venkman781

Combining this tool with the tweaks over on nvidia's site might be a good approach.

This is a great source for evaluating the Post Processing effects. Nice find. I'd not stumbled across the Immersive Environment, but it's a strong contender for me. I've been using RCRN 2.1 Pure, which I found to be more authentic and challenging to adjust to at times.

I was curious to try this out, so I took the benchmark area I've been using and did just that. The 30 second benchmark starts on a small hill outside of Riverwood, and I run down the path into the center of town, past the blacksmith. I do see micro-stutter in this area as I start to look around close to entering Riverwood. I ran a vanilla-high test and a test with all of the texture mods from B1 of STEP 2.0.1a. I used only x16 AF forced through CCC, no AA, no lighting/shaders. Here's what I recorded: Vanilla - 78fps (avg), 1364MB dedicated (max), 101mb dynamic (max) STEP - 62fps (avg), 2570MB dedicated (max), 104MB dynamic (max) According to the GPUz logs, it seems like dedicated VRAM is maxed out (2GB cards in Xfire) running STEP, but dynamic is only around 100mb... :| I'm not sure I understand the difference between these two VRAM figures in a way that helps me interpret the results in any actionable way... Any thoughts on this?

Interesting. The new SRO is a huge mod, and based upon that comparison photo, I'm not sure its worth it. Lots of detail loss, particularly if you look at the mountain textures, roofs, rock wall...wow...

Ah yes. I do use the DLC pack from Vano already. I like the approach of optimizing individual texture packages, then having both versions handy to plug and play as needed during benchmarking. I will most likely try DDSopt'ing a few of the larger texture mods first to see where I can get the most bang for the buck.

@z - Do you do run the vanilla BSAs and HD DLC bsas through any optimization, as well? Or just the STEP mods? I was tempted to unpack my texture BSAs into loose files, optimize them and load through WB...not sure if there's an advantage there or not, other than being able to control the texture overwrites more with more granularity...

@Mardread - thanks for posting this link. I'm definitely in the camp of liking a bit more diffusion to the shadows, rather than really sharp outlines. Good info - perhaps worth a link in the INI tweaks section of the forum. @z929669 - re: DDSopt frequency. How often do you go back and re-DDSopt your textures folder? After getting a stable STEP setup? Or do you parse it out, package by package, then re-BAIN? I presume you have to go back and run it again after making any updates to texture mods? I'm trying to think about it from an order of operations/best practices perspective. Trying to avoid making more work for myself than necessary. I imagine the process is something along the lines of benchmark vanilla > add high res mods/shaders > benchmark > ddsopt > benchmark > tweak ini > benchmark...

Thanks for this guidance, z. I've definitely opted for the high res textures in my current STEP setup, and honestly did so without consideration for how that impacts VRAM usage. I'll have to go back and see where I can slim down, especially for textures used in landscapes, outdoors, etc. Look forward to the updated DDSopt guide, as I have yet to optimize my textures and will probably do so once I see where TC lands in the new STEP guide and the dust settles a bit.

Maybe a dumb question - Is it automatically updating the plugins.txt file?

@Raistlin - even with that 7950 and 3GB of RAM, there's no approaching any uGrids value without doubts. It all depends upon the configuration of your hardware setup, the mods your running, the other ini tweaks you've made, etc. None of us are really in the position to give you that kind of advice - but you can use the tried and true benchmarking tools available to you (FRAPS) to benchmark at vanilla to establish a baseline. Then incrementally add tweaks and mods, benchmark again, and repeat until you find the sweet spot for your rig that balances image quality with performance.

No need to stop trying - go out there and install 2.0.1 of STEP and get familiar with the mods in it, Roogal. Takes a while to get acquainted with the over 160 mods that make up STEP and there's always more getting added. Appreciate the effort even if some of these have become redundant.

There are a few different weapons re-tex packages in STEP - Jaysus Swords is a nice one, and includes 50+ new weapons that you can craft. https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=1002

This was a part of STEP prior to 2.1 Update 3 when TheCompiler opted to remove it because the vanilla HD versions were on par. Perhaps he'll re-evaluate...

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uGrids - I agree, Monty, I need to test it more. Recently, I tried using STEP and uGrids7 before with my current rig and it crashed under the load. That said, I hadn't really done my due diligence beforehand to ensure that my rig was stable with STEP and the .ini settings I kept tweaking (mostly just increasing draw distances). I imagine the combination was just overkill - I wasn't really being too prescriptive in how I was going about optimizing my settings. Tweaks - Back before Skyrim was patched to use 4GB, I was using the LAA fix and MaxAllocatedMemoryBytes, but I can't say I noticed anything major. That was before I had implemented STEP or was using WB. Since then my tweaks are mostly to shadows, grass, etc. largely from here. I'm debating the order of my next tests, but I think I'll continue to benchmark for "livable" frame rates by incrementally adding in STEP mods into the mix, starting with the textures. Although, I wonder if there is any logic to how one goes about making these tweaks to improve FPS? Just thinking here - does it make sense to start with video card settings (AA/AF), then textures (resolution, optimization), then draw distances/uGrids, then shadows, then multi-thread/CPU? I don't know - but I'll bet there's a method to the madness.

Did a few benches tonight on a fresh, vanilla install using Fraps to cap a run down the hill into the center of Riverwood. Plenty of trees, water, smoke and a few NPCs. With AA off, vsync off and x16AF: Default high = 82fps Default ultra = 60fps Default high, uGrids7 = 70 Next, I'm going to try ramping up the draw distance on high with uGrids7, then I'll do STEP at default high, ultra and with uGrids7. One thing I noticed right away with uGrids7 is the tree pop in effect had greatly diminished. It was driving me nuts before - beautiful trees but only after they render when your 100 yards away. I'll try 9 as well and stress test a little to see how stable these are longer term. Ultra vanilla is pretty nice to look at, but I'm already missing my STEP textures...

Thanks zMan. I'm familiar with many of the more common ini tweaks from the various Skyrim tweak guides and my Fallout days, but hadn't seen the multi-thread options before that are offered in the cfg editor. I updated my sig with my rig specs and here's a brief rundown of my current setup. Full STEP setup through 2.1 Update 3. In general, I chose 2048 textures, and I've not done any optimization of those yet with DDSopt or Optimizer Textures. Forcing 16x AF through CCC, no AA, disabled vsync, Tessellation is AMD Optimized, Catalyst AI set to High Quality, using Skyrim Crossfire profile. At 1920x1080 120Hz, I get between 50-70 average fps outside and max out at 120 fps inside dungeons. When I added in Beautiful Whiterun and Better Villages, my fps in Riverwood dropped to 40, but remains at 50 elsewhere outdoors. To control stutter and physics issues indoors, I've been using Dxtory to cap my fps at 50. This has smoothed out gameplay quite a bit. I've just now started tweaking the ini files to start to expand the field of view. My main point for looking at these tweaks is to help improve the draw distances. I've been getting lots of tree pop in and land objects popping into view, so I'm trying to adjust for that without crippling my gameplay. Hence my question about uGrids=7... I need to do some more benchmarks to see the fps hit, but I'm just curious what others are doing for tweaks.

I'm starting to refine my .ini settings for Skyrim. I'm curious if any of you have tried out this config maker: https://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/skyrim/ I'm also curious what the STEP users here use for uGrids. I tried 7 last night with a throwaway save. Seems to improve distance without too much of an FPS drop. I've capped my FPS at 50 to smooth out stuttering. Also, do any of you use the Multi-Threaded tweaks (e.g. bUseThreadedBlood)? Any advantages?

Cool. Thanks Monty. I've got kind of a wonky system at the moment because I'm a little OCD (in general and when it comes to managing my files). Sounds like we're doing the same thing - using WB markers, renaming mods to STEP names, and tracking mods with original filenames in NMM. Whenever I download a new mod or update, I toss it into NMM, then convert to BAIN for WB.

I've landed on a mix of both for now. Markers to divide out the sections, and renaming to make sure I can quickly identify the mod for updates, etc. It'll work for now until we see how TC organizes the next STEP guide.

I noticed this behavior too. I've been using the View New Posts link and after reading the posts, the parent forum icon doesn't reflect a change to read status unless I drill into it and then back out. Not a huge deal, but as you say, it would be quite a convenience if it worked. ;)

You, Sir, just introduced me to my new favorite feature of WB.