Help me utilize my new PC!

[TheThinWhiteDuke87]

Hey guys, just got a new PC, played skyrim on my PS3 before (boy was i missing out!!).

 

These are my (most important) specs:

 

AMD Processor - FX-8320 Balck Edition, 3.5 Ghz 8 Cores

 

XFX RADEON 7870 2 GB DDR5 RAM

 

8 GB DDR 3 RAM

 

WD Digital HD 640 GB

 

OZC SSD 120 GB

 

Of course i run Skyrim on the SSD :)

 

So, as im completely new to modding, it is easy to really get lost with all these great mods. I've really been browsing and reading a lot about a lot of different mods and how to's etc, but i still find it hard to utilize my PC specs, for the best performance/quality. I've noticed that I only use 30-45% of my RAM when playing skyrim, even with the mods i already downloaded. Am I wrong in thinking i could do a lot better?

 

These are my currently installed mods:

 

http://i.imgur.com/pVZ4P.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/LarUy.png

 

Im still not quite sure what the difference is between plugins and mods, but i'll get there.

 

So was thinking about getting, Sharpshooters Extreme Graphics Vision ENB - good performance, (btw, what does ENB stand for?). Am i correct in doing that or should i run one of the other graphic enhancers, or can i run multiple?

 

Thanks for any feedback at all :)

[Dart98Rock]

I'm not a fan of AMD processors, mainly cause I using one and ITS SLOW. From what I can see of your specs you should be good for any amount of mods you want. I don't even have half as good of specs and I playing Skyrim/Fallout 3 with 100+ mods on each. My main specs for my Acer Aspire Laptop - AMD Athlon TF-20 1.60 GHz processor, 3GB of DDR2 Ram, Hard Drive 160 GB( last I saw I was down to round 300 MB left on it). Plugins refers to the .esp files.

[MootsMods]

Dude, I feel your pain. And here's why:

 

I have-

Amd FX8120 3.2ghz

16GB corsair highspeed ram

samsung 128 ssd

WD caviar black 1 and 2 TB drives

Same GPU as you

All running on a ASRock 990FX mobo

 

And still this game is sluggish. I am starting to think this game is "broken". Meaning, it just doesn't play well no matter what. I have flickers, flashes, stutters, and slow loading/rendering. And I really shouldn't with this pc set-up. So that's why I say this game is just damn broken!

 

But I love it still, of course.

[noae86]

pc specs don't matter much when the game is a 32bit .EXE and was created to run a old directX9 not the newer DX11, you can pretty much thank xbox for that, unless bathesda writes a 64bit .exe the game will never run at its full potential(with mods),

 

my specs,

AMD FX4100 @ 4.8GHZ

8GB ADATA 1600 DDR3

SAPPHIRE HD6850 TOXIC @ 890/1150 (1gig)

990fx ud3 rev 1.2

samsung 256 SSD windows/skyrim (save games and mods stored on HDD)

all watercooled,

1080p on high-ultra

 

programs i use to keep things in check, maybe you should try these programs, i dont use any "boost" mods because they really dont do much on higher end machines, but these help a lot...

dxtory set at 45FPS

game booster 3

 

also your pc cooling is really important when running games, if anything starts heating up close to T max the hardware will throttle down performance causing bottlenecks on all aspects, nothing on my rig ever gets past 43 degree's

[bben46]

For tweaking http://www.tweakguides.com/

 

Tweak your OS first, then your video card, and the game last. If you have a poorly optimized OS, it doesn't matter how well you optimized the game, it will still run poorly.

 

Note that the game doesn't do well on more than 2 processor cores. 6 or 7 years ago - when they first started work on Skyrim 2 was the most anyone had anyway - so they didn't optimize for 4, 6 or 8 cores at all.

[FiftyTifty]

Tip: Get PriFinitty, add TESV.exe to your favourites, set it to use the last two cores (For a quad core, that'd be core 2 and 3), set affinity to high, click the 'Auto set favourites' Icon, launch Skyrim.

 

Performance...Rising...

[velouriam]

Its running so smooth for you because you are not running an intensive enb. Get yourself an enb with all the goodies activated and your machine will feel it.

 

I myself have an i5 2500k, 8gb ram, amd 7950, 256 gb samsung ssd, and I average around 50 fps with all my mods and enb enabled. So to get the most out of your rig, get all the high resolution texture mods out there that you like and get enb. (find an enb with v123 and try out the new reflection feature. That will put an extra load on your system too ;) )

[MootsMods]

Okay.. wow, so much to say here. As for over heating, I don't have that issue. My Cpu stays well and cool thanks to my CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo. It's whisper quiet and cools like a champ!

 

I am running the game on Win7 64bit Ultimate Edition. So I suppose the game is not currently optimized for this OS? So then what is the best OS for it to run on? Even when I delete the ENB files I still get those ugly flickers, flashes, and other graphical anomalies. And still it runs sluggishly. Same happens if I deactivate most mods. One mod in particular is giving me problems. And that is the 2K textures mod that was officially released by Bethesda. Why is this? My GPU is high speed w/2GB memory, 2k textures should hardly be any conflict. But if it really is as you say that it's the OS configuration, then I will certainly read up on that. Thanks for that bben46.

 

And fiftytifty, how do you designate cores with AMD processors?? I know nothing about this. And I keep reading that my 8 cores are really useless for gaming. Isn't there a way to make my 8 cores run as 4 permanently? And from there I'd run the game only using two.

 

Ugh.. it's fun building your own pc isn't it!? Please help me optimize my rig. Because so far, it's a $1200 system running like a $600 one :/

 

Thanks in advance.