Do I need an ENB?

[hellfire28]

Community,

I'm thinking of getting back into Skyrim with the SSE version (despite not have SKSE). After years of toiling with Old Rim I just had to give up because it wasn't stable enough/had performance issues with the mods I was running. Some of the most important were ENB mods. Now that the SSE version is supposedly more stable and running in a 64bit environment - if I get some high rez textures do I still need to have an ENB to have it look great? I'm worried if I go through all that effort I still will be up against many of the same issues in SSE.

What's been your experience? Do I still need an ENB to have it not look like terrible? I won't play it unless it looks good.

Thanks!

[LeddBate]

Having played SE for awhile, I will tell you that it looks a LOT prettier than vanilla Oldrim. However, a nice ENB can make it look even better. Really, it comes down to personal taste.

 

The nice thing about SE is that it's so stable that they only thing you have to look out for are straight up mod conflicts. As long as you have a good GPU, then the sky is (nearly) the limit where texture mods are concerned. People playing SE on a 1070 with 6GB of VRAM (or AMD equivalent) are probably in graphics Nirvana.

 

Mod availability is still limited in SE compared to Oldrim, but that divide is narrowing every day with all the mods being ported. And many of the old favorites that relied on MCM menus (like Warzones2015) have been ported using workarounds (like spells to make adjustments.)

[jones177]

You do not need ENB to make this game look good. Reshade is all you really need.

 

ENB performance is a big issue.

 

For example. I use a i7 2600k with a GTX 1080 & play at 3440 X 1440. In the old Skyrim I could get 60fps just about everywhere with ENB. In this game I got less than 30fps with the same user settings.

 

With Reshade my game looks as good as the old one with ENB.

 

It would take a lot more than a GTX 1080 ti to make ENB useable. Maybe the next generation of video cards will do it for me.

 

Later

[LeddBate]

Sheesh. I feel so old-fashioned gaming at 1920 x 1080. Guess that's why I get great FPS on SE with a vanilla 980. I guess 1080p is today's equivalent to playing using a CRT monitor.

[Mandragorasprouts]

Actually you don't need enb or even reshade. SE is very beautiful looking game. Bethesda completely changed lighting, shadows, added godrays.

Install weather mod of your choice and that's it.

 

But there are some nice ENBs like Re-Engaged, organic ENB, Rudy. They are very performance friendly.

Even on my medium rig (960gtx , 8gb ram) I get stable 60 fps with enb, bigger trees, weather mod and some texture overhauls.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Mandragorasprouts

[KurganSPK]

You certainly don't need an ENB but why not try one - installing one is pretty easy and removing it simple too. I use Rudy and it looks amazing compared to vanilla SE. I have stonkin' new PC with a 1080 so perf isn't a problem - but I get minimal perf hit with it on ... just a frame or two. Rudy also is compatible with a reshade - name escapes me - which I have installed as well, which lets me boost sat and a couple other things if desired on the fly. And you can always Shift-f12 to turn it off in game and go back to standard, if desired. Win win.

[hellfire28]

So, I've been playing SE without an ENB and it's not bad! It has taken a bit of getting used to and some visuals just lack the wonder of an ENB. My textures have never looked better (thanks to the 20+ new texture mods and all the 2017 texture mods) and performance is solid. In fact, I have about 180 mods running and I have had a total of ZERO in game crashes. This never happened in old rim. I'm thrilled.

 

I'm still a bit scared of ENB but I'll try it out again soon. I'm gaming at 1080p with an R9 390 but I'm afraid I'll need something in the GTX 1080 range to get good performance with the ENBs.

 

But, the hardest part this whole ordeal is playing without Sky UI and other quality SKSE mods. It's taken a lot to get used to the way things were. No MCM menu... but I have all that need until SKSE is updated (if it ever is).

[KurganSPK]

Yeah the stability gain with SE is amazing - fyi i'm playing with a gtx1080 and get 60fps steady with Rudy enb and a reshade running at 2560x1440 on a gsync display so it's just butter smooth. The biggest thing to remember if you do install an enb is to turn off AA in the skyrim options control panel - enb has it's own AA and it causes some visual issues and degrades perf quite a bit if you leave it on. Again, try Rudy - one of the easiest to install that I've used. Just take note of the files it installs so you can easily remove if needed.

 

and yeah skyui is a bummer - you can apparently use an older version that doesn't require SKSE but I haven't messed with that.

 

UPDATED: oh, and I have 301 mods with 254 active plugins in my current build. Buttah.

Edited May 10, 2017 by KurganSPK

[hellfire28]

Very naive question - but what is a shader? Is it an ini setting, or a mod or what? I've never really come across it before.

[KurganSPK]

Very naive question - but what is a shader? Is it an ini setting, or a mod or what? I've never really come across it before.

Google is your friend :laugh: : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shader