Upgrading Computer Hardware for Skyrim Total Enhancement Project (STEP

[oqhansoloqo]

I am wondering if anyone can give me some good advice on upgrading the key components of my system that are bottlenecking my system from attaining high FPS rates while running Skyrim using the entire list of mods in the Skyrim Total Enhancement Project (STEP). I have followed all of STEP's recommendations for setting the catalyst control center settings, .ini file settings, as well and the launcher graphical settings (which really just edit the .ini though). I noticed that if I run the game 'vanilla' that I seem to get FPS in the wilderness at around 50. If I install 1/2 of the graphical mods I get around 40. If I install all of the graphical mods (using lite versions of the FPS!-listed ones) I get a little over 30. That assessment was done visually be me using a program called FRAPS - I did not run a benchmark. Oh yes, and I play the game at 1280 x 1024 resolution on an 18" monitor.

 

I have heard that the game is mainly bottlenecked by CPU speed. That sounds odd to me, since most games these days are held back by the video card. Yet again, the game was designed mainly for console systems I've heard. BUT, it seems to me that the graphical mods are what really lower the FPS, and from my understanding what most of them do is replace textures with larger versions. If that's the case, and what is slowing things down the most... then wouldn't that be an issue with the graphics card memory size and graphics card memory speed?

 

Here is my system, which I think should be running this game, even with all the graphics mods, way faster than it is:

 

Motherboard: ASRock X58 Extreme6

CPU: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07 GHz

RAM: 8 GB DDR3 - 1600 CL9 240 (2 - 4 GB, dual channel)

Hard drive: OCZ SSD SATA2 120GB

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1 GB GDDR5 (GPU: 775 core clock, 960 x stream processors, 40 nm chip; Memory: 4000 MHZ effective, 1024 MB size, 256-bit GDDR5)

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

 

I do not overclock anything... well actually, I think my motherboard has some kind of BIOS-enabled intelligent overclocking feature that automatically overclocks the CPU in certain situations. So I guess my system does that on occasion.

 

Does anyone who understands how the STEP mods would tax the system have any recommendations for me for improving my FPS issues in Skyrim? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated. :) I'm sure other people have similar concerns, so you would be helping them as well. Thank you.

 

Eric