I've seen the light - I need a new video card

[Kruciallol]

I think you're overestimating the strength of a 560 TI. My brother has a 560 SC, and his framerate only stays near 60 as long as the shadows are on high rather than ultra. Turning the shadows to ultra knocks the framerate down to 40-45.

Could the CPU be an issue? It's always a possibility, but they don't get much stronger than an i7-4770, and a 1GB GTX 560 TI certainly won't handle HD textures or graphics mods very well either. His CPU is already much stronger than the 560 TI, he won't regret the upgrade.

 

 

I'm glad that you posted this, because I was confused as to how my relatively new CPU could be the issue and my nearly 4 year old 560ti was less of an issue. Perhaps I could OC my CPU, but I'm not that competent when it comes to computers and extremely paranoid that I'd break something.

 

Even SkyrimTuner, the author of RealVision recommended just an i5 Quad 3.0ghz. What I was lacking in his recommendations was of course the GPU, which he recommends is at least a 660Ti. I knew that I didn't meet that req, and so I knew I was going to have issues, and I only had issue when I went ENB + Texture crazy on my third restart.

 

My previous restarts had the occasional CTD/ILS, even when loaded with 100+ mods. Granted they were cleaned with Tes5Edit and somewhat organized with BOSS, the load order wasn't perfect, which is why I restarted twice due to things being broken (SkyRe perks/item stats).

 

I'm on my fourth start now, and have eliminated practically every texture mod I had previously installed on my third attemt. Plus no CoT, SoS, AV etc. I only got to play around 20 min but I had no issues.

 

PS. I don't know if you mistyped, but the 560Ti is 2gb, not 1gb. I added the link in my first sentence.

[FMod]

I think you're overestimating the strength of a 560 TI.

They have reviews for that:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_760/27.html

 

560Ti has a bit over half the performance of a 770 or 7970GHz or 280X.

 

 

 

My brother has a 560 SC, and his framerate only stays near 60 as long as the shadows are on high rather than ultra.

You should never set shadows on Ultra in Skyrim, unless you purposely want to dump your framerate. The difference is impossible to notice and the drop is very inconsistent and severe, often in scenes that don't even have shadows in the first place. It's another one of these options that just eat performance without contributing in visuals.

 

 

 

Could the CPU be an issue? It's always a possibility, but they don't get much stronger than an i7-4770

Which is a piece of junk.

So is i7-4930, though.

So is every other CPU money can buy.

 

Sadly, CPU performance growth has practically stopped at Sandy Bridge. Every gain since then has been either marginal or outright nonexistent outside of synthetic benchmarks written with the singular purpose of showcasing that gain. And by SB's time CPUs were advancing at a snail's pace already.

 

So, since we're all divided into ones who have essentially an 8-year old CPU and essentially a 10-year old CPU - if the appropriate derivative of Moore's Law was to be extrapolated - games become CPU-bound far more often than you expect them to.

 

What it means WRT Skyrim is that you should try and keep the number of mods down whatever CPU you have - no, it's not good enough, they don't make them good enough - and always check being CPU-bound first.

[Rennn]

 

I think you're overestimating the strength of a 560 TI.

They have reviews for that:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_760/27.html

 

560Ti has a bit over half the performance of a 770 or 7970GHz or 280X.

 

 

 

My brother has a 560 SC, and his framerate only stays near 60 as long as the shadows are on high rather than ultra.

You should never set shadows on Ultra in Skyrim, unless you purposely want to dump your framerate. The difference is impossible to notice and the drop is very inconsistent and severe, often in scenes that don't even have shadows in the first place. It's another one of these options that just eat performance without contributing in visuals.

 

 

 

Could the CPU be an issue? It's always a possibility, but they don't get much stronger than an i7-4770

Which is a piece of junk.

So is i7-4930, though.

So is every other CPU money can buy.

 

Sadly, CPU performance growth has practically stopped at Sandy Bridge. Every gain since then has been either marginal or outright nonexistent outside of synthetic benchmarks written with the singular purpose of showcasing that gain. And by SB's time CPUs were advancing at a snail's pace already.

 

So, since we're all divided into ones who have essentially an 8-year old CPU and essentially a 10-year old CPU - if the appropriate derivative of Moore's Law was to be extrapolated - games become CPU-bound far more often than you expect them to.

 

What it means WRT Skyrim is that you should try and keep the number of mods down whatever CPU you have - no, it's not good enough, they don't make them good enough - and always check being CPU-bound first.

 

 

Normally I like your posts, but this is rife with inaccuracy.

It's remarkably easy to notice the difference from ultra to high shadows, just not in blockiness. Skyrim's shadows scale resolution with distance. If you have shadows set at a distance of 2000, they will appear twice as detailed as shadows at 4000, but they will disappear half as close. Ultra shadows are 4096 at a distance of 8000, while high shadows are 2048 at a distance of 4000. Visibly, they look the same up close because of how the shadow resolutions scale with range, but ultra shadows use the extra resolution to apply further away in the scene (twice as far, actually). It's very easy to see the difference if you set shadows to apply to trees. In addition, ultra shadows can have a lower shadowbiasscale without causing extreme banding, meaning they're drawn on meshes at more extreme angles.

 

Look, my Phenom II 955 copes well enough in Skyrim. I'm sure it's limiting my GTX 660 GC according to my benchmarks, but not by much unless I use script-heavy mods. There are even a few places in lightly modded Skyrim where my GPU still is the limit, like on foggy days in the Morthal Swamp. A 4770 is over 75% faster than a Phenom II 955. Script heavy mods will overpower any CPU if there are enough of them, but that's more due to Skyrim's engine than the CPU performance.

[Kruciallol]

@FMod You're basically saying that every single person is incapable of running a modded Skyrim, and that all the YT videos are a shame because it's unobtainable. At least that sounds like what you're saying.

 

Regardless, the card has been purchased and I'll have to make do with my crappy CPU.

 

Oh...been playing since 10pm last night--straight. Only 3 random CTD's.

 

Thank you both for your contributions, but I probably won't be back here since your conversation is above my technical level lol.

[FMod]

@FMod You're basically saying that every single person is incapable of running a modded Skyrim

 

With very heavy mod load, yeah, there's no machine out there that can run a smooth 60 fps at all times.

 

 

 

 

Ultra shadows are 4096 at a distance of 8000, while high shadows are 2048 at a distance of 4000. Visibly, they look the same up close because of how the shadow resolutions scale with range, but ultra shadows use the extra resolution to apply further away in the scene (twice as far, actually). It's very easy to see the difference if you set shadows to apply to trees.

That applies if you're looking for that difference.

 

Most of the time, shadows are barely visible in exteriors to begin with, in part due to how lighting works. So yes, if you've read up on what to look for and your goal is to find it, you will. But if you're actually playing the game, it's one of these things that just don't make a difference to how good the game is.

[Rennn]

 

Ultra shadows are 4096 at a distance of 8000, while high shadows are 2048 at a distance of 4000. Visibly, they look the same up close because of how the shadow resolutions scale with range, but ultra shadows use the extra resolution to apply further away in the scene (twice as far, actually). It's very easy to see the difference if you set shadows to apply to trees.

That applies if you're looking for that difference.

 

Most of the time, shadows are barely visible in exteriors to begin with, in part due to how lighting works. So yes, if you've read up on what to look for and your goal is to find it, you will. But if you're actually playing the game, it's one of these things that just don't make a difference to how good the game is.

 

 

It makes an extreme difference, provided you have shadows on trees enabled. And really, I can't see why anyone capable of running it at a good framerate wouldn't use that tweak, it's been known to be stable since day 1 and it improves the graphics dramatically.

If you *don't* have shadows on trees enabled, it becomes less noticeable as Skyrim's shadows start to fade out on sharp angles anyway as a result of the shadow mask filter.

Ultra shadows also enables shadows of extra branches on trees and grass shadows. Though if I remember correctly, it's also possible to force an enable of grass shadows on high settings with ini tweaks.

 

You can also set shadow resolution the vanilla ultra, then tweak the distance up to 12,000. That shadows trees and terrain all the way until it hits LoD at a default ugrids. That makes an even bigger difference if you use a shadows tree LoD mod like Tree LoDs With Shadows or my Detailed Terrain and Tree LoD. It's nigh impossible to get a smooth transition from trees to tree LoD unless you use ultra shadows.

 

There are no settings that don't provide a graphical improvement in some situations. The closest a setting comes to useless is radial blur quality and specular distance, but those are meant for people with substandard rigs anyway, like notebooks.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Rennn

[Thor.]

 

@FMod You're basically saying that every single person is incapable of running a modded Skyrim

 

With very heavy mod load, yeah, there's no machine out there that can run a smooth 60 fps at all times.

 

 

 

 

Ultra shadows are 4096 at a distance of 8000, while high shadows are 2048 at a distance of 4000. Visibly, they look the same up close because of how the shadow resolutions scale with range, but ultra shadows use the extra resolution to apply further away in the scene (twice as far, actually). It's very easy to see the difference if you set shadows to apply to trees.

That applies if you're looking for that difference.

 

Most of the time, shadows are barely visible in exteriors to begin with, in part due to how lighting works. So yes, if you've read up on what to look for and your goal is to find it, you will. But if you're actually playing the game, it's one of these things that just don't make a difference to how good the game is.

 

There is a video card that can run skyrim with mods and enb, and have it run around 128fps, if you don't hit the vram cap. The gtx780 ti gigabye windforce edition has some amazing fps capabilities with dx9.

 

Indoors i'm capping out around 260fps, no joke.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Thor.

[FMod]

Perhaps I could OC my CPU, but I'm not that competent when it comes to computers and extremely paranoid that I'd break something.

You should definitely OC your CPU. You're as likely to break something overclocking as you're changing any other setting. i7-4770 has a semi-locked ratio anyway, you can only o/c it a little bit.

 

i7-4770 without overclock is slower than i5-2500K with overclock. That is a 3 year old CPU.

 

Just go into BIOS, find Turbo Ratios there, and set all of them as high as the system allows you, in the 40-43 range. That's all.

Assuming you have a 4770, not a 4770K, with a "K" it's a bit more complicated.

 

 

 

There is a video card that can run skyrim with mods and enb, and have it run around 128fps, if you don't hit the vram cap. The gtx780 ti gigabye windforce edition has some amazing fps capabilities with dx9.

I'd know, I have a couple.

Well, not quite, mine aren't Gigabytes, they're MSI, since 580 I've pretty much stuck to the brand.

 

128 fps? With enough interiors to pad the rate, why not.

From my graphs it's more like 50 average with dips below 30 not rare at all. 60 most of the time - I use vsync, not a fan of that amazing look of a screen torn in three - but 30 and under dips are much more frequent than just new areas loading. And I don't have nearly a hundred mods.

 

Average framerate without vsync is as meaningful as average patient body temperature: some are cold in the morgue, the rest are running a fever, so the average is a perfect hundred. A million fps in interiors is meaningless, since you only need 60, and does nothing to alleviate dips in the exterior areas.

 

 

 

Ultra shadows also enables shadows of extra branches on trees and grass shadows.

You have to be quite into trees and their shadows specifically to get concerned with such matters.

Though I don't have shadows on trees enabled, the game's performance is troublesome enough to begin with.

Edited March 5, 2014 by FMod

[Rennn]

 

There is a video card that can run skyrim with mods and enb, and have it run around 128fps, if you don't hit the vram cap. The gtx780 ti gigabye windforce edition has some amazing fps capabilities with dx9.

Average framerate without vsync is as meaningful as average patient body temperature: some are cold in the morgue, the rest are running a fever, so the average is a perfect hundred. A million fps in interiors is meaningless, since you only need 60, and does nothing to alleviate dips in the exterior areas.

 

 

 

Ultra shadows also enables shadows of extra branches on trees and grass shadows.

You have to be quite into trees and their shadows specifically to get concerned with such matters.

Though I don't have shadows on trees enabled, the game's performance is troublesome enough to begin with.

 

 

Very true... I find that in Skyrim without texture packs or ENBs, interiors run at about 3x the framerate of exteriors. Even worse of a disparity, if you're talking about exteriors in the Rift or Hjaalmarch. Skyrim has perhaps the most variable framerate I've ever seen. Other games tend to fluctuate between 10-15 fps either way. Skyrim can fluctuate between 30-50 fps either way.

 

Anyway, it takes attention to detail to get decent optimization in Skyrim, as the engine is crap. Not researching what each graphics setting does is a great way to get 30-40 fps on a 2x GTX 780s.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Rennn

[Kruciallol]

 

Perhaps I could OC my CPU, but I'm not that competent when it comes to computers and extremely paranoid that I'd break something.

You should definitely OC your CPU. You're as likely to break something overclocking as you're changing any other setting. i7-4770 has a semi-locked ratio anyway, you can only o/c it a little bit.

 

i7-4770 without overclock is slower than i5-2500K with overclock. That is a 3 year old CPU.

 

Just go into BIOS, find Turbo Ratios there, and set all of them as high as the system allows you, in the 40-43 range. That's all.

Assuming you have a 4770, not a 4770K, with a "K" it's a bit more complicated.

 

Just used the MSI BIOS OC setting and it's up to 3.9GHz.

 

The new GPU is installed--what a beastly thing. I wish I had taken performance numbers using my old card to compare against this new one. I guess I'll just slowly start adding mods and see how it goes.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Kruciallol