Can these specs run a heavily modded skyrim at 60fps

[tayosm]

I honestly don't see the reason to have heavy-preset ENBs for Skyrim, 4k textures, enhanced lighting, parallax and stuff for purely playing purposes. Most of this stuff is made for showcases in mind where FPS doesn't play huge role. In monatge videos or for screenshots if game has 30 FPS average - it's perfectly fine.

 

Now, while you play, even in insanely modded Skyrim towards visual beauty it still looks odd, to say the least... Game is old, and you'll definitely find some low-res textures somewhere. When furry, live-like Khahiit moves like a plastic doll and has clipping, steel plate scales on his chest when he moves and etc gives you VERY odd impression.

 

Visuals can be modded towards improvement, sure, but to logical extent, keeping in mind that you won't pay too much attention at high-res sand with parallax and sun reflexions on the beach which gonna eat up tons of hardware resources for no good reason. And yes, you can have NASA computer, but heavy-ENBs + visual mods gonna kill FPS hardcore.

 

You're totally right. All I do these days is take screenshots anyway :) But I was just curious. Cuz as I said, I've seen people with the same specs as mine running all the 4ks at 60fps. Just wanted to understand how much my system can take and if I was doing something wrong.

[jones177]

HI

 

 

 

Skyrim is an old game & dose not like SLI(along with ENB). That is why I us one GTX 980 ti sc.

 

Without DoF I play in the 60s & dop into low 50s in the usual places & that is with over 250 mods.

 

I recommend switching off all your landscape textures & look around in-game. At 1440 most of the vanilla textures hold up better that the high rez packs. At 4k it gets worse. These packs were designed in 1080 & some textures are too sharp along side textures that are too dull. Since I started playing at 1440 I have been adding textures manually, using 1k, 2k & 4k textures depending on how they look along side other objects & the distance viewed. I am happy with the results.

 

At the end of 2015 I did some tests with 2k & 4k texture packs using a one 970. The frame rate stayed the same with both but the game ran longer without stutter with the 2k pack. I was only using 3.7gb max with the 4k pack( the 970 did not slow down after 3.5 gb).

I have found that if the game needs more VRAM than you have it slows down & some times CTD. When I went from a GTX 980 to 980 ti I was using 4.1 gb VRAM max & that was with a 2k texture pack & lots of NPCs. My in game CTDs dropped by more than 50% with the upgrade. Now that I add textures manually my VRAM max usage has gone down to 2.7 gbs max & on the play through I am doing now I got my first CTD at level 17.

 

Even though I have a 4k monitor I play Skyrim at 1440. At 4k with my setup my frame rate is in the 30s. My script heavy mods start to act up at that frame rate. When I tone it down to get into the 40s, it doesn't look as good as my 1440 setup. It is probably doable but not at my skill level.

 

Having & maintaining a heavily modded game is a bit of an art form. Getting the balance right is the thing. I started doing it back in 2000 with MS Flight Simulator. From there I went to MS Train Simulator & after that Oblivion.

 

Oblivian holds my record of content add at 90gbs. I have only added 61gb to Skyrim.

 

Later

[536861646f57]

I disabled any normal antisotropic filerting and just used FXAA instead. On a slightly crap system like mine, FXAA can take off anywhere from 5 to 20 FPS. I still get 15 FPS overlooking Markarth, only because I'm using 2K textures (damn you, mipmaps, taking all of my memory!). Everywhere else is a good 30+fps, and I don't use an ENB. Something like Imaginator might be able to help you achieve a better color palette. I used it once, and could never figure out a "perfect" preset for all worldspaces.