sgman1 Posted November 25, 2011 Share Posted November 25, 2011 (edited) So I am playing with one of the tweaked inis available here on the skyrim nexus. The only things that have been modified are that I am using no FXAA, AF or AA. So basically everything other than those three things are set at max. I am using an FPS limiter but even with all my patience I can't help but feel that I might probably be able to get more FPS and slightly better graphics by reducing a few settings and increasing others. Anyone have any tips for which settings don't vary much from medium/high to ultra and which settings might be a better trade off for others such as slightly lower resolution or AA for FXAA? All this should be considered also considering the fact that I have a multimedia function laptop rather than super high end gaming desktop (i7-740qm, 4GB RAM, ATI HD5730m EDIT: If possible, with or without mods, I would also like to get as much of a photorealistic look as possible while maintaining FPS consistently at 30 or above. Thanks. Edited November 25, 2011 by sgman1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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rhophius Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 well i would say for a start off dont bother with ultra, that system wont run it, i have 6gb of corsair ram xms2 with a 560ti gainward and i run it on high with hd packs, as far as your settings are concerned its a lot of trial and error to get the best performance. Btw im no expert with ATI cards i hate them but ill do my best... Launcher settings, set your resolution at whatever your monitor supports best, AA and AF, 2x AntiA should be enough to remove a minor amount of jags without a massive hit, maybe even 4 make sure you got the catalyst panel set to app controlled AA, Anisofilter can be set to x8 or even x16 coz this doesnt affect performance in skyrim at all, its a CPU intensive game, One good tweak if you can do it on a ATI card is to change how physix are handled, i have my card handle my physix instead of my CPU. Advanced Options: Textures can be set to high, that card of yours should handle the high textures easy Radial blur is how drunk you wanna feel when you get hit or cast a spell, i use medium. Shadow Detail, this is the killer for me, i run this on high and get one fps drop in all of skyrim, its at the top of the stairs outside dragonsreach. Decals: meh whatever you want, this doesnt do much, just how many bullets holes / blood spatters there are in the world FXAA- dont bother with this, this will murder even the most powerful systems when combined with HD mods Water reflections is personal preference, i use Land / Trees and things are fine, i think objects is a killer if your in a town with lots of items on shelves near water. Dont know about sky, i dont walk around staring at the water to see what the weather is like ;) View Distances: These all control the distance at which things are streamed or rendered relative to your, so higher values allow you to see things further away, i use the following in order down the list. Left side 7/6/5/10 and the right side 25/4 with distant object fade on and object fade detail on. One thing would be that if your using a control pad is to diable the Vsync, since screen tearing in skyrim is minimal anyways, i have it off and im using a mouse/keyb and i dont see any tearing, this can provide a large fps boost and also in intensive areas it wont stress your pc as much. As far as tweaks go theres some really simple ones, ill assume you have no tweaks made and point them out, as always the file is in ur docs folder and called Skyrimperfs.ini, edit it with notepad or some other text editor, if UAC is being a douche, run notepad in admin mode. bTreesReceiveShadows=0bDrawLandShadows=0 Those can be set to 1, will provide slightly better overall real feel to the world, as far as the jagged shadows that are seen i cant remember off the top of my head if they make it any better. iPresentInterval=1 This is the infamour vsync, change this value to 0, provides a fps boost,a dn reduces the mouse interface lag issue that a lot of people get, also it fixes the insane up down speed on the sticks for control pad users. iPresentInterval=0 none of this guide is in any order im just looking thru things as they come to me but you have 4gb of ram so you should get the 4gb fix for skyrim, link below... easy to follow instructions. If this is still working with version 1.2 i dont know but it dont matter. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013 ill try get back to you with more fixes and tweaks when i get more time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgman1 Posted December 5, 2011 Author Share Posted December 5, 2011 Hey sorry for bringing this up again but I never actually looked back on this thread when people never replied, until now AA and AF, 2x AntiA should be enough to remove a minor amount of jags without a massive hit, maybe even 4 make sure you got the catalyst panel set to app controlled AA, Anisofilter can be set to x8 or even x16 coz this doesnt affect performance in skyrim at all, its a CPU intensive game, One good tweak if you can do it on a ATI card is to change how physix are handled, i have my card handle my physix instead of my CPU. You sure? There is a massive difference between you're card and mine. AA and AF have always caused a noticeable drop even at the lowest of settings. Whether this drop made the game go below 30 FPS was another issue but still... I recall maxing out everything in fallout 3 but it lagged to about 20 FPS. Skyrim is slightly more advanced than FO3 so it works even less. In Skyrim I didn't use any AA, I used AF but it always seemed to lag to 20-25 FPS which became annoying when it was consistently at this speed. As for my monitor, it supports 1600x900 max. I usually have set it to 1280x720 though. I like intense and dynamic graphical effects more as opposed to higher resolution itself. Advanced Options: Textures can be set to high, that card of yours should handle the high textures easy But what about the hi-res texture packs? Radial blur is how drunk you wanna feel when you get hit or cast a spell, i use medium. Does it make any difference other than the shader being more intense? Is there any actual FPS drop? What's the realistic setting? Shadow Detail, this is the killer for me, i run this on high and get one fps drop in all of skyrim, its at the top of the stairs outside dragonsreach. Funny. I heard a lot of people all over the internet say that there's a major and highly inexplicable drop between high and ultra. As in nobody could see a large difference between the quality but the FPS drop from high to ultra was ridiculous and not worth it. Decals: meh whatever you want, this doesnt do much, just how many bullets holes / blood spatters there are in the world You mean like all at once? As in if I repeatedly slash one body, there will be a certain number of wounds on the body or blood splatters all around before the older ones start getting cleaned up? Like that? FXAA- dont bother with this, this will murder even the most powerful systems when combined with HD mods Funny you should say that. I tried fiddling around a bit and FXAA for the most part has negligible FPS drop as compared to conventional AA. Even 2xAA creates a large difference as compared to that. Water reflections is personal preference, i use Land / Trees and things are fine, i think objects is a killer if your in a town with lots of items on shelves near water. Dont know about sky, i dont walk around staring at the water to see what the weather is like ;) Do there happen to be any perfectly nearly still bodies of water? I don't think there is any benefit to the relfections as most of the bodies of water I have come across are flowing for the most part and even the ones that are relatively still only reflect light sources mostly rather than what is given in the options. View Distances: These all control the distance at which things are streamed or rendered relative to your, so higher values allow you to see things further away, i use the following in order down the list. Left side 7/6/5/10 and the right side 25/4 with distant object fade on and object fade detail on. Did you notice any difference between the object detail fade on and off between the FPS and the quality of extremely distant objects? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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