Aiyen

You can have multiple instances of AF activated at once... but it is kinda pointless since it does not help quality and only lowers performance. In the case of the ingame one and ENB, then it would first apply that and then apply ENB´s afterward. If you force the driver one then it will overwrite the ingame one but also have the ENB one applied on top.

awww it is cheating to just upload the fixed .esp´s :P Here I had looked forward to seeing the walls of text involved in making those two compatible! But good job! Very nice addition to the guide indeed!

If the game fails to clean redundant scripts in savegames then over time they would get more and more bloated. Then it stands to reason that the game would also become more unstable. But since most progress so far have been to make the game stable (texture wise) within the memory limits, and updating and adding content then I have not heard from any who have actually played the game for an extended period of time. Also most people do not use a pure SR install but have something else added or removed etc. Which is ofc fine, but also adds a certain degree of uncertainty that one must be aware of. I am fairly sure that Neo will keep the guide somewhat like it is now. Only he knows what gets thrown out and what stays etc. As for updating a save when the time comes then the following applies to old saves. You can always add new mods to an existing save, the problem is if you remove mods.

Currently Neo have reformated his machine and is looking into optimizing the entire guide, so it will properly take him a month or more to get it all shiny and stuff. The red backgrounds in Tes5edit are due to various criteria of that program that I forgot atm, but it is not necessarily a bad thing by default. The best way to help SR atm is to play the game so we can get some more feedback from further into the game! There is a standing theory that as the game progress then more script issues might arise. Since there are not going to be any new updates for a while now then you can just go ahead and install the guide as is now, and then play test.

Leaving papyrus logging enabled all the time is just a bad idea. At least in my experience. It causes slowdowns and a higher likelihood of issues. Logging every single script in a script intensive mod list does require a bit extra of the CPU. Freezes are normally because something happens in the execution of scripts. By adding logging you just add more stuff the game engine must do... which is counter productive since this is most likely what is the issue in the first place. There is only a point in having logging on if you have a reproduceable freeze/CTD, or an area where you can produce one with an extremely high probability.

Could you not just use the built in feature to make a new steam folder on a different drive and install skyrim there ? At least that is what I have done.

Memory issues can also come in as freezes like monty says. If something is not written into memory and the game tries to access it then CTD. This is what happens when the game hits the wall. However if the game just needs to swap out a large amount of stuff then perhaps a script gets stuck which cause a freeze. Which is most likely what cause most freezes. If you can still produce your frequent freezes if you save near the locations and then move to them then you might have some mod issues. If you only can get them if you are riding through several cells then the solution is simple.... do not just ride about without saving every few cell changes! The alternative is to reduce the complexity of your mod lists, until the problem goes away. I know you want to be able to just ride about and play the game without a worry, but sadly that is just not possible with such complex lists as is employed here. If you find out which mod has the troublesome script you can ofc. get rid of that mod.

I am guessing that you are using NMM instead of MO. But in general the following applies. Mods further down the mod list of the STEP guide are supposed to overwrite the files of the ones that come before them. This is unavoidable since many mods share resources.

It should be an option in the installer of Even Better Quest Objectives.

Well if a CTD is not due to memory, then it is most likely due to a script. If it is persistent and reproduceable, then the papyrus log should show which mod specifically is the cause.

Yeah the issues are most likely memory related. And I agree with the other suggestions here. However on top of VRAM then also RAM please. You do have a 4Gb card so VRAM is theoretically enough but people who come here and read this will keep thinking that VRAM figures apply for all card types which they do not. It is just a small mission of mine to stop people thinking in VRAM since it is a massively inaccurate figure that depends on too many other settings. RAM is more straightforward, and more likely to be the culprint. Also you do have a large amount of extra weapons and armor mods, and you do force those extra options to actually spawn. Hence you effetively have many MANY more textures that need to load in at once. On top of those weird memory .ini tweaks then your issues might be there. Also lastly, when you use such a large mod list then you might as well get used to the idea of taking it "slow" while traveling. The way to do it is to either find some sort of cave etc. while traveling and make a change from exterior to interior. Or just save your game, and quit to menu and reload. Both ways will force the game to unload unrequired info from memory keeping you running for longer.

It is most properly a great thing, however my tests show that it is not strictly required. However for your silly resolution Neovalen then it most properly is! :P With lower resolutions then it should not matter. I only run at 1650x1080 and I have verified that I could run the game just as stable as Neovalen could, but I would get lower performance in terms of stuttering, and loading in new cells. I only have the 2Gb model of the 660. However as I think I stated in some other thread, then VRAM does matter, but the exact amount is really fuzzy. The only thing I know is that if you go to 1Gb or below your game will stutter so much that the game engine just crashes eventually due to a massive bottleneck. Also windhelm is a fine place to test, but as we found out in some other threads then falkreath and riverwood are still also prime candidates since they contain cells with varying terrain types, hence far bigger texture loads.

Did you remember to copy in the originals and see if the problem persist? Steam can obviously not change the file in your overwrite dir. only the one in the skyrim data dir. This is the file you need to replace the one in overwrite with. If the game still fails with just the vanilla .esm´s enabled after you have done that, then try to delete the .esm´s and reverify and try again. Failing that then I see no other option then a complete reinstall since the pure vanilla game should always function properly. Even the one with the cleaned masters should always function properly unless an error have happened in tes5edit.

Skyrim has its own built in Vsync enabled, so there would be no point in putting anything on through drivers.

Physics rendering is today largely limited by bounding boxes to limit the amount of memory and computation power required for each effect. However this also limit multi object physics interaction to a high degree. With more memory you can prerender more things and just read them from memory instead of having to render them every single time. In games this is properly mostly relevant for environmental effects that the player is not meant to interact with, since those would always require real time computations.. but would still allow for more realistic and epic scenes. The last I read about was realistic weather systems for use in games. So instead of just textures for clouds you would have real clouds. Also yeah Havok runes on CPU only, which is part of the reason why Skyrim is such a CPU heavy game.  That being said then I agree on most other points you have mentioned. Open source is maturing to create competitive software, and hopefully the trend will continue. So more companies can start up without having to pay large amounts of money to get started... Or existing ones can stop playing silly amounts in licence fees, and spend that money on investing in expanding their business. All that said I guess this is a bit off topic by now! :)Â

Well there also is such a thing as "minimum requirements" ;)Â In this case it is more "What one needs to do with it, that count" as well... so many more puns and jokes. I am just going to get another beer!Â

It is rather annoying, but as far as I gather it is a(nother) limitation of the game engine. Just like the game engine gets unstable if you use too many hairs etc. without the mod that allows it you get freezes and CTD´s. The way I got around from it was to stop using bandolier since it adds a million things that essentially only vary in color. Cloaks of skyrim is another however it did remove most of its stuff unless you have a book etc. to avoid cluttering the lists.

I use Empowered magic and it works nicely too imo. I decided on that since back when I put them in then empowered had dragonborn support. Also it is only 3 .esp... mighty magic has a ... mighty large number of them to produce similar effects.

Sounds like issues with NMM and the way it handles the data directory. Best advice would properly be to change to MO since it uses 100% virtual data directories for its profiles. Hence nothing can linger in the Skyrim data directory to create "ghost" effects.

Sounds like we are going into an argument of Open Source vs. Proprietary Software. Which is a bit off topic. :)  But regardless of that then it is a feature of Nvidia cards so it is worth having in mind when making a decision! I have not used it in years so I cannot speak for the specific performance and documentation for it today. I have only briefly looked up the details of today, since I just started on 3d modelling etc. as my new hobby. I have only vaguely read about these better alternatives. The last one I saw promised the end of polygon rendering etc and could produce very nice images of static objects etc. However they never ever released their codes to the public, and only showed the result of the "revolutionary" methods on youtube. Guess there theoretically are a few ideas that have made it into prototypes but they still are a long way from convincing the industry to change standards. I partly disagree with your point requiring PhysX. Imo. then PhysX is only maturing these years, since it has always suffered under DX9 due to the same reason we suffer... not enough memory. However this issue all the other technologies have also had, hence why it has been too costly an affair to try to wrest the market from PhysX on marginal performance gains. I think we are going to see more of them pop up in the following years as physics simulations become more demanding and required in games. Actually it is the game engine developers that decide it should be in their engines! Game makers are then pretty much bound to use it unless they want to implement some sort of merge between the softwares. It is true that Nvidia have deals here, and I am fairly sure they are mutually beneficial for both companies and royalties go both ways. Hehe yeah true that! Thanks for that laugh! ;) As for the memory bandwidth then yeah you are of course right that it will get outperformed by cards with a higher bus speed at tasks where this is the bottleneck. However this bottleneck is really only an issue if you are running seriously demanding graphics operations at high resolutions. Which most games today cant do anyways since they are mainly made for last generation consoles. Most of the time other bottlenecks will hit you hard first.  Also thank you for keeping a civil tone! It is refreshing when dealing with this topic! Sorry if I sound a bit fanboish in some posts! I try my best to avoid it! We all fall into that trap every now and again I guess!Â

Everything you add to the game cost some memory! Textures just cost comparatively more since they are large 2D objects that where a script entry is just a value. Extremely simplistic you can divide the game up as follows. Total Memory use = Textures/Meshes + Sounds/scripts etc. + Game engine overhead. The last is pretty much set in stone, since a minimum amount of memory is required to load in the game engine at all. Of all these then textures/meshes is the most simple thing to change. As mods mature they get more optimized scripts etc. but again compared to just altering a few textures then this is a long and time consuming process.

That is true! I do not feel we have gone into a fanboy contest here yet, and I hope we do not ever get there... it is such a waste of time. That said there also are issues with Nvidia. Like the latest beta version and ENB showed... alot of people upgraded and suddenly everyone had the sun through every building! Driver issues happen for both companies, and AMD have gotten better over the years, but they still have a horrible reputation to get past. Granted a large part of this is due to some of the major AAA titles have been more optimized for Nvidia cards, and hence produced better results in benchmarks. Aesthetics are part of it no doubt. However there are also large differences in what the cards support. I mention CUDA since it is the most obvious one where Nvidia is still far ahead of AMD. Again mostly because they where out quicker, and hence most people naturally started to use it. PhysX is the next largest difference, and games made for PhysX will ofc. have more effects at higher framerates then AMD can provide since they cannot use the technology. It is not just performance wise that Nvidia is better for ENB. It is also largely in terms of stability and weird bugs etc. There are again subtle differences at the driver level that can have something work on Nvidia and not on AMD, but of course this also goes the other way around! Boris is afterall just one guy who does this in his spare time. And if he develops on an Nvidia card, then some AMD related issues slip through obviously. Not sure what you mean by this to be honest. The reason they put the extra Gb on the card is just a marketing stunt I imagine. Higher numbers always look better after all. As for it not having enough power to utilise it... not sure what you mean here. I have not seen a computer based on any of the more modern cards that have the bus speed of the GFX card being a bottleneck... at least not in games. There CPU, RAM, HDD etc. will all cause a bottleneck much earlier. So I guess the reverse question is also relevant. Why do you need a card with such a high bandwidth when it is almost never the cause of bottlenecks ? Again my point is only to get the card that suits your needs. And not a general "Nvidia is always better then AMD" since that is just not true. If you need CUDA, PhysX etc. then there is not even a choice in the matter sadly. And in terms of cost/performance ratio the 660 GTX 3Gb is the best one Nvidia has to offer. Sorry if you felt that I advocated that people just get Nvidia because they are so much better etc! That was not my intention!Â

An API for using the GPU for rendering and computation instead of the CPU... basically. Just do a quick search for CUDA on google and you will get a ton of hits that explains it in huge detail.Â

There is the difference between Nvidia and AMD on the driver and feature side that is worth considering. It depends on what you want it for. For Skyrim Nvidia is just more optimized. For ENB Nvidia is just more optimized. Last I checked then CUDA was also superior to the AMD alternative. So yeah the price tag is a bit higher. Even more so when you get brands like EVGA.. but I find it is worth it! Especially since some brands (Both AMD and Nvidia) offer OC tools, but do not offer a good cooling solution. That said then the Radeon 7870 XT would most likely be my choice if going for an AMD card!Â

Do not spend that kinda money because you expect more wonders in Skyrim. ENB is rather unstable with SLI since it is not optimized for it at all. And the game can be run with a single card in the 600 (now 700) series and max out FPS without any issues. Spend smart... if you are going to spend that much on something then make sure there is a point to it! Skyrim alone is not a good point!Â