Which STEP Core mod causes the biggest FPS hit?

[robbydee]

I'm running the STEP Core mods (can't get the STEP patch to work, hopefully that's not critical), and my FPS drops hard from 60 in dungeons to 40 outside ... to 20 in some areas around Rivertown.

 

I'm wondering what the best way is in STEP Core to get my minumum FPS up to 30-35. Which mod(s) should I uninstall? Or is there an .ini setting that would help? Or should I use the DDSOpt optional mod, or some other non-core mod?

 

**My system is an i5-3450 with a AMD 7870 (2g) card.

 

Any information would be greatly appreciated ... I just got back into Skyrim, and the amount of information is overwhelming!

 

 

 

 

[Xaviien]

Have you tried changing your ENBOOST settings?

I made my wife turn down some of the quality settings so she could get decent FPS, mainly because she didn't want to play around with the ENBOOST to see if she could get gains there.

[CJ2311]

Something that I find helps in the riverwood/falkreath areas is removing the fences from Static Mesh Improvement Mod.

Lowering the other options of that mod can help too (such as the 3D ropes/chains and the texture size)

[robbydee]

Last night I got back into ENBoost and redid some of the settings ... the settings formula was very odd, however ...

VideoMemorySizeMb=<integer in KB, multiples of 1024>     ;all 32-bit users and 64-bit users with less than 8GB system RAM, set to formula: [VRAM] + [System RAM] - [2048]     ;64-bit users with >= 8GB system RAM, set to formula: [Total Available Video Memory] - [170 (for win7) or 350 (for win8/10)]

Since I'm a 64-bit user with 8GB of RAM, I found my Total Available Memory number and subtracted 170 ... can't remember the number, but it's weird.

 

Didn't help with my FPS, however.

Edited April 9, 2015 by robbydee

[Aiyen]

Use a lower version of SMIM, it would be the extra detailed models that cause your hardware to struggle. Especially in riverwood where it changes quite a few of them. 

[robbydee]

When you say "lower version of SMIM," do you mean turning off/down some of the options inside SMIM? Because I only see one version.

(EDIT)

 

Wait ... are you maybe referring to this?

 

Xtra Options - Half-Size Textures Addon

• None (NOTE: Low VRAM graphic card users can use the half-size textures.)

Edited April 9, 2015 by robbydee

[Aiyen]

Take the "do it yourself" option and then do not select the high quality fences and rope options. As I recall it have images showing the differences between the options.