Rennn

Yep. Exactly what velve666 said. Essentially it's simply the fact that it opens in a small window that's increasing the performance.

Something's wrong with the specular. In fact, doesn't Skyrim bind together the speculars and normals?

I suggest you go straight to a superclocked 770. The lifespan on modern video cards is already so long you won't notice the difference in durability. It's pretty much just free performance as long as you're not using a compact case, and it saves you the trouble of having to overclock it later. Your motherboard is probably a bit overkill, but imo that's a good thing because the motherboard and PSU are really the two parts you don't want to have to replace for quite some time. Get a new cooler for the i5-4670k if you have money to spare. You *might* need one right away, and you will *certainly* need one if you overclock it in the future. I'd recommend a blu-ray drive, whichever optical drive you decide to get. You only need one drive since the day of the disk is mostly past, but a blu-ray drive as opposed to a dvd drive will come in handy for movies, or if PC games ever switch to blu-ray for their disk versions. A blu-ray drive costs roughly the same as a dvd drive now anyway. Also... I don't know if you've ever tried Windows 8, but I have, and it's just as horrible as people say. Imagine using a touch screen with the tip of a basketball you're holding instead of your finger or a stylus. That's about how well the Windows 8 UI translates to mouse control. I support your decision to get Windows 7.

I completely agree. Individually, each texture from 2K textures looks better than the vanilla HD DLC. However, the HD DLC looks much more cohesive and artistically sound in an overall scene. Also, HD 2K takes like double the VRAM of the HD DLC... the HD DLC will be more stable in Skyrim's engine. The original poster should definitely get more RAM though if the motherboard has an extra slot. Go for 8GB instead of 4. You'll probably notice the difference in Skyrim, and you will certainly notice the difference in newer games with 64-bit support. Pairing a 3GB 7970 and i7 with a mere 4GB of RAM is going to waste some performance. If your mobo doesn't have an extra slot... :/ Then it's a tough choice.

First, it's always a bad idea to use Skyrim's FXAA, even if you don't use ENB. It's tuned pretty horribly and makes everything blur. As for helping... You should probably find out whether it's your CPU or your video card limiting you for the most part. Download something to measure your graphics card activity and see how much of its power is being used when your framerate drops. Unless people know which part of your PC is weakest in Skyrim+ENB, advice would just be random guessing and hoping.

Have you tried disabling your Steam Overlay in Skyrim? I have no idea if that will work, but sometimes it interferes with things like SweetFX or ENB.

It seems like the framerate limiter in current Nvidia drivers breaks all vsync. I've commented on this before. I think the last time Nvidia's framerate limiter worked with vsync for me was the 320.46 WHQL driver. If you want to use new drivers and limit your framerate, use Dxtory or D3D Antilag to limit fps instead. Also, if you limit your framerate in Skyrim, don't go below 35 fps or you risk infinite load screens and extra choppiness. Since you have an Nvidia card, have you tried adjusting the maximum prerendered frames? Increasing or decreasing that affects mouse lag. You might need Nvidia Inspector to see the option. I have standard vsync set to 'force on' in my Nvidia drivers, with triple buffering enabled and smooth AFR behavior enabled. I have my framerate limited at 35 with Dxtory. I don't have noticeable mouse lag or screen tearing. If you don't want a framerate as low as 35, you could theoretically limit it to anything.

I've used seen 3 Asus monitors for long periods of time. You get pretty much exactly what you pay for, imo. Their low cost monitors dive in quality sharply when compared against their high cost monitors, but their high cost monitors are excellent. I went for one of their medium options (VS247H-P) last time for $180 and it's meh. Not great, not bad. I've seen a lot better and a lot worse. It's certainly not the kind of thing I'd want paired with a GTX 770 though. When you're already spending about $2000 on a gaming rig it's only fitting to get a monitor that allows enthusiast-grade visuals, particularly an IPS panel.

Ehm... I've been building a pretty long list of antialiasing settings and stuff over the years, so I figured I'd post it in case someone benefits from it. Many newer games used deferred lighting engines, which makes antialiasing a pain. I've tested dozens of compatibility bits in dozens of games to find what I consider to be ideal antialiasing settings, as well as other random tweaks, fixes, and optimizations. So I'm going to post the list in case anyone finds it useful. I may have gotten a couple names wrong, but meh... This is primarily for Nvidia video cards, and I recommend you have Nvidia Inspector to make most of the changes. These optimizations should be ideal for mid range cards such as a 460, 550 TI, 560, 650, 660, 750, etc. Weaker cards will be better of with just shader AA, or no AA. These are just my settings and observations, I'm not trying to say that these are the best possible settings. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Key AA driver bit: the antialiasing compatibility flag (or bit) set in Nvidia Inspector AA driver setting: the antialiasing set in your Nvidia drivers, in Nvidia Inspector AA game setting: the antialiasing option in the specific game itself AA injector setting: the antialiasing injected via something like the SMAA injector FPS limit: the lowest the framerate can safely be set without significantly degrading visual quality. I recommend Dxtory for framerate limiting. Nvidia's driver option sometimes causes problems for me, like breaking vsync. Of course a framerate limit is optional depending on your PC. Anisotropic Filtering: A method of filtering textures that prevents blur and makes scenes look more crisp and realistic, for almost no performance drop. It should generally be set using your Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia Inspector, for the highest quality and best performance. Note: extra facts that you should be aware of__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Types of antialiasing MSAA: multisample antialiasing (set with Nvidia Inspector in the section "Antialiasing: Setting") SSAA: supersample antialiasing (set with Nvidia Inspector in the section "Antialiasing: setting" as an alternative to MSAA) OGSSAA: ordered grid supersample antialiasing (set with Nvidia Inspector in the section "Antialiasing: Transparency Supersampling") SGSSAA: sparse grid supersample antialiasing (set with Nvidia Inspector in the section"Antialiasing: Transparency Supersampling" as an alternative to OGSSAA) TrSSAA: transparency supersample antialiasing (the result of using OGSSAA without additional MSAA) FSAA: full screen antialiasing (used in rare games, seems to come with a higher performance cost than MSAA) FXAA: fast approximate antialiasing (lower quality shader AA that can be set in either Nvidia Inspector or sometimes game options menus) MLAA: morphological antialiasing (lower quality shader AA that can sometimes be set in game options) SMAA: subpixel morphological antialiasing (modified MLAA for higher quality that may be set rarely in game options or injected) AAA: analytic antialiasing (modified FXAA for higher quality, used in Metro 2033 and Metro: last Light) _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Game guide Dishonored-AA driver bit: 0x000010C1-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA-AA game setting: FXAA (as an alternative to sampled AA if the thin white line is a problem)-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Using sampled antialiasing (MSAA, SGSSAA, etc) may result in a thin white line on the left edge of the screen Dark Souls-AA driver bit: 0x004000C0-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA (performance) or 2x2SSAA (quality)-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30 (shouldn't be disabled)-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Use the DSfix mod to uncap resolution (version 1.7 or earlier allows hardware AA, later versions seem to only allow shader AA such as SMAA or FXAA)-Note: An Xbox 360 controller or equivalent is recommended Skyrim-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS Limit: 35-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: A cap below 33 breaks load times and may also seem much less smooth Killing Floor-AA driver bit: 0x20410041-AA driver setting: TrSSAA-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Star Wars: The Force Unleashed-AA driver bit: 0x00000245-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA-AA game setting: automatic, can't be disabled (FXAA)-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30 (can't be disabled)-Anisotropic: 8x Dragon Age: Origins-AA driver bit: 0x004010C0-AA driver setting: 2x2SSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Zeno Clash 2-AA driver bit: 0x080000C1-AA driver setting: 2x2SSAA-AA game setting: automatic-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Mass Effect-AA driver bit: 0x080100C5-AA driver setting: 2x2SSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Set audio to "hardware" if game refuses to launch-Note: This AA is compatible with motion blur, unlike most Mass Effect 2-AA driver bit: untested-AA driver setting: untested-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: untested-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Mass Effect 3-AA driver bit: 0x000000C1 (default is 0x080100C5)-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Arx Fatalis-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: 2x2SSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: At high framerates the game will begin to speed up, I recommend capping at 30 to resolve this-Note: Install the latest patch and the Arx Libertatis mod to resolve bugs with modern drivers and Windows Vista/7/8 Red Faction: Guerrilla-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: untested-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Uninstall Windows optional update KB2670838 to resolve DX11 visual bugs, if they occur-Note: Use warm color temp on monitor for best visuals, or perhaps SweetFX, the PC port otherwise has washed out colors compared to the console versions Enclave-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: 2x2SSAA (unconfirmed?)-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Dark Messiah of Might and Magic-AA driver bit: 0x40008000-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Install the 1.2 patch to fix several game-breaking bugs Far Cry 3-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 2xMSAA with enhanced alpha coverage + FXAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Use 1 frame vsync in game to allow a stable framerate limit-Note: May need to add Farcry3_D3D11.exe to the Nvidia Inspector profile if running DX11 Magicka-AA driver bit: 0x00012C0-AA driver setting: 2xMSAA + 2xSGSSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector set: untested-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Minecraft-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: FXAA (disable FXAA if using HD texture packs or detail will be lost)-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: none-Anisotropic: N/A-Note: Anisotropic filtering must be set in the game options, not in drivers-Note: I recommend a mipmap level of 1 for 8x Anisotropic Delver-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: automatic-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: none-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Limiting the framerate seems to cause stutter and control issues Overlord: Raising Hell-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Overlord 2-AA driver bit: 0x00001244-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: edge smoothing (custom MLAA)-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Although it is possible to force MSAA with the bit listed above, I find that the quality doesn't noticeably improve from MLAA Dungeon Defenders-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: SMAA-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Call of Cthulhu-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Use a 4:3 custom resolution for best results, such as 1440x1080 for a 1080p monitor. Sacred 2-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xFSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Oblivion-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: SMAA-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Sampled antialiasing is automatically disabled when HDR is turned on Hunted: The Demon's Forge-AA driver bit: 0x000010C1-AA driver setting: 4xMSAA + 4xSGSSAA-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Guild Wars 2-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: FXAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x Area 51-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: none-AA injector setting: untested (hopefully SMAA)-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Ultra textures are not worthwhile, they simply add noise filters and introduce graphics bugs-Note: Run at 1440x1080 or a similar custom 4:3 resolution KOTOR-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Ensure that scaling is disabled in video card drivers and run at 1280x1024 for 1920x1080, or alternatively 1600x1200 for 1920x1200.-Note: Enter "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1" under the graphics options section of the swkotor.ini to prevent crashing on Windows Vista/7/8-Note: Replace mss32.dll with a Windows 7 compatible version found online-Note: The widescreen Patcher seems to decrease FoV and cause HUD anomalies, I don't recommend it unless you can't can't turn off resolution scaling in your drivers KOTOR: TSL-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: 4xMSAA-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 30-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Ensure that scaling is disabled in video card drivers and run at 1280x1024 for 1920x1080, or alternatively 1600x1200 for 1920x1200.-Note: Enter "Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1" under the graphics options section of the swkotor2.ini to prevent crashing on Windows Vista/7/8-Note: Replace mss32.dll with a Windows 7 compatible version found online-Note: The widescreen Patcher seems to decrease FoV and cause HUD anomalies, I don't recommend it unless you can't can't turn off resolution scaling in your drivers Warframe-AA driver bit: none-AA driver setting: none-AA game setting: enabled (FXAA)-AA injector setting: none-FPS limit: 35-Anisotropic: 8x-Note: Limits lower than 35 seem to cause an abnormal loss of fluidity in gameplay, as well as extended load times

You can lower your shadow distance and decrease the resolution below vanilla low settings. That should help. There's a section in your Skyrimprefs.ini that should have these lines. This is what they look like at vanilla low settings. [Display] fInteriorShadowDistance=3000.0000fShadowDistance=2000...random stuff in between... iShadowMapResolution=512 Try changing them to this.[Display] fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000fShadowDistance=0...random stuff in between... iShadowMapResolution=16 That should pretty much entirely disable shadows, so theoretically it should be a significant framerate boost.

Wait, what's C0DA now?

Epic build... But I just hope you don't regret that monitor. :3 After my last 2 cheap monitors, I've made it a rule to spend as much on a monitor as I do on a video card, to balance the visuals. A $500 video card is a bit of a waste on a $200 monitor, for example. Your card will be putting out details and colors that you won't be able to see. :s

A GTX 580 is about the same in performance as a GTX 660, meaning a 580 is far weaker than a 770. It's not a good idea to use a comparison between a 580 and a 780 as justification for why a 770 might not be strong enough. Also, 8xAA is entirely pointless. 4x is pretty much the limit for a visual difference at 1080p or higher, unless you intend to take screenshots and spend several minutes studying them, looking for jaggies. :3

A GTX 770 is a massive upgrade over a GTX 650. It's definitely worthwhile if you can afford it. Just a heads-up, there's no difference between a 4GB card and a 3GB card in Skyrim, all else held equal. Skyrim can't effectively use more than about 3GB of VRAM. The 4GB models are mostly meant for SLI and multi-monitor setups. Otherwise the extra VRAM is kind of wasted. You'd be hard pressed to hit even 2GB of VRAM in Skyrim, though it can be done. You can go 4GB if you want, it won't hurt anything, but if you're struggling for cash I thought you should be aware you won't notice the difference between 3GB and 4GB. Your CPU and RAM is excellent, very high end, so there's definitely no need to upgrade those. They won't hold you back. More expensive doesn't *always* mean better. Asus and Gigabyte tend to make cards that perform better than their price would suggest. EVGA and Galaxy are also good options. If you can, try to go for a superclocked card. They're usually just a free increase in performance, provided you have a decent power supply and decent fans.

Well, there's a mod that adds static DoF for the same purpose. I don't know about fog though. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9503/?

That's how ENB filters shadows. Instead of being blocky like in vanilla Skyrim, they become dithered. If the shadow resolution is low, you can easily see the dithering. You can either increase the shadow resolution, or disable detailed shadows in your ENB. Ofc, disabling detailed shadows will bring back the vanilla Skyrim blocky shadows.

Not to detract from this, but Vista is widely considered the worst OS of the last decade. :3 Even Windows 8 is at least good for tablets... Vista isn't good for anything.

In other news, Dxtory has a very robust framerate limiter included.

No, we can't see the difference, provided there's no microstutter. And yes, we can measure it in fps. That's all been proven in more studies than I can shake a stick at. Most people mix up 30 and 60 fps if they're not told which is which. The only reason anyone can possibly see the difference from 30 to 60 fps is because modern video cards and engines are incapable of maintaining perfectly consistent framerates. The human eyes stops being able to tell at about 24-25 fps. Every other inconsistency is purely the result of uneven frame latency and hardware, and that can be mostly wiped out at either 60 or 30 fps. Yes, 60 fps looks better. I don't think any gamer who specifically buys a PC for gaming would dispute that. However, it only looks about 15% better, imo, for exactly double the performance cost of 30 fps. The extra smoothness you see isn't from the increased framerate, it's from the decreased microstutter that comes with 60 fps, which is far less efficient. It's not even close to worth it for me, or for many people. You essentially spend 200% performance for a 15% increase in visual quality. Besides, not every game has a good option for decreasing visual quality. Look at Assassin's Creed III. If you drop the shadow quality one notch below ultra, everything starts to flicker and strobe. In cases like that, where there is no good option below ultra, 30 fps on ultra is much more attractive than 60 fps on medium. Same for the Witcher 2. Dropping the graphics to medium turns everything glowy and silly looking. Much better to aim for ultra at 30 in games like that. Skyrim is honestly one of the exceptions where there's not a big difference from ultra to high, or even ultra to medium, in most cases. And that's just because ultra looks rather borked. The shadows look pretty much crap no matter what, so turning those from ultra to high doesn't hurt much, it just nets you about 15 fps. Same for view distance. The whole world turns into mud past 200 meters anyway, why not get rid of the tiny clutter items at distant ranges and net yourself an extra 10 fps? ENB, however, is a different beast. I don't know whether it's horribly optimized or if Skyrim's engine just can't handle post processing effects, but either way the performance hit of ENB is about 5x what you would expect from a similar looking game on a better engine. Vanilla Mass Effect 3 looks arguably better than the best Skyrim ENBs (once you get around ME3's deferred lighting and find some SGSSAA that works), and ME3 runs at over 100 fps for me most of the time, as opposed to Skyrim with the best ENBs, which can hit 20 fps. Making Skyrim look good is possible, but it's highly inefficient. And for people with middle-grade cards (I believe Steam ran a survey that indicated most Steam users are running a GTX 650 or equivalent), efficiency is the single most important part of image quality. 60 fps is not efficient... Meaning 80% of gamers are better off without it right now.

I think most people can "see" a difference from 30 fps to 60 fps in current engines, but you shouldn't be able to feel it. Human reaction time is 1/10 of a second, or in other words, 10 fps. If below 45 feels slow to you, that simply means you're doing something wrong and causing mouselag, perhaps with vsync or a choking game engine, because 30 fps itself will never feel noticeably different without something else interfering, although it looks different. Also, the human brain directly interprets blur as fluidity and sharpness as choppiness, meaning two things. 1. The higher the resolution you play at, the higher your framerate must be for it to look smooth. 2. Motion blur literally makes a game smoother to your brain, it's not some underhanded trick. And ofc, every movie you've ever seen was recorded at 24 fps. Finally, it's ridiculous to compare a video card dropping to 30 fps to one capped at 30 fps. The two are dramatically different. A game dropping to 30 fps will look awful to most gamers, and depending on the engine it can also turn laggy as your video card hits its peak and overflows. However, a game limited to 30 fps keeps all the responsiveness and stability of 60 fps, with a purely aesthetic difference. And remember, if you have vsync on and your framerate falls to 29 fps, vsync will make it jump straight down to 15. Benchmarks won't show this, because technically your video card is still drawing 29 frames or 30 frames or whatever. It's just syncing in such a way that you only get 15 on the screen. Ofc, a higher bandwidth card will also run smoother than a lower bandwidth one, due to the effect it has on frame latency. 60 fps on a 384-bit card will look smoother than 60 fps on a 192-bit card. I don't have a problem if you want to keep 60 fps, but I put in the effort to get consistent framerate limits in my games, so I'd rather enjoy the extra stability, lower cost, and the ability to push my settings higher without worrying as much about performance.

I'll try it, at least in DX9 games. I have enough DX11 games though that it might be worth just rolling back my video card drivers until Nvidia releases something more stable...

Very defensive, aren't you? We're not talking out our asses. Most of us have hardware strong enough to run 50-60 fps, but prefer to have the extra stability. I've played Skyrim for 600-ish hours according to Steam, and capping the framerate at 35 is smoother than letting it fluctuate between 50-60. I doubt you've tried setting up a stable fps limit though, since you seem dedicated to hating it. Anyway, I have a GTX 660 GC, which is 10% faster than a stock 660, and I can barely hold 55-60 fps without ENB and no mods in most places. I'm sure your framerate drops much lower than that at times, you're probably just not spotting it. The best place to benchmark is in the Solitude Swamp, that should bring a 660 down to 45 easily in vanilla Skyrim on ultra at 1080p with at least 4xMSAA. With ENB, 660s tend to drop at the highest to 50 fps, usually more like 40 or even 35 on the better looking ones. That's just how the cards perform. Ofc, it's hard to benchmark since Skyrim's framerate drops steadily the longer you play. You can easily lose 20 fps from 5 minutes in compared to 2 hours in. Damn memory leaks...

I agree with everything you said, so much... This reminds me of the console gamers who said Dark Souls 2 needed to be at 60 fps, because 30 fps was so choppy in Dark Souls 1. Never mind that Dark Souls 1 kept dropping into the 15 fps range on consoles. :3 What method do you use for capping your framerate though? I also use an Nvidia card. Until a couple days ago I used Rivatuner Statistics Server, but that stopped working once I updated my drivers. I could use Nvidia's limiter in the drivers, but that always breaks vsync for me...

At a time when literally any other engine can use a shadow map of 1024 with filtering to look and run amazing, or step the resolution down in several stages from 2048 (IE, Unreal 3), the Gamebryo *cough* Creation Engine needs to run the shadows at 4096 to make them look tolerable because it doesn't support filtering. Ultra shadows knock my fps down to the 50-ish range, which although it's still a high framerate, simply should not happen. Where's the justice in a world where I can run Mass Effect 3 (a beautiful game, btw, much better looking than Skyrim in most places) at ridiculous numbers like 140 fps, but can't even hold 60 in Skyrim? Just a couple lighting mods and I start to fall below my cap of 30 in Skyrim. o_o

I agree with you about ghosts, I don't see why draugr would only be killable with certain weapons though. They're made of flesh and stuff... Not like ghosts. I've never seen a mod like what you're asking for, but I get the appeal of having restrictions like that, so I'm just going to mention my mod. It doesn't make draugr or ghosts unkillable by anything except a silver weapon, but it does bring back some of Oblivion's other damage resistances and enemy traits. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44576/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D44576%26preview%3D&pUp=1