Dropping a couple 'heavy' mods, need a second opinion

[Nudedragon]

I'm currently hitting either my or the game systems limit, and I've decided to cut back on my load order. I'm hoping to get rid of a few larger mods, rather than a number of smaller ones, and I'm trying to decide which ones will have the most impact. Right now my game's playable, but I'll crash doing anything from fighting to entering a new area, for no apparent reason. It seems that I need to drop a mod that impacts my game in almost every situation.

 

I'm linking my load order, if you see any mods that jump out as being particularly hard on either the game engine or one's system, please let me know.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xwp6058hkqg6ado/BOSSlog.html

[Rennn]

First, the accepted limit of active Skyrim .esp plugins is 255. Exceeding that amount, if it's even possible, would cause strange things to happen.

 

Second, WATER and the Skyrim Flora Overhaul are the 2 heaviest mods most likely to cause crashes due to memory constraints. You could use the 2k LoD for the Skyrim Flora Overhaul, which would only help if Skyrim's limit of 3.2GB of memory is truly being exceeded. Other HD texture mods will make the problem worse, so if you use 2k Textures or something of that sort, it will contribute to crashes.

 

However, I can't say for certain that either of the above possibilities are the real problem. You have a lot of large mods that could be conflicting in hundreds of tiny ways, which I can't be certain of and which I'm not familiar with.

Edited July 11, 2013 by Rennn

[Nudedragon]

Oh, you can't pass the limit, I just merged esp's that were all for one mod. If x mod comes with 5, because it's modular, I squish em back into one plugin. Flora overhaul wouldn't surprise me, but I've been having crashes out in the wilds and in cities, not as much near water.

 

Textures could the issue, they certainly don't show up in the boss log. I recently went and downgraded from 4k to medium or low resolution alternatives, and then ran a compressor over them. I'm not using skyrim HD, or even the official texture pack, but I've got a bunch of individual texture mods.

[Ironman5000]

Definitely sounds like performance problems, btw texture replacers will not show up in BOSS as they usually don't require plugins, but are simply...texture replacers - dds files that go under data\textures.

 

You need to be careful when merging plugins, sometimes mods will try to edit the same stuff so merging them could cause issues. Once you merge check them out in tesVedit for possible errors.

 

And also be sure to follow this guide to optimise your game accordingly, I live and breath by this (skyrim-wise) and did so before this page was even posted.

[ArtMurder]

Oh, you can't pass the limit, I just merged esp's that were all for one mod. If x mod comes with 5, because it's modular, I squish em back into one plugin. Flora overhaul wouldn't surprise me, but I've been having crashes out in the wilds and in cities, not as much near water.

 

Textures could the issue, they certainly don't show up in the boss log. I recently went and downgraded from 4k to medium or low resolution alternatives, and then ran a compressor over them. I'm not using skyrim HD, or even the official texture pack, but I've got a bunch of individual texture mods.

Textures never show up in the log. ^_^ if they did, it would be 99% textures! You would be ASTONISHED by how many are loaded at any given second!

 

I use almost all 2k textures, and I don't have much issue with them, but I do have random CTDs out in the wilds and I do use WATER and SFO as well. I would personally try SFO before anything else

 

There is Detailed LOD mod that just came out that replaces the SFO LOD with MUCH less laggy ones (about 1/4th as laggy) despite the fact that they look BETTER. I'll check my recent downloads for you....

 

here you go, this should have no, or posative effect on your FPS! ^_^

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17984/

[Nudedragon]

My point was that people can't tell what textures I am, or am not, using via boss log :P Thanks for the links!

 

I'm careful when I merge plugins, I was doing it manually and then double checking, but now I use matortheeternal's script. I still double check, of course. I know how to manually repair conflicts, if they pop up, too.

[Rennn]

 

There is Detailed LOD mod that just came out that replaces the SFO LOD with MUCH less laggy ones (about 1/4th as laggy) despite the fact that they look BETTER. I'll check my recent downloads for you....

 

here you go, this should have no, or posative effect on your FPS! ^_^

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17984/

 

 

You just linked to my mod! :biggrin:

*happy dance*

 

Detailed Terrain and Tree LoD takes 1/4 as much VRAM as Vurt's 2k LoD option. It only takes 1/16 as much VRAM as the default SFO LoD version.

1024x1024=~1,000,000 pixels, 2048x2048=~4,000,000 pixels, whereas 4096x4096=~16,000,000 pixels.

That's just the LoD, mind. It doesn't do anything to make nearby flora or anything else take less VRAM, so in game you'll probably see closer to a 10% total decrease in used VRAM while in exterior cells. While a 10% decrease in required VRAM is not likely to improve framerates on its own, it will make Skyrim less likely to crash from its memory cap.

 

It's not Vurt's fault, it's Skyrim's engine again. It blurs all LoD to a similar amount, whether the texture is 4k or 1k.

Edited July 11, 2013 by Rennn

[Defender1970]

I had an installation that used to crash me all the time, in random places out in the wild while just running around. I deleted the game and the left over folder and everything except my saved games, reinstalled the game and then all the mods and poof, no more crashes. I think it might have had something to do in the fact I would try a mod out, not like, uninstall it and then try another one, over and over and over again. Just my 2 cents.