FelixFelicis

TL:DR-- Look at my system specs and help me understand, with my comp could I run Somber ENB or UnrealCinema ENB? How, or why not? PS: I'm sorry if this kind of post doesn't belong here. I've been looking for the right place to ask this question and checked for FAQs in this forum. This seemed like the best place.

The situation: --Found Somber ENB 2.0 unchained. It's exactly what I wanted in an ENB. Turns skyrim into what my imagination always wanted it to be. Started a new game with this ENB and was blown away by the beauty... of the individual screens, because the framerate was SO choppy I was clipping all over the place and the game was unplayable. Tried performance-enhancing: mods, apps to boost framerate, .ini tweaks, hialgo, etc to no avail. My system: Windows 7 64bit Personal on Bootcamp (I know, I know.. leave the hate at the door please... just... sorry. I grew up with apple before it was 'cool' and I stuck to what I knew when I bought a new computer). 2.7GHz intel core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Quad core SSD with plenty of space Graphics: nvidia GeForce GT 650M VRAM: 1024mb Intel HD Graphics 4000 VRAM: 512mb So my understanding of my system is: I have a decent amount of RAM and good processor speed, that combined with fast loading from my SSD allows me to use *lots* of high-res textures with minimal performance drop. However, my GPU is underpowered as far as GPUs go, and 1Gb of VRAM is deplorable for a computer trying to game. My questions are: 1. Does this setup have a prayer of running Somber ENB? (at least with bloom and DoF intact, and without glitching out all over the place) 2. If not, what is the limiting factor in my setup? 3. If I can run it, since I've got these intel integrated graphics do I need to use an injector version, do I need to use a certain speedhack, what can I do? I tried using the wrapper fix for laptops posted to nexus that was supposed to allow Optimus laptops to use wrapper ENB instead of requiring the injector, but it didn't make a lick of difference. Sub-questions: --should I use the wrapper or injector ENB? --should I avoid high-res texture mods to make things easier on my system? --should I disable certain features to make the ENB workable? --should I do anything to prevent bugginess? --if I keep getting a message that says ENBhost.exe has failed and I need to check my antivirus and run as administrator, but I don't have antivirus installed (since the only thing I use the bootcamp side for is games, regular computing I do on the Mac side) and am running the SKSE_launcher.exe as an administrator, is there something else I'm doing wrong? 4. How do I know I'm installing an ENB correctly? Gopher's vids/other tutorials make it look so simple, "Just copy in the files that start with ENB," but then I download something like Somber ENB or UnrealCinema and there are tons of extra files that look important but don't start with ENB, some of which also apparently need to be merged with the data folder (potentially overwriting other mods)... am I just supposed to copy ALL the files 'as-is' from the download into the skyrim folder and let the mod figure out where the different pieces are? --at the end of the day, I'm not sure whether any of the multiple ways I tried installing Somber ENB were even correct. Why am I even bothering to ask about this? Because threads like this that make it seem like you can get the game looking great with an old rig make me wonder if I'm just doing something wrong: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1089661-enboost-for-dummies/ I would appreciate input from people who have run ENBs on laptops before (especially any with intel integrated graphics + an nvidia graphics card). I have spent the better part of the last few days trying to figure this out tweaking, installing performance mods, etc. Final notes When I last tried to run things with Somber ENB here's what I had done: --Run the texture optimizer on my skyrim DATA/Textures folder. --was using ENB 2.11 (which comes with the optimization/speed-improvement built in if my understanding is right). --tried using grass with steroids on the settings meant to improve framerate, though I didn't see a difference and didn't know if I was doing it right anyway. I saw how to adjust grass size but didn't know where I could edit the density. --I had used Texture Pack Combiner to make a big DATA file that I installed as a mod using NMM. Tried to uninstall that and run the game, but I got a Crash-to-Desktop when I tried to run it without that massive texture pack installed. --installed the Somber ENB DATA folder (compressed to .rar and installed with NMM, overwriting data from other mods). --tried running the game with and without a background FPS booster application running --Tried reducing draw distances and shadow quality in skyrim launcher. Turned of AA and AF. --Turned on/off tree/grass/land shadows in the skyrim .ini --Turned off effects like reflection, ambient occlusion, and reduced sampling quality in the enb .ini file. --Turned on hialgo boost using proxy stringing for the .dll files, tried with and without additional proxy effects.