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

[Kruciallol]

Here's my stats with the new card before adding any new mods. The stats included Jorrvaskar, running around outside, couple fights /w bandits, include one five on one.

 

Again, I don't have anything to go off of so I can't say whether or not the results are poor.

[FMod]

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.

It's CPU bound. I get the exact same framerate at 2560x1600 or 2880x1560 with pimped-up GPU options as I do in 1920x1080. No magic video card can save a CPU-bound game.

 

Anyway, the game's shadows are an immersion-breaking horror at any quality setting, so it looks best with them at "off".

 

Between 2x580, 2x680 and 2x780Ti, I haven't really noticed more than a 10% or so increase in framerate, certainly nothing like the change in every other game.

Edited March 8, 2014 by FMod

[Rennn]

 

 

Anyway, the game's shadows are an immersion-breaking horror at any quality setting, so it looks best with them at "off".

 

 

You're aware that setting the shadows "off" also disables most of the lighting in the game, aren't you? The game looks abysmal with the shadows off.

[FMod]

You're aware that setting the shadows "off" also disables most of the lighting in the game, aren't you? The game looks abysmal with the shadows off.

My mistake, certainly not that. Then it was something else I did to reduce shadows, don't remember. Been a while since I even launched Skyrim to test it out and over a year since I modded and tweaked it, moved away from the game since.

[Rennn]

 

You're aware that setting the shadows "off" also disables most of the lighting in the game, aren't you? The game looks abysmal with the shadows off.

My mistake, certainly not that. Then it was something else I did to reduce shadows, don't remember. Been a while since I even launched Skyrim to test it out and over a year since I modded and tweaked it, moved away from the game since.

 

 

Ini tweaks to disable shadows will disable lighting, however... I believe there's a mod to disable shadows (more advanced than the ini tweaks to do it) that keeps the rest of the lighting intact.

[FMod]

Don't remember what I did, maybe nothing and just tried to do something. Should probably remove myself from this discussion as I'm not current on Skyrim.

 

My only point was that one gets markedly lower performance with shadows on Ultra than on High, it's a no-brainer to reduce this setting, it's pretty much the cheapest quality/performance tradeoff.

[Rennn]

 

My only point was that one gets markedly lower performance with shadows on Ultra than on High, it's a no-brainer to reduce this setting, it's pretty much the cheapest quality/performance tradeoff.

 

It's only a no-brainer if you actually need the performance, however. You're right, that was the first thing I turned down when I was running a GTX 460. Stronger cards, however, should still run ultra shadows if they can handle it without framerate drops, as it is still a modest increase in visual quality. Anyway... I think everything on the subject of Skyrim's shadow settings has been said.