BossNoob

When I first started using Mod Organizer, I setup a Default profile, a STEP Extended 2.2.9 Profile, and a STEP REGS profile. I then noticed that every mod shows up in all profiles (even mods that aren't installed in that profile), which I think defeats the purpose of having profiles. It would be a lot more intuitive and user friendly if it showed only the mods installed in each profile. If I had to do this again (and I probably will after I finish this playthrough), I'll go with multiple installations of Mod Organizer.

I think you need to save/restore the Profile folder for Mod Organizer as well? If you run SkyrimLauncher, be aware that it may reset your Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini and download any mods you've subscribed to on Steam. I just went through this a couple of weeks ago on a new build using pretty much the same steps, except I let Steam install Skyrim from scratch to get me back to a clean slate. I also had to delete the Steam subscribed mods from the Skyrim\data folder to let Mod Organizer manage those.

I think what you're seeing on the cart ride at the beginning looks normal to me. My FPS drops to 48 when I round the bend to see Helgen and the mountains in the distance. I think a drop to 46 FPS is most likely just a difference between the R290 and R290X. Here's a shot of Skyrim Performance Monitor on my system in the part of cart ride coming into Helgen. As you can see, the GPU jumps around quite a bit and is normal if you have sufficient RAM/VRAM to keep all the meshes and textures loaded. Apparently something in STEP is causing the issue with the extra texture over the hands in the cart ride. This is the only place I've seen it so far, but there is a thread here discussing the issue https://forum.step-project.com/topic/6240-mesh-clipping-opening-scene/.

I think the next step is to run Skyrim Performance Monitor and Windows Performance Monitor, play the game while getting the low FPS, and then examine the charts to see if anything stands out. You might also check "Combined TESV and ENBHost System RAM" just for giggles. On my new system with the R9 290X I normally see combined RAM and VRAM just about the same in the 2.5 to 3GB area and very little disk I/O. TESV RAM (uncombined) is generally about 1.2 to 1.5GB. Basically I'm just looking to see if it's thrashing your disk or perhaps some external process is hogging the CPU. If you have a dual monitor setup, put the performance monitors on the secondary screen so you can see them live. I did this on my old system that had an older 2GB 7970 video card watching the Disk tab full screen on a secondary monitor and discovered that it was hitting the SSD pretty much constantly for meshes and textures. You shouldn't have this specific problem with an R9 290, but it might be nice to rule out CPU and disk usage. And just to be certain, have you defragmented your hard drive recently?

You might try updating the drivers to see if this makes any difference. I'm currently using AMD Catalyst 14.9 on my R9 290X and I get a steady 60 fps with STEP Extended and REGS. I do see some differences in your enblocal.ini, but I doubt these will make a significant difference.

I've always questioned the quantity of salt used to cook meals more than its availability. A typical meal shouldn't need more than a pinch or two of salt, and that bowl seems to have enough salt for several meals. It just seems to me that a bowl of salt should have multiple quantities of salt, but I haven't attempted to deduce what that quantity might be to keep it balanced. On the other hand, all that salt intake might explain why there aren't many older people in Skyrim.

I think your RAM usage looks really good considering all the mods and texture packs you are using. Just as a point of comparison, my RAM usage never exceeds 1200mb (and averages right around 1100mb) with STEP Extended and REGS, so in your case I think ENBhost is doing what it's supposed to do. If you're curious to see what ENBHost is doing, check "Combined TESV and ENBHost System RAM" in the Miscellaneous Settings tab in Skyrim Performance Monitor. With this enabled, you'll see all the RAM ENBHost is pulling out of TESV into a 64-bit process space. I doubt it's really useful other than to see ENBHost working, though.

This is one of the reasons I really like STEP Extended and the lore-friendly packs. When I first started Skyrim I was trying this on my own and having a tough time dealing with the incompatibilities between mods. I then discovered STEP and have pretty much been sticking with STEP Extended and the packs. The people here put a lot of time and effort into making this about as easy it gets.

Thanks, CJ. I just finished updating all the mods to STEP Extended and REGS 4.0.3 and started fresh with a new character. So far everything is looking good.

The list for Expanded Towns and Cities Patches has these instructions: For Oblivion Realms Serie, should this be Complete or Complete w/o Inns?

Well, this is somewhat embarrassing. After I installed STEP Extended and REGS and fixed a few blunders on my part (notably forgetting to install a couple Falskaar and Wyrmstooth patches for STEP Extended mods), I deleted all the old saves, started a new character, and disabled the autosave options. I just double checked and found the autosave options are back on. Does Skyrim re-enable these options by itself? I never actually use autosave anyway. I usually do a full save before starting a quest, a full save before exiting Skyrim, and quicksaves at certain stages of a quest (just in case something goes wrong). EDIT: Something tickled the back of my mind, so I double checked Mod Organizer and found where autosaves are disabled in skyrimprefs.ini as well.

Does anyone know why or how I can solve an issue with "randomly missing textures"? A few days ago when I walked to Little Vivec, a big square in the lake around the sunken ship was missing. I thought I had a screenshot of this, but I can't find it now. I could see the sunken ship as clear as day without any water around it. I think I either entered one of the buildings or fast traveled somewhere and the lake was golden when I came back. After finishing all the quests in Wyrmstooth, I went to the dock to travel back to Skyrim and found a floating door in the middle of the ocean. As you can see, the ship is mostly invisible although I can walk on it normally. I fast travelled to a nearby location and the ship was completely visible when I came back. I have all of STEP Extended and REGS installed with the exception of Consistent Older People and Better Males. I do not have any other mods installed. I was iniitally getting a lot of stutter outside Whiterun and found that unticking Better Males helped significantly. I have also modified skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini (using the Mod Organizer INI editor), pasted the settings into skse.ini (also in Mod Organizer in the INI-Files tab of the skse mod) and installed enboost directly into the Skyrim folder with the appropriate settings. This should be the relevant sections in enblocal.ini. I'm using an i7 930 processor with 12GB and a Radeon 7970 video card with 2GB. It's not exactly top of the line these days. The setup right now is perhaps a bit "odd" given that I have Steam/Skyrim installed on the SSD boot drive, but Mod Organizer, BOSS, and all the mods are installed on 2GB 7200 RPM spinning rust since I don't have room on the SSD for the downloads plus the installed mods. One thing I've considered doing is reinstalling Mod Organizer on the SSD and pointing its download folder to a secondary drive.

Does someone have a clean STEP Extended + REGS loadorder list you can post? The reason I ask is because I've apparently messed up somewhere and it would be nice to be able to compare the files in my loadorder with a good one to see if I have an extra or missing plugins. One thing that really stands out is that when I enter some of the interiors in Falskaar (like Amber Mead Inn) I see a lot of grass that shouldn't be there. A couple examples I found using Mfg Console are 0901E43C and 0901E4CD in Falskaar.esm orignally in Skyrim.esm (although this don't make any sense because this is DweHallLg1wayRamp01 in the armory). On second thought, this may be a stranger problem than I first anticipated. After exiting and reloading Skyrim, the grass in the Amber Mead Inn and the armory is gone. When I first travelled through the gate, the Amber Mead Inn, portions of the Jarl's house, and the armory near the docks (the one with all the bandits that kidnap the people on the dock) I entered was full of grass (some floating in the air). After restarting Skyrim while in Falskaar, everything is clean. I just started using STEP Extended + REGS last week with a new character (not on an old save). I was initially having severe lag on the just outside Whiterun. I removed Better Males and now lag isn't even noticeable. I also found I had overlooked adding a couple of patches to mods in STEP Extended to account for Falskaar and Wyrmstooth (thanks to a comment from CJ I got these installed). So far STEP Extended + REGS looks really good, so I really appreciate all the time and effort put into such a beautiful version of Skyrim that's so much more immersive than vanilla. Right now I'm just going through my mod list to make sure I haven't missed anything before I restart from scratch with a new character. I'm using an AMD Radeon HD 7870 video card with 2GB memory and Skyrim Performance Monitor shows it getting close to max on occassion, but I've never seen it actually hit max yet. As I recall it peaks somewhere around 1906MB, so it's a wee bit close to peak. The desktop is somewhat oldish with an i7 930 processor and 12GB RAM, but I haven't quite convinced myself that it's worth the expense to upgrade. This is my load order.