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In my opinion, it's the best value for money at the moment, if you can leave without the nvidia's exclusive features mentioned in my previous post. You should probably look into Eyefinity vs Nvidia Surround since you're going to use more than one monitor for gaming. GeForce GTX 670 4GB https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130785 AMD Radeon 7970 3GB 1.1GHz (sic!) - https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125439 Both cards are around $450-470, depending on the model you choose. I bet the 7970 with the core clocked to 1.1GHz at stock is a mighty beast. From the review I've seen, it's almost as fast as the GTX 590. Imagine what two of these cards will be like. With that said, it's still looks like GeForces do a better job in Skyrim. https://www.techspot.com/review/546-amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition/page8.html And here's some insight into whether you need 4GB VRAM or not: https://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/evga-geforce-gtx-670-4gb_7.html#sect0 My opinion, it's probably not worth the extra $140 that you'd pay on both cards. Just a quick edit, I found this Gigabyte 7970 1GHz for $420 after rebate. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413 Plus you can probably get the standard cards with decent coolers for around $400, the choice is yours.

I agree, Nvidia cards are a better choice for some, but most people wouldn't notice a difference. TXAA, adaptive vsync, better support for many games, PhysX, CUDA, superior performance at Folding, support by ENB mods, ambient occlusion and extra AA settings that are easier to set with behavioral flags. In all those regards, Nvidia cards are better (not so much for Linux support, mind you :D). It's one of the reasons I made the switch from a 6950 to a GTX 580. But then again, these are all extras, most of which people don't need or wouldn't use anyway. Which is why I recommend AMD cards to most users, since they wouldn't ask to help them choose the right card otherwise.

Economics of Skyrim for me. :)

Done, done, and done; got most of the basics covered and it's just been reformatted so there's almost nothing on there. Â Thanks for the appropriate link, will check it out.Have a look here, I know it's mostly for fresh installs with SSDs, but some points might be of use for you as well. https://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds#post_15523325

Actually, you might be better off getting two 7970s and overclocking them to 1GHz or so. 3GB VRAM should be enough at that resolution anyway. They're much better value with the current price drops.

I'm running Win7 and of course it's all updated and stuff. I'll add anti-virus to the list of tests.https://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/ Also disable UAC, features that you don't use under Programs and Features, tweak the visual effects (e.g. disable all unneeded ones), set up an appropriate page file and make sure to defrag the HDD regularly.

Lol, fixed the thread title :hurr: Unfortunately the choice between XP and 7 was already made for me and I've disabled as much background crap as I can.  I'll have to look into Game Booster as well. https://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-xp-x86-32-bit-service-pack-3-service-configurations/ Not using an anti-virus may also help. Make sure that you've got the latest Service Pack and updates.

Finally, time to go about reinstalling all mods.

More VRAM only gives you a higher buffer. It won't magically improve the card's rendering capability, therefore you will be throttled by the low processing power of the GT 630. So not worth it at all.

The simple answer is: no. It's not how GPUs work. They don't share video memory. There's no reason why 1.25GB VRAM would not be enough to play Skyrim with High-Resolution mods at 1920x1080. Just optimize the textures after installing the mods, use lighter forms of AA (e.g. SMAA instead of MSAA), and choose Lite or 1024K versions of large texture mods.

Try setting some performance flags in Nvidia Inspector (I assume the 7000 series cards are supported?). Make sure to install the latest supported drivers. What OS are you running? Clearing up as much memory as possible could be beneficial. Oh, and please post some screenshots. I'm very curious on how Skyrim looks like at super-low details. Any chance you could overclock either the CPU or the GPU?

did you use the riverwood file too? it requires both. Chimneys for skyrim, and chimneys for skyrim - riverwoodNo, you don't. From the mod's description: "If you have Chimneys for Riverwood and want to add to that use ChimneysForSkyrim. If you don't have Chimneys for Riverwood or prefer to only have one mod for all the chimneys, use ChimneysForSkyrimRW. Remember to remove Chimneys for Riverwood first if you already have that mod and wish to use ChimneysForSkyrimRW."

This mod is fundamental for the way I play Skyrim. It's a shame Skyrim Trade Guild is no longer developed.

Some reports of the fire sounds being too loud. Any more info on that?

I was just going to post it this morning, definitely going to be on my new clean install of Skyrim.

Or Sandy Bridge, if you can find that cheap. Got me a nice i7 2600K upgrade here for £165, overclocked to 4.6GHz and uses less power than my previous CPU. :) I concur, having 8GB RAM has crash issues with a few other games to, like BF3.

Trust me, your CPU is holding you back. https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_CPU_Scaling/16.html («-- that's with an AMD FX-8150 @ 3.6 GHz) To move Skyrim to an SSD, use Steam Mover https://www.traynier.com/software/steammover P.S.: Adding an extra 4GB of RAM (total 8GB) wouldn't hurt either. I'm playing Skyrim with all settings maxed and dozens of texture and re-texturing mods and that leaves me with only 2GB of free RAM out of 8GB. So, yeah, that could help too. STEP mods put more strain on the GPU than CPU, the game has been optimised to put more load on the GPU since its launch, with several patches. I wouldn't think CPU is a deciding factor here, a Phenom II X4 should certainly cope with Skyrim just fine. SDD is certainly a good addition though.

I like RLwC with the Vision preset better than RCRN from STEP, but I'd stopped using it after the reports about incompatibility with some other mods and potential files corruption.

Scroll back a page or two and look for the link in one of Ethatron's posts. If it does not work anymore for some reason, I can post it. Thanks a lot, reposting the link in case anyone else has troubles finding it. https://github.com/Ethatron/ddsopt/downloads

Any idea where I can get the latest preview of DDSopt from? It doesn't seem to be freely available on github.

Thanks! Well, the 4.0 has been out for a while and the new standalone should be ready tomorrow, Wednesday the 20th. Very soon after that we will be updating Vibrancy to 5.0. Everything has been rewritten from scratch and a lot of new features and a few surprises have been added too. :) I meant the standalone, Pure Vibrancy version of your mod, since RLwC is known to cause some issues and I prefer to keep my mods as clean as possible from now on. :)

Looking forward to trying this out as soon as Vibrancy 4.0 is out. I'm currently reinstalling all mods for a new character.

Have either Optimizer Textures or SMCO got any better? Are there any known conflicts or files that shouldn't be optimised by these programs? Is DDSopt still preferable to the other two? I haven't seen any updates for it in ages.