All of a sudden: poor smoke resolution on home screen, general graphics trouble

[kcinlober]

I have been playing skyrim with STEP 2.2.9.2 Core + Extended + Requiem + vividian ENB packs for a few months. I got everything working very well with only the occasional CTD and no recurring problems. I hadn't played in a few weeks and started it up again last night and had some weird graphics issues. 

 

FIrst, the smoke on the home screen had a really poor resolution. See this screenshot, for example. 

 

 

Secondly, when loading a save game the overall colors were off, as if the contrast and saturation were messed up.

 

 

Third, I noticed--when outside in Riften--that some of the stone textures in the walls were extremely poor. Not everything in the walls was like this, in other words, the mossy and green parts of the wall texture seemed fine, but the stone bits were just blobs.

 

 

I have a MSI GTX 970 and a intel core i5 4460 with an Asus H97M-E motherboard.

 

I double checked and the skyrim and skyrimprefs ini files were as recommended by STEP. I had updated my graphics driver recently and restored it to a previous one to check. The trouble was the same.

 

I can't think of anything other than an update to Windows and an update to my graphics driver that could have changed things. As I said, reinstalling a previous graphics driver that worked resorted in the same problem. What else could I do to figure out the issue?

Edited March 17, 2016 by kcinlober

[TechAngel85]

I haven't checked the recent Steam updated to see if they changed something with the overlay, but I've played though a level 12 character after rolling back the driver without issue.

[George79]

Doesn't have to do with Steam overlay at all. I've had this issue appear when a certain ENB feature is enabled. Can't remember what it was though. I'm using T.A.Z Enb with the latest version at the moment and the issue is there. Overlay or not. In my previous Skyrim mod setup I didn't have it (different ENB).

[hishutup]

If youre using SMAA then disabling the steam overlay makes sense.

There is a weird bug that is "fixed" in smaa via a weird steam overlay hack in the smaa ini.

 

EDIT: Wow the resurrect is strong

[Tobi]

Shocked I found this thread. Would just like to confirm that I'm using SMAA and that turning off the overlay fixed it for me, no driver rollback required.