Should I upgrade my PC to use ENBs?

[FreakshowGamer]

I tried several ENBs that I found on the Skyim Nexus mod library, such as Sharpshooters Extreme Vision, A Realistic Hope and various others...

 

I really adore that depth of field and even the ambient occlusion (though I am willing to sacrifice the ambient occlusion for performance), but when I apply these mods to Skyrim with the depth of field turned on, and SSAO (ambient occlusion) turned off, I get a rough 20 FPS, which I'm fine with... but it takes an unbelievable 3-4 minutes to start a New game, and it takes like 2-3 minutes to go through a door. (Like when you have to enter the keep at the beginning of the game). I've tried so many tweaks, and I've grasped how the Skyrim mods work. Without the ENB and realistic lighting mods that it comes with, I get like 30-40 FPS and decent loading times, similar to the console versions. I just really want these ENB graphic mods.

 

So here are my specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo: 2.66Ghz

2GB of RAM

nVidia GeForce 9500 GT @1GB of GFXRAM

600GB HDD

 

I've got money saved up that I wanted to eventually spend on computer upgrades (about $300) and I was wondering what would be best to upgrade to improve the performance of Skyrim's ENBs. I feel like my RAM could be at least tripled, since that wouldn't be too expensive now. I don't mind the 20FPS so much, I'd primarily like to eliminate those loading times, if anything. But perhaps other upgrades would also help out?

Edited July 19, 2012 by FreakshowGamer

[gasti89]

I'm not here for suggestion since i'm not an expert in this field, but here's my rig:

 

Anthlon II X2 245 2.9ghz

4gb ran ddr2

Sapphire Radeon hd6850 1gb ddr5

500 gb hdd.

 

I stopped using enb around 3 months ago, so there might be something better now, but let me say that i couldn't run any enb in exteriors.

 

16-20 fps with many drops to 3-4, and 10 fps on the dragonsreach stairway.

[FreakshowGamer]

The ENB ran satisfactory for me (15-20 fps at 1280x800) with ambient occlusion off, along with many of the game's settings set to low-medium. It just took so long to load the game. I could play it perfectly to my liking with the ENB, I just had to sit through 2-3 minutes of loading, and it was dreadful. I need to know how I can prevent this? Which specs could I upgrade to improve this?

[DavidD]

You may get paged (wording?). That means that you're using 3GB RAM even though you only have 2GB. It uses some HDD space for RAM which makes it extremely slow. So get a bit of RAM Edited July 19, 2012 by DavidD

[FreakshowGamer]

You may get paged (wording?). That means that you're using 3GB RAM even though you only have 2GB. It uses some HDD space for RAM which makes it extremely slow. So get a bit of RAM

 

Would that happen even if 100% of my RAM wasn't being used? I checked task manager during my loading times on occasion because I thought it was hanging on me, and my RAM usage was usually only 1600-1800MB out of 2048MB. I always did set the priority of TESV.exe to 'High' from the processes tab in Task Manager, and that seemed to actually make things load (to the times I described). When I don't have it set to High priority, it doesn't seem to load at all. (Didn't wait longer than 8 minutes) Skyrim usually uses 30-60 of my CPU, as viewed in Task Manger.

[DavidD]

Well, I don't see why your loadtimes would increase so dramatically if it wasn't that. Windows probably has a bit reserved for other things. Could also be your VRAM (which also gets paged onto your HDD).

[FreakshowGamer]

I certainly hope not... I mean, I can easily run other games with ambient occlusion and sometimes on all high settings (Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3, Bioshock 1 and 2, Command and Conquer 3, Diablo III, Mafia II...)

 

When I don't have the graphics mods in Skyrim (specifically any ENB) I get like 25-40fps at 1280x800 and the game loads equivalently like the console versions. But I don't feel like it's worth playing with nasty 'low' setting graphics on the PC if I have access to all these mods, and especially if the only thing in the way is the load times. I don't understand how simple colour and light changes and depth of field effects add MINUTES to the loading times.

[Korodic]

possibly corrupted save. Not many mod authors go through the trouble of making their mods play nice. Many new kids on the block are especially guilty of careless editing.

[FreakshowGamer]

possibly corrupted save. Not many mod authors go through the trouble of making their mods play nice. Many new kids on the block are especially guilty of careless editing.

I have yet to actually get past the intro because of this. The New Game initial load is like 3 minutes, and then entering the keep in Helgen takes like 2 minutes. I'm pretty positive that I installed the mod correctly because I must say it looks like the way it's supposed to be. I've followed all the instructions correctly, and I'm not exactly new to game modding. I've managed to get several different ENBs to work, but they all have the same common problem with the 3 minute loading times. So what would be improved if I upgraded my CPU and RAM? I feel like they could be culprits of bad loading times. I can handle the actual graphics just fine, it's just... the loading.

[Korodic]

Try this?

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/15123

 

doubt this effect loading time though...