Maxing Havok - Skyrim Spanked!

[Rennn]

My specs are in my sig. With the latest patch, heavy .ini optimization, and multithreading of course, I'm able to run extremely high quality ENB.

 

On ultra with no ENB, I get 70+ fps.

On medium vanilla with high ENB, I get 30-40 fps.

 

My game pretty much looks like one of the most graphically intensive games ever modded :)

And it's a smooth thirty fps (very playable for an rpg, as long as it's capped).

 

Hopefully my framerate will increase more and let me cap at 40 once I get more RAM. Right now my RAM is a generic brand with a slow speed, and only about 3GB are actually useable with Skyrim because of Win7 taking 1GB for itself. Hopefully at 8GB, which is a pretty cheap upgrade even for Corsair RAM, I'll be able to cap at forty fps.

[Thor.]

I almost forgot its running 60fps with 16x csaa sli 2x plus supersample 4x mode overided.. With some minor tweaking here and there

 

And 16 imultisampling :turned:

 

Fraps overlay included for proof

http://www.image-share.com/upload/1262/147.jpg

Edited February 2, 2012 by Thor.

[thesapien]

I don't see

uExterior Cell Buffer=64

above

uGridsToLoad=7

 

It's my understanding cell buffer should be your value of 7 plus 1 (7 around you plus the one you're in) squared. In our case, that's 64. The default is 36.

[Thor.]

Mines around 9, and increased fov for my 24 inch viewsonic

[thesapien]

You know, those pics would even look better with some ambient occlusion. Then, again, that would mean re-tweaking everything else since AO is not cheap on the performance.

 

But, if you don't already know, the enbseries will allow you enable AO as well as tweak its many AO settings. As icing on the cake, it gives you better lighting that is hugely customizable, as well as bloom settings, and even comes with subsurface scattering for skin on characters.

 

Edit/PS: Also allows enabling of depth of field, which is way cool with its setting for how quickly you want it to adjust. Lower settings is neat in how if you look at something close then far away it takes however long you set this value for your "eyes" to adjust.

Edited February 2, 2012 by thesapien

[MorwynKelm]

@thesapien, I realize I left out "uExterior Cell Buffer=64" because I found that adding it caused instability. I was testing uGrids up to 13 but couldn't get it to load. I suspect I hit the 2GB limit of my vram. As for the AO, I am testing different configs and experimenting some more, hence, this thread. So share your experiences. ;)

[Thor.]

I have a good 2gb of ram all together in sli, i should try to see how far it'll go :biggrin:

[thesapien]

My specs are in my sig. With the latest patch, heavy .ini optimization, and multithreading of course, I'm able to run extremely high quality ENB.

 

On ultra with no ENB, I get 70+ fps.

On medium vanilla with high ENB, I get 30-40 fps.

 

 

What do you mean by high quality ENB? Do you mean with AO enable? AO, itself, has many quality settings, too, so just asking. The sample quality value actually seems to drop performance less than adjusting sampling size and scaling, for me. Do you have depth of field enabled?

[defosh369]

In response to Morwyn Kelm message about giving Skyrim engine a graphical workout via .ini tweaks:

Well, I've been tweaking Skyrim shadows for a long time now, mostly my tweaks where optimized for Medium and High range PC's, but, with my latest tweak I've focused to increase overall Ultra shadow quality and performance. I've learned a lot on how Skyrim shadows work, how different values work and how game react after applying them. All my knowlege is based on my trial and error expierience and so far, my observation where fairly accurate. I've also learned about some additional tweaks, that can be applied to increase overall game presence, like uGridsToLoad or iMinGrassSize.

 

Looking at your .ini files, you can notice that, there is some serious potential in Skyrim visual tweaking, but from my testing, I do know that most of them, don't really work (at least for now). So, writing a comprehensive guide about all those values and lines, that cover not only working ones, but also those that can be applied, but will not work (as I wrote, at least for now), that people can jump-in and see "what's this all about" as a ton of work, but very useful work.

 

Ive like to notice that, I've never been into setting Skyrim to it's maxium possible visual capabilities via .ini tweaks. I've only used values that I know will work, like my shadow tweak, grids (set at 9), trees, grass, decals, memory and water tweaks. Nothing above that. Mainly because my PC isn't capable of doing that, so I just don't bother checking it out :D

 

My system is (cheap, heheh):

Win 7 64bit,

AsRock MB,

5.1 Audio,

GTX460SE (Overclocked version, overclocking done by Gigabyte),

4GB RAM DDR3,

i5-2500k 3.30GHz.

I run Skyrim maxed 1920x1080, 2xAA, FXAA, forced 16xAF, Vsync ON (plus forced triple buffering) with tweaks that I've wrote above with addition of some visual mods, like RWT and Skyrim Sunglare. FPS limited to constant 35FPS (without it, FPS like to jump between 35-40-60FPS).

 

Also, you have some epic images there :P

Edited February 4, 2012 by defosh369

[thesapien]

I noticed you included your resolution, too, at 1900x1200. Is that the native resolution of your monitor? I'm only asking because, if so, that must be nice. I'm using a 30 inch monitor with a native resolution of 2560x1600 which kills my framerate because of all the extra pixels to push. For me to get all the eye candy, I have to upscale lower resolutions. Funny, I'm currently running at 1280x800 which is 4x faster and am actually loving it because it runs like butter with all the eye candy. I can't go back because I'm now spoiled by just how smooth it runs. The loss in detail also actually kind of helps blend the whole scene together, too, so the bad parts of Skyrim that don't always look good on super high resolutions are less noticeable. Kind of more cinematic. However, NOT for everyone, by no means. Also depends on your monitor's quality of scaling.