Purple Trees & No Sound

[Malachor01]

Hi All,

 

I was wondering if one of you wonderful guru's would be able to assist me please. I have two issues in Skyrim - firstly the trees are purple and look like sheets of paper and, after installing NMM (latest version) and a few mods, there is no longer any environmental sound and/or music. The only sound I can hear is NPC voices, nothing else.

 

I've checked the game cache and it said 'one file failed to validated and will be reaquired', however, it always says this, everytime I run it. I've uninstalled and re-installed Skyrim but have the same problems.

 

Here's my system specs:

 

3930k @ 4.6Ghz stable

32GB RAM - RipJawsZ 2133Mhz (8 x 4GB)

2 x MSI 7970 Lightnings (3GBVram each) in crossfire @ stock

Samsung 840 Pro SSD 128GB (Boot/Apps)

Vertex 3 MAXIOPS 120GB (Games - currently Skyrim/NMM are installed here)

Sound Blaster Titanium HD

Windows 7 Ultimate x 64 SP1

Custom water cooling loop

 

I installed Skyrim Performance Monitor and, this is where things get a bit strange...... when I play at the very beginning of the game, it says I'm using 4GB+ VRAM. How can I use that much VRAM? I thought in crossfire it was 3GB shared? The only mods I currently have installed are the High Res DLC and High Res DLC fix. I also have the Texture Pack Combiner with ALL mods (required & optional) listed in NMM. I followed the instructions to create the "combined" folder for this, and made sure to RAR up the "data" folder within it having run the combiner batch file. NMM recognisies this and installs/deactivates the mod without any issues, but whether I use it or not, the game still has purple sheet trees and the sound doesn't work properly. I can confirm that I have disabled the high res .esp files in the "plugins" area of NMM and also added lines to my Skyrim.ini file as I understand they must be loaded differently? The lines are along the lines of "HighResTexturePack01.bsa, HighResTexturePackFix.bsa" etc etc.

 

I'm only playing the game at 1920 x 1080 so I don't understand why I would be using so much VRAM only with a few mods (or does performance monitor scale all the way to 6GB because I have two cards in crossfire?). I tried disabling all mods, and, by default, the game sets everything to "ultra" with all sampling on the highest, but still, the VRAM usage is insane. Surely something isn't right? If anyone has any ideas it would be of great assistance. I truly appreciate any feedback you may have :smile:

 

Kind Regards

 

Malachor.

 

P.S. My hardware has the latest drivers for everything.

Edit: Forgot to add I'm running the latest version of Skyrim (1.8....?) and steam.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Malachor01

[korun]

for the 4 gb vram it's probably a bug with Sky perf monitor which is not handling the crossfire, in the setup tab you can choose between you 2 7970 right? it doesn't matter which one but it means that it found your GC

for the purple trees, i've had this once when i've installed SFO .177 or 175 + lush tree - lush tree sfo patch, which wasn't required anymore, i get almost half of the trees purple without texture, uninstalling the patch did the trick.

if you use the HD dlc + uesp patch, then check again TPC it's probably the culprit

 

@@

Edited March 8, 2013 by korun

[Malachor01]

Thanks very much for the prompt response :smile:

 

I just ran Skyrim again and disabled the following plugins and I got no purple trees and about ~3.4GB VRAM usage (according to skyrim performance monitor):

 

http://s2.postimage.org/kigk5sgud/Clipboard_1.jpg

 

Then I installed texture pack combiner (with all associated textures/meshes), and by default the following were enabled, which made the purple trees come back and the VRAM usage went up to ~4.4GB:

 

http://s22.postimage.org/qlko4warh/Clipboard_2.jpg

 

http://s11.postimage.org/57eh5lecv/Screen_Shot2.jpg

 

So, then I tried disabling the hi-res dlc & fix .esp files, but still no luck.

 

The version of 'lush trees & grass' I have installed within the texture pack combiner is the latest (1.5); so are you saying I should remove it and try running the combiner batch file again? I just don't understand why it's not working - my system should be more than capable of handling Skyrim at 1920 x 1080 with these mods.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

Many thanks.

 

[Belial666]

Just disabling ESPs won't remove the stuff in folders,like loose texture replacers.The more highres textures you install the more it loads in VRAM,and will max you out fast and cause purple or black textured objects.Also try enabling one mod at a time til the issue happens to see which is causing it.

[Malachor01]

Update: Just installed all mods manually via NMM as opposed to using the texture pack combiner. Said "yes to all" to anything that wanted to overwrite a file. Got 65 models/textures/visuals mods installed along with 10 others like immersive weapons, warzones civil unrest, cloaks of skyrim etc and guess what - no purple trees! The VRAM went up to ~4.8GB, RAM up to 2.3GB and yet no problems... Load order is default as set my NMM (all .esp files enabled). This modding process baffles me ><

[korun]

@Belial66

op is using Tpc for his texture, if the .esp is uncheck for testing i insure you it won't load, it's not a scripted mod

 

the thing i know, is Vurt requested to load Lush trees lower than is mod, but with tpc it's not the same, basically this mod "help" to combine several texture mod and place them in different folders, so the install order is not the same

 

BUT if it's your actual load order, WATER must be the last, wel now you know where the culprit is, check your TPC install one more time, it's a missing texture 100% sure, tpc bug somewhere, so, make few try with/without text pack, run tpc each time

 

SFO is v179a now or v 181 for the basic one

 

your Vram consumption is huge even with that bunch of high res text

 

@@

 

edit:

Tpc main page about Lush grass

Quote

I no longer recommend using this mod together with Skyrim Flora Overhaul

Lush tree and grass :

Quote

Is this compatible with SFO?

 

To a degree. Vurt is changing that mod so fast that we have both agreed that making a patch is

rather pointless. I am also around here less and less too. If you want to go ahead and use these

mods together you can. Make sure you install this mod first, then overwrite with Vurt's mod. You

shall still get a lot of my trees. If you would like to make a patch yourself and update it, then give

me a shout via PM.

 

 

Edited March 8, 2013 by korun

[Malachor01]

Many thanks for the information :)

 

I agree the VRAM usage is insane. Does it matter that everything is set to the absolute maximum within the graphics options (x8/x16 antialiasing/filtering), ultra distances etc? I ran Skyrim with MSI afterburner thinking that there was an issue with the performance monitor, but, that too reported that I was hitting a wall with the VRAM maxing out. Just seems strange that ONE monitor at 1920 x 1080 with TWO 3GB 7970 lightnings is struggling because of VRAM limitations.

 

Maybe if I replace the high res dlc with the optimised version and run the game in windowed mode? The game seemed to run fine when it stated I was using ~4.8GB VRAM with all mods installed manually, but I don't want to chance something going wrong in the long run. I've never played Skyrim before and I want my first time to be fault free and entirely enjoyable :)

[korun]

it doesn't matter with those cards you can go to max setting, except, do not use those from the game, set them to off and if you don't use any Enb force it with CCC, which Amd profile cap are you using for Cross fire?

then i'm using Ugrid7 with a lower setup, but it seems that Ugrid 5 is the best for SLI or crossfire setup, it will depend of the specific rig i suppose.

 

i always used skyrim hd 2k instead of the DLC's, they are better even in lite version

 

skyHD 2k » SFO » Water » SMIM , SKy HD 2 k install also clutter, architecture etc. like SMIM, from there i install every thing manually, to not overwrite and choose the best one

 

Keep up

@@

[Malachor01]

Hi,

 

I'm using 12.11 CAP 2. I have just uninstalled Skyrim/NMM so I can start again from scratch, as I believe installing all those mods manually, and including the High Res DLC & associated fixes has corrupted something somewhere (plus there were hundreds of overwrites performed, I'd rather TPC did that for me). I'm going to follow your advice and just use TPC with High Res 2K, SRO (1.1 is all I could find), Serious HD Retexture, SMIM, SFO & W.A.T.E.R. All others I will install manually via NMM.

 

Excuse my ignorance but I'm not sure what ENB is and, having read a lot of forum posts regarding graphics tweaks, the general concensus was that messing with ugrids was more hassle than its worth because it can corrupt your savegame? I apologise if this is not true, I'm still acquiring knowledge, but obviously don't want to mess with something that could potentially damage my gaming experience in the long run.

 

I will make sure to turn the sampling/filtering within the game options to 'off' in the hopes that CCC will use a preset application profile to boost this for me. If there's anything else I'm missing, haven't done, or something that you could suggest that would improve things - I'd be very greatful. If I'm honest I'm struggling a bit given the complexity of it all. Whatever I can do to make things simpler so I can just play the game, and it works without issue, whilst looking nice, then I'm happy as Larry :)

 

Thanks for all your help thus far - I really appreciate it.

 

Kind Regards

 

Malachor.

Edited March 9, 2013 by Malachor01

[korun]

Hi,

changing Ugrid is not a big deal, until you.....save:D, but if it fit's your tast no problem, i was 5 and test 7 for few minutes , fast travel on place etc.. then save, from there, yes it's better to stay with the setting, but untill that you can revert back, on a save it's tricky! or go further, there is people playing with Ugrid 9.

 

Enb is one of the greatest graphic enhancement, there is many tweaking preset on nexus for every setup, tast , extreme, low, vanilla, disney land :smile: your skyrim will became amazing with all these High res text.

Project ENB for COT from Bronze the one i use

xtrem and colorful = KENB from Kyo

Extreme = Sharpshooter Enb

then as i say there is many to choose from

 

For your CCC, create yourself a profile for skyrim, go to the game tab, new, it will ask which .exe you want to choose, go to your skyrim folder and pick Tesv.exe or SKSE.exe, then set every thing and save, every time you launch the game you can call the profile by the icon tray

 

 

then if you want, there is Beta drivers with a new profile cap for Skyrim and few other games, use this only if it's cool for you.

 

keep up

@@

 

edit: when i say i install manually, i didn't mean it, i'm not using NMM, just copy past the texture i want :biggrin:

Edited March 9, 2013 by korun