Are too many texture mods a bad thing?

[Steakuddin]

Hello all,

 

Recently upgraded my rig. Now have:

 

• Intel i7 2600k
  
• 16gb Ram
  
• Asus Sabertooth Z77 Mobo
  
• EVGA GTX680
  

 

and using NMM, i've installed the following mods:

• Skyrim HD2K
  
• Skyrim Flora Overhaul
  
• FXAA Post Process Injector
  
• Enhanced Blood
  
• Static Mesh Improvement
  
• Skyrim Enhanced Shaders
  
• Realistic Smoke and Embers
  
• Crimson Tide
  
• Sunglare V4
  
• Better Dynamic Snow
  
• Real World Lighting
  
• Enhanced Night Sky
  
• Realistic Water and Texture (forgetting the correct name)
  
• and few other popular mods
  

 

When I run the game, it looks spectacular, however, there are times when I see some pixelation (is that even the right word), when looking at the clouds during the day time. Or when looking at the water, from an over-the-top-character camera angle, i see very slight pixelation.

 

Is this due to having so many hi-res texture oriented mods? Should I not be using so many and just go with a few?

 

I invested quite a bit of $ into this rig in order to play Skyrim and The Witcher 2 with ultra maxed out 1080p settings. I've tweaked the INI file as per geforce's tweak guide, etc. And these minor graphical issues are annoying.

 

Any guidance and/or suggestions will be appreciated.

 

/Regards

Edited July 3, 2012 by Steakuddin

[kevkiev]

imo: no, no and no. I run a truckload of hi-rez texture mods . For me, they're the most important (imo, downright necessary) mods in the game. As long as your rig can handle it, I don't see any problem with going overboard on texture mods. Taxing your rig too much with textures can result in lag and stutter ('cuz they'll require more memory) but I've never heard of them causing the pixelation you describe. (I absolutely cringed when I first ran skyrim totally vanilla - it was like a sea of pixel soup. I also like 'em 'cuz they're easy for a perpetual noob like me to understand.)

 

I underlined "texture" above because texture mods to me are ones that replace the .dds files (and sometimes .nif files - ie meshes) in the game. I'm talkin' things like, from your list, Enhanced Night Sky, Skyrim Flora Overhaul and Skyrim HD2K. (SMIM is actually more about meshes than textures) I guess a texture mod could be poorly done and have flaws in the texture itself, but you could probably see that if you looked at the dds file itself. Tho I think that's pretty unlikely. I run flora overhaul, enhanced night sky and HD2K myself and can verify that they're high-quality stuff. (I also run SMIM - awesome mod tho I tend to overwrite its textures components.) But what you describe shouldn't result from having too many texture mods that are properly done.

 

You have to differentiate between texture mods (dds and nifs) and some of the other mods you have listed like FXAA and the shader and lighting mods. I don't really consider those to be texture mods. Those kind of mods... I dunno maybe they could cause pixelation, I'm not sure. But I don't really think any such problem would be from "too much" anyways - likely a conflict with another mod or some other discreet issue.

 

Though it's hard to tell what you mean by pixelation - you mean like little white dots or something like that? Posting a screenshot of what you mean might help. I know that some recent versions of the catalyst drivers (AMD) had pixelation issues, maybe that's an issue with Nvidia as well? i.e. try a different driver?

[Steakuddin]

kevkiev,

 

thanks much for the quick response. glad to see that textures ARE the way to go if the machine can handle them. i'm going to upload some screenshots to give a better idea of what i mean. i may have used incorrect terminology when describing that. basically, when i'm upclose to certain items (1st person), they appear VERY low texture - like certain grass, leaves, walls, etc. i wish there is a way (or a mod) to get these things crisp and clear too.

 

thanks again for the info, as mentioned i'll post some screens once i get home from work.

 

regards.