Aiyen

For load times make sure to not count the initial load of a cell.. only count the ones following. The first load will always take longer when you have more stuff going on. However once everything is in memory it should load near instant. Also do not worry too much about CPU load... unless it is at like 99% all the time (with massive slowdowns etc) there is not really anything to worry about.

SMAA will never be able to do a quality equal to 8x MSAA, so do not expect that. It might at best be able to compete somewhat with 4x on a good day. The main reason to use it is that it cost not even a fraction of what MSAA does, and allow you to run with other effects that MSAA would prevent. If Aliasing is your major concern, either use MSAA and no effects, or downsample at higher resolutions.... if you got a 980 setup you should easily be able to do 1600p and still have a decent framerate. For information about how to do downsampling then do a search on the topic, loads of good sites that explain it in great detail.

What ENBoost does is allow you to run skyrim with textures so the total cost is higher than 4Gb of memory.. if you do not have more than 4Gb there is not much point in it. You might get a bit better load times etc. but that really depends on just how much better your graphics card is relative to your other components. The rest of ENB is mainly just if you want to alter the visuals of the game, and add a few new effects not in the default game.

It is only physical that matters, since it is the "fast" type of memory... virtual memory is just a slow type of cache. You would not want to read several GB´s off a disk since even on an SSD it would take too long compared to the milliseconds it takes in physical memory. If you only have 4Gb of physical you should not set it higher then 2048... since then windows will most likely just pop up with an "out of memory" error and shutdown. In general using ENBoost only really works if you have more then 4Gb of RAM. for the 2nd one. You can set this value to almost any height, however it will not really make sense to set it higher then 10Gb.. since making skyrim reach that amount of texture load will most likely cause other bottlenecks to appear due to the insane amount of load required.

This is starting to remind me of when crysis was a thing.... everybody wanted those GTX8800´s so they could run it.. only to find out that they could not even with that! :) Increasing resolution is always going to result in huge frame drops. However the raw horse power of two 970 > a single 980 any day of the week. The only issue with the memory is if you (like Neovalen) hate texture popin with a fierce vengence... and also want to run with 4x MSAA, and every high resolution texture known to man. As for the witcher 3... you can try to see how well you fare if you max out everything in witcher 2, if that runs to your satisfaction then most likely you will do alright with the 3rd one. Always remember that witcher games have ALWAYS had horrible performance optimization upon release... because they do have their own engine. And I will be really surprised if it is not going to be the case again. Heck my GTX 660 cannot even come close to running the witcher 2 at 1440p with DoF´s and motion blur etc on.... and that card came out how much later then the actual game ? But the game still looks really good.. much better then other titles at max.

Yeah that would be a bad business move from their part... but I guess it ultimately depends on how much money they got invested in it. Guess with this report the price of the 970 is going to drop soon..... then perhaps I can get one if I get a decent tax refund this year... I would not care about the memory issue since it would still be way more then my 2Gb! :) oh yeah btw Neo... your system specs are wrong.. it should only say 3.5Gb :P (Runs for the hills!)

I am aware of the cost of post processing effects with increased resolution... but it does not measure in the GB range or even 500Mb range. Taking ENB as an example, its memory use is rather minimal compared to texture use, and it does use techniques etc. that current game engines are only starting to employ this generation. The witcher series is unique in respect to this.. looking at witcher 2 then it had options that no GPU at the time could hope to run at any meaningfull resolution and FPS. But that is part of what made it awesome. And they are most likely doing that with nr. 3 as well... and the point here is that people should not expect current gen cards to even be able to do it at 60 FPS at 1600p... with everything at max.

Even with vsync on the physics can and will still do funky things. Especially with realistic force and ragdolls on. All it takes it spawning several monsters on top of each other and once their hit boxes collide... boom, sometimes things go into the stratosphere. Also when giants hit normal bandits.. they can and will fly over a mountain sometimes. No idea why this happens, but it does. Most of the time it is mostly only related to ragdolls... ie dead enemies or you however. But do not be surprised to see a mammoth fly over a hill.. because it stepped on a mudcrab.

Make sure you got all the directx elements you require to run ENB in the first place, and that you do not have any 3rd party programs running in the background which might interfere with it.

I am personally going to have to do some research... I just do not buy that those games cost that much active VRAM use... it simply does not compute for me! They are not modded, and they are not made with the intent of squishing every last bit out of the consoles since some of them also are on the previous generation. It would also mean that my Skyrim at 1440p would eat up way more VRAM then at 1080p.. and it does not. The impact of increasing resolution should hit the GPU not its memory first.

We have had a few other users dabble with the 3d, perhaps that will chip in with some hands on experience. Mine is mostly just based on what you could find by searching sadly. However at 1080p only then it should be possible to get enough horse power to pull it off somewhat.. worst case you have to lower some settings, or remove a mod or two.

You would most likely not be able to get the required framerate required for a good 3d experience with SRLE since it does add quite a few mods that increase both draw distances, as well as the amount of stuff rendered. At least not on just one of those cards. If an ENB is used then it is even more unlikely to be possible.

Okay this might be a bit off topic but I am curious.... So you are telling me that shadows of mordor.. at 1600p with AA on will eat up past 3Gb of VRAM atm ? and cause FPS drops and massive slowdowns ? That is just ... wow. Are we talking like 16x multisampling or what ? (In which case I have to ask.. why would you do that at 1600p.. would make almost no visual difference! Heck even 8x would probably be overkill). Based on what I have seen of the game it does not contain even full 2k textures majority since it is somewhat polished and optimized. So that would mean that most of it would be purely rendering the same thing 16 times at most... just does not add up to that much memory actively being used. At least not in my head! But oh well hard facts beat me down on a daily basis! :) Anyways... ofc if one can get a refund here etc. then that is an option.... now the only question is neo... why did you not just go for the top models if you wanted future proof (ish ) grade hardware! :)

Unless you are at higher resolutions, and/or use silly amounts of memory and expect fully fluent gameplay then it wont matter in the slighest. Most current games, and even upcoming are still made within the console specs... so they wont be able to kill your system. Witcher 3 is ofc. going to be a pc made game first, and most likely going to have the same silly options the 2nd one had... so there you might be able to feel a difference. However at the end of the day it is memory, so the main culprint is going to be texture load.. not so much resolution. So Neo I am not sure what you mean by "games gobbling up VRAM".... again you almost never can use the figure of VRAM use for anything since it does not take cache into account... it will just happily be full even though it does not use the memory for anything. The reason people even noticed this is only in cases like Skyrim where you can load such silly amounts of textures that you can exceed into the slow part of the memory and then have to wait... swapping out textures at low bandwidth.. especially the slowdown here would be noticeable. However as the original article stated.. it would kinda require one to seek out the issue to really find it at all. I would highly doubt that any game.. even the witcher 3 will be able to provoke slowdown issues because of this... most likely some over epic DoF or other related issue will kick in way before that. Which is again not related to memory. As a final note.... Increased power consumption does not only equal more heat.. it also means more power is used.. which mean the card actually cost more to run. That is the main reason this chip is so epic compared to the previous generation. And still the main selling point. Hope that all made sense :)

Somehow this makes it even more impressive just how good that chip actually is. Ofc. it is not okay that one part of the company did not talk properly with the other part to make it all right.

Okay just to make sure I looked up on the SkyrimEditorprefs.ini The FbrightColorRGB´s are in there under general and set to 1.0 by default. So that part is true at least. And altering them can be done with the CK open and altering its preferences. As for the sD3DDevice then that sounds reasonable. At least I am able to start the game even if I change my GTX 660 to a 970 in the .ini. ENB still reports the proper 660 as well so it does it´s own lookup it seems. Good to know about the mouse acceleration as well! Thanks

The following fBrightLightcolorRGB are only relevant in the CK (To my knowledge). They are what determine the light you have on when you disable ingame lighting. By default this is just set as pure white. Perhaps they are just leftover values from the engine as they should be set in the CK .ini file not in the skyrimprefs. Mouse Acceleration have always been just that... same as in most other games that have that setting enabled. Actually unsure if it matters for me since I have a mouse with its own settings stored in its own memory (I can set mouse acceleration settings there separately if I wanted). But I always disable it since I in general dislike the effect. The sD3DDevice should just be what your current video adapter is. It should always be set by default... if you run the game and generate ini´s first. It will be whatever is reported by DirectX... which in turn depends on what is in your driver settings. It can be weird for optimus laptop users since they have two settings for it by default.

Because mod popularity does not automatically make a mod part of STEP. Lighting overhauls is something that has been discussed several times. All previous times the reason was that it simply was not complete enough to be a part of it. Also there is the fact that it some can argue that it does deviate too far from vanilla style... however it is mainly the first reason.

You can always try out other ENB presets. The only question is if they are compatible with your weather mods, image space and interior mods. I can tell you from experience that orange/red skin is an "issue" on quite a few presets. Since skin textures have orange/red as their base color. Most likely the presets with images that does not have it use some form of other weather setup and or altered .esp´s to change the lighting. Or they try to make skin look a certain way and by doing that have to compromise in other areas. However it also depends on weather, and location... especially when image spaces are used since they provide an additional tint layer on everything. Hope that helps a little bit. If you where just looking for a solid "try this" then the best I can say is just try it.. you can always revert the ENB files again.

Moved post to appropriate forum. And to answer your question... jerks and other lowlifes of the community happened, so no ENB´s from prod80 for the time being.

Will keep Elianora in mind if it becomes relevant with the assistance! As for JK... it was his mods that more or less inspired this project to begin with. But I do not plan on the project to have a scope where it really requires more then one person. But I guess once the mod is more complete I can shift it past him to get some input.

Almost at the end of the various major construction efforts. I am kinda running out of real estate without cluttering up the entire place too much... I guess there should also be a little bit that resemble uncivilized caverns as well. Currently I got plans for two more major construction efforts. First is expanding the gatehouse area, so it will look a bit more majestic. The other is to add a few more massive structures near the cathedral and massive waterfall area.. so that part in general looks a bit more like it was inhabited once. After that is finished, the next step will be to pretty up the various locations with more clutter type objects, so the areas are more interesting to explore. I do hope that I will figure out how to create loot, monsters and other stuff that can be linked to the already existing leveled lists later, since a few of the locations really would benefit from having a falmer or two. I guess if I get really into it down the line.. then I could start to create new sub caverns as their own interiors and try to make the whole area appear even larger... Oh a boy can dream! :) I have also decided to make the mod require all of the DLC except hearthfire. There are some nice new models in the other expansions that really helps to make the place more diverse looking. I do hope to have a beta version up for testing soon!

If you are using SRO etc. then there is no point in having optimized versions of the vanilla textures... almost every texture is going to be overwritten by other mods... the few that remain you are most likely never going to notice anyways. That will save up a lot of space.

If stuff is greyed out like that then it most likely means that deeffered rendering is disabled, which means that your enblocal.ini is not properly setup. That or your general game .ini´s have an error in them.

I figure that some images will do some good, so I created a nice little album to showcase the "finished" areas so far. Hope the link works! :S https://imgur.com/a/pQqTC So far I started at the tower of Mzak.. added a hydro dam like construct to it. Which I think have come out rather nicely, and it blends in quite alright, and does add a bit to the size of the tower, and gives a nice view when you are down near the falmer mining camp. I rearranged the overseers farm house area, so it actually looks a bit more like a farm that has decayed. Added a courtyard, and moved the fungi into various corners that where not used in order to better simulate a bit better that some agriculture was going on. Added a bit to the main entrance into the main city... making it look a little bit more majestic. Currently I am adding a major estate complex on the other side of the river where there was absolutely nothing before! I try only to focus on the major details currently. All the glorious detail can come later... since there is a LOT of ground to cover still! If anyone got some ideas they would like to suggest I am all ears! The most difficult part here is getting the idea on what to place!