z929669

I can see that somewhat in the last image you posted, but not so much in the first two. The stone meshes on that walkway in Windhelm are among the WORST in the game. I really hope that SMIM addresses this mess ... You ought to compare with the DDSoipt'ed versions....

Agreed, BW. I am just waiting for the effects of the waning petroleum market to force a new world order and crush these global mega-corporations into hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Big BIG changes coming in the next 20 years. Put on your seat belts, as only our great-great-(great) grandparents will have had any inkling of a life without oil. Perhaps RL will eventually become more like Skyrim then (or Fallout3!) ... on a more positive note, I imagine THOSE 'games' will have fantastic graphics if you are under 60!

I personally like the idea of 'unlocking' kill moves with skill increases.... now we just need to get this silly skill/leveling system fixed to be slower, smarter and more dynamic!

Yep, that's right. You can still do option #4 if you want, but not 6/7. Your VRAM is admirable, so I would to full blast wherever possible (Vano is not necessary for you!) :envy:

Hmmm, Looks like missing textures in both (or the snow is just the normal map), and the smudging tells me that you may not have the proper settings on the constraints tab (or elsewhere) ... or more likely, the DDSopt'ed texture(s) is not getting used. I'd say that your "del" edit in Excel is the problem. Also, you should not perform that step anyway, as I have already vetted the settings for DDSopt with Ethatron, and none of the textures is really messed up at all by DDSopt, save only one forge texture that is well known. Again, the guide is out of date :D Sorry, I thought you knew about the MSE being a false negative in the Compressonator (posts around here somewhere, first of which are in the previous site archives). This is largely due to edited normal maps not being renormalized or other perceived problems that are not really problems at all; however, the game shader engine does that automatically, so even though they appear messed up in Windows, they render nicely in game. (you can see the diff using the Photoshop DDS plugin or in Gimp with the same). Compressonator is buggy, but it is still pretty useful in many ways. Just go to my earlier post on this thread with all of the benchmarks and use the DDSopt settings at the end of that. Otherwise, use the defaults. Run this on all of the vanilla textures and use that product(s). I have 7z archives of vanilla standard textures, vanilla DDSopt'ed textures, combined vanilla HR standard textures and combined vanilla HR DDSopt'ed textures. That is what I tested in that post, and the DDSopt'ed versions of both will be best for your rig (no Vano optimized DLC necessary unless you find yourself low on VRAM later in STEP)

Good point on the BSOD, s4n.... I never worry about that though, since I pretty much always know the cause of a BSOD, and if I did not, then that log would be a PITA for me to interpret :P

I found an 'experimental' setting in the AdminCP that likely came with the update to 1.6.7: Forum Display Options > Attempt to Mark Parent Forums as Read My guess is that it is a clunky sort of a band-aid the MyBB team developed. It seems to have solved the problem

As s4n states, you want your page file to be about 1 to 1.5 times the size of your available system RAM, no more. You should also set min and max size to be the same to avoid resizing on the fly. Another good recommendation is to place the page file on another drive than your OS (NOT another partition of same HDD as OS!), preferably at the beginning of the drive. I actually created two 6.5 Gb partitions at the beginning of two of my HDDs (not the HDD with my OS). I use about 6 GB of each for swap space. This is great for performance of non gaming programs for graphical and video editing, but the page file will be of little use for gaming, as it is way too slow for real time needs. Your video card is good enough to handle most/all of your graphic memory needs in-game I suspect.

assume '4x' means 4 core? Can you be more specific? Intel AMD? Processor? Sounds like a decent rig, so more info on the effects of each of those boosters on a controlled bench would be interesting... not sure that you need to allocate any of your HDD to memory, as you should have plenty (and HDD 'RAM' should be pretty choppy if you actually ever need it). In fact, you are most likely not even close to consuming your available VRAM. Bleeding out to even system RAM will give you a lot of stuttering ;)

Not wishing to throw a spanner in the works ;) but which version of Skyrim HD - 2K are you testing with zMan?The author appears to have split his pack not only into a Full & Lite option in version 1.5 but also into seperate downloads for Dungeons, Landscape, Misc., and Towns. Due to my system limitations I generally use the Lite versions. I have the numbers now for 1k for both SHD and SRO. Will add 2k tonight and look at DDSopt results as well as compare the performance & appearance between texture packs. Prelim results are in my original benchmark post further up this thread, but I can say in addition right now that SRO 1k is already completely DDSopt-imized, but SHD is definitely NOT. Descent gain in VRAM by optimizing SHD 1k. Performance is also better for SRO 1k than for SHD 1k, by just a smidge.

That guide is in need of update ... It should not matter which HR pack overwrites the other, as there should be no overlap, so the end result will be the same I think. However, 02 traditionally overrides in-game, so maybe it is best to write over 01 with 02. Yep, go with the most recent Vano package. I have found some more textures in that pack compressed as DXT5 when they should be DXT1 (half the size), so I imagine he will update this when I let him know (probably will address specifically tonight). I'll have much more on DDSopt for SHD and SRO shortly. Testing both now and should finish tonight (if the wifey lets me ;))

Regarding difficulty enhancement, my char is around level 45 now, and running PISE + DD + Complete Crafting Overhaul. This makes the game sufficiently difficult, and most dragons are out of the question without a companion (accept for lower dragons). Dungeons can also be quite difficult even at that level. I use another mod that removes cumulative effects of regen potions and also spreads their effects out over a time range. Disclaimer: I have not played that char for nearly 60 days, so any changes to the mods I used are not yet known to me.

Looking forward to it, as that's my same setup, so any tips/tricks are/will be appreciated. Then you might be interested in this post

I'd welcome more 'suggestions' like this one. Thanks for the detail

No, that was a fluke. Not sure what happended, but let us know if it happens again.

WB will install the net of all selections, which is the most efficient way to do it. If you want to do things in some particular order, just install in smaller batches, gut that is neither necessary or efficient, as it is likely that you will wind up installing something that gets overwritten later. WB won't do that.

Ok I think that you are speaking about package order mismatch with the screenshot. As long as STEP mods labeled 1-5 are in order among groups, then it does not matter what the order is within groups, as there are no conflicts within groups. Just select all mods within a group and use the Move To... command and they will group together when you sort by the Order header. Once order is set and all sub packs and plugins are selected. Install all at once and load SR HTH Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

I will answer this tonight... I PROMISE!

@torminater I wrapped your giganjumama ini code into a spoiler and a code block to maintain a little sanity. Just FYI for future use, go into the source editor to see the syntax ;)

Just to throw a wrench in the whole thing, I have never yet experienced a corrupt save in Skyrim due to mod swapping (and I have done a LOT so far). This could be partly attributable to Wrye Bash's bashed patch, which does merge mods and leveled lists in Skyrim as of right now; however, it is also likely that I have not seen much of this since there are not a whole lot of big FAT overhaul mods in the mix yet with GMST tweaks and all of the other things that can cause compatibility problems. ... er .... maybe also because I am severely anal in maintaining my setup? I saw more of this with Morrowind and Oblivion, but even then, I was usually able to get a crucial save cleaned up and continue with an old character :D

Good point...

Once this wraps up, we may want to move part of this threaed to the "Advice, Hints & Spoilers" under "INI Tweaks" just for reference. I will be interested in looking at this as well.

@Beald The large texture packs may already be optimized, but it doesn't hurt to run them through anyway just in case they missed some or used diff settings. It will not change anything that is already "to spec". Just remember to add your analogous water textures to the DDSopt ini as they are already added for Pure Waters and RWL. RE FPSBB, I will give it a try on both hi and lo systems and report back the results. I'll need to install more of STEP on the hi system as my FPS is capped at 60 almost everywhere, so I will need to add more stress. The lo system is ready on just plain vanilla! I'll use the same procedure to keep comparability. Also want to try SkyBoost when it gets updated.

Thanks for the info.... I assume that it allows the player character to "chill" with the rest of the NPCs? Kind of like the ability to sit in a chair, but using a spell instead? Sounds ... funky, but maybe not worth the spell or plugin slots.

Updated what I will call my own "official" DDSopt performance review results ( Now with both Hi-end-rig & Lo-end-rig results and a performance summary.