Question about modding and 3.1gb limit

[MandoPatriot]

Can someone explain to me why mods bring Skyrim over the 3.1gb RAM limit? As in, why does it do it with mods and not with the normal Skyrim game?

 

Example, the Lakeview Manor Extended mod almost always makes me crash or the game won't load if I save there. It does not seem like a big mod, but there is a bit added (walls, guards, bath/pool, etc). So why does the RAM spike there but not in cities or outdoor towns that have a lot more people/buildings?

 

I want to get a better understanding of what modding does differently than the core game so maybe I can fix some of these issues with RAM usage. Thank you in advance people.

[Georgiegril]

Simple answer--mods add new files to the basic game. More files, larger textures, scripts, etc= larger game size.

As for the specifics of the mod you mention, I don't use it so I can't help you there.

[ArtMurder]

The main thing that does this is TEXTURES. all things contribute, but textures are the killer. Some mods will use tons of VERY high res textures, in addition to tons and tons of items lying around. The game renders the texture for every item, so if you take an item with a large texture, and enter a room with a hundred of it, then it lags the game a hundred times more then if you just entered a room with one of it.

 

I know nothing about the mod in specific, but a lot of mod authors like to clutter their houses obnoxiously with tons and tons of stuff, and either include their won HD textures, or simply use the vanilla ones. often, when they sue the vanilla ones it';s more problematic, as they expect you to use the vanilla texture. Say for example, you have 4k texture pack for misc clutter, and you enter a room with a lot of misc clutter, and the game loads lets say... 500 textures for every assorted item in the room. Normally, in vanilla this would be about .5k, or 250k. Now, with that 4k texture, that's 2,000k, almost TEN TIMES more. Now, keep in mind, skyrim has a bad habit of poorly managing it's memory, so you've just wandered around outside with an HD fauna mod, you've probably already used up a ton of ram. If every room in the home is cluttered like that, that's 2,000k more every single time you enter a different room. This is, just an example of coarse. if you want a less technical answer, I can give an analogy.

 

Basically, it's mostly stacking blocks. Think of it like this.. Skyrim plays Jenga with itself, because in vanilla skyrim it only uses a few blocks so it never collapses, and this is a safe thing for it to do. but if you add in a bunch of mods, it adds in a bunch of blocks, the bigger the mod, the more blocks. If you add in tons and tons of mods, then the tower is bound to collapse very quickly if you don't tend to it, because it's only expecting to deal with just a couple blocks.