Spock

Yes, there where many very bad 290 coolers. The high TDP and small chip make cooling that card a real challange. The Sapphire Vapor-X one is very good and quiet though. Sorry mate, all depends on the task. There is no "this card outperformes that card" if their average performance is somewhat similar. But as you can guess from my previous posts I think NVidia is currently working on an inferior architecture for the tasks I think are important. I've read a lot about the various r9 290(x) cards and I think it's a marketing gag. You could apply very high voltages to your chip but I wouldn't do that. The two 8 pin power connectors are more then enough. If we can believe the rumor mill the TDP of the new cards will be fairly low and performance exceptional. But rumors are rumors, only actual benchmarks will tell. HBM will certainly lower TDP though and the memory bandwidth will probably help for high resolution performance. Since cooling and TDP probably cost AMD a fair amount of sales, I think they worked hard on those aspects. It also seems like their new generation architecture is maturing. They spent a lot of time to move from the 7000 series to the 290 cards but it still felt like they couldn't get some core optimizations done. Hopefully the 390 series will be more mature. On a side note, if people are looking for those cards, it might be advisable to grab one rather quickly. If the 22 nm rumors are true the yields might be low and the card might be even more interesting for computing tasks then the 290. Sure, those are not real comparison benchmarks. But tbh, 4k shadow res isn't an overly big deal either. My remark wasn't about them reporting bad performance, they were just upset that their cards didn't have better performance then a 290 like the benchmark websites indicate. My goal was to underline that shaderperformance is fairly important for many aspects of gaming graphics, I personally think it is worth weaker overall benchmark performance. But that of course depends on what you want to do. Far too many people fall for the "NVidia has the fastest cards" trap (which is a marketing trap just like Physics, True Audio, CUDA, Mantle etc). In the past I always chose the architecture with better shaderperformance, it's usually the better choice if you only look for performance (there are other aspects ofc like TDP, cooler noise etc). Hmm, maybe I'm just not around long enough. Over the past 1 1/2 years I personally never had any problems with ENB on my AMD cards. Not that there weren't any, but they where fixed within days.

I did read the first 4 pages of this thread, this is indeed bad news for all 970 customers. To be honest, I do not understand people clinging to one GPU company over the other, it really depends on the architecture. Both do their dirty tricks (e.g. NVidia cards did have different performance on cut chips because some cut into texture units, I don't remember if it was 600 or 700 series though). On the other hand the 290 series has problems of their own. Experienced posters that are perceived as experts on this forum seem to advertise NVidia too much imho. Over at the Lumen ENB comments there are several posts where people complain that their 970s and even 980s don't get the same performance as Jafin's 290 ("are they not supposed to be the faster card?"). The simple reason is that the shader power of NVidia cards really sucks, and they did nothing to improve it over the last 3 generations (open cl raytracing benchmarks). If you really want to crank up ENB effects at high resolution, AMD is currently the better choice, regardless of optimizations. I'm eager to see what is possible with AMD optimized ENB shaders, what I read so far AMD cards profit from optimization much more then NVidia cards. Either way, I would seriously recommend waiting for the 300 series if only for the price drop (the 200 series was a land slide).

This is going to make Requiem compatibility so much easier! Stuff like explosive bolts visualized, radiant and unique potions, avrak etc can be solved via bashed patch. Improved closefaced helmets could be made compatible by loading it after Requiem and adding Stats to Requiem (in case it doesn't overwrite Requiem keywords, didn't check that).If we can also get a scripts tag (for stuff like BOYD) the only thing left to do would be keyword merging (dunno, maybe the skyprocc patcher is capable of doing this?) and npc deleveling (this will always be a manual thing). A STEP compatibility section could be made largely obsolete just by using Loot. Loot could apply the right order and tags while the bashed patch handles the incompatibilities.

Thank you soooo much! This is simply gorgeous! Two tags that come to mind that would significantly help compatibility are keywords (for stuff like WAF) maybe with a special tag for mods that remove keywords and scripts (for stuff like BOYD).

Does this have any negative effects related to Skyrim lighting bugs? Especially in areas where pointlights are already stressed to the limits? If this uses the same distance units as fTreesMidLODSwitchDist, I'd suggest not going over 14000 with ugrids 5 because that's how close you can get to a cell border. Grass seems to work at a 2:1 distance compared to fTreesMidLODSwitchDist though, so those distance units don't seem to be homogenous.

Since ENBoost is core now, Boris included an alt F4 feature: https://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3389&start=290#p57533

I might have underestimated the battery lifetime a little, maybe because it's always empty when you need it. I just wished they made a 700s with the 602 sensor which requires much less power and still performs more then well enough (because optical sensors are more efficient then laser sensors).

That's kind of hard to tell because I don't count the hours. But under heavy use in power save mode maybe two days.

I got the g700s. The mouse feels very nice but it needs charging very regularly which is a huge annoyance for me. @Phaser: The problem with non gaming wireless mice is, that the polling is limited to the USB frequency. Which is 125 Hz ~ 8ms. That's something you will notice when gaming. 2ms should be sufficient. There might be hacks that enable you to overcome that limitation, the gaming mice usually have such features built in. If someone finds a rechargeable, wireless gaming mouse with good responsiveness, a side scrolling wheel, and a month of battery life, please tell me. I don't need lots of buttons, 1200 dpi and 1ms poll rate is more then anyone ever needs.

Pathfinder is a good system, it does carry forward some of the underlying problems of 3.5 though (even though much better balanced as a whole). After level 12 well built casters simply start to take off and overshadow everyone else. I personally love D&D 5. It simplifies a lot of imho unnecessary rules, they are very straight forward. It's power curve amplifies the level range that was most enjoyable in 3.5/PF stretching them.

[edit]Sorry, didn't read your post properly :(

Hmm... seems like some things may not work the way intended. Non-Essential Children already is loaded after CCOR. Side question regarding the matter: Does the conflicts tab under mod information take files packed in a bsa into consideration for conflicts? If yes then most of the mods MO lists me have no pex file conflicts.

I am referring to "Potential mod order problem": This sounds rather important. I don't understand it though because looking at the conflicts tab many of those mods show no asset conflicts at all.

Huh? This is an entirely new concept for me. I never thought that mod order changes anything if there are no file conflicts. Is there a forum post with a more in depth explaination for this?

For everyone not knowing what Vurt's stress test is: Open the console and enter the commands tcl (toggle clip) tgm (god mode, optional) and player.setav speedmult 1000 Then fly around the world very fast loading lots of stuff stressing the engine. I would like to know what your results are with STEP:Extended. My game usually crashes at 5-8 minutes. This might be due to my GPU clocking down when the game is loading assets. What do you think about the stress testing method to asses your game stability? Thanks in advance for any input on that matter, Spock

I installed the mod exactly the same way NameTaken displayed. It somehow makes my game crash within seconds when doing vurt's stress test (vanilla is completely stable). Dunno if it's due to the way MO works (stressing asset loading like that with a very large BSA might not have been accounted for) or due to the package. But on the other hand doing vurt's stress test isn't fully stable with STEP Extended+Lumen ENB @7 ugrids anyway, but that's lots of 2k textures and not a lightweight ENB. I'd be interested if others can reproduce this.

Hey, I just finished my reinstall. I applied all the Loot rules suggested on the 2.2.9 wiki and ran loot as an external program. MO now warns me about errors in my load order. Is there a way to update the internal Loot of MO (it might also not get through my fw even though I think I allowed the key programs)? Thanks in advance! Spock

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59901/? Since it's released since today and I spend most of the day reinstalling Skyrim I didn't have an extensive look at it. My first impression: The first thing that really sprung at me was the fires. They just look sooo beautiful! It is clearly inspired by NLA, Opethfeldt and Serenity. A little more on the cinematic/fantasy side then Opeth and NLA but not overly so. The brightness seems very well balanced, not too dark but still encouraging torches and light spells. The performance version seems slightly more demanding then Opeth/NLA (which seemed to have the same impact for me), but this may very well also be due to the upgrade to STEP 2.2.9 (distance overhaul for example is new) and upgrading my texture resolution. I definitely have to take a look at sunsets/rises and see how they feel. If I find out that my first impression is way off I will edit this post.

Yep, that's the shadow lod bug he explains and shows on a youtube video. Doubleyou claimed he doesn't have the bug with his ini settings with farther draw distance, I didn't test that though. Be aware though that using ENB shadows changes things quite dramatically. Turning up ENB shadow settings and reducing resolution in the ini is the way to go. Most ENBs have their shadow settings maxed. I go with 2k since the difference to 1k is a very small fraction of an FPS. Don't bother with primary or secondary resolutions, they seem to change nothing. The only other quality setting worth changing from vanilla (I use high as base) is iBlurDeferredShadowMask. I prefer 4, Jafin uses 5, you need to decide which value is right for you. Note that shadow distance still effects quality with ENB shadows because Skyrim essentially renders one big shadow. Higher range means a bigger shadow means less quality. I think 6500 is a good balance.

It seems like the gigabyte overclocks a little better while the asus card runs quieter and blows part of the heat out of the case. Your GPU cooler will most likely be louder then the strix, and the strix temps are probably enough to overclock the card anyway, so both are probably overkill. I would read up about vrm temps and falue rates (if there already are articles, this usually takes some time) to make a decision. Edit: https://compubench.com/result.jsp?benchmark=clb11 Ouch! This is probably not a problem for current generation rasterization engines. But I would really like to know the performance difference for UE4 GI and the likes.

GPU scaling actually looks really good full screen, I would at least try it. It depends on how far you sit from your monitor though (you shouldn't sit to close for the sake of your eyes anyway). You will probably have to make this trade off for some gpu generations to come if you are into newer titles. I personally prefer higher settings to higher resolution if I have to choose. @hishutup: It probably isn't enabled by default to keep people from complaining about their benchmark scores. GPU scaling comes with a performance hit (dunno how large).

Some monitors have the option to disable fit to screen. It depends on the monitor. That way you could get the black borders and native resolution. You can improve the up scaling by letting your GPU handle it. If you set gpu upscaling to true under "my digital flat panels" in the CCC the image quality should be quite good at 1080p.

Could you send me that save so I can test the exact angle?

No, they are certainly not mutually exclusive. They tend to have different approaches to the pc rpg genre though, both series probably compete for a similar marked. So a comparison is interresting imho. I never said DA:O or NWN are not entertaining, I just think that DA:I is overhyped. It's a little like comparing the Spiderman movies to The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight being a masterwork doesn't mean the Spiderman movies are bad, they are highly polished hollywood movies and really enjoyable. I'm simply more excited about Witcher 3 and Torment:Tides of Numeria and wanted to give a short critique as to why. Btw: Did you play the Aielund Saga for NWN 1? It's an absolutely marvellous module! My problem with 4x games is, that sadly the AI is often too stupid. Civ 4 with the k-mod has the most challenging non cheating (aside from some special cheese protection) AI I found so far. If you like the civ series you should definitely try it! Interface wise: Yes. But there have been some mechanical changes since they derived from the d20 system. Maybe I need to do another Baldur's Gate playthrough when BGII:EE is patched up and Sword Coast Stratagems is updated.

I am sorry to say this but I do not get the Dragon Age hype. So far I have played DA:O and found it underwhelming. The setting and the world is really great but the the dialogue is kind of unoriginal, the characters seem stereotypical and the plot is ok, but not overly captavating. Personally, I think if a game lacks depth in decision making and interesting dialogue it has to live off a great plot. KotOR is such an example. The character development mechanics in DA:O feel very mmorpg'ish, I really disliked that. It's not that DA:O is a bad title, it is certainly a good game, I just think it doesn't deserve the hype. I think Baldur's Gate II just did so much of a better job on a "we are the heroes" type fantasy rpg. DA:O is more on par with NWN II vanilla or Storm of Zehir with better level design (imho Mask of the Betrayer is one of the best fantasy rpgs ever made btw). From the videos Dragon Age Inquisition it looks kind of flashy. I couldn't help but think of a modern diablo clone. What I'm really excited about is Witcher 3!