quality vs performance

[adogkronik]

ok guys ill make this short, i really just want some side opinions on this.

before you guys ask im running skyrim on the best i can for now and am looking for a temperary situation until i can save up the money to get a better machine.

anyway.. all my mods arent being considered here, only 1

 

im running skyrim with my mods vanilla looks with about 14-15 fps inside and 19-20 fps outdoors, terrible right?

with an enb-series mod added to those (for intense colors) im running 8-9 fps inside and 13-14 fps outdoors.

 

the only thing that brings me problems is i want the best graphics for a true roleplay experience, i like to get truly sucked into the world and the greyish coloring of vanilla skyrim pisses me off. on the contrary the extreme lag pisses me off. and honestly i cant make up my mind which is worse to me.

 

so for anyone sayin tl;dr,

 

vibrant realistic colors with lag, or gray dull colors with little lag

Edited February 16, 2012 by adogkronik

[Tom2681]

Get rid of ENB, grab realistic lighting without postprocessing.

Vibrant realistic colors, vanilla performance.

 

Problem solved, no?

(to be honest, you'll never achieve an ENB-like level of quality with that mod, but you can get pretty close).

Edited February 16, 2012 by Tom2681

[gsmanners]

You could always do like me and go with NoTint and then mod the Skyrim.ini with something like:

 

[LightingShader]

fEyeEnvmapLODEnd=0.0

fRefractionLODFadeEnd=0.0

fRefractionLODFadeStart=0.0

fSpecularLODFadeEnd=0.0

fSpecularLODFadeStart=0.0

 

Or some variation of settings. And make sure you're using the lowest settings you can stand in the launcher window.

[Hurmferd]

ok guys ill make this short, i really just want some side opinions on this.

<snip>

vibrant realistic colors with lag, or gray dull colors with little lag?

I play on a laptop that is almost 2 years old and I try to find a nice balance of graphics versus performance. I love the gorgeous graphics when I can get them, but if the game lags too much, then I have difficulty with battles and can't enjoy the scenery. So when I add mods, I test them and often have to remove them when they introduce too much lag.

 

The ENB series of mods kill my performance, so I don't use them. There are a number of graphics mods that I was able to load that didn't cause too much trouble though, as follows:

• Enhanced Blood
  
• Enhanced Night Skyrim
  
• Lush Grass
  
• No More Blocky Faces
  
• Realistic Lighting with Customization
  
• Realistic Smoke and Embers (low res version)
  
• Realistic Water Textures and Terrain (low res version)
  
• Sexy Villages and Towns
  
• Skyrim Flora Overhual (low res version)
  
• Skyrim Realistic Overhaul 1024

 

H.

[adogkronik]

ok guys ill make this short, i really just want some side opinions on this.

<snip>

vibrant realistic colors with lag, or gray dull colors with little lag?

I play on a laptop that is almost 2 years old and I try to find a nice balance of graphics versus performance. I love the gorgeous graphics when I can get them, but if the game lags too much, then I have difficulty with battles and can't enjoy the scenery. So when I add mods, I test them and often have to remove them when they introduce too much lag.

 

The ENB series of mods kill my performance, so I don't use them. There are a number of graphics mods that I was able to load that didn't cause too much trouble though, as follows:

• Enhanced Blood
  
• Enhanced Night Skyrim
  
• Lush Grass
  
• No More Blocky Faces
  
• Realistic Lighting with Customization
  
• Realistic Smoke and Embers (low res version)
  
• Realistic Water Textures and Terrain (low res version)
  
• Sexy Villages and Towns
  
• Skyrim Flora Overhual (low res version)
  
• Skyrim Realistic Overhaul 1024

 

H.

 

thanks for the feedback to everyone, and ill def have to try these and everything else mentioned, my comps about a year old but its also just a cheap lenovo laptop :/, runs fine overall just cant handle skyrim like i want :[

[NoobusExtremus]

The ENB series of mods kill my performance, so I don't use them.

 

• Enhanced Night Skyrim
• Lush Grass
• Realistic Lighting with Customization
• Realistic Smoke and Embers

 

I too dumped ENB because of the post-processing frame rate hit, even though I spent three nights tweaking the configs to get what I considered the best overall picture quality (colors, lighting, etc.).

 

IMO, the four mods listed above add a whole lot to the "world experience" with little to no hit to frame rates. I've spent a night or two playing with the config for the RL mod and am very happy with the results.

 

I have a number of other mods, and my rig is giving me 25-40 fps in the great outdoors and pretty much steady 60 fps in dungeons and interiors where there isn't so much that the game needs to keep track of.

[Beriallord]

The thing is with my PC I should be able to get both, but I'm still missing the quality part due to the crummy shadows. I can make them look good outdoors, but indoors the shadows are blocky, and to my knowledge there is no fix for the blocky shadows indoors. Hopefully some modder can redo the shadows like they should have been done to begin with. You can make the textures look good with mods, but if they got blocky shadows over those 2k textures, the game still looks like garbage anyway. Edited February 16, 2012 by Beriallord

[thesapien]

If you're just talking colors, then there is no reason to compromise performance. If you're using ENB, disable AO and DofF. Then tweak the lighting and colors to your liking, could even use a color palette in ENB if so desired.

 

Your framerate would unplayable for me. Have you experimented with lower resolutions? I play at half my monitor's native resolution which gives me 4x performance. 2560x1600 is a lot of pixel pushing. My dropping down to 1280x800 is still better than watching a 720P movie upscaled to fullscreen and kind of makes Skyim look more cinematic for me. Smooth as butter, too, even with AO enabled.

[adogkronik]

If you're just talking colors, then there is no reason to compromise performance. If you're using ENB, disable AO and DofF. Then tweak the lighting and colors to your liking, could even use a color palette in ENB if so desired.

 

Your framerate would unplayable for me. Have you experimented with lower resolutions? I play at half my monitor's native resolution which gives me 4x performance. 2560x1600 is a lot of pixel pushing. My dropping down to 1280x800 is still better than watching a 720P movie upscaled to fullscreen and kind of makes Skyim look more cinematic for me. Smooth as butter, too, even with AO enabled.

lol i just hit low detail on the options and called it a day for that xd, i just checked and if your talking about the resolution on the skyrim option i have

 

1280x720 [letterbox]

1360x768

1360x768

 

those are the options... why is one listed 2x idk o_O

[Ferodaktyl]

i hate jerkiness in a game much more than low graphical quality, so i go for the maximum quality that lets me play a smooth game.

this means at least 20fps for me.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Ferodaktyl