obobski

I would say expecting "at least 3 years or more at highest settings" is over-ambitious. That isn't to say GTX 960 or 970 or whatever wouldn't improve over the 745, but you're talking about unreleased games which have unknown system requierments, and hoping for max settings out of the box with hardware that can't provide that for some modern games. I'm not trying to be discouraging here, just realistic. The 970 *would* be a great improvement over the 745, but so would any of the other cards mentioned (even including the 750 Ti), and that's still very much worth considering for games of today, but let whatever is going to happen in 3 years, happen (and be taken care of) in 3 years.

I'm tempted to ask "what is your end goal" before you purchase anything - IOW, sure it should work if you've got confirmed reports saying it does, but do you actually need that performance increase, or can you do something cheaper (e.g. a 4GB 960, or a 750 Ti, or whatever) that will accomplish what you want, or whatever? I know that's kind of a vague question - just something to think about before pulling the trigger.

SLI does not "stack" VRAM, and GTX 970 doesn't/can't fully utilize all of its installed memory due to the interleaved design. Further, 4GB+ of memory is fairly overhyped (nor does VRAM accurately reflect the performance of a GPU). GTX 970 SLI *may* offer better performance in some games (especially if you're looking at "average FPS" or similarly broad measures) over something like GTX 980 or 290X, however it will also introduce more potential compatibility problems and conflicts, as well as the micro-stutter phenomenon (which a single GPU will not exhibit). There's also the potential for no scaling, or even negative scaling, which will be worse-off than a faster single GPU. It will also cost more than 980 or (especially) 290 or similar. As far as the Windows 10 upgrade - it's available for one year after Windows 10's release, so that'd be July 2016.

If people are reporting it works, then I'd go with that (I admittedly didn't google it up - just made a guess based on working on SFFs in the past). The GTX 670 isn't, afaik, a current option for the X51 though (current X51s come with GTX 960 or a Radeon). There are 4GB 960s as well, but honestly 4GB of VRAM is significantly overhyped (and has been for some time), especially if you aren't hooking up to a 4K monitor.

If you're a student, you can download 3DS Max from AutoDesk, here: http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/all As far as wanting an older version, the download page appears to allow you to select version (but I didn't sign in/sign up to check). I wouldn't be surprised if you could contact AutoDesk and explain that you need a specific version either - I know Microsoft supports that for their academic (and commercial (e.g. MSDN)) software downloads, as sometimes there's some feature/compatibility/whatever that's tied to some single version. If you're not a student, 3DS Max is not free, so "full download links" won't be legal unless they're digital distribution from AutoDesk or an approved retailer directly. They do offer a 30-day trial for 3DS 2016, if you need to test out functionality with whatever 2010-based "thing" prior to buying as well.

GTX 970 has the "memory bug" - much better to get GTX 960 or GTX 980, or a Radeon, as the 970 will have issues when trying to use all of its VRAM at once (its more of a 3-3.5GB card than a 4GB card, basically). As far as the upgrade itself - is this the X51 that's a little SFF? It probably won't like that card in terms of cooling or power very much, and a 330W PSU is probably insufficient depending on what other hardware you have installed in the machine. If I remember correctly, Alienware currently ships their SFF machines with up to GTX 960, and that would be a good option to consider. GTX 750 Ti would also likely work very well. You may also keep an eye on the new Radeon Fury Nano, which is supposed to be small, low power, and high performance as well.

I would honestly pass on the GTX 970, and I would pass on SLI of midrange/upper-midrange cards too. Get a GTX 980 (or Radeon R9) instead. Single-GPU will be more consistent in terms of support and performance, and in a year or two if you determine you need more graphics horsepower, buy a new single-GPU with some of the money you saved. Everything else looks okay, but a few notes: - If you go with Windows 8.1 Pro (and I will admit I don't currently know what the price difference is like, but I don't recall it being substantial) it will upgrade to 10 Pro, whereas 8.1 will upgrade to 10 Home. - Ensure that your motherboard will support the Haswell and Haswell Refresh processors out of the box (this isn't as big of a concern today as it was even a few months ago, but it's still worth spending 2 minutes on). - I've never had issues dragging-and-dropping my Steam folder from one machine to another, even with modded games, but keep in mind that many games do not store their save-games in the Steam folder, but instead in My Documents or AppData, so unless you use the cloud back-up service, you'll need to grab those too. Basically what you'll do is drag the folder over, install Steam on the new machine, and point it at the existing folder. Then run the game, and then once it sets up folders for its saves and whatnot, drop your backed-up saves in, and all should be well. If you're using the cloud service, it will probably auto-grab the saves. You would also need to re-install applications like Nexus Mod Manager or LOOT as well. - You may want to consider an after-market cooler for the CPU, as it will likely reduce both temperatures and noise over the Intel in-the-box model.

I honestly don't remember with NMM and UOP - I know I had Oblivion installed last fall (I haven't re-installed it since getting a new PC; it's on my todo list :ninja: ) and used either OBMM or NMM and had no problems whatsoever, and that included the unofficial patches and a few other "base" mods (like Better Cities). If I remember right though, the unofficial mods are just esp/esms and resources, so they don't need an automated installer. I vaguely remember there's an OMOD package for the "unofficial plug-in mod" that lets you select which plug-ins you have active (e.g. Mehrunes Razor but not Horse Armor) but I remember "back in the day" just having a bunch of separate plug-ins for each DLC and that working. If things are working with UOP disabled, it sounds like an Archive Invalidation (or other install/config) issue (like I said before) - I'm skeptical UOP is actually "bugged" (as in UOP itself as a mod is not likely faulty), but it's entirely possible that in your configuration it's installed or configured wrong (or your specific download is corrupted (this is a slim chance but always a possibility with downloaded content) - you may try re-downloading it too). As far as the save games, it's very unlikely that such an issue would "carry over" but there is always a potential for mods (or the base game itself, now that I think about it) to cause saves to become corrupted. Always best to have back-ups of saves as a result.

Alright, let's the put the brakes on and go back to the beginning. Uninstall everything; no more Wrye, no more OBMM, go back to square one. Install Oblivion along with KOTN and Shivering Isles. With *just* Bethesda stuff loaded, does this error still exist? Once you've got the base game working properly, then you can begin installing mods. One at a time in a logical fashion. You should not need Wrye or any other "mod helper" application just to run the unofficial patches, but LOOT never hurts, and switching to NMM (vs Oblivion's built-in manager) will make life a lot simpler. The reason I'm suggesting this is that currently it sounds like you're both new to the game, and new to modding the game, and want to do 73 things in 15 directions all at once, and that's more than likely where you're running into trouble. For info on instalilng Oblivion in the right order, see here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/406737-oblivion-optimum-install-order/ And this for removing Oblivion entirely, prior to re-install: http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/561101-unofficial-technical-faq/?p=8103714&do=findComment&comment=8103714

To keep things extra confusing: Apple will call the same instruction sets "x86-64", and in the past Microsoft has used "64-bit" to refer to both x64 and IA-64 (Itanium). :facepalm: Support for 16-bit (e.g. 8086) code exists, at least in hardware, for x64 CPUs, but 64-bit Windows dropped NTVDM and WOW16 which eliminated 16-bit support. This can break installers for some applications (including games) that are still 16-bit. Nothing until they say what hardware recommendations. Everyone expects Fo4 to be on the same engine as Skyrim, which means whatever you have for Skyrim should get you through a game of Fallout 4. I guess there would be a lot of surprised people if Fo4 came out and it uses Unreal, but that is a highly doubtful scenario. I wouldn't be surprised if Fallout 4 added DX11 support, but I agree that it doesn't seem unreasonable that it should run on systems that can run Skyrim (this was at least true for Oblivion-> Fallout 3; Fallout 3 added DX9c but machines that ran Oblivion could run Fallout 3).

OBSE has to be installed in the right location to work properly (refer to the readme for directions (you can redownload the entire thing from here: http://obse.silverlock.org/)), and if you're using NMM (or similar) you will have to point it at obse.exe as opposed to oblivion.exe (newer versions of NMM should automatically offer this; older versions, and OBMM require manual configuration iirc). The Oblivion launcher itself is likely looking for the wrong executable - have you tried running the game straight from obse.exe in the directory? Does that work properly? If so just create a short-cut to that (or go into that folder whenever you want to play - your choice really).

What's your frame-rate, if you know, and/or do you have vsync enabled at 60Hz? If no to vsync, try it - does the problem go away?

It looks like the custom hair is just clipping on the actor's head (the custom hair would have to be modded to change that, and I'm guessing if it exists this way it's for a reason (e.g. changing it to not clip there may make it look bad everywhere else)). Have you tried making a new character with that hairdo and just moving around a bit to see if the issue is reproduced there?

If I remember right you have to re-apply ArchiveInvalidation for Readius to work properly. Else you could remove the mod via NMM and load a clean save and things should go back to the way they were.

Just to add to what's been said: no there's no risk for running various mods from Nexus for Fallout 3 (or Fallout New Vegas). As far as VAC - I don't think Fallout even supports VAC, but multiplayer games like Counter-Strike do. Basically what VAC does is check for hacks/cheats running on your system (like stuff that makes your aiming easier than it should be) and will kick players who try to use them on VAC servers (and a VAC ban will prevent cheaters from joining any VAC-enabled server). Not all multiplayer servers for games that support VAC will implement it though - there's plenty of "custom" servers for games like Left 4 Dead (and I'm sure Counter-Strike and HL2: Deathmatch) that run mods, for example to add different guns, use non-Valve maps, allow more players to join than is conventionally possible, etc and those servers won't have VAC enabled because they're running modded games. AFAIK any multiplayer server that also enables the console also will not run VAC (because the console can be used to cheat). And of course in single-player it won't matter - you can cheat as much as you want in single-player even in games like Half-Life 2 or Counter-Strike. Basically, there's nothing to fear with VAC unless you're trying to hack/cheat in a conventional multiplayer match in supported games, like Counter-Strike. You can read more about VAC here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7849-RADZ-6869 (has a link to all VAC supported games too). As far as achievements go, I know that Fallout New Vegas will disable achievements for that session (e.g. you have to quit and restart the game) if the console is opened, but it will not disable achievements just because mods are running (at least none that I've ever seen). That said, IME the achievement detection thing is a little spotty even when the console hasn't been opened, so it's nothing I worry about (I've had it give me achievements twice, fail to register achievements, etc - its bonkers). I would assume Fallout 3 behaves similarly on Steam; I have the GFWL version and it behaves that way (achievements disabled per-session on console open). No idea whatsoever about Dark Souls though, sorry.

Yes it looks like this is a problem with archive invalidation. The lazy-man solution would be to let NMM grab Oblivion, your two mods, and apply ArchiveInvalidation from there - just bypass Wrye until/unless you determine down the road that you really need it (e.g. because you need to create a bash patch).

Agreed on it looking like a good system (the specs are very solid). The only thing I'd be cautious about, and by that I mean do a little bit of review-checking and whatnot, is if MSI's support has improved in the last few years. I remember years ago (we're talking probably ten years ago here) their customer support was not all that great - like emails going unanswered and RMAs not ever coming back to you "not all that great." Things certainly could have turned around in that time, and part of my reason for posting this is I'm hoping someone will come in and go "no man, I have an MSI, and their service rocks!" If you want to buy a pre-build, you may also consider a desktop if that's possible. It'd give you more options for upgrading in the future (e.g. you could swap the graphics card out), but price-wise would probably be pretty similar (actually building your own machine would probably end up pretty similar in price too; $1k is not bad at all). Just using Amazon's "suggested products" thing from the MSI's page, it found this Asus that already has an SSD, IPS screen, same/similar hardware, and is only $100 more: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T7XRGGC/ref=psdc_565108_t3_B00TI6TASK Might be worth a look at least.

When you say "runs fine without mods" you mean you can enable higher than 800x600? Or that it doesn't crash? (or crash as often) General curiosities: - Does this only affect one character/save that you have, or does it happen with a new game as well? - Have you sorted your load order with LOOT or similar? - Are your graphics drivers up to date?

An application being in "Program Files (x86)" is not forced to execute as a Win32 application - at least that directory tree doesn't force or impose that limitation. The (x86) folder serves to (in theory) separate 32-bit and 64-bit applications to try and prevent conflicts between them (e.g. 32-bit application trying to read a 64-bit DLL, or separation for an application that installs both 32-bit and 64-bit variants (like Internet Explorer)). Convention is to have 32-bit applications in (x86) but that isn't a hard and fast rule. Windows will determine if an executable is 32-bit or 64-bit at runtime, regardless of where it is installed (you can install things to C:\Games for example, if you wanted). For more information about the dichtomy: http://www.howtogeek.com/129178/why-does-64-bit-windows-need-a-separate-program-files-x86-folder/ On the application profiles/3D settings: Both nVidia and AMD support per-application profiles in their drivers, as well as stand-alone applications that will seek to optimize settings per-game based on your detected hardware (nVidia users have GeForce Experience, AMD users have Raptr). As far as I know these optimization applications do not account for overclocks, but otherwise will try to set the best settings based on your hardware. Many of the settings in "Manage 3D Settings" can be set in-game, and doing that in-game is usually better when available, but forcing over-rides is sometimes useful (e.g. if you want to force vsync). On DSR: https://techreport.com/review/27102/maxwell-dynamic-super-resolution-explored (it has pictures too) AMD offers a similar feature called VSR ("Virtual Super Resolution") on many of their GCN parts (e.g. Radeon R9 series).

"Skyrim on Ultra settings" at what resolution? Do you intend to run AA/AF? Running at 4K with 8x MSAA and 16x AF is almost certainly out of the question, but 1080p (or lower) with FXAA and AF should be no problem (my GTX 660SC could handle that).

Stutter around things like flames may also be caused if the frame-rate is too high - especially in Skyrim. These games generally don't like being run at multi-hundred FPS, and the animations associated with fire and some other lights will behave improperly when they are. Just enabling vsync or something else to cap at 60FPS can fix this. HyperThreading may also be causing the stutter problems - have you tried turning it off?

No - neither SLI nor CrossFire "stacks" VRAM. So 2x4GB of 4x4GB or whatever will still only provide 4GB of VRAM for the application. Historically, 3DLabs' multi-GPU solutions could combine VRAM across multiple GPUs into a larger frame-buffer, however those aren't gaming cards, and also relied on an additional load-balancing processor to accomplish this feat (the GPUs were also all piped into all of the memory, which SLI/CrossFire does not implement). For General gaming, though, would you take 3x GTX 980s, or 1x Titan? (Just Titan, not the super Titans (Titan Z & Titan X)) Or another comparison, 2x GTX 580 or 1x GTX 970? 3 GTX 980s, or 1 GTX 970. No question. The 980 will be generally faster than Titan (unless we're talking FP64 GPGPU), and three of them would be significantly faster. I'd take 3 980s over "super Titan" as well. Same goes for 580:970.

I agree with the GTX 980 over the 970. Alternately, Radeon R9 290X makes a good choice, and will cost less.

Yes, everything does draw power, but no graphics card will actually use 600W. What you're probably seeing is the suggested PSU capacity for the entire machine, which includes that "extra" based on some generic assumptions about your computer (which probably works out for your system, based on the specifications you provided). The GTX 770's actual power draw will be around 200W at max, and in normal usage it will be lower than that (it has power management features that will try to minimize its power consumption). A 600W PSU would be fine with your configuration; "at least 750W" is decidedly overkill. As far as the different types of cards - there's various brands, like PNY, EVGA, and Asus (all three are good; EVGA is usually the crowd favorite), and then different makers will have different features like offering the card overclocked from the factory, with upgraded cooling, etc. Price-wise, $550 is ridiculous. $250-$300 is not unreasonable though. If you want a bone-stock card, it won't get any more standard than this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-2gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0-graphics-card-black-silver/1826004.p?id=1219065626957&skuId=1826004 Looking at prices for 770s, it may be a good idea to strongly consider the GTX 960 instead - you can get one for probably $100 less, and the performance difference will not be that dramatic (if at all), and the 960 will use less power to boot. Here's a review, comparing them, and a lot of other cards, in Bioshock Infinite: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_960_SLI/8.html "960 SLI" means two cards operating together (and your system may not support this), so that can be ignored. For whatever reason it appears TPU has removed Skyrim from their benchmarks (they used to include it), but it will run equally well on GTX 960 or 770.

On file extensions - t'll make Windows show the full file name for everything , as opposed to just the title. It's useful because you know exactly what you're looking at, so instead of say "super awesome mod" you would see "super awesome mod.esp". By default, Windows will hide extensions to "known" filetypes, so things like 7z, zip, jpeg, doc, rtf, etc won't show, but "unknown" filetypes (which is where esp and esm usually end up, unless you've associated them with a specific application) will show. To change this setting, just type "Folder Options" into Windows search (in the Start Menu/on the Start Screen), open Folder Options, go to the View tab, and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types." Now, something else that may be occuring since you're dealing with modder resoruces and not finished mods - it may just be a collection of meshes, textures, etc that you have to associate with your mod. To do that you'd have to create your own mod and then use some object in the modder resoruce, and you'd specify the path in the CS when you do that.