Prophes0r

The STEP: 2.2.1 WIP has an error. iBlurDeferredShadowMask=2 Any value LESS than 3 causes massive artifacting in shadows. Even 3 has some, but it is slight, and tolerable (to me). ENB suggests 3-5. Higher values cause significant performance reduction though. So the lowest value you can handle should be used.

No z DDSopt does not save my settings at all. Every time I close it it opens with the default settings. These settings Seem to be hard coded, because I can't find any registry settings for DDSopt, nor are there any places in the INI that can change them.

@Ethatron I realize this is a somewhat low priority change, but could we possibly get the ability to change the default settings of DDSopt? Preferably with the option to change between presets via a drop-down, or a sub menu? At the moment I'm resorting to keeping the forums window up on a second machine and keeping a few instances of DDSopt running so I don't loose the settings I like (and will never remember).

Looks like the Wiki got an update. The Link for Compressionator is currently broken, so i hunted down the new page for it. Till The wiki gets opened to Step users I'll just post the fixes here. Correct Link for Compressionator: https://developer.amd.com/resources/archive/archived-tools/gpu-tools-archive/the-compressonator/

Silly question. Where do we post images for the Wiki? and what format should they be in? Ive done thousands of edits and creations on Wikipedia and Wikia, but i have never had cause to upload an image.

It most definitely does try and compress the textures for all actors, including characters. I'm wondering if the INI can handle exclusions with wild cards so we can exempt the entire character (or even actor) directories. I did try compressing Cabal's aMidianBorn Steel chest with the recommended settings, definitely ended up worse for wear even with just the base .dds https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/20792 Same for Hectrol's Dwarven Shield retex. Even just converting the main dds it comes out looking somewhat worse for wear. https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3996 For the normal maps, if they are ALREADY lossy, and they have mips, shouldn't we just leave them? chopping them down but leaving them uncompressed causes them to end up bigger. Now if you could get the uncompressed masters, that is a different story. Same for lossy with no mips.

Oh yes, those are correct. I keep seeing those 2 acronyms (about 12 times in this very thread) so I assumed they were a convention. As i said, i just got back into this a few days ago and I've basically been reading non stop. As for the data, a combination of things. In game I have the Elys MemInfo SKSE plugin, it is super light weight and works well. I also was able to get Skyrim performance monitor working with SKSE but loaded by Mod Organizer I also was grabbing data from sysmon on this machine and/or my second box. and I turned on recording in a custom map of CPUz and GPUz to record the raw data for another run that I didn't include above just to confirm it. I never got around to making them BSAs, I probably will when i get done with some other things. I actualy started doing this to help me learn to deconflict stuff at a lower level. I have 4 mods total in my "perfect" build, 2 that dislike each other, and 2 that crash each other. So I'm learning the creation kit now to see if i can remap some things, or combine them since there doesn't seem to be a reliable automatic tool that can handle it yet. With all the mods i'd like to run, minus those 4 I'm clocking in at 2gb VRam/ 1Gb V-Vram / 2.4Gb Mem right now so if i can cut it down without bogging it would be nice.

I pre-ordered Skyrim and i decided I was at a time in my life that I could finally enjoy TES games. So I promptly uninstalled and worked my way through Morrowind and Oblivion for the first time successfully. So it's been a little over a year, and on Monday the 24th of Dec I reinstalled Skyrim and started to build my "perfect" game. Morrowind and Oblivion have completed installer that make overhauling the games easy, but for Skyrim I have to work for my fun (which I'm totally OK with). This is when I stumbled on STEP. So, I'm at the point now where I have decided on everything I want installed, and I'm working on optimizing the textures. DDSopt took a little while to get used to, but once I did I ripped everything out of Vanilla + DLCs + CTP and optimized it. Then I went back while I had the extracted files and made a second set of reduced normals. Both methods were done using the 2 presets in this topic. But there must be something wrong. Tests were done with Nothing but SKSE, MO, DLC, USKP and CTP. System Info. i5-3570K @ 3.4 (OC @ 3.8) 32gb Ram (If I had enough Ram I'd actualy try running the game entirely from a Ram drive) 2 Gen4 SSDs in RAID-0 GTX 670 2Gb @ GPU 1006 / VRam 1552 (OC @ 1173/1832) Those OC values are the ones that have survived a 24 hour loop of simultaneous Floating point & Unigine Heaven Benchmarks with no logged errors. But just to be absolutely sure, When I had problems with this I stock clocked and tried again. Test: New game, ride the cart into Helgen 1920x1200 - 2xMSAA + 2xSGSSAA + 16xAF(Nvidia) + Performance SSAO UGRIDS=7 uExterior Cell Buffer=64 Shadows are manually tweaked between medium and low settings since they look so bad anyway. Beth BSA + CTP: 54-60 FPS - Vram 1.8Gb - Vswap 200Mb - Mem 1.4Gb - GPU 95-99% - CPU 55-65% Only drops to 54 just after the first turn, then climbs back to ~58. 60FPS by the second left turn, stays there till character creation. Vanilla/Dawn/Hearth OPT + CTP OPT: 42-54FPS - Vram 1.2Gb - Vswap 500Mb - Mem 1.2Gb - GPU 60-80% - CPU 50-65% Hovers around 48FPS, drops horribly on that first left turn. finishes pretty stable at 52FPS Vanilla/Dawn/Hearth OPT + 521 Resized Normals(no actors) + CTP OPT + 521 Resized Normals: 29-48 FPS - Vram 1.4Gb - Vswap 700Mb - Mem 1.3Gb - GPU 55-75% - CPU 55-65% By far the worst. I'm going to attempt to repackage these as a BSA to see if this fixes the problem any, this does not make sense.