Rig specs, what would help?

[crimsonaralia]

Hey there, I'm pretty new to modding, but I'm catching on real quick thanks to the guides and taking to this learning curve pretty well... but I'm running into some issues.

 

I recently upgraded my graphics card to a nvidia gtx 960 4gb (high ranking card as per the list on newegg.com iirc, came in 21'st on the list.) Skyrim slapped me in to ultra settings and I noticed without a limiter I'd hit 300+ fps on the title screen. (this made me squee and cry at the same time, since I knew I now would need to slap a limiter on)

Well, once I got the game loaded, I noticed I'd stutter a lot... Mostly moving from cell to cell, but my fps wasn't registering massive drops cause they were only in short bursts.

 

I upgraded to the enhanced flora mod, 2k textures, and the saraan su'um enb + elfx. no real change in the stutter, a bit of one when loading new objects, but that doesn't seem any more than prior to adding. I've tried the memory fix by sheson... didn't even come CLOSE to using too much according to the memory block log. I have enboost set up and have the d3d9 set up to run a proxy. (followed the instructions to a T) I'm fairly certain the GPU can handle anything I throw at it with this game.. my friend was playing on high with a nvidia gts 260 (512mb) so... 4gb on a better GPU should produce exponentially better performance, as said, the game slapped me into ultra to begin with.

 

What I'm really getting at here is what do I need to do to get this game running smooth like the beautified videos I've seen... I know my CPU is old, I know I'm running a "low" amount of ram for what I wanna do... but I'm kinda at a loss here. I like to think I know hardware decently well, but it seems that a lot of games I like to play need a lot more than recommended to play top quality...

 

my specs and limitations:

 

Asrock 970 extreme 3 with turbo UCC (MB)

AMD Phenom II x3 740 black edition (unlocked to x4 40 with turbo UCC) (CPU)

Nvidia GTX 960 4gb (GPU)

8gb DDR3 (Ram) 2 sticks, 2 slots left

850Watt power supply

 

The motherboard is stuck, I'm not upgrading that, it's just more hassle than I feel it's worth... money IS a limit here...

 

I've got all the DLC, HD patches, and the unofficial legendary patch

Only the HD patches are new to the active list

 

ELFX core

Flora Overhaul

2k Textures

Saraan Su'um ENB

 

That's what I added after play testing my new card a bit to see what I'd get out of it. All other mods were working with my old card same as my friend's (Nvidia gts 260 512mb) and I had managed to fix the stuttering, mostly, with occasional stutters on high speed stress tests on low settings. (no hd patches, but with hdt physics mods applied.)

(Currently fluxuating between 25-59 fps, capped at 58 via Nvidia Inspector) Memory block logs show no more than 212 usage in the first block when stress testing in a high flora environment at around 10x player speed crossing cell borders. ~32 on loading screens, and between 0 - ~14 when actually loading up an area. (new mods don't seem to have had more than ~ -5 fps effect on my rig, but have made loading scenes a bit longer, which I can deal with.)

 

I checked and cleaned my files with LOOT and Tes5edit. (following the tutorial I found about how to do this to the letter)

I have one seemingly common issue that I can't really seem to find anyone in my shoes with, but that shouldn't effect the stutter or lag... (in case it matters, for some reason even when the game was 100% vanilla I'd CTD going to Vamp/WW perk tree... just completely died out when I tried.)

 

Sorry bout the wall of text and diversions...

 

Aside from the MB and GPU, what would I need to upgrade to run smoothly on ultra or at least high? and how much impact would the upgrades likely have?

 

[ironbender800]

Faster CPU.

 

Make sure your ENB local is configured properly.

 

Dont go too crazy on the texture and flora mods. Balance is key.

 

960 is decent but it doesnt allow you to run whatever you want. Heavily modded skyrim can bring 980s to their knees. And you will always be bound by your slow cpu and skyrims engine limitations.

[crimsonaralia]

hmm, what should I aim for? if I'm running at 3.0Ghz now?

[niphilim222]

Well i take it back, cleaned out my machine with air containers, the ones you use for pc's. And uninstalled everything including drivers. And to my surprise the drivers i installed fixed the issue. It wasn't from the latest drivers but from February.

 

AMD is a good choice, so is Nvidia. Get what suits you.