The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Best mods on the net thread

[schoolslave]

Has anyone else had random FPS drops in Skyrim? I can be playing the game, enter somewhere then exit and out of nowhere my FPS is shot to hell. Even more strangely if I save when I get these FPS issues then load the save the FPS problem goes away.. same happens when I fast travel. The last place this happen to me in was Whiterun, I was running around outside no FPS problems, I then broke into someones house to nick some stuff, when I exited the house my FPS had randomly got all shot to hell, entered the house then immediately exited and my FPS was fine again

Happened to me on my GTX 570 as well. Usually after about 45mins - 1 hour of gaming. Save and reload always resolved the issue though

[zanzabar]

I'm not done with the ini files yet, they need refining. I doubt my GPU is the problem as I noticed the FPS lag happens when the game is autosaving, doesn't do it all the time, but the times it does thats when it slows and sometimes the FPS will pick right back up after the game is done autosaving. Amazing how Skyrim is at v1.6.89 and theres still a lot of fundamental issues unresolved.

i had turned autosaving off (i had the same idea) it still lagged a bit, when using quick save it dose lag a bit but not as much as changing to the over world.

[Ket]

Happened to me on my GTX 570 as well. Usually after about 45mins - 1 hour of gaming. Save and reload always resolved the issue though

I've spent a entire day fiddling with settings and testing andI've come to the only conclusion possible, the problem is with patch 1.6.89. With patch 1.4.21 the game would "judder" after a while but you could iron that out by having a large exterior cell buffer (4608), it wasn't like it is with patch 1.6.89 where the whole "outside world" slows down to a crawl of like 8FPS, it usually happens when I exit a building. I can immediately re-enter the building and FPS returns to normal, but the instant I go to the "outside world" crap FPS again. A save and reload solves the issue for me too but thats not exactly a solution... so instead I started looking at what files have been updated with patch 1.6.89, low and behold a renderer file appears to be updated in the newest patch. Now we have the source of the problem identified we now either A: All switch back to patch 1.4.21 or whatever patch you were using previously with fewest issues, B: Wait for Bethesda to release yet ANOTHER patch for Skyrim..... or C: Hope the issue can be fixed by nvidia. I wouldn't hold my breath though I was using 304.79s and still had the problem, even reverted back to 302.59s thinking it was a problem with the newer driver.

The only thing I can think of atm that MIGH be a workaround for the FPS problem is to delete the latest TESV.exe file and use a older version, at least that way you can just use a huge exterior cell buffer in the ini files to iron out the "judder".

[Ket]

From all the testing I done with earlier ini files the only settings to have a major impact on performance were if uGridsToLoad were set to 11 (still playable) and setting shadow resolution to 8192 (outside ok, inside FPS was like 3) after every ini change I always enter a small shop / house and type refreshini into the console to make sure the new settings get applied. I also went back to patch 1.4.21, and the strange FPS drops went away, the issue IS patch 1.6.89. Also, if you had issues with grass draw distance something is up with your system grass draw distance is the first thing I changed and played with for 30+ hrs on patch 1.4.21 and I didn't have any CTDs or odd behavior Anyway, I finished the new ini files last night I just have to double check everything is as I want then I'll upload them. AFAIK the cell buffer has nothing to do with vRAM but system memory, it tells skyrim how much data it can store in memory so it doesn't have to constantly load in new textures. That setting is massively different in these new ini files anyway because the buffer appears to behave differently with the new patch. Could also be the new patch made the buffer much more efficient.

[SabreWulf69]

This game is making me get a EVGA GTX 670 2GB FTW Ed. , should be miles ahead of my 560Ti, ah well, needed a new gcard any way (not really lol)

[Ket]

haha stubborn as ever lol dont take it the wrong way its all good

i am on patch 1.6 and its by far the best skyrim yet even though some of the old issues are still present

iWaterMultiSamples=16 has greater impact on performance than ugridstoload=11 and 8192 shadow res combined

all cell buffers all ugrids have everything to do with vram.. pretty much all settings

the issue with my grass distance is the same as with higher ugrids/higher shadow res/higher cell buffers/higher rest of the settings and thats not having enough vram to go higher than what im at

My info is based on research I've done from a number of sources including the "official" nvidia tweak guide, not hear-say Its all good you not having issues with the latest patch but in my case, there is issues with the latest patch. I am pondering if perhaps I can resolve the random FPS drop by a slightly hacky means in the ini files I'm gonna try later. I'll try to remember to get those ini files uploaded some point later today my head is kinda heavy atm, long night of much drinking

[Ket]

This game is making me get a EVGA GTX 670 2GB FTW Ed. , should be miles ahead of my 560Ti, ah well, needed a new gcard any way (not really lol)

lol no you didn't need a new card Even with loads of HD texture mods a OCd 1GB GTX460 is plenty (quite sad I know ). I use the Skyrim HD 2K "full" textures and the most vRAM that gets used is about 700MB. Even with HD mods for NPCs an stuff thrown in I doubt you will see vRAM usage much beyond 1GB. Overall while Skyrim is good with mods, I'm not enjoying it as much as Oblivion, maybe thats just me though

[[XC] Oj101]

That should be reason enough to add the Towns and Villages Enhanced (TAVE) - Riften mod to the list. If you follow the link you'll find some more TAVE mods listed.

[Olivon]

lol no you didn't need a new card Even with loads of HD texture mods a OCd 1GB GTX460 is plenty (quite sad I know ). I use the Skyrim HD 2K "full" textures and the most vRAM that gets used is about 700MB. Even with HD mods for NPCs an stuff thrown in I doubt you will see vRAM usage much beyond 1GB. Overall while Skyrim is good with mods, I'm not enjoying it as much as Oblivion, maybe thats just me though

I loled.

Playing with a 470OC (850/1700/3800) and full of modz, my RAM is at Max and the game is not smooth by moment.

Three Kingdoms Revisited: modded is better than one
For this re-test of TES 5 Skyrim not we leave it at the default graphics, but also increase quality, and hence the difficulty for the PC hardware dramatically. Thus, we evaluate not only the Old Republic on hi-res textures by Bethesda, but also pack Realistic overhaul on top of it, better tree and plant textures in the form of flora Overhaul provide the finishing touch. In addition, we tweak the vegetation density via Grass Lush and Lush Trees . In addition, we increase the number of pre-loaded Grids (part of the game world) from five to nine, bringing the distance representation is improved dramatically - at the expense of CPU and memory. The devised for Skyrim version of ENB Series ( Superb ENB-RL ), we looked at too, but the optical gain is through the activation of proportion to the drop in performance (halving the frame rate is - that is more for screenshots). You decide whether you give the SSAO and the brighter colors of ENB Series have a chance. The game's graphics menu, of course, all other options are maximized.

• Realistic Overhaul (texture mod for cities and countryside)
• Flora Overhaul (texture mod for trees and plants)
• Lush grass (dense grass cover)
• Lush Trees (dense branches)
• uGridsToLoad = 9 (instead of 5, more than triple the number of cells!)

[v0dka]

I started a new game with the ini's and the mods listed in the OP. Don't know what went wrong but after a while I got an overbright image, that would flash to dark as soon as I walked under anything that creates shade. After closing the game the launcher would crash. Deleting the ini's and disabling the mods only fixed the launcher. Save games would still CTD upon loading.

It was a fresh install of a Steam version (fully patched, at least I couldn't force any updates). Freshly installed Nvidia drivers on a GTX670.

I wasn't very impressed by the graphics quality with the ini's and after modding. The game (still) doesn't look as crisp as I would want to. Colors are kind of flat and the difference between dark and light became far too big. I must say I expected more of it, so much that I reinstalled the game with a new light armor / archer type of character. I'm hoping I did something wrong because it turned out into one big dissapointment so far. Perhaps I should have kept a different order in enabling the mods? Or what could it be?

[SabreWulf69]

What was that in-game time mod again? The speed of the dayz is really irritating >.<

haha nvm

[EniGmA1987]

I started a new game with the ini's and the mods listed in the OP. Don't know what went wrong but after a while I got an overbright image, that would flash to dark as soon as I walked under anything that creates shade. After closing the game the launcher would crash. Deleting the ini's and disabling the mods only fixed the launcher. Save games would still CTD upon loading.

It was a fresh install of a Steam version (fully patched, at least I couldn't force any updates). Freshly installed Nvidia drivers on a GTX670.

I wasn't very impressed by the graphics quality with the ini's and after modding. The game (still) doesn't look as crisp as I would want to. Colors are kind of flat and the difference between dark and light became far too big. I must say I expected more of it, so much that I reinstalled the game with a new light armor / archer type of character. I'm hoping I did something wrong because it turned out into one big dissapointment so far. Perhaps I should have kept a different order in enabling the mods? Or what could it be?

The light thing sounds like a bug with HDR. You could try turning the setting off to see if it helps. And as for the crashing, it is most likely your load order on the mods, or some settings messed up in the skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini. The one posted in the OP doesnt work for me either.

I have the Steam version as well and all is working fine now for me, looks great too. Here are some screenshots of my game:












Here are my Skyrim preference files:
Skyrim.ini.zip

Remember to change your graphics display adapter to whatever you have.

[SabreWulf69]

My best effort so far ->

[v0dka]

Thanks for the reply Enigma. I resorted to re-intalling the game and all the mods. Using the standard .ini and all is well so far.

SabreWulf, that looks impressive. Can you elaborate on what you did to achieve this? What mods, what order and settings please!

[SabreWulf69]

Sure! Install list in install order and my Skyrim pref's and Skyrim INI's -

Lastest update
No Intro Fix
SKSE
SkyUI
Tytanis - The Ultimate Mod
Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM
Skyrim HD Textures (LITE Edition)
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Distant Detail
Enhanced Distant Terrain
HQLOD's
Enhanced Night Skyrim
Real Ice ALL-IN-ONE
Xenius Character Enhancement
ApachiiSkyHair
A Quality World Map - With Roads
WATER (Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux)
Towns and Villages Enhanced
Towns and Villages Enhanced - Whiterun
Populated Cities
Shadow Striping Fix
Sounds of Skyrim - The Dungeons and The Wilds
EDWS - Enhanced Dynamic Weather System
Natural Skyrim Rain
Immersive Skyrim Thunder
WARZONES - Civil Unrest
Skyrim Monster Mod
Monster Wars
ENBPM - Atmospheric ENB Series
Parallax Series Mods

Skyrim_INI's.zip

Should hopefully run fine once I get my GTX670 :-) Running pretty slowly at the moment (10-20 fps) haha...

[crazyg0od33]

idk if its a combo of my settings playing a part, but just as an FYI, the tweak in the OP that adds detail to the map caused my game to hang and crash at loading screens, but was fixed when I removed it

[Ket]

I loled.

Playing with a 470OC (850/1700/3800) and full of modz, my RAM is at Max and the game is not smooth by moment.

This may be true for you, but it certainly was not for me. For me, everything ran fine with the "full" Skyrim HD2K textures, 8xAF, 2xAA. Those benchmarks you link to are using high amounts of AA so of course performance will be crippled The only problem I had / have even with the 7950 is that changing ugrids to anything but default causes the game to crash at certain points in the world, which is bloody annoying.

[EniGmA1987]

Isnt the default 5 or something like that? I was able to raise up to 7 with no crashing issues in the world. Higher up caused problems too often to be worth using.
The exterior cell buffer should be calculated like this: (uGrids + 1)^2

[Ket]

Yep 5 is default, but even changing to 7 caused issues. Its a real shame Bethesda have such a consoled up POS engine to run Skyrim as I've set ugrid values of 11 and 13 and holy hell the game looks fantastic with those values. Perhaps I'm miscalculating the cell buffer but I don't think I am, when I set ugrids to 11 I set the cell buffer to 144 (uGrids 11 +1 = 12, 12x12 = 144) and 196 when I set ugrids to 13. I assume the interior cell buffer is calculated the same way?

[EniGmA1987]

Interior cell buffer is usually much smaller than exterior, also some people have reported that they are more stable if the line is removed completely from the skyrim.ini file. You could try that if you want, or figure out some formula on your own for how it works best for you. I havent seen anyone post the proper formula for interior yet, I usually just divide the exterior by 2.

[Ket]

I'll give it a go. I just want to sort out this ugrids stuff.. with a high ugrid value I couldn't care less about stuff like parallax (that mod is buggy as all hell anyway) because Skyrim looks truely fantastic with a high ugrid value. I'm not sure I understand why lots of people say high ugrids kills their FPS though, even on my GTX 460 while I took a FPS hit increasing ugrids it wasn't performance killing.

[NEOAethyr]

About the fps dip stuff.
When I 1st got the game I had that prob.
I don't seem to have that prob at all anymore, and I haven't even fiddled with the power manage cpl stuff.

One prob I have though, it's rare.
When I was testing my vga mem clocks, I came across a prob on one spot of the map.
Somewhere in the north, at the beach, or whatever.
There's a group of 3 walrus'es, and if I'm up on the mountian looking down at them from a distance, they go nuts.
Jumping up and down like mad, a twitch you could say.
I think it may of been related to my system mem or my cpu (I got my mem downclocked now to 1666, and the cpu voltages I'm re-working in amd msr tweaker).

I had been using skyrim for testing but I found bf3 and dead island to be much better testing programs.
Dead island crashes on exit even if it's stable thugh anyways, it crashes so much mostly on random.
Sometimes not, and when I increase the cpu voltage the probs go away, except now on act 2, loading that it crashes no matter what I don't understand why.
I'm getting the goty edition as I type this anyways so whatever.
Whatever right...

Anyways still playing skyrim once in a blue moon.
The story boring as ever, but it's a bit better now with the updates when it comes to free roaming.
I even got scared for a sec when a giant saber tooth kitty attacked me out from nowhere lol .
I still haven't updated to the latest ver or installed the dlc as of yet.

Maxed out, no af and no aa (I'll enable aa later, no af though, I use -15 mip bais so no af for me), it avg's around 1.5gigs of vga mem.
No custom stuff installed, just the official texture patch.
I've never seen it go past 1.6 gigs though.
Running at a res of 1920x1080.

[Ket]

I'm getting minor graphical glitches in Skyrim I'm trying to iron out. I know its nothing to do with the system itself thats rock stable, I'm thinking maybe its the memory clock on the 7950 but that would be weird if it is as I've run the 7950 with its current clocks in Heaven 3.0 with everything maxed and let it loop for ages with no issues. Maybe its just Skyrim, its a Bethesda game so its inevitably going to be buggy.

[EniGmA1987]

Skyrim needs good CPU performance to do well, and a 2500k is great for it. I have always found maxing out shadows to be the largest performance hit, since those are all done CPU side for some weird reason.

Try settings these lines and see how your system does:

Skyrim.ini file:
[Display]
fShadowLODMaxStartFade=4500.0
fSpecularLODMaxStartFade=6000.0
fLightLODMaxStartFade=6500.0
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=8192


SkyrimPrefs.ini file:

[General]
bEnablePerPixelLighting=1
bPerPixelLighting=1

[Imagespace]
bDoDepthOfField=1

[Display]
bDeferredShadows=1
bDrawShadows=1
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=5
fInteriorShadowDistance=6000.0000
fShadowDistance=8000.0000
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=4096
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=8192
iShadowSplitCount=2
fSpecularLODStartFade=6000.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=4500.0000
fLightLODStartFade=6500.0000
iShadowMode=3
iShadowFilter=3
bShadowsOnGrass=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1
iShadowMapResolution=8192
fShadowBiasScale=0.1500
iShadowMaskQuarter=4

[Trees]
bRenderSkinnedTrees=1
uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=60




Those settings (mainly for shadow stuff and things that cast or receive shadows) should hit your FPS by 10-20 on a 2500k but also give you a MASSIVE boost to detail levels for all shadows while still able to draw shadows at long distances.

[jimba86]

how would a 950 or 980X go?