3GB will not have enough raw power for fancy effects + maximum texture details in game to make real use out of that memory. Then you take PhysX and driver-forced methods of AA, and you're simply running off the ballpark of comfortable performance threshold to fully utilise the video buffer on your card. It's all meaningless anyway, since there really isn't a viable alternative to the GTX 660 3GB if William insists on the aforementioned criteria. And from what I've read, the limited memory bandwidth on the card would be an issue . It is a great value for money card either way you cut it. I just don't see how paying $50, or 17%, extra for that 1GB more VRAM is going to make a difference in real world. I think the fact that Nvidia's only recently released high-end cards, such as GTX 770 and GTX 760 Ti, are still using 2GB VRAM as standard is telling us a different story to what you're portraying. However, I'd like to be proven wrong, as with accordance to what you said, we've been held back by the consoles for quite a while now. EDIT: all larger tech forums have idiots trolling new members or people seeking for advice. They've also got hardcore fanboys who'd defend one camp or the other, no matter the circumstances. Being unbiased feels strange in those place at times.

I prefer Debian based distros to Red Hat fork-offs. Even Debian Sid is far more stable than most popular distributions out there. Xubuntu has the best Xfce setup out of the box from what I've seen, but I wouldn't mind playing with Arch again, so might give Manjaro a try.

It's still mostly indies and Source-based games.

That sounds like a great value for money. If only I had any use for it. My Raspberry Pi is currently acting as a home seedbox,. I've had a few other uses for it in the past (web server, media box) but nothing requiring extensive knowledge of the system. Modern GPUs have a lot more processing power than that chip. I wonder what uses people would have for a $99 computer.

I've never done that. I might argue that somebody's actions might be perceived that way, but I wouldn't resort to name calling. It was late at night and I went overboard with that post, it was not in good spirit, for which I'm sorry. The advice to post on a tech forum was genuine, though.

If it freezes in interiors, I highly doubt it's a VRAM related issue.

As you might or might not know, I had to quit modding and playing (yes, in this order) Skyrim due to my personal circumstances that took the toll on my free time. Soon after, I lost my 1TB hard drive with all my games (including back ups of all my save games), Skyrim install and mods, plus some smaller projects I've been working on. No other important data was lost. Anyway, rant over. Is there anything I could do to help with the development of STEP 2.2.6 revision? I've got some spare time to help with STEP, assuming admins will let me stay. On a related note, I haven't been able to follow the forums closely. I noticed Realistic Crime Radius is being removed in this revision. Any further note as to why? It would be nice if you put those in brackets, sometimes it gets confusing and the Search isn't being exactly helpful.

Feel free to ban me if you don't like what I say. However obnoxious I may sound, I always try to be helpful to other users and share my knowledge. I'm not pushing William to agree with me, but it would be nice if my advice stopped him from making a bad decision. My advice to post on some tech/overclocking forum was honest, although provided in a cheeky way. If you don't trust my expertise, there are countless other individuals with far better knowledge base and experience than me, eager to help. Unfortunately, on most forums people will post their opinions with no proper understanding Anyway, if you're settled on that EVGA GTX 660 card (which is a fine value for money, by any means), I'd strongly advise getting the 2GB version. 3GB ones is sort of just "stuck" on the same PCB, since the card doesn't have a higher bus width to handle the bandwidth. You can read about it in this thread, post #6 by lehpron. Please read it, it's an honest advice from someone who seems to know what he's talking about. Once again, I recommend going for the 2GB version of the card (here's the cheapest EVGA GTX 660 I could find) that isn't crippled by bad design choices. It's all up to you in the end. You guys are a nice lot and I'd hate to leave this place, but I'm afraid I've been on the Internet for far too long to change my ways. I respect all and every one of you, so hopefully you don't see my condescending tone as demeaning. If you'd like me to stop posting tech advice, I can abstain from it completely. I do think that it's valuable, at least to some degree, but I can understand why you might see my posts as flaming from your perspective. On the other hand, invite someone over with more knowledge about computers and let them judge what I said in this thread. That might clear up my stance on the subject a little bit. Either way, have a good day and let's enjoy this community for what it truly stands for, that is making the most out of our experience with Skyrim. PS William, please don't scare me with your ability to ban me at will. You have to realise I couldn't care less if you're an admin, mod or God when I'm talking to you. I treat everyone equally. EDIT: actually, I'm wrong, Nvidia uses slightly different memory chips than I thought and 3GB on 192-bit, whilst slow, isn't all that odd. So yeah, if you don't mind paying $50 extra, go for it. https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/43797-kfa2-geforce-gtx-660-ti-ex-oc-3gb/ Here's the review that proves me partially wrong. That is, the 3GB version of the card is not using mismatched memory modules, the 2GB is. You're still struggling with the limited memory bandwidth on the 3GB model and justifying the need to utilise it at 1600x900. And the actual review of your card that proves there is no visible benefit to the larger frame buffer on the 3GB model of the card. https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/51273-evga-geforce-gtx-660-ftw-signature-2/

You're still linking to the wrong card. And you still don't realise how stupid buying a GTX 660 with 3GB on board is. I advise posting posting about your choice on some larger tech forum for some laughs. You can't have enough of those. Have a good night, mate. EDIT: I've just looked at that thread again, and oh my god, are some people funny. First of all, having a Boost feature means nothing. The performance is already measured with it on. PhysX has been already discussed in this thread, AMD has their own adaptive vsync method (can be forced through RadeonPro), you won't be able to use TXAA with a single GTX 660 and FXAA is available on all cards (yes, that means Radeons too).

Radeon 7870 XT is both faster and cheaper than the GTX 660 3GB, but whatever. At least don't get the 3GB version of the card, because that's a massive waste of money at that resolution.

With regards to CUDA, it's good for what it is, but there's no reason to not use an open source alternative if that's an option. CUDA isn't really anything special and a lot of people don't realise that there are alternative OpenCL implementations. Take Photoshop CS6 for example, hardware acceleration exists on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Yet there are many other applications in which CUDA is the only way to go. If you know that CUDA is something that you will make a lot of use out of, a GeForce card seems like a worthy consideration, however you cut it. AFAIK, PhysX doesn't use much memory at all. It runs solely on CUDA cores and the CPU. All that matters is the number and speed of CUDA cores. It's never been popular and only a bunch of PhysX-designated titles are released each year. A lot of them aren't even hardware accelerated. Bullet Physics is an engine that has been used in games such as GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, or even one of the most famous benchmarking software, 3DMark 11. It was also used in a handful of movies and is a well-known open-source physics engine. I truly believe projects like this are the future, especially when you take into account the new generation of consoles are all AMD partnerships. Skyrim and Source-based games use the Havok engine, which whilst proprietary, is used in many other popular games. It does not have the same capabilities as Physx, and runs on CPU only if I remember correctly, but it's worth a mention anyway. It probably should be said now, most of PhysX effects still run on the CPU. Only a portion is designed to be utilised by the CUDA cores. NVIDIA is very dedicated to pumping substuntial funds into their closed-source technology, but I really hope it won't last much longer. A lot of developers are finding the open alternatives that run on most hardware to be more future-proof.

I haven't had a chance to play Metro Last Light, but I've heard good things about PhysX effects in that game. Then again, you won't be able to enjoy it with all bells and whistles on a GTX 660 at 1920x1080, so my argument in that context stands. Like I said before, I do appreciate PhysX effects in games like Batman, but they could be done using an open technology if there was enough demand for it. As it stands, Nvidia is restricting PhysX for the sole purpose of having it as their USP. Developers get money to use PhysX in their games.

CUDA is arguably worse than OpenCL that can run on all platforms. Its usage in certain applications is worth noting, but most people will have no use for it. Likewise for PhysX, there are better alternatives in terms of technology, but PhysX has more money behind it at the moment. Yet it's usage is limited to a handful of titles when it comes to actual visual improvements. The part about more effects at higher framerates is not necessarily true. A lot of PhysX enabled games cripple the performance, or at least used to in the past. I can't really comment on ENB all that much as I haven't used it on AMD cards in a while, but from my recent testing in Skyrim, my Radeon 7970 does surprisingly well with it. Boris tends to ***** about both vendors, which is understandable. 192-bit bus width is standard for cards with 2 GB of VRAM, not 3. Its usage is down to the design, which is why 3GB memory will have limited (as in slower) memory bandwidth available resulting in a not so great performance if you really want to load it up. I agree with you on the other point that it's a marketing gimmick anyway, since a card like GTX 660 would be throttled by its raw power way before VRAM becomes a factors. I disagree that anybody needs PhysX. It's quite useless and I even had a dedicated PhysX card for a while. It's a nice addition to have, but I wouldn't pay for it. At least you can reason your arguments in an appropriate manner, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with my point of view. Bear in mind that I've been using all sorts of hardware in the past 15 years or so, particularly not caring about being loyal to either Nvidia or ATI in the past few years, since the latter often offers superior value for money despite the bad rep it gets from uninformed consumers.

You're not even comparing the right cards. I was talking about the Radeon 7870 XT, I even linked a handful a reviews of that card for you in one of my previous posts you seem to have omitted. And find benchmarks that are newer than 6 months.

I've got a couple of rigs, one using an Nvidia GTX 580, the other a Radeon HD 7970. People like to exaggerate problems with ATI cards. Granted, Nvidia Inspector is more user-friendly than Radeon Pro, same goes for the equivalent control panels, but the differences are often to aesthetics. I take it a lot of users just don't know how to configure them optimally. Catalyst drivers have been more solid since 12.11 than GeForce drivers in the past few months. I don't disagree with ENB being a bit more efficient on Nvidia cards, but then again, AMD has a lead at mainstream and lower end, and the difference in ENB's performance will be neglected by simply having a faster card. Whilst VRAM might come into consideration when choosing similarly speced cards, I think it's ridiculous to think that your hypothetical GTX 660 would have enough power to utilise 3GB of video memory efficiently. It's a waste of money from that point of view. Another thing is, how did they implement 3GB VRAM on a card with 192-bit bus? Seems like you don't mind having a card with limited bandwidth. Getting that card is a bad idea. But sure the peeps on this forum know better. Edit: DoYouEvenModBro, I'd love to see that microstutter on your single-GPU card, bro.

The only downside to 660 model is the 192-bit bus. I'd say the main downside to the GTX 660 3GB is that it's more expensive than the significantly faster Radeon 7870 XT (which is a cut down version of Radeon 7970, with smaller bus).

Recommended and minimum specifications are almost always a joke. They never reflect what kind of experience you're going to get with said hardware or what settings they are tested at. They tell you exactly nothing.