Graphics and framerate - What must I do?

[adam123453]

This is a simple post. What can I do to get a high framerate (40+) when playing Skyrim decked out with high-res textures (I'm talking Skyrim Flora Overhaul, ENB, Superior Rocks, Skyrim 2K, MidianBorn, all that good s#*!)? So far, it's always been a tradeoff between nice graphics and performance - even with a bloody decent rig (8GB RAM, 4GB VRAM, 4GHz*8 CPU), and I'm tired of it. Skyrim is my all-time favourite game, and I hate that I can't make it look as beautiful as it deserves to be without destroying its performance and making it unplayable.

 

What do I have to do to get to that level?

[ZeroKing]

Important pieces of information:

 

What is your GPU (as in, is it a NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti)?

What is your CPU (as in, is it an Intel i5 2500K)?

Edited May 28, 2014 by ZeroKing

[vgchat]

I usually find that disabling high-res textures saves quite a bit of vram. I believe I read on another thread that using the (official) high-res packs by themselves with no other active plugins eat's up 1.4GB of vram.

 

Quotable:

 

There are load of smaller texture packs for specific things like rocks, trees, armor etc. Many of them offer 2 or 4k options. By choosing carefully and only adding one at a time you can make quite an improvement without affecting performance too much.

Look in the 'Models and Textures' section of NexusMods.

Edited May 29, 2014 by vgchat

[adam123453]

My CPU is an AMD FX 8350, Graphics card is a GeForce GTX 650Ti.

[Novem99]

I'm sure there is a lot of things a GTX 650Ti can be but definitely NOT part of a decent rig, sorry. Most of your 4gb won't be used because of it's poorly memory bus width. So it's no wonder your system cannot handle ENB + HD Textures properly.

[adam123453]

I'm sure there is a lot of things a GTX 650Ti can be but definitely NOT part of a decent rig, sorry. Most of your 4gb won't be used because of it's poorly memory bus width. So it's no wonder your system cannot handle ENB + HD Textures properly.

 

Well that's annoying. I could have sworn this card was listed with at least a 192-bit bus width when I got it.

 

In that case, out of curiosity, what cards are you people running?

[vgchat]

I use this 3GB 384 bit Sapphire 7950 and it's on sale atm for around $200-ish at newegg. I've had it since october or so last year and it's still running smoothly, powerful and silently :smile:

Edited May 29, 2014 by vgchat

[Novem99]

Even 192-bit would be anything else than sufficient. Look at this benchmark test made by a PC magazine:

 

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/original/2012/10/GTX-650-Ti-Test-TES-Skyrim-1080p.png

 

As you can see the 2GB version performs with nearly 28fps WITHOUT ENB and HD textures. And the used CPU here is better than yours.

 

I have an Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X Overclocked (4GB RAM, 512 bit). Although I have to admit that just for Skyrim it's way too much.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Novem99

[MacSuibhne]

speaking of graphics cards..if the card in question had 3GB memory and a 384-bit bandwidth...would it suffice to play Skyrim with multiple texture mods?

 

Would 4gb and 256 bit be better or equivalent?

Edited May 29, 2014 by MacSuibhne

[Novem99]

First question "Yes" second "No".