New GPU (well its old actually)

[jaszn]

For a long time I played Skyrim using the Nvidia 7900 GTX 512mb, I was able to run the game fairly smoothly on medium graphics with some high res texture mods, that is until the poor old thing melted when I tried to play Mass Effect 3.

 

Since then I have been getting by on Radeon HD 3400, it can't handle much so I bought a new card on my small budget, the Nvidia 610 GT 2GB, from the research I've done it seems to perform about the same as the 7900, maybe a little worse.

 

My question is how well will I be able to run the game with mods? I used to have some vram issues with the 7900 when running mods so I'm guessing (hoping) the new card will have an edge there with 2GB of on card ram. At the very least, if it can barely run Skyrim I should have no problems going back to Oblivion.

 

Anyone have some insight on this?

[FiftyTifty]

If Novabench is anything to go by for NVidia cards (it's utterly broken and poorly done for AMD cards, so don't rely on it for that brand), the 7900GTX is a good deal 40% faster than the 610.

 

For an adequate gaming experience (few fps drops, enough wiggle room to add a few mods, etc.), aim for something around the AMD HD 6850/7770 or NVidia 650 ti/750 ti level of performance.

[jaszn]

I've already gone ahead with the 610, its the only card I could find to fit in my pc within my price range, I know I really need to buy a whole new pc but I don't have the money for it at the moment.

 

Once it arrives I'll give it a thorough testing, I was just hoping someone else is in the same boat and can give me their experience with lower end hardware.

[SMB92]

Skyrim is a game that demands absolute grunt. I would advise you dont use any memory or object increasing mods, such as texture packs or SMIM. Have a try by all means but i think you will find you crash often and stutter outdoors.

[jaszn]

Skyrim is a game that demands absolute grunt. I would advise you dont use any memory or object increasing mods, such as texture packs or SMIM. Have a try by all means but i think you will find you crash often and stutter outdoors.

 

I'll keep that in mind when I start playing again.

 

When I used to use the 7900 card I often found some textures were missing, for example with the wet & cold mod, some scarves and hoods would show up black. I was told that it was due to running out of vram, would the extra ram on the 610 stop that from happening?

[SMB92]

Potentially, yes. I have noticed a trend though, seems laptop gpus and also low-mud end AMD 7000 series cards run out of memory even with the ENBoost fixes, and a number of these cards have been 2gb, but mostly 1gb. So you might expect to see this again, but it less likely i would think, especially if you're wise about your mods.

 

If you do at any point start using ENBoost, and you do encounter that problem again, please update this post. I would just like to know. Just if you can. For instance, i know that a 550ti DCU2 can go over its 1GB limit without losing all the textures, but a 640m cant.

[FiftyTifty]

Potentially, yes. I have noticed a trend though, seems laptop gpus and also low-mud end AMD 7000 series cards run out of memory even with the ENBoost fixes, and a number of these cards have been 2gb, but mostly 1gb. So you might expect to see this again, but it less likely i would think, especially if you're wise about your mods.

 

If you do at any point start using ENBoost, and you do encounter that problem again, please update this post. I would just like to know. Just if you can. For instance, i know that a 550ti DCU2 can go over its 1GB limit without losing all the textures, but a 640m cant.

 

The reason that some cards don't miss out on textures and the like, when the memory limit is reached, is due to them using system RAM. Which is, uh, slow. Not SO bad if you're using an igp, but for an external GPU, the latency just kills performance.

 

Methinks that the ENBoost settings were not appropriately set for the laptop GPUs and low end 7000 series cards. And if low-end cards/mid-end laptops are being used, there's probably not much RAM to be spared in lieu of the needed vRAM.

[SMB92]

Couple guys setups i looked at i just couldnt explain why this was the case. It just seemed to be dependant on the card, maybe the driver.

 

Agreed that the latency is definitely killer, but they should still be showing textures. One thing i did not ask them to try was to disable the driver memory manager and see if that fixed it. I do believe that is what that setting is for?

[FiftyTifty]

Couple guys setups i looked at i just couldnt explain why this was the case. It just seemed to be dependant on the card, maybe the driver.

 

Agreed that the latency is definitely killer, but they should still be showing textures. One thing i did not ask them to try was to disable the driver memory manager and see if that fixed it. I do believe that is what that setting is for?

 

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI/Memory

 

If vRAM is low, and you have enough spare RAM, this is what you should use, supposedly.

ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true

DisableDriverMemoryManager=true

VideoMemorySizeMb=vRAM + Spare RAM - Some buffer for safety (256MB? 512MB?)

[SMB92]

Ill have to keep in mind to get them to try it when i see someone with this issue again. As it was someone was just complaining about black textures on the chat.