Neovalen

Here are the screenshots... These are the default Ultra Shadows (Resolution: 4096, View Distance: 8000). They aren't perfect but I think they are improved. Don't mind the jaggies, I had AA only set to 2x during this test run. Have not noticed as much z-fighting (still present but reduced) or shadow striping (more rare). In Surround, the odd shadow flickering is gone. Unfortunately the SLI water flicker/HDR bug still persists unless Stereo3d is enabled.

Alright, I decided to go against my normal grain and actually installed the Skyrim 1.7 beta since I hadn't re-installed STEP anyway. I am actually impressed. Did a full refresh of ini's as well. The good: Â Â The dialog bug appears to be fixed, I can use USKP 1.0 and have no bugs now with getting quests from dialog. I have reported this in the USKP Thread #10 on the Bethsoft forums for Arthmoor. Â Â I think they fixed the shadows...or at least improved them drastically from what I remember. I may just be imagining things but you can tell me. Screenshots coming soon. The bad: Â Â I haven't found any so far... for once. Give it time, I'm sure something will come up. The unknown: Â Â I don't know about the supposed performance increase, I'm still pegged at 60fps.

I think the biggest thing with the higher uGrids is it runs all the scripts and spawns NPCs for the additional cells. As we all know, Papyrus is very sensitive to being overloaded no matter your PC.

Edit: Just tried 1.7 for myself. They did not change the forge area in Riverwood. Not sure where that guy got his information.

@rpsgc I disagree. The armor itself is a little "too fancy" as a vanilla type armor, considering the many npcs who wear steel plate. Not to mention the helmet on that one looks... odd. As a side note, I really wish more mod authors would make their lore-friendly armors for both sexes, there are some awesome armors out there but many of them only cater to one sex either male or female.

I wish I had an answer for you MadWizard, I'm having the same issue with my game and it drives me nuts with high res textures. If I am ~30 feet from a castle wall then move up to ~25 feet all kinds of little details just "pop in" to the texture and I'm hating it. Hope someone has an answer.

Please let me know your results, I'm really curious. As to the FPS hit, heck ya at 4x4 supersampling I was down to 30fps when it's normally 100+ with 8xAA (or pegged at 60 when vsynced).

Wanted to come back and note, disabling FXAA in both game and Nvidia Inspector had no visual difference than standard 8x MSAA forced in the Inspector. So I left it disabled from now on. This way of using AA also bypassed Nvidia's check for >2xAA in Stereo3d.

After reading the notes from RCRN and doing some internet research I managed to force 4x4 Supersampling. Unfortunately, Skyrim does NOT like it and has artifact issues (white shafts of light/flickering). FPS was ~30 with no lighting mod @ 1080p. Here was the settings to get it working: IN GAME: 2xAA, disabled AF, FXAA enabled. NVIDIA INSPECTOR settings attached. Screenshot of artifacts also attached (sorry for the poor quality, it only allowed me to attach 500kb). That being said, setting the Nvidia Inspector AA to 8x all the artifacts went away and I didn't see any jaggies ANYWHERE. Trying to use CSAA was also fruitless (game crashed / black screen). I also didn't see any FXAA blurring as I think the latest Nvidia drivers took pretty much all of it out. (Using 304.79) Also note: My VRAM usage is ~2500 even in just the opening sequence in Helgen. I strongly suggest not turning it all the way up without having a 4GB card.

According to the RCRN page, "mirror" values have to be set in the game itself for all the effects to work from the CP. I cannot confirm or deny on that, but their suggested settings for "Ultra" are as follows: Link: https://www.rcrncommunity.com/nvidia

According to Bethblog a new Skyrim patch 1.7 beta has been released to the masses. It is billed as a "bug fix" patch instead of a content patch, however the release notes are a little sketchy. BUG FIXES General memory and stability optimizationsFixed crash related to new water shadersFixed rare crash related to dragon landingsUsing vampiric grip and swimming no longer prevents swimming animation from playing afterwardsI removed the lines about the Xbox 360 as it doesn't apply to the PC player base (mainly Kinect junk). According to Arthmoor this patch MAY have fixed some of the dialog bug issues people have reported with 1.6.89.0. Source 1, Source 2.

Mind. Exploded.

Alright, been a lot of speculation on this page on what does or does not work.... I'm just getting around now to re-installing Skyrim (moved drives and decided to make a clean run of it). Things I have confirmed myself (Nvidia System): 1. HDR does not work for Skyrim in SLI unless Stereoscopic 3d is enabled. Stereoscopic 3d limits standard MSAA to 2x or lower. 2. Nvidia SSAO for Skyrim is broken as of patch 1.5+, so there is no need to enable it via Nvidia Inspector. Things I am confused on: 1. What modes of AA actually work for Skyrim? Ansitropic Filtering = Clamp actually do anything? etc. Perhaps someone with some answers can post a definitive "best" setting?

I too am confused, but I saw no difference between off and on when using ENB. I think ENB uses it's own type of it, since it's definitely a lot better than regular. and it seems to switch off the regular when you enable it (I think, anyways) so I leave it off in nvidia inspector. if you find different results, let me know :D Edit: also, don't use 4x4 supersample. it doesn't work, and even if it did your framerate would be like a slideshow. especially with your res, it would be rendering at 23040x4320. the game's setting overrides nvidia inspector anyways, but I set 4x MSAA override with 4x in-game just for good measure. (I saw some kind of fps boost when doing so, but could have been within margin of error) Edit2: if your cards can handle it (which they should) I highly recommend 4x SGSSAA instead of 4x TrSSAA, it produces a much better image quality - gets rid of most of the shimmering from lizard skins, doors, leather helmets, standing stones, and other specular objects, etc etc Edit3: and I think the jury's still out on matching MSAA with TrSSAA/SGSSAA but I do it for good measure. (like 4x msaa + 4x trssaa/sgssaa, and 8x msaa + 8x trssaa/sgssaa). someone else had mentioned it only matters with supersample AA (2x2, 3x3, 4x4) and not MSAA but I'm not entirely sure. I don't usually like to use more than 4x MSAA anyways since 8x and above are a much bigger performance hit. Alright... 4xMSAA doesn't work with Stereoscopic 3d enabled. I get a big red message from Nvidia saying it's been downgraded to 2xAA.... without 3d enabled it works fine.Of course I don't get HDR then due to SLI.... gotta love it. Also noted that SSAO from Nvidia DOES NOT WORK since patch 1.5... Beth screwed something up when they implemented grass shadows. Is it bad I'm actually HOPING for a patch from Bethesda? All of this is reminding me why I stopped playing Oblivion after too long even though I had fun with the game itself.

Maybe not the right place to ask this, but since we're discussing various Nvidia Inspector settings... I've set up 4x4SSAA/4xTrSGSSAA etc as noted in the first few posts of this thread. However, my question for everyone is... Nvidia SSAO vs ENB SSAO vs Both? I'm confused as to which I should use.

I just do it so I don't have to deal with Vsync issues... it's probably not needed but I hate any type of stutter/tearing. Glad I went with the 4GB cards though, my VRAM usage has hit up to 3GB+ with all the maxed out texture mods around... especially in surround res.

Personally I am using Skyrim Enhanced Shaders right now... will see what I end up with in the end. Been too busy fiddling with my new system! lol Got my GTX 670's up to 2240 max boost (2215 min during bench, my cards run hot.. 80c/81c) and memory up to 3480Mhz. Gained 10fps from when I started benching. Next step is getting my CPU temps down a little more, think I need to reapply my thermal paste. Loving Skyrim at 58fps (fps cap) with ENB and game maxed out... even if I have to deal with the SLI glitches.

Shadows are screwed in SLI and also in surround resolutions. Bethesda screwed the pooch with shadows and it just gets worse with more processing power / usage. As if we didn't already know. :) ENB goes a long way to fixing it but it's not perfect either.

I ended up trying out the new preview of Skyrim Enhanced Shaders... now that it doesn't tank my FPS I actually like it alot.

With my 4GB cards I have seen VRAM usage with all high res texture packs (2048/4096) hit almost 3GB at times. Thank god I spent the extra cash. No stuttering at all running single card. On the other hand, if I leave SLI enabled and try to run my game with stereoscopic 3d(to fix SLI HDR bug)... BSOD/Black Screen/CTD a lot. Gotta love Skyrim sometimes.

Looks gone to me?

Wow... another one? This does not bode well for the Nexus. I was really looking forward to trying this. I have a feeling that with the increased attention on modding Dark0ne will need to address this issue.Honestly, without seeing the offending authors infraction... it's hard to say one way or the other. I understand the need to police users, and yes sometimes they get a little happy with the ban hammer but for all we know there was good cause. However, I would think that people knowing the Nexus rules and heavy handedness would tone down their responses/comments appropriately to avoid it.

I knew there would be issues, but figured I could get around them by disabling SLI. Unfortunately, if I have two cards in the case I cannot get surround resolution from a single card. Nvidia Control Panel won't let me and I'm not about to uninstall my SLI setup every time I want to play Skyrim. For now my solution has been to enabled 3d and hide it (unfortunately not available in the latest beta driver with the performance improvements) and reduce down to 1920x1080 and pray that Bethesda fixes the damned shadows issues but I'm not holding my breath... honestly I'm starting to think Skyrim is more work than it's worth these days.

Now that I have a SLI setup I'm learning about this painfully... works great in other games but Skyrim is very unfriendly to both SLI and Surround. The 1.6 patch screwed up shadows for surround resolutions so they flicker like crazy....

I had been using Stakado Realistic for awhile now and it looks wonderful, only issue I ever had is the light in the early morning literally washes everything out... need to turn down the sun intensity somehow.