Getting ready to mod Skyrim, not sure how far I can go with my rig

[GR1993]

Hi folks, as the title suggests I'm not really too sure how far I can push my system in terms of mods before my frame-rate drops to a point I deem to be unplayable.

 

Specs: Motherboard - MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate

CPU - Intel Core i5 4670k

RAM - 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance

GPU - 4GB MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Twin FrozrV

 

What I want: Project ENB with Climates of Tamriel + The majority of mods here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76373/? opting for the 2k options where possible.

 

My Question: Am I expecting too much from my hardware or is this within the capability of what it can handle without causing me too much bother in terms of fps, as much as having skyrim looking pretty is quite important to me there's no point in having all those looks if i cant fully appreciate it with a laggy game.

[Darthsith]

Hi folks, as the title suggests I'm not really too sure how far I can push my system in terms of mods before my frame-rate drops to a point I deem to be unplayable.

 

Specs: Motherboard - MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate

CPU - Intel Core i5 4670k

RAM - 8GB (2x4GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance

GPU - 4GB MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Twin FrozrV

 

What I want: Project ENB with Climates of Tamriel + The majority of mods here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/76373/? opting for the 2k options where possible.

 

My Question: Am I expecting too much from my hardware or is this within the capability of what it can handle without causing me too much bother in terms of fps, as much as having skyrim looking pretty is quite important to me there's no point in having all those looks if i cant fully appreciate it with a laggy game.

I have just about the same system but an intel core i5 4690 (basically the same as the 4670 IIRC just a different heat spreader) and a GTX 970 AMP Extreme Core something or other which has like 50 higher core clock etc, etc. My Skyrim installation is 32 gigabytes (vanilla was like... 6 gigabytes on release I think), lots of 2K textures, new armors, weapons and so on. NPC Addition based mods such as Immersive Patrols, SkyTest Animals and Predators, 3DNPC/Interesting NPCs, Inconsequential NPCs, Populated this and that series by Erkeil, etc etc.

 

The game runs smoothly, 40+ FPS, load times are a bit high I will say, somewhat of a side effect of enbBoost, which prevents crashing due to a 3.2 GB total RAM usage limit (physical and visual) that Skyrim's engine has. Well, enbBoost and having a 32 gigabyte Skyrim installation cause the long load times haha. There is the occasional stutter when new cells are loaded/unloaded in the worldspace due to large textures being loaded and more NPC's being managed.

 

I did get problems with animals and water glitches when I installed Warzones on top of all these other mods, though this was before the update where he said he fixed all of that, but I think I just pushed the engine too far with the accumulation of so many mods and that extremely large one just put it over the top.

 

I will point out that I have an SSD, which does help with load times, so keep that in mind with aforementioned long load times, which will be further increased if you do not have one yourself.

 

I do not use ENB's graphical components so I cannot give you feedback on that, I just never liked it. Every feature other than the stability fixes more or less just makes things brighter, which I found out hilariously as I turned each one on and off/up and down, major face palm moment, not worth the performance loss in my opinion. Not to mention if any of the 200+ texture mods you installed are not ENB friendly, prepare to see any number of really dark or really bright textures all over the place.

 

The main thing with mods is not to get dangerous mods, there are a number of them with quite a few endorsements and downloads which have significant problems, some of which only show themselves late in the game.

 

Here is a link to a list of mods to stay away from:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/dangerous_mods_masterlist

 

Outside of that, anything that says it needs the brawl bug patch should probably be avoided, but that might just be me.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Darthsith

[KornelTheGamer]

My skyrim is about 20 GB in size and i have an i3, you should be fine