RSnider

I've been away from Skyrim for a while. I have a Radeon HD6870. The last time I played, I was using 11.x CCC drivers (can't remember the exact version) and forcing AA and AF through CCC had no effect and to make matters worse, the Bethesda AA was absolute crap. I think ATI drivers are up to 12.6 now and I've noticed Skyrim has received a few updates since I last played as well. So my question is: is the AA and AF still broken for ATI cards or can it finally be forced through CCC? I really don't feel like re-installing everything just to find out if the AA is working (or not).

Well that's just shitty. I can't believe AA has been botched since 11.11 and ATI has yet to do anything to fix it.

Now my next question is: Is there any way to apply armor mods in the same manner? The UNP armor sets make it look like you have the UNP body when equipped, regardless of the actual body mods you're using. So, even with Custom Races, if you use the UNP armor mods, it gives everyone the UNP body (NPCs included) until the armor is removed. I suppose it would be possible to create duplicates of the UNP armor to act as stand-alone armor. That way, the NPCs would continue using the vanilla armor and the player could use the command prompt to add the UNP stand-alone pieces, thereby allowing the player to have the UNP body while the NPCs keep the vanilla body while dressed. Its just that building a complete set of duplicates seems like it would be extremely tedious and time consuming. Are there any easier ways?

Excellent. Sounds like exactly what I need and this should save me considerable time. Thanks for the link.

I downloaded a custom race mod called "Nidia Race" from some other site a while ago. The Nidia Race mod is decent, but what interests me is the way in which the texture and mesh folders are structured for the Nidia characters. Instead of loading textures and meshes from the default Data folder, the mod is entirely self-contained. The resulting effect is the ability for the Nidia race to utilize what appears to be the UNP body without changing the body for any other race. You see, the one thing I always disliked about body mods is if I want to use the UNP body to make my character super skinny, then ALL female characters get the super skinny body as well. I don't want every female character in the game to have the body of a runway model. The problem is, I'm not totally crazy about the Nidia race. The face meshes/textures always look a bit too young. What I want to do is create a custom race that is basically identical to Breton in every way, except I want to use the same file structure as the Nidia mod so I can use body mods without making every female NPC ultra skinny. The idea isn't so much an entirely new "custom race"; rather, a copy of the Breton race so it looks and behaves like the vanilla Breton race, but doesn't use the vanilla body. My problem is I don't know how the original creator of the Nidia race mod went about setting it up so it didn't automatically load the meshes and textures from the default data folder but instead loaded meshes and textures from the Nidia-only folders. Any tips/thoughts/advice?

This made me lulz. Looks like some textures got dropped in the wrong folder somehow.

Random purple textures is indicative of running out of texture memory. It almost sounds like you might have a memory leak somewhere. Corrupt files could be playing havok with your system resources, which would explain why the problem seems to be getting worse. Have you considered reformatting? I like to keep my HDD as empty as possible, so I can reformat whenever without having to backup dozens of gigs of data. Keeps everything running clean and smooth and without a ton of unnecessary crap, a full reformat/OS install can be completed in a couple hours. Significantly less with decent disk imaging software.

Nothing?

Nevermind! I started digging around in the device manager and found 2 yellow question marks. I clicked "update driver" and Windows found and installed the appropriate driver. That's the last bloody time I ever trust an OEM driver disc to actually perform the task it was made to do. This was my first experience with an Asus product and I must say, I'm quite disappointed by the overall product. I can't believe I was about to pull my hair out over something that was so easy to fix.

I built a new pc last year. The motherboard I purchased (Asus M4A88T-V) is USB 3.0 compatible. At the time, I didn't care about USB 3.0 one way or the other, because I understood it was backwards compatible with USB 2.0. All my devices are USB 2.0, so the USB 3.0 was a moot point, really. However, after assembling all the components, installing XP 32 bit, and installing all the drivers (including the USB drivers), I plugged in my external hard drive to transfer my files and got an unexpected message from Windows: "The USB mass storage device is a Hi-Speed usb device and will function at reduced speed when plugged into a non-Hi-Speed port." The transfer rates were utterly pathetic. Pathetic as in 0.76 MB/s. That's not a typo. It took over an hour to transfer a 3 GB folder. It didn't take long for me to get fed up with it and I used another pc to transfer all my files to an old 40 gig internal HDD on its last leg so I could bypass the USB interface on my new computer. As time went on, I got used to using the spare internal HDD to transfer files, but physically removing the drive and installing it in my other pc just to transfer files is getting old. More importantly, theres no telling how long this HDD is going to last, especially with it being moved around constantly, so it's critical that I get this stupid USB situation sorted out before the HDD dies and takes all my backup data with it. All my drivers are up to date. In the BIOS, USB legacy is set to Auto (my only keyboard and mouse are both USB, so I don't dare disable USB legacy). I've tried changing the BIOS settings from Hi-Speed to Full-Speed, which did nothing. I've tried plugging into each of the 6 USB ports and it doesn't matter if it's a standard USB port or a USB 3.0 port, it still transfers extremely slowly. The problem is definitely not the external devices, because the pc behaves the same way whether its an external HDD, a digital camera, a card reader, or a thumb drive. Conversely, when I connect the exact same devices to my other PC, they transfer at full USB 2.0 speeds (which feels blisteringly fast after waiting on the crap USB 3.0 transfers). It's been like this since day one. I'm at a complete loss as to how to fix it and, like I mentioned earlier, my "transfer" HDD is barely hanging on. It doesn't even spin up half the time when I turn on the PC. Eventually, its going to stop spinning up entirely and all my data will be gone if I don't get this USB issue resolved. Any advice or direction will be greatly appreciated and hugely helpful. Thank you in advance.

I don't think anyone else has asked this, so I have to wonder; have you changed the uGridsToLoad setting in your Skyrim.ini file?

This is such a strange bug. I've never had a load screen last more than 20 seconds in Skyrim and my system isn't anything special, aside from the 4.1 GHz CPU overclock. No fancy SSD; just a 7200 rpm SATA. Although, I do keep my HDD spotless and usually reformat every 60-90 days. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? On the other hand, I used to play Total War: Shogun 2 and that game would take a solid 5 minutes just to launch to the main menu.

Purple textures means the texture failed to load, which is common of running out of video memory. Are you using the Bethesda Hi-Res DLC pack? That pack will devour 1GB of video memory in no time at all, especially if you're not running Vano89's hi-res optimization mod (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9080). Are you running any other mods at all? If so, try disabling all mods and see if you still have problems. Is it always the same textures that are purple or is it random?

The latest ATI drivers I've found to work for me are in CCC 11.10. Any driver from 11.11 and newer breaks the driver-controlled anti-aliasing. AA still works if I set it in the Skyrim launcher, but the built-in AA is crap, so I avoid it at all costs. The problem occurs when I disable AA in the Skyrim launcher and use ATI Tray Tools (same problem occurs if I use Catalyst Control Center) to control AA; With this method, AA is completely disabled no matter what settings I use in ATI Tray Tools. I've tried controlling it with Catalyst but I get the same results. Has anyone encountered this problem and found a work-around OR a newer driver in which anti-aliasing DOES work properly? I'm trying to squeeze every last bit of FPS from my 6870, so I'd like to have the ability to use the newest drivers. Unless, of course, nothing has changed performance-wise since 11.10, in which case I'll just stick with what works and forget about it. However, I'd really like to avoid testing, uninstalling, sweeping, and re-installing every driver iteration since 11.10 for obvious reasons, so feedback would be hugely appreciated!

First off, I'm fairly certain the jitter I'm experiencing is due to the high res DLC pack because A) it only started after I installed the high res pack and B) it is less severe when I turn down the view distance sliders in the options menu of the launcher. However, what has me confused is why it is jittering in the first place, given my PC shouldn't have any problems with the high res pack. My PC is: Phenom II X2 Black, OC'd to 4.0 GHz XFX Radeon HD6870 1GB 4GB G.Skill DDR3 1800 Windows XP 32 bit I'm using the Catalyst 11.10 video driver and ATI Tray Tools to force AA and AF. Anything newer than 11.10 breaks forced anti-aliasing through ATI Tray Tools and/or CCC (tried both with identical results - couldn't force AA through the driver, and yes, AA was turned off in the Skyrim launcher). I have no idea why the newer drivers won't let me force settings, so I just stick with 11.10. I am running 2xSSAA and 16xAF. Before suggesting I turn off super-sampling and turn down AF, I have tried Skyrim with AA and AF turned off entirely and it has zero effect on the jittering. The jitter I'm experiencing is like the camera suddenly becomes very twitchy. My framerate stays decent when it happens (30-40 fps) and all animations are smooth, but as I move the camera, the mouse and/or camera is jumpy, not smooth. Today I performed a full reformat and re-install of Windows. The only mod I have installed at the time of testing is Vano89's high res pack fix, so it's not like I'm throwing a ton of textures at my GPU on top of the high res pack. Additionally, the jittering only occurs at specific places and always occurs at said places. For example, if I exit Whiterun's main gate and walk straight forward to the wall and face towards the guard tower where you fight the first dragon, it becomes jittery; however, if I stay in the exact same position and just turn to face the Whiterun stables, the jittering goes away completely. The entire time, my frame rate doesn't drop below 40 fps. Does any of this make sense to you? Is this all perfectly normal and I'm just asking too much of my machine? Is there any way to get rid of the jitter or do I just have to live with it?