Should I buy a cheap gpu with 4gb vram?

[dreadflopp]

A question. Should i buy a new graphics card? I have a decent rig i think. 8 gb ram. Sandy bridge 2500k overclocked to 4,4 ghz. SSD. The problem with my rig is vram. I have an nvidia 570 gt 1280 mb card which cost about 250-300 euro. This card is good i think but lacks in vram to play skyrim with high res mods. With other games its fine. I have seen new cards, gt 630 for example, for about 70 euro. These cards have 4 gb vram and should be great (?) for skyrim but my current card outperforms gt 630 in bechmarks (https://community.futuremark.com/hardware/gpu/NVIDIA+GeForce+GT+630/review#). What would you have done? Buy a new one? Can you run a rig with 2 cards and swith to the one with more vram when youre going to play skyrim? Whats the downside of the cheaper card? 

[dreadflopp]

Will it work though since you're starting the game through skse?

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[LeetMiniWheat]

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Will it work though since you're starting the game through skse?

 

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Yes, SKSE just launches TESV.exe anyways.

[frihyland]

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I'm using windows 8 which doesn't have aero I believe. Will definitely look into ways of freeing up vram in the os though. When mixing 1k and 2k mods, which ones you think I should have in higher resolution? Landscape, trees/fauna, buildings, bodies, faces, armors/clothing, weapons, effects.

Feels like, to me, armors, weapons, faces and landscape should be prioritized.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > select Adjust For Best Performance > click smooth edges of screen fonts > Apply > Enjoy

 

As for Nvidia models, don't buy any model under x60.  x60 is the budget model, x70 is the price/performance model, x80 is the bling model

 

The wiki guide is here.

[LeetMiniWheat]

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I'm using windows 8 which doesn't have aero I believe. Will definitely look into ways of freeing up vram in the os though. When mixing 1k and 2k mods, which ones you think I should have in higher resolution? Landscape, trees/fauna, buildings, bodies, faces, armors/clothing, weapons, effects.

Feels like, to me, armors, weapons, faces and landscape should be prioritized.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > select Adjust For Best Performance > click smooth edges of screen fonts > Apply > Enjoy

That makes things ugly all the time though, not *just* when running the game.

[frihyland]

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I'm using windows 8 which doesn't have aero I believe. Will definitely look into ways of freeing up vram in the os though. When mixing 1k and 2k mods, which ones you think I should have in higher resolution? Landscape, trees/fauna, buildings, bodies, faces, armors/clothing, weapons, effects.

Feels like, to me, armors, weapons, faces and landscape should be prioritized.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > select Adjust For Best Performance > click smooth edges of screen fonts > Apply > Enjoy

That makes things ugly all the time though, not *just* when running the game.

You can turn on transparent glass and shadows under windows as well if you like the bling all the time without much of a hit.  Windows 8 supposedly automatically clears all this stuff out of memory when  running a fullscreen directx app anyway.

[LeetMiniWheat]

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I'm using windows 8 which doesn't have aero I believe. Will definitely look into ways of freeing up vram in the os though. When mixing 1k and 2k mods, which ones you think I should have in higher resolution? Landscape, trees/fauna, buildings, bodies, faces, armors/clothing, weapons, effects.

Feels like, to me, armors, weapons, faces and landscape should be prioritized.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance > Settings > select Adjust For Best Performance > click smooth edges of screen fonts > Apply > Enjoy

That makes things ugly all the time though, not *just* when running the game.

You can turn on transparent glass and shadows under windows as well if you like the bling all the time without much of a hit.  Windows 8 supposedly automatically clears all this stuff out of memory when  running a fullscreen directx app anyway.

Transparent glass is the biggest vram hog, but just having the themes stuff running at all will suck up vram. That's good to hear that windows 8 has that fixed, unfortunately windows 8 is a piece of trash in general (like vista). I'll be waiting for windows 9.

[frihyland]

I would compare Win 8 more with the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, buggy as all hell but a necessary step to achieve a complete paradigm change. To date Microsoft has only ever released one stable Operating System and that is Windows XP SP3 32-bit, Windows 9 (or 2015) will hopefully be the 64-bit equivalent.

 

I'll be upgrading to Win 8 myself for sure because the compatibility and performance increases are pretty substantial and I have already bent Metro to my will.

[LeetMiniWheat]

  frihyland said:

I would compare Win 8 more with the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 buggy as all hell but a necessary step to achieve a complete paradigm change. To date Microsoft has only ever released one stable Operating System and that is Windows XP SP3 32-bit, Windows 9 (or 2015) will hopefully be the 64-bit equivalent.

What about Win NT, Win2k, server 2003, etc? Those weren't stable? Lot of servers and enterprise machines ran on those back in the day. Not sure about vista/win7 to be honest so I won't comment there.

[frihyland]

  LeetMiniWheat said:

 

  frihyland said:

I would compare Win 8 more with the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 buggy as all hell but a necessary step to achieve a complete paradigm change. To date Microsoft has only ever released one stable Operating System and that is Windows XP SP3 32-bit, Windows 9 (or 2015) will hopefully be the 64-bit equivalent.

What about Win NT, Win2k, server 2003, etc? Those weren't stable? Lot of servers and enterprise machines ran on those back in the day. Not sure about vista/win7 to be honest so I won't comment there.

 

I meant consumer systems, Microsoft servers/workstations are actually quite good until you compare them to Linux.

[LeetMiniWheat]

 

 

  frihyland said:

  LeetMiniWheat said:

  frihyland said:

I would compare Win 8 more with the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 buggy as all hell but a necessary step to achieve a complete paradigm change. To date Microsoft has only ever released one stable Operating System and that is Windows XP SP3 32-bit, Windows 9 (or 2015) will hopefully be the 64-bit equivalent.

What about Win NT, Win2k, server 2003, etc? Those weren't stable? Lot of servers and enterprise machines ran on those back in the day. Not sure about vista/win7 to be honest so I won't comment there.

I meant consumer systems, Microsoft servers/workstations are actually quite good until you compare them to Linux.

I think it really comes down to who is administrating the system.

[stoppingby4now]

  LeetMiniWheat said:

 

  frihyland said:

 

  LeetMiniWheat said:

 

  frihyland said:

I would compare Win 8 more with the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 buggy as all hell but a necessary step to achieve a complete paradigm change. To date Microsoft has only ever released one stable Operating System and that is Windows XP SP3 32-bit, Windows 9 (or 2015) will hopefully be the 64-bit equivalent.

What about Win NT, Win2k, server 2003, etc? Those weren't stable? Lot of servers and enterprise machines ran on those back in the day. Not sure about vista/win7 to be honest so I won't comment there.

 

I meant consumer systems, Microsoft servers/workstations are actually quite good until you compare them to Linux.

 

I think it really comes down to who is administrating the system.

 

There is no comparison between Windows servers and solid UNIX servers (I don't consider Linux desktop distributions to count). The former requires significantly more attention and maintenance to keep stable, is more complex to secure, and suffer from far more downtime (some of which is inherit to the patching process, but by no means is the primary culprit).

[Selway]

Hey all. Ive been following STEP for a long time now and am so thankful for all of your hard work. STEP has opened my eyes to modding and improved my overall working knowledge of computers greatly!

 

I saw this thread and I hope you dont mind a quick question on this topic. I want to know how much improvement there would be if I purchased another MSI 570GTX TWIN FROZR II (1.25gVRAM) and put them in SLI. I've done some research and just have not come up with any real definitive answer on if it would help significantly. Im running a modified semi-updated version of the last STEP and about 40 other mods including COT and Texture Pack Combiner 1.5. I have run the texture optimizer and all textures are at 1k. At this level I am still getting outdoor lag. Im also using Project ENB but will probably try Vibrant ENB next. My goal is to be able to run 2k textures with some sort of decent ENB, full STEP and about 40 other mods.

 

i5 3570k cpu

MSI 570GTX TWIN FROZR II

16g RAM

SSD HD

Win 7

 

Thank you all again for your amazing work. I cannot imagine what the point of playing Skyrim without STEP would be!

[torminater]

Well, I can probably tell you, cuz I have a GTX 570 SLI setup.

If you read through some of the threads I have started in the support and troubleshooting section you'll notice that I have had quite a lot of issues.

First of all: sli does not boost your performance in skyrim by as much as it does in other games, and it will most probably not reduce lag/stutter for you.

Skyrim does not work very well with SLI and there are many many many problems which can occur. For more details see this thread: https://forum.step-project.com/showthread.php?tid=629

If I were you I'ld buy ONE card with at least 2GB VRAM and reasonable speed which is easy to overclock (not necessarily for skyrim) and sell my old one for as much cash as it will give me. It's up to you whether you stick to GeForce or Radeon, I'ld recommend GeForce though.

[frihyland]

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Hey all. Ive been following STEP for a long time now and am so thankful for all of your hard work. STEP has opened my eyes to modding and improved my overall working knowledge of computers greatly!

 

I saw this thread and I hope you dont mind a quick question on this topic. I want to know how much improvement there would be if I purchased another MSI 570GTX TWIN FROZR II (1.25gVRAM) and put them in SLI. I've done some research and just have not come up with any real definitive answer on if it would help significantly. Im running a modified semi-updated version of the last STEP and about 40 other mods including COT and Texture Pack Combiner 1.5. I have run the texture optimizer and all textures are at 1k. At this level I am still getting outdoor lag. Im also using Project ENB but will probably try Vibrant ENB next. My goal is to be able to run 2k textures with some sort of decent ENB, full STEP and about 40 other mods.

 

i5 3570k cpu

MSI 570GTX TWIN FROZR II

16g RAM

SSD HD

Win 7

 

Thank you all again for your amazing work. I cannot imagine what the point of playing Skyrim without STEP would be!

Assuming you're running win 7 64 bit that is pretty much the perfect price/performance gaming rig, well done.  As torminator states you will receive much less value from the extra card in Skyrim unless you are running multiple monitors or at 2560 or higher resolution, but for other games that are not cpu limited you will see a big difference.

 

His advice is sound to sell your current card, but if you are going to all that trouble anyway by all means get a 4GB 670 and only do it if you plan to spend at least a thousand hours playing this game because its a huge investment that won't really benefit you in other games for as long as another year or two.

[Selway]

Hey thank you both for your great input. Concerning SLI, I was worried about that. I definitely wont go the SLI route then. Ill probably just get a better card as I spend an obscene amount of time on this game. Thanks again for the help!