Help me select Texture mods

[sgman1]

So a while back when Skyrim nexus was still filling up with mods, which happened to be texture mods mostly, I downloaded pretty much everyone that I could. Used them and had fun. But after a while my game crashed every 5 minutes and eventually just before this happened, I used to spot a buggy or not properly loaded texture. This usually happened with textures that were outdoors or in the distance, but I am not quite sure if it may have or did happen indoors with indoor textures as well.

 

So if you all could give me your opinions on various texture mods and how stable they are currently, I would very much appreciate it.

[yoyoguy678]

I'm currently having the same problem that you are. I believe the texture replacement is what is causing the crashing, but I have no idea how to fix it.

[darthsloth74]

Typically if you are using textures of a resolution of 2048x2048, this can lead to crashing. Since its a known issue that causes Skyrim to crash.

 

If you have 4GB RAM then the solution is to use the large address aware solution which should solve the issue. You can find it here:

 

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013

 

Please read the description carefully if you haven't done this sort of thing before.

[sgman1]

Yeah I ran across several of the large address aware fixes. Only problem is that I have exactly 4 GB of RAM, 1.5 of which is being used by my video card. My video card has sufficient VRAM so I thought about changing the amount but when I asked on the forums for my laptop, several of them said that it is best left untouched as they had lots of problems like BSODs and artifacts and the like.

 

So effectively, that only leaves me with 2.5 GB RAM. At most times Windows 7 at least uses 500-700 MB RAM and Skyrim while it is active uses 2 GB.

 

So my question before applying this patch, after taking what all I have said in this post into account is, will it make any difference?

 

I don't want to have to accidentally worsen my framerates just to play a few texture mods.

[yoyoguy678]

Typically if you are using textures of a resolution of 2048x2048, this can lead to crashing. Since its a known issue that causes Skyrim to crash.

 

If you have 4GB RAM then the solution is to use the large address aware solution which should solve the issue. You can find it here:

 

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013

 

Please read the description carefully if you haven't done this sort of thing before.

 

 

Thank you, that worked for me.

[darthsloth74]

Yeah I ran across several of the large address aware fixes. Only problem is that I have exactly 4 GB of RAM, 1.5 of which is being used by my video card. My video card has sufficient VRAM so I thought about changing the amount but when I asked on the forums for my laptop, several of them said that it is best left untouched as they had lots of problems like BSODs and artifacts and the like.

 

So effectively, that only leaves me with 2.5 GB RAM. At most times Windows 7 at least uses 500-700 MB RAM and Skyrim while it is active uses 2 GB.

 

So my question before applying this patch, after taking what all I have said in this post into account is, will it make any difference?

 

I don't want to have to accidentally worsen my framerates just to play a few texture mods.

 

Well it should definately make a difference, I myself only have 4GB RAM and a 1GB video card. However I have 64Bit Windows 7 installed, since I always found the 32bit version was stealing RAM to use on video settings etc and leaving me with unstable games as a result, namely the recent Total War stuff. Ever since I moved to 64bit and use tweaks to modify game exe's to use the large address aware I don't have problems at all.

[sgman1]

Well... I too happen to be using Windows 7 64 bit, just so you know. As I said, I was going to find out how to change the settings for RAM routed to VRAM but everybody on the notebook forums say it's just best to let Windows decide what to do with that in this case because they apparently had to learn the hard way that what they are doing won't work...

[darthsloth74]

Hmmn. That does sound strange and you still get crashes on 64bit? It took about about 6-7 hours of gaming before vanilla Skyrim started crashing on me.

 

Its potentially possible that you have a driver issue maybe. Either that or theres something wrong with one of the texture replacers you're using, maybe a texture in the wrong format. I don't know, wish I could tell you something useful. :ermm:

[sgman1]

I doubt. it's a driver issue. Vanilla Skyrim starts getting unstable for me too only after 6-7 hours. However, Vanilla Skyrim with new textures does so after 5 minutes even though I've started fresh.

 

As I implied in my initial post, one of the texture packs is probably not working properly seeing as most of them are WIP or BETA. I'm under the assumption it's one of the landscape based texture packs because this usually happened when I was moving around in the worldspace. Then all of a sudden I'd see a missing or messed up texture and then after a few more seconds, CTD.

 

Hence, the name of the thread. I was hoping somebody would have an idea on which texture mods are currently buggy and don't play too well.

 

EDIT: Just had a thought. Aren't all graphics related calculations and their intermediate data i.e. TEXTURES supposed to be stored in the VRAM instead of RAM??? So wouldn't it effectively mean that the Large address aware patch shouldn't make much of a difference??? Or is it a problem because only 2 GB of RAM can be used regardless of whether it is RAM or VRAM???

Edited November 27, 2011 by sgman1

[darthsloth74]

I doubt. it's a driver issue. Vanilla Skyrim starts getting unstable for me too only after 6-7 hours. However, Vanilla Skyrim with new textures does so after 5 minutes even though I've started fresh.

 

As I implied in my initial post, one of the texture packs is probably not working properly seeing as most of them are WIP or BETA. I'm under the assumption it's one of the landscape based texture packs because this usually happened when I was moving around in the worldspace. Then all of a sudden I'd see a missing or messed up texture and then after a few more seconds, CTD.

 

Hence, the name of the thread. I was hoping somebody would have an idea on which texture mods are currently buggy and don't play too well.

 

EDIT: Just had a thought. Aren't all graphics related calculations and their intermediate data i.e. TEXTURES supposed to be stored in the VRAM instead of RAM??? So wouldn't it effectively mean that the Large address aware patch shouldn't make much of a difference??? Or is it a problem because only 2 GB of RAM can be used regardless of whether it is RAM or VRAM???

 

Have you let Steam autoupdate to the new version? I made that mistake and it crashed my game with texture replacers in 5 minutes everytime. I didn't try it without texture replacers because that defeats the point for me. Thankfully I made a backup of the orignal exe and replaced the new one and everythings fine again.

 

The replacers I'm using at present are the following:

 

Landscape Texture Pack WIP

HD Food and Clutter

Realistic Water Textures

Vurts Flora

Enhanced Night

Better Gold

Better Beast Faces

Detailed Faces

No more Blocky Faces

Riften HQ Textures

High Quality Eyes

Enhanced Night Sky

Detailed Lips

Enhanced Blood

Glowing Ore Veins

Dragon Texture Pack

Younger Faces with Reduced Brightness

Chris2012 Whiterun Retexture

Mage and Monk Outifts Replacer ( Yeah I'm the author of that one)

Improved Rock and Mountain Textures

Nicer Snowflakes

Realistic Fire and Embers

 

If you have anything from my list maybe we can work out the problem. I did notice Landscape Texture Pack WIP has some strange/possibly unfinished textures near some streams and sometimes water disappears form streams too. To be fair the author did say its WIP and the textures are really good.

 

I get a massive slowdown near one of the doors to a house in Riften everytime I go past it. Not sure if the Riften Texture pack is responsible for that either.

 

I'm still testing some replacers so I haven't commented or endorsed them until I'm certain theres no issues.

 

In regard to VRAM , you'd assume so. I think it still draws on the base RAM though and all the extra stuff loaded into memory makes it seriously unstable when its only configured to use 2GB. Its the nature of Bethesda's games. Oblivion had stability issues and so did Fallout 3 and Fallout NV, why they can't flag the exe to be large address aware is totally stupid given current technology.