What's the issue with the 3.1GB of memory?

[Wolfmod]

So, the Skyrim engine was created in the stone age when the world was in black and white. It seems that the better your machine is the more crashes you have running this game. I installed "Load Game CTD Fix" < https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/85443 > which is brilliant, BTW. Apparently, when multi-core CPUs load this game, a second core will start loading things out of sequence before the first core has loaded the necessary foundations which leads to a CTD. This mod restricts the loading of saves to a single core regardless of how many cores you have. I regard this mod as a 'must have' for everyone with a modern PC.

 

However, I do have another issue... Textures. I'm told that Skyrim can only access 3.1Gb of memory and that my 32Gb of machine memory and 12Gb of Video Ram is of no help. So, what is the problem? Why can't someone write a program or a mod that changes that limit to a user defined amount? Is it a legal issue? I've seen what the clever people around Nexus, STEP, Github, etc can do so it can't be an expertise issue. Can someone explain to me in layman's terms why it can't be done or is not being done?

[Kazuya482]

ENBoost circumvents the Ram issue, the fall creators update also now allows as much Vram as required to be used on windows 10.

[TheGreatFalro]

It's because the engine is a 32-bit application. Skyrim Special Edition does not have this issue. To change it would require access to the source code.

[tejano2828]

Using Skyrim Peformance Monitor with 300 mods and 255 plugins I am using

 

3,700 Vram

700 ram

and 60 fps

 

When I first started modding Skyrim I was reading about the limit. It said that the 3.1

limit was computer ram not gpu Vram isn't this right? I've even hit 4gb vram usage with

no issues.

 

I have enb boost installed also.

[Evangela]

I don't know. For oblivion, it contained a notorious memory leak and so you'd hit the 3.1 gb limit in less than an hour.. several mods were created to fix that. I'm not sure about Skyrim though. I could play that game for hours and maybe get 1 crash.

[Wolfmod]

I'm a staunch Windows 7 user - the last OS where what users wanted was considered. How's that for a sweeping statement? So, as for:

 

"ENBoost circumvents the Ram issue, the fall creators update also now allows as much Vram as required to be used on windows 10."

 

I have ENBoost and it does give me extra... I think... but not enough to run OSA animations. So without Win 10, the fall? Is that "The Fall"?

 

As for Skyrim second Edition, I played that for a number of weeks. I couldn't work out how mods overwrite. Normally, you put in an overall improvement mod whether that was a body mod or a 'trees and grasses' mod. Over those you put more specific mods, be it hair, eyes, teeth, or skin textures for the body, or prettier flowers, highly textured rocks, etc. However, in SSE, the more I overlaid mods the uglier things got and the more unstable the game became as if it was allergic to conflicts.

 

After my installation of Skyrim became totally unplayable back in 2014 I stopped playing. A few months ago I installed Skyrim SE on a brand new 1TB SSD and to make sure all was well I started a new game and did the journey from Helgen to Riverwood. There were no mods - just the vanilla game and all of my settings were on Ultra. I remember thinking "this game desperately needs mods" because looking across the valley towards Riverwood and Bleak Falls Barrow everything looked soft and really unimpressive. It looked like I was playing on a console. After my problems with SSE I downloaded a fresh copy of Skyrim (Regular) from steam to the same hard drive. This too was completely vanilla. On my Helgen to Riverwood test run I made a point of taking screenshots of Riverwood valley. In spite of the lack of an ENB or LOD mods (which I never use) or any mods at all, the trees were sharp and the environment was... well beautiful. Not, "I got to take a screenshot" type of beautiful like it is now but it still had that element of "I could live here" that made it the best game ever on the day of its launch. Am I imagining things? It's possible.

 

But at the back of my mind is this niggling fact that just can't be ignored - they didn't clean the dirty edits from the dlc or update.esm in Skyrim or SSE. Now, we know they do no harm unless you mod your game. And, we also know that any one of Bethesda's programmers could have cleaned those edits while his mates were booking a table for lunch which means that leaving those dirty edits in was policy - the staff were instructed to leave those edits as they are because we all know that the guy who likes to leave his pencils lined up straight would have cleaned them otherwise. It's a bit like leaving your burger wrappers and an unfinished thick shake on your desk at the end of your day. So, why?

 

Did Bethesda see what I would see if I was on crack or sniffing glue? The long line of X-box games on the left of the store, Play Station games on the right and down in the corner with the keyboards, mice, and headphones, a small shelf for PC games? Sure, but its the PC market that has kept Skyrim current by providing ten times the original content. And, if Bethesda would just put what the players want before their own wants and just once support the modding community I believe real magic could happen. But I'm just a dreamer anyway. It's also because every game, apart from the Witcher 3, since Skyrim have been exercises in market control and push technology. In the end, this policy will fail.

 

I'd like to see some debate on this. Test it for yourselves. The graphics on SSE are not as good as Skyrim and SSE for PC was a throwaway because this edition was designed for consoles. I'm not solid on this and I'm a long way from being authoritative.