Computer is struggling to run Skyrim with all the texture/enb mods

[jellyhead]

Hi,

 

I've started playing Skyrim again recently and set out downloading all manner of texture and enb mods to try out, but my computer has struggled to run the game smoothly :ermm: and I realised the other day that it's three years old... I've got a i7 2.67Ghz processor, 12 gigs of RAM and a radeon HD 5850 1Gb (I dont actually know which specific one in the 5800 series it is so just picked the middle...). I downloaded the Seasons of Skyrim enb and the Texture Pack Combiner and my fps dropped to the 20s :sad: I tramped round town the other day to ask advice from all the techy shops and they said to upgrade my graphics card, but I just wanted to check out round here as Skyrim is the game I specifically want to play, and to also check whether thats the kind of frame rate i should expect on my computer with those mods installed? I'm happy to buy a new graphics card but I can't really afford the super-duper ones, but I'd like to avoid buying another graphics card for 2 or 3 years after if possible!

 

Thanks!

[SineWaveDrox]

I just upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 680 4GB, and I still get a significant drop in framerate when using ENB (from solid 60fps without ENB to 30-40fps with ENB) so I'm thinking that a framerate hit is to be expected unless you have a seriously powerful machine. However, if you want to avoid that as much of a fps hit as possible, you can disable the Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field in the ENB. Those seem to be the biggest causes of framerate drop, as far as my experience has told me.

[jellyhead]

Ok, thanks for the reply, I'll do just that!

[bben46]

Lots of advice for improving what you already have here. Be sure to go through the general stuff before the game specific stuff or you will miss what you need.

 

http://s1.zetaboards.com/bbenlibrary/topic/4751769/1/#new

This is updated often so come back later for more.

 

If you use any of this and have some success - or even if nothing works - please post back here what you did that worked or didn't work. That kind of information can be invaluable to other members having the same or similar problems - And to me in fixing any problems in the blog.

[Aegrus]

In enb mods, the cpu will almost always be the limiting factor, since Skyrim is cpu heavy and gpu light to begin with, and most enb effects are mostly run on the cpu. For people with nvidia cards, I always advise enforcing ambient occlusion and texture filtering through their video card instead of using the enb mod's, to spread the load more evenly between the gpu and cpu.

 

But that advice is no good for amd cards. . .

I suggest you use an enb mod that comes with shadow filtering, if you aren't already. Shadows resolution is a huge fps hit in Skyrim, and, like enb mods, they also use the cpu (not entirely, but more than they should), so if you get an enb mod with filtering, you can turn down your shadow res a bit further without losing very much quality. I typically don't like to turn off enb effects like dof and ambient occlusion. They're big frame rate hits, yeah. But they also look pretty awesome, when turned well.

 

Losing some shadow detail, I usually don't mind (as long as its filtered and not pixelated), because most shadows in real life aren't pristine and clear, anyway.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Aegrus

[jellyhead]

thankyou for all the replies!

 

@aegrus I'm not very good with the technical side of enbs sorry, how will I know if an enb is using shadow filtering? Is it something that is likely to be specifically stated in the enb description and would editing the shadow res be something I'll find in one of the enb guides floating around?

 

cheers