improving graphics

[urumizawa]

before talking about the problem i just want to make things clear: I am not asking for texture mods unless it will help solving my problem
here is a screenshot of what my game looks like
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/8KJ2kAwi1CCMWSb5yMP8hHycNg758AmPEPxh_Jihv1pZFDRi_sRuBZPAf4jaZ44GbRmfkU5Xut0=w1886-h849


as you can see it is not satisfying at all
i have the 2K texture, vanilla re edited texture, FLO, trees textures............. and project ENB
i tried the skyrim tweak guide and set most of the graphical settings to a higher values and kept increasing them until i made the game instable (the screenshot is with the original skyrimprefs.ini values with high resolution) but still nothing
if you are asking my config i'd say its more than enough to run the game: 12go gpu / I7 / AMD Radeon R9 M265X (although its a laptop actually)
but i ve seen some guys in videos/ forums having a shitty PC or sometimes even a laptop a lot lower than mine but have far greater resolution
i ve probably missed something but WHAT?
is ENB even working properly? i ve noticed no noticable changes although im pretty sure (at this point i can't be sure about anything) i have installed it right

and thank you in advance

Edited December 11, 2014 by urumizawa

[saurusmaximus]

Your screenshot link didn't work, so I can't comment on how your game looks. As far as ENB working, when you start the game, you should get a couple messages in blue text in the upper left-hand corner of your screen telling you things like your ENB version. If you get any messages in yellow, or red, make a note of what it says as it's telling your there is a problem. Along with that, if you get NO messages, it means you didn't install the ENB version correctly.

[urumizawa]

sorry about that
google plus is so useless when it comes to sharing links
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/346/b/b/skyrim_screenshot_by_urumizawa-d89k6b7.jpg
yes I get the message but i am using the no freeze patch as the original ENB have issues with my graphic card
I was using the realvision fantasy presets as they seems to make the most noticable changes but it seems like nothing changed to me

[postal001]

Looks like you have new ground textures, but no ENB. What's the 'no freeze' patch that you're using?

[urumizawa]

thats flora overhaul and its one of the things i couldn't understand it doesn't appear like that in the previews and by "like in the previews" i mean the grass textures of course

for the patch i am using the one in their site ==> http://enbdev.com/download_patch_skyrim.htm since without it i had something like this

Edited December 12, 2014 by urumizawa

[Amyr]

Install SFO but disable the esp. Then install Verdant Grass Plugin. Use a lighting overhaul and then install an ENB(a good one).

 

But I must say that it's really hard to get a good looking Skyrim with your PC specs. I believe you want something like this? Really different that vanila Skyrim?

 

http://i.imgur.com/izgMHcH.jpg

[dayglo98]

 

 

if you are asking my config i'd say its more than enough to run the game: 12go gpu / I7 / AMD Radeon R9 M265X (although its a laptop actually)

but i ve seen some guys in videos/ forums having a shitty PC or sometimes even a laptop a lot lower than mine but have far greater resolution

 

 

Hmm what did you compare to ?

 

Your specs are definitely NOT <more than enough> to run with the mods/ENB that you want to use. I have a laptop with an i7-3630qm,12gb RAM, and a 2Gb GT650M so pretty much the same as you, and it is crazyness to expect to have 2k textures AND an ENB running on that machine.

 

Also, what model of i7 processor do you have ? If you have your R9 M265X and the gpu integrated into your i7, you need to mess with stuff to be sure that your R9 M265X is the one being used while playing.

 

Edit : Well I fired the game up on my laptop although I haven played in month, its better than I recalled :

 

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_13_11_zps92742687.png

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_14_16_zps140ec4b6.png

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_12_31_zps53cc5442.png

 

That is in 1600x900 with Stakado's Cinemascope ENB (this one is very light), no vegetation mod, no lighting overhaul (like RLO or ELFX) and no 2k textures

except for the Official HD Texture pack. So there is still ways to make the game look decent but nothing like Project ENB or Realvision (!!!)

Edited December 13, 2014 by dayglo98

[tweedledee111]

Hi!

I am running Skyrim on a laptop slightly less beastly than OP (i5 8Gb, Geforce 740m 2Gb) and i tried my best to improve the graphics without melting my GPU. I'm definitley no expert on this issue, but i guess i learned a few things tweaking my own game.

 

 

Preparation

 

Yeah, i know it's a lot to ask for, but i'd suggest to start with a fresh installation of Skyrim, thus getting rid of all possible problems connected with the old mods, saves etc.

 

Then update your GPU drivers, if necessary. (Can usually be done with Steam in a very comfortable way.)

 

The next thing to do is to ensure that Skyrim uses the correct GPU (not some crappy onboard card). You can check this in the steam launcher under "Options". If Skyrim doesn't use the correct GPU, you have to force it to do so via your GPU driver's controlpanel or the windows system controlpanel. Delete your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini (user/documents/mygames/skyrim) afterwards (<- only with a fresh installation!!! Otherwise leave them where they are.) Then run the steamlauncher (SkyrimLauncher.exe in your gamefolder - usally programsx86/steam/steamapps/common/skyrim) again. This automatically will create new .ini files. In the "Options"- panel the correct GPU should be displayed now.

 

Adjust your graphics stettings. I would set everything to LOW (Yes! We are going to adjust a lot of stuff in the skyrimprefsi.ini later.) in both the main and the advanced options exept for texture quality, wich i would set to medium. Since i strongly recommend ENBoost, i'd also to disable Anisotropic Filtering (ENBoost will do that job, if you use it.)

 

 

Ensuring stability as much as possible

 

Now it's time to prepare Skyrim for modding and tweaking.

 

Get the following tools: SKSE, Nexusmodmanager and LOOT (check out Gopher's videos on Youtube for more information and detailed advice regarding the installation process.)

 

Then get the Memorypatch (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038 - yes, the SKSE.ini) and ENBoost (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38649). Check out Gopher's Video about ENBoost on Youtube. As usual he shows the installation in detail. And, of course, READ THE MODAUTHOR'S EXPLANATIONS.

 

In short: ENBoost is not an ENB itself, it is a tool that greatly improves Skyrim's usage of VRAM, thus ensuring stability. The Memorypatch does something similar (though in a completley different technical way) for Skyrim's reserved DRAM. The installation is super-easy now. Get the newest SKSE-Version and download the SKSE.ini from Nexus with NMM. Activate. Done.

 

 

A very good guide regarding stability can be found here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50244. I strongly recommend to read this thoroughly.

 

Adjust the enblocal.ini from ENBoost carefully according to the modauthor's advices. BTW: you might get a performance improvement by setting the max Anisotropic Filtering to 8 instead of the default 16 (I did.) That's still good enough for decent graphics.

 

 

Initweaks for shadows

 

Now you can start to play around with the shadowstettings in your skyrimprefs.ini. A very insightful post on this subject can be found in the S.T.E.P-Forum: http://forum.step-project.com/topic/2911-skyrim-shadows/

 

Backup your old skyrimprefs.ini, just in case.

 

From my own experience the most important values are

fShadowBiasScale, iBlurDeferredShadowMask, fShadowDistance, iShadowMapResolutionPrimary and iShadowMapResolution.

 

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary on the other hand controls the distant shadows and doesn't matter all that much imo.

 

fShadowBiasScale controls the placement of shadows in relation to your character. Stetting this value to 1.5 has removed shadow-stripes in the exterior world on rocks or ice for me completley. I'd try out values inbetween 0.5 and 2.5.

 

The various shadowmask values control the actual resolution. My results with a medium value of 2048 for both primary and unspecified resolution are very good. 4096 is possible, but will have a performance impact. My secondary resolution is 1024 only, but it's totally fine since this affects only distant shadows, thus the pixelation is hardly noticeable.

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask and fShadowDistance are the tricky values.

 

If u set the blur at 3 or higher you get pretty crispy shadows, but you will encounter a strange "halo"-effect around objects and NPCs in the shadow. I use a value of 2, trading a bit of crispyness for no halo.

 

There's no optimal solution for fShadowDistance unfortunately, because the shadows will look better if you reduce this value, but objects beyond the given distance will have no shadows, wich leads to a "pop-up"-effect (Not the objects themselfs pop up, but the shadows on them). Try values inbetween 1000 and 4000. Higher values (up to 8000) are possible, but from my experience that would make the shadows very,very blocky. (And probably hurt performance as well)

 

Turn on self-shadowing by

 

bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1

 

For Performance i strongly recommend to disable shadows on grass though via:

 

bShadowsOnGrass=0.

 

This has a noticeable impact even without grass- or texturemods.

 

And these are all initweaks i ever would make for graphics. :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: DON'T TOUCH UGRIDSTOLOAD :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: . The risks are huge and well explained in the Skyrim-Stability-Guide on the Nexus.

 

 

Suggested Mods

 

Now we come to actual mods. To be very clear: most Laptop GPUs cannot handle 2k-texture mods, let alone SFO, Unique Grasses or an actual ENB. There are plenty of mods though wich won't put such a dent into your fps and will yet improve the looks of your game greatly.

 

ALWAYS USE LOOT WHEN YOU ADD OR REMOVE A MOD.

 

From my own experience i can recommend the following mods:

 

Enhanced distant terrain 1 and 2,

Revamped exterior fog and

Detailed terrain and tree LOD 2.5 for a way better LOD-look with 0 fps loss on my system.

 

WATER, medium textures, for - lol - water. Minimal FPS loss.

 

Climates of Tamriel 3.1 for lighting. No FPS-loss for me, but this is a very complex mod, so someone else might have different experiences on a different system. (it uses only vanilla resources though, thus it's a fair bet that i won't hurt your fps much)

 

Imaginator - let's you adjust all sorts of things ingame to great effect (it's almost as good as an ENB without the performance loss).

 

Static Mesh Improvement + Ruins Clutter improved: These two let all the small things in the game look way better. They might have some impact on performance though (but nowhere near a complete retexture mod.) For me no performance loss is noticable.

 

Better dynamic Snow - no Performane loss (it doesn't change textures or resolution).

 

Detailed Rugs - yes, this is an HD retexture mod, but it's impact on fps is tiny because it affects only interiors and only a small part of them.

 

With all these mods i'm at solid 35 fps in the exterior world and 50 -60 fps in the interior settings, but as soon as i try a HD-retexture my fps drop by 10-15 (!) in the exterior world wich simply isn't worth it. Grassmods basically kill my machine, dropping my fps to abyssmal values (below 10 fps in some places).

 

If you want to try HD-textures nonetheless do it carefully, ad them one-by-one and test each one for a few hours before you commit your playthrough to it. (Uninstalling mods in the middle of a character's life can lead to very unpleasant experiences in Skyrim.)

 

 

Sorry for this wall of text, but i wanted to get rid of all of that :kiss: .

 

PS: Get a diagnosis tool for your performance, e.g. Skyrim Performance Monitor, http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6491.

Edited December 13, 2014 by tweedledee111

[urumizawa]

 

 

if you are asking my config i'd say its more than enough to run the game: 12go gpu / I7 / AMD Radeon R9 M265X (although its a laptop actually)

but i ve seen some guys in videos/ forums having a shitty PC or sometimes even a laptop a lot lower than mine but have far greater resolution

 

 

Hmm what did you compare to ?

 

Your specs are definitely NOT <more than enough> to run with the mods/ENB that you want to use. I have a laptop with an i7-3630qm,12gb RAM, and a 2Gb GT650M so pretty much the same as you, and it is crazyness to expect to have 2k textures AND an ENB running on that machine.

 

Also, what model of i7 processor do you have ? If you have your R9 M265X and the gpu integrated into your i7, you need to mess with stuff to be sure that your R9 M265X is the one being used while playing.

 

Edit : Well I fired the game up on my laptop although I haven played in month, its better than I recalled :

 

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_13_11_zps92742687.png

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_14_16_zps140ec4b6.png

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo50/dayglo98/th_enb2014_12_13_1_12_31_zps53cc5442.png

 

That is in 1600x900 with Stakado's Cinemascope ENB (this one is very light), no vegetation mod, no lighting overhaul (like RLO or ELFX) and no 2k textures

except for the Official HD Texture pack. So there is still ways to make the game look decent but nothing like Project ENB or Realvision (!!!)

 

 

 

its an intel core 4700 HQ

and for the graphic card i know i have a radeon R9 M265X wich is pretty much the same as yours and an integrated Vcard.... to be honest i don't know how to find wich card is being used

so... if you can explain the procedure in few lines i'd apreciate that

[urumizawa]

Hi!

I am running Skyrim on a laptop slightly less beastly than OP (i5 8Gb, Geforce 740m 2Gb) and i tried my best to improve the graphics without melting my GPU. I'm definitley no expert on this issue, but i guess i learned a few things tweaking my own game.

 

 

Preparation

 

Yeah, i know it's a lot to ask for, but i'd suggest to start with a fresh installation of Skyrim, thus getting rid of all possible problems connected with the old mods, saves etc.

 

Then update your GPU drivers, if necessary. (Can usually be done with Steam in a very comfortable way.)

 

The next thing to do is to ensure that Skyrim uses the correct GPU (not some crappy onboard card). You can check this in the steam launcher under "Options". If Skyrim doesn't use the correct GPU, you have to force it to do so via your GPU driver's controlpanel or the windows system controlpanel. Delete your skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini (user/documents/mygames/skyrim) afterwards (<- only with a fresh installation!!! Otherwise leave them where they are.) Then run the steamlauncher (SkyrimLauncher.exe in your gamefolder - usally programsx86/steam/steamapps/common/skyrim) again. This automatically will create new .ini files. In the "Options"- panel the correct GPU should be displayed now.

 

Adjust your graphics stettings. I would set everything to LOW (Yes! We are going to adjust a lot of stuff in the skyrimprefsi.ini later.) in both the main and the advanced options exept for texture quality, wich i would set to medium. Since i strongly recommend ENBoost, i'd also to disable Anisotropic Filtering (ENBoost will do that job, if you use it.)

 

 

Ensuring stability as much as possible

 

Now it's time to prepare Skyrim for modding and tweaking.

 

Get the following tools: SKSE, Nexusmodmanager and LOOT (check out Gopher's videos on Youtube for more information and detailed advice regarding the installation process.)

 

Then get the Memorypatch (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51038 - yes, the SKSE.ini) and ENBoost (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/38649). Check out Gopher's Video about ENBoost on Youtube. As usual he shows the installation in detail. And, of course, READ THE MODAUTHOR'S EXPLANATIONS.

 

In short: ENBoost is not an ENB itself, it is a tool that greatly improves Skyrim's usage of VRAM, thus ensuring stability. The Memorypatch does something similar (though in a completley different technical way) for Skyrim's reserved DRAM. The installation is super-easy now. Get the newest SKSE-Version and download the SKSE.ini from Nexus with NMM. Activate. Done.

 

 

A very good guide regarding stability can be found here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50244. I strongly recommend to read this thoroughly.

 

Adjust the enblocal.ini from ENBoost carefully according to the modauthor's advices. BTW: you might get a performance improvement by setting the max Anisotropic Filtering to 8 instead of the default 16 (I did.) That's still good enough for decent graphics.

 

 

Initweaks for shadows

 

Now you can start to play around with the shadowstettings in your skyrimprefs.ini. A very insightful post on this subject can be found in the S.T.E.P-Forum: http://forum.step-project.com/topic/2911-skyrim-shadows/

 

Backup your old skyrimprefs.ini, just in case.

 

From my own experience the most important values are

 

fShadowBiasScale, iBlurDeferredShadowMask, fShadowDistance, iShadowMapResolutionPrimary and iShadowMapResolution.

 

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary on the other hand controls the distant shadows and doesn't matter all that much imo.

 

fShadowBiasScale controls the placement of shadows in relation to your character. Stetting this value to 1.5 has removed shadow-stripes in the exterior world on rocks or ice for me completley. I'd try out values inbetween 0.5 and 2.5.

 

The various shadowmask values control the actual resolution. My results with a medium value of 2048 for both primary and unspecified resolution are very good. 4096 is possible, but will have a performance impact. My secondary resolution is 1024 only, but it's totally fine since this affects only distant shadows, thus the pixelation is hardly noticeable.

 

iBlurDeferredShadowMask and fShadowDistance are the tricky values.

 

If u set the blur at 3 or higher you get pretty crispy shadows, but you will encounter a strange "halo"-effect around objects and NPCs in the shadow. I use a value of 2, trading a bit of crispyness for no halo.

 

There's no optimal solution for fShadowDistance unfortunately, because the shadows will look better if you reduce this value, but objects beyond the given distance will have no shadows, wich leads to a "pop-up"-effect (Not the objects themselfs pop up, but the shadows on them). Try values inbetween 1000 and 4000. Higher values (up to 8000) are possible, but from my experience that would make the shadows very,very blocky. (And probably hurt performance as well)

 

Turn on self-shadowing by

 

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

bDrawLandShadows=1

 

For Performance i strongly recommend to disable shadows on grass though via:

 

bShadowsOnGrass=0.

 

This has a noticeable impact even without grass- or texturemods.

 

And these are all initweaks i ever would make for graphics. :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: DON'T TOUCH UGRIDSTOLOAD :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: . The risks are huge and well explained in the Skyrim-Stability-Guide on the Nexus.

 

 

Suggested Mods

 

Now we come to actual mods. To be very clear: most Laptop GPUs cannot handle 2k-texture mods, let alone SFO, Unique Grasses or an actual ENB. There are plenty of mods though wich won't put such a dent into your fps and will yet improve the looks of your game greatly.

 

ALWAYS USE LOOT WHEN YOU ADD OR REMOVE A MOD.

 

From my own experience i can recommend the following mods:

 

Enhanced distant terrain 1 and 2,

Revamped exterior fog and

Detailed terrain and tree LOD 2.5 for a way better LOD-look with 0 fps loss on my system.

 

WATER, medium textures, for - lol - water. Minimal FPS loss.

 

Climates of Tamriel 3.1 for lighting. No FPS-loss for me, but this is a very complex mod, so someone else might have different experiences on a different system. (it uses only vanilla resources though, thus it's a fair bet that i won't hurt your fps much)

 

Imaginator - let's you adjust all sorts of things ingame to great effect (it's almost as good as an ENB without the performance loss).

 

Static Mesh Improvement + Ruins Clutter improved: These two let all the small things in the game look way better. They might have some impact on performance though (but nowhere near a complete retexture mod.) For me no performance loss is noticable.

 

Better dynamic Snow - no Performane loss (it doesn't change textures or resolution).

 

Detailed Rugs - yes, this is an HD retexture mod, but it's impact on fps is tiny because it affects only interiors and only a small part of them.

 

With all these mods i'm at solid 35 fps in the exterior world and 50 -60 fps in the interior settings, but as soon as i try a HD-retexture my fps drop by 10-15 (!) in the exterior world wich simply isn't worth it. Grassmods basically kill my machine, dropping my fps to abyssmal values (below 10 fps in some places).

 

If you want to try HD-textures nonetheless do it carefully, ad them one-by-one and test each one for a few hours before you commit your playthrough to it. (Uninstalling mods in the middle of a character's life can lead to very unpleasant experiences in Skyrim.)

 

 

Sorry for this wall of text, but i wanted to get rid of all of that :kiss: .

 

PS: Get a diagnosis tool for your performance, e.g. Skyrim Performance Monitor, http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6491.

thnks about all that i ll trywhat i havnt tried yet later

I tried messing with ENB settings and skrimprefs yesterday and i got something like this while maintaining the high quality, ENB and around 50 fps (tho i lowered shadow quality a little bit)

Edited December 13, 2014 by urumizawa