DanielCoffey

I just used the .esm and it seems to work fine. BOSS correctly complains if you use both.

Thanks for the tip about AV. I did have one crash approaching the watchtower before Bleak Falls Barrow. Fortunately I was still running Skyrim Performance Monitor and it showed RAM usage had peaked at 2931Mb briefly in that area so I am not surprised it flipped out at that point. I suppose I have two choices - cut back on AV a bit or go down to 1024 normal maps. While I was having all my previous crashing issues under the STEP guide I had dropped to 1024 Normals in an attempt to reduce RAM usage and I did notice the difference in some textures - mainly clothing and chain mail. Lokir's simple cloth tunic and the guard's chainmail were immediately obvious as looking less "real" with 1024 normals. I will have a look at the AV models and textures in use first. EDIT : selecting the AV textures in the MO Override folder and dropping the normals to 1024 knocked a fairly decent chunk off the file sizes. I will see how that affects the RAM usage around Bleak Falls later.

Mod : Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers Author : toaDime Version : 1.3 File : https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9385/ This is the simple little mod that adds a quest with markers to the remaining Unusual Gem locations. The file has no ITMs or wild edits but it has failed to include an edit from the UKSP. Warning:This mod does not forward some fixes from the unofficial patches. To resolve the problem(s), perform the following: Open TES5Edit. Select Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp and BarenziahQuestMarkers.esp then click [OK]. Expand "Quest" under BarenziahQuestMarkers.esp and select the "0009DD77" node. Scroll about a third of the way down until you find the highlighted Stage that begins with the text "It was suggested that I show my..." Drag the "CNAM-Log Entry" record from Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp to BarenziahQuestMarkers.esp. Click the [X] in the upper right hand corner, uncheck "Backup plugins", and click [OK].

Well colour me amazed! Smooth, stable and no crashes in a whole hour! Chalk another one up to NeoValen. I have adhered faithfully to NeoValen's guide, installing it to the letter over several days with no deviations from the mods listed. I have run the textures through one pass of DDSopt bringing all textures down to 2048. Straight out of the box, so to speak, RAM around Helgen peaked at 2520Mb and VRAM at 2280Mb. After DDSopt sizing to 2048 (with 2048 normals) RAM was down to 2340Mb and VRAM at 2030Mb. I am running 0xAF to keep a steady frame rate but on a 2560x1440 monitor I find it fairly hard to tell if AA is on or not. With 4xMSAA I was finding that outdoors in Helgen was making the card hit 100% GPU fairly often but 0xMSAA it was able to self-overclock to keep from hitting the ceiling. Indoors of course it was working less hard. I must say that after working through the Guide I have learned enough to check simple mods for wild edits, omissions and basic conflicts. There are only a couple of mods I want to add and I will re-read the Suggested Mods thread for discussions of Perk or Spell overhauls.

NeoValen - I would like to thank you for the detail you went into when formatting the Guide. After multiple sessions over several days I have just finished the installation adhering very strictly to the Guide. Apart from one case of User Error where I missed an optional in Race Menu (hardly surprising given there are around 360 mods or optionals to be installed) the game fired up flawlessly first time. Excellent work, sir. I do have one recommendation for an edit to the Guide, specifically to do with the version description for the Better Males mod... You currently state "Geonox Faces Without Beard, FavoredSoul Meshes" as the download options to select. The first was obvious but I got the second file wrong. The only reference to FavoredSoul Meshes in the file titles pointed to the two naked versions. I incorrectly assumed that clothing would be applied later and picked the second version. I would suggest that you change the recommendation to "Geonox Faces Without Beard, Underwear - Default". Let us just say that in the Keep under Helgen, when Ralof told me to help myself to Gunjar's gear, Gunjar was a... um... bigger boy than I was expecting! Talk about surprised! I felt decidedly weird getting dressed as I found my eyes dragged back to Gunjar's corpse! I also have further questions which are mainly to do with subsequent optimisation... 1. Do you advise running the ModOrganizer directory through DDSopt to resize any large textures down to 2048? I know you can tell DDSopt to put any resized textures into a new directory and they could be packaged so that they can be turned on or off if needed. 2. Would it be advisable to select any of the Apachii SkyHair styles that we know we don;t want to use and remove them as recommended in this tutorial https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/32768 or is there no benefit once we are past the character generation screen? Do random bandits select from that list of new hairstyles too?

I have reported this as a possible bug on the MO board. If you let MO hold the Uncapper .dll, it loads with no errors from SKSE but is then ignored. If, however, you manually move the .dll to the real SKSE Plugins folder in Skyrim data it works perfectly. The MO author is aware of the issue but the lack of SKSE errors is confusing.

Hmm... it seems that iShadowMapResolutionPrimary is duplicated in both .ini files. I have just cleaned my Skyrim installation and you are correct, it is in SkyrimPrefs.ini... but it is in Skyrim.ini too.

I was not using FNIS as it was not in STEP but I see an association with the Maximum Skeleton mod which is (because of the Dual Sheathe Redux). I will have a look at it. I will review UFO. I like what it brings to the table (specifically the "Train some, you are weak" and the increased number of followers permitted (I rarely go out with more than two followers at most) but it is nice to know it can handle that. I remember when followers did not auto-level with you and you had to disable/enable them to get it to work as well as struggle with hidden weapons they refused to relinquish. Do they still do that? Do you recommend anything else instead of from UFO? I will certainly have a look at the guide because I know that a Bash Patch or merged Patch is the next thing I should look at. Thanks for all the advice. EDIT : I had to look up the location of the Guide and here it is for those who are reading this and haven't found it yet... https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited

I am going to turn on Papyrus logging to see if any mod leaps out as suspicious but in the absence of any suggestions I will take a shotgun to the mods directory and delete a chunk of mainly script-related mods and see if stability returns. Already done - unpack BSA, optimise textures, reduce normals, turn off AA, check RAM/VRAM used. To do - Papyrus check, bash patch, remove mods.

I understand from a quick Google that the 635M 2Gb is a re-badged 555M 2Gb. That means that according to https://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:System_Requirements you should be able to play at Medium/High, possibly High. The proviso comment is... "These cards should be around medium/high settings give or take a little depending on the exact resolution. Some of these cards are showing their age but should still be more than sufficient for Skyrim" You do have plenty of VRAM on it so I suggest you stick to the STEP Baseline 1024 mods. You certainly shouldn't need to pick Performance but I would steer clear of the Extreme choice and pick Medium for Shadows.

That bird flee trigger could come from one of two places. It is a long-standing vanilla bug thrown by "invisible birds" used to trigger the flock of birds or bats like the ones in the tree near the Riverwood bridge, near the three standing stones and in the cave at the end of Bleak Falls Barrow. If you search for the script name you will see it has been an issue for a long time. The worst one for it is the Riverwood bridge. In addition, one STEP mod, Birds & Flocks, uses that trigger to add more birds into the game. According to the mod author, the cleaned version and the HF addition may throw the odd error but it should not be critical. If you are getting those bird triggers logged at CDT times in places where the five (I think it is five) vanilla bird triggers occur, then you could temporarily remove Birds & Flocks to see if the errors go away.

The Werewolf Perks works fine with SkyRe as they affect different perk trees. SkyRe does not touch the Dawnguard perk trees at all.

I think that a lot of people who report CTDs use SkyRe because it is good. I believe that it isn't SkyRe causing the CTDs itself, merely that it is on so many installations when CTDs are reported. I am approaching 600 hours on Skyrim and I reckon about 400 hours were with SkyRe (but not STEP). I very rarely had CTDs but was only using around 50 mods. Since upgrading my graphics card from a 5870 1Gb to the 7950 3Gb I applied the STEP list of mods and the CTDs started.

I would appreciate some help tracking the likely source of frequent CTDs that I am getting since applying STEP to my preferred Immersion mods. Firstly some info... This has been a completely clean Skyrim install, as advised by the STEP guide. All drivers are up to date. I am using ModOrganizer. I have followed the large majority of the STEP Baseline mods, only omitting those in which I had no interest. I have strictly applied the mods in the order specified in the STEP 2.2.4 (and now 2.2.5) guide. I have applied my Immersion mods in a group at the end of the load order, following author-specified load order recommendations (such as RLO and COT). I have not used WB to create a Bash Patch yet as I am unsure of the merits of doing so and am unfamiliar with the tool. I have unpacked and cleaned the .bsa files as instructed. I have resized all textures down to 2048 and normals to 1024. RAM used peaks at 2.36Gb. VRAM peaks at 1.8Gb Hardware : 2010 Mac Pro, 6x3.33, 12Gb ECC RAM, 7950 3Gb, 2560x1440, 240Mb SSD with Win7-64 Home Skyrim : Ultra but high shadows, 0xAA 16xAF (in an attempt to reduce VRAM) Before all the optimisation I used 2.80Gb RAM and 2.45Gb VRAM at 4xMSAA, 16xAF. MODLIST : LOADORDER : The crashes are frequent and appear to be random. I have had some hard lockups on zoning, a few lockups on initiation of combat, quite a few sudden CTD with no warning when moving and a few CTD when interacting with harvestables. The longest I have gone without a crash is 45 minutes. Most occur every 15 to 20 minutes and are centred around Riverwood and Helgen (and even in the Escape from under Helgen). Here is a sample RAM/VRAM usage graph from the latest 45 minutes. The graph starts as you get off the cart at Helgen, move into the keep, emerge outside (the GPU% jump is that point), head to the stones then go into Embershard Mine (the drop), clear the mine and head outside (the jump in GPU%), clear the wolves, cross the river and pick up the hidden treasure then turn to face Riverwood. The game locked up with audio looping when I used Flames on a bunny. Divine payback I assume. I would really like to know how to tackle these CTDs as it is getting highly irritating. I have dealt with the textures which shaved about 350Mb off the VRAM usage and dropped off the AA which reduced it even more but there seems to be something apart from RAM usage which is causing this instability. Thanks in advance for advice and help, Daniel.

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary is in the Skyrim.ini, not the SkyrimPrefs.ini If it isn't in yours, you should probably start with a clean ini and let Skyrim recreate it. Remember that Mod Organiser puts its ini files in the ModOrganizer Profiles subdirectory.

Your best bet would be to ask this question on the Nexus thread relating to the actual unofficial patches. If you need to know about specific issues you really do have to read the long changelogs. Whenever critical bugs are fixed by Bethesda, the Unofficial Patch team remove the fixes from their patch so that it doesn't get applied twice (or in two different ways). The only exceptions are when they find that the Bethesda fix does not address the entire issue. I think, these days, the entire set of Unofficial Patches are considered highly recommended by anyone who wants to make Skyrim more stable, especially since there are not likely to be any more official patches from Bethesda. As you will have heard they have shut down the Skyrim developer project, leaving only a few caretaker members behind for minor fixes.

I am not sure just how low a GPU the STEP Performance build is aimed at but I do think that if you follow the DDSopt guide for unpacking the Skyrim - Textures.bsa and HDDLC packs (if you use them) into loose files and optimising them (in your case downsizing them to 512x512) you may be able to claw something back in terms of GPU vram used. EDIT : Also make sure you are using the lowest texture detail versions available for the hair mod and also the cloaks. Integrated GPUs are really not that good for Skyrim as I am sure you are aware. Out of interest, what GPU do you have? Compare to https://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:System_Requirements and make sure you are not trying to run the game on too high a setting.

I believe this now has DG and DB support and could be reconsidered?

Aha - I have found where the Papyrus logs were hiding I was looking in the wrong place. MO places them in Documents \ My Games \ Skyrim \ Logs \ Script

Apologies for jumping onto this thread but I too can't get a papyrus log generated. I have edited the logging entries in the MO copy of the Skyrim.ini and started the game but I can't find any log files anywhere. Do I need to zone or allow a certain amount of time for the logs to be generated? I really need to check logging as my STEP + personal mods game is very unstable and I have found a point where I can repeat a crash reliably. The very instant the last remaining bandit outside Bleak Falls Barrow spots me and the Sneak Eye opens, I CTD. Every time. I have tried one-shot killing him at range, sneaking past with an Invisibility Potion or approaching not under stealth. The instant his combat AI triggers, I am staring at the desktop.

I can help with the ATI CCC part... The AMD CCC Guide advised switching from the in-game MSAA to CCC-controlled SSAA but with your limited hardware you won't be able to get a playable framerate with SSAA so stop following that guide. If you have already created it, delete the custom 3D Gaming profile you created for TESV.exe inside the CCC panel and leave it with the default one. Let Skyrim control the AA and AF settings in the .ini file. If you are struggling to get a smooth framerate I would suggest trying 0xAA and 8xAF first, loading up with the STEP mods and seeing if you are still smooth. If you like, you can try putting 2xAA on in the .ini and seeing how it goes but I suspect that you will find a smoother playing experience more pleasing to the eye even if it has a few jaggies than an AA paradise that jerks and stutters all over the place.

Argh - now I feel like an idiot - you are quite correct! You DO need to mirror the settings in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file. I took some screenshots of sky against a roofline to check and it was immediately obvious. If CCC forces an override but the SkyrimPref.ini is set to 0xAA 0xAF, that is what you get. No AA and no AF. Once the SkyrimPrefs.ini is edited to put back the AA and AF, then AA is visible. I do have to ask if the CCC settings are even applied at all. Some more testing would be needed. Damn - I had got all excited and thought I could save a bit of VRAM and get a steadier framerate but no. Lots of testing and I never even looked at a screenshot to check if the AA/AF was even on at all. Well spotted.

https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/34780 Metal Cage HD is (currently) a 4096 texture replacer for the Vanilla box cages that you see in places like the escape from Helgen. It is produced by skunky123 who is the mod author of Realistic Mushrooms which is already in STEP. He has also produced HD replacers for the torture rack, Forsworn tents, practice dummies and even the Telvanni Mushroom in the DG expansion. The author has been asked to produce a 2048 and 1024 version of the mod but has not yet replied. Once the medium and low detail versions are offered, this would be an excellent addition to the Textures section of STEP.

That was my STEP copy with some added Immersion mods. I have no idea why I had turned Triple Buffering on in my earlier tests. I can only assume I had misread the AMD CCC Guide. The most recent five tests above are investigating what the guide advises - Skyrim AA/AF control vs CCC AA/AF control and looking at MSAA vs SSAA. Triple Buffering was off. EDIT : Vanilla Skyrim with HDDLC, DG, HF, DB with CCC controlling 4xSSAA and 16AF shows VRAM avg / max at 1091Mb / 1300Mb, FPS avg / max at 58/60 and GPU load avg / max at 50% / 88%. Nice and comfortable.

I have re-run the tests on the cart ride and can confirm that when Skyrim is involved in setting the AA and AF, the VRAM usage reported by Skyrim Performance Monitor is higher than when just CCC is used. I also found that setting Triple Buffering was causing the GPU to work much harder which led to some GPU 100% flat peaks with shaky frame-rate so I turned it off for the performance gain. All the tests below were run at 2560x1440 with Triple Buffering OFF. 1. When CCC is overriding the AA/AF settings, should Skyrim .ini match it or be set to 0xAA 0xAF? Test 1 : Skyrim setting 4xAA, 16xAF VRAM Avg / Max : 1540Mb / 2000Mb FPS Avg / Max : 56 / 60 GPU Load Avg / Max : 69% / 100% Test 2 : Skyrim Setting 4xAA, 16xAF, CCC overriding with 4xMSAA, 16xAF VRAM Avg / Max : 1651Mb / 2076Mb FPS Avg / Max : 56 / 60 GPU Load Avg / Max : 70% / 100% Test 3 : Skyrim setting 0xAA, 0xAF, CCC overriding with 4xMSAA, 16xAF EDIT : No AA/AF was observed in screenshots in this test. SkyrimPrefs.ini NEEDS to match the CCC Override for AA to be visible. VRAM Avg / Max : 1318Mb / 1702Mb FPS Avg / Max : 57 / 60 GPU Load Avg / Max : 57% / 100% EDIT : Apologies but these tests are invalid as no AA was present because I had turned it off in the SkyrimPrefs.ini. Disregard this half of the testing.