Installation of STEP

[Marthenil]

First of all I would like to thank you for your awesome work in making Skyrim at least a tenfold better!

Now on to the topic at hand: 

You'r installation guide in general is very detailed and informative, however I have a couple questions I would like to adress. 

I had to format my hdd a month or so and since then I have been trying new mods etc. Right now I am at around 100 mods, however I have run into an issue: I'm throwin stuff at my pc at such a rate that it can no longer cope with it :P Thing is the only performance affecting mods I use are the Texture Pack Combiner (the non Light version, however, as per the instrunctions of the original author,i.e when applicable, with the "light" version of each mod) and the Official HD pack DLC. So I thought by installing STEP with all the optimizations I could increase performance, especially VRAM usage (using an EVGA 560TI 1GB FPB).

That brings me to the first question: Based on your experience, will installing the "light" version of STEP and all the optimizations improve performance to a much more playable level? Or should I just suck it up, accept that my pc is dated and run with the HD DLC only?

Then it's the issue of installing STEP as well. Will I need to perform a new and clean installation of Skyrim before I install STEP or can I just install it "over" the current Texture Pack Combiner textures i'm using ? Other than the textures the mods I use are not very close to STEP's so there should be no issue with those.

I made a very sloppy and quick search on the matter and couldn't find anything regarding this, so sorry if such a topic exists already.

Thanks a lot in advance !

[Farlo]

First of all I would like to thank you for your awesome work in making Skyrim at least a tenfold better!

Now on to the topic at hand: 

You'r installation guide in general is very detailed and informative, however I have a couple questions I would like to adress. 

I had to format my hdd a month or so and since then I have been trying new mods etc. Right now I am at around 100 mods, however I have run into an issue: I'm throwin stuff at my pc at such a rate that it can no longer cope with it :P Thing is the only performance affecting mods I use are the Texture Pack Combiner (the non Light version, however, as per the instrunctions of the original author,i.e when applicable, with the "light" version of each mod) and the Official HD pack DLC. So I thought by installing STEP with all the optimizations I could increase performance, especially VRAM usage (using an EVGA 560TI 1GB FPB).

That brings me to the first question: Based on your experience, will installing the "light" version of STEP and all the optimizations improve performance to a much more playable level? Or should I just suck it up, accept that my pc is dated and run with the HD DLC only?

Later today we'll be releasing v2.2.1 of STEP which no longer has TPC in it, so unfortunately I encourage you to follow that guide.  The performance increase you'll get from using the "light" versions really depends on your computer, in particular the amount of VRAM you have.  In the STEP guide you'll notice that we generally specify a "baseline" version of the mods.  This is usually done with 1-1.5GB graphics card in mind.  Unfortunately it basically comes down to trial and error to test the limits of your machine.  I suggest you also use Wrye Bash or Mod Manager if you're not, they will allow you to test different versions of the mods to see which works best.

Then it's the issue of installing STEP as well. Will I need to perform a new and clean installation of Skyrim before I install STEP or can I just install it "over" the current Texture Pack Combiner textures i'm using ? Other than the textures the mods I use are not very close to STEP's so there should be no issue with those.

I made a very sloppy and quick search on the matter and couldn't find anything regarding this, so sorry if such a topic exists already.

Thanks a lot in advance !

We generally suggest a fresh installation of Skyrim before following STEP, especially if you did everything manually.  You can either follow this guide to return your current installation to a "Vanilla state" or start over following our Skyrim Installation Guide for best results.  In either case you'll also want to use new saves (or possibly clean your current ones) as removing and adding a lot of mods that aren't purely assets can have a lot of issues.

[Marthenil]

Alrighty then, thanks for the reply, patiently waiting for the release :D You basicly solved a major issue of can't-be-arsed-ness since TPC is a bit tedious to compile :P