Official HD DLC - Loose files vs. BSA - Performance

[Drkshadow22]

Hello everyone,

 

I have recently downloaded the Official HD Pack for Skyrim and, since I like to view textures in Irfanview, I extracted all three BSA files with FO 3 Archive Utility. I was also able to install them via Nexus Mod Manager after packing them all into a single RAR archive (using the BSA sometimes caused problems for me with certain body retexture mods). My question is:

 

Does using the BSA + .esp files as they are originally downloaded from Steam can have any performance hit when compared to loading the textures as loose files (apart from the potential one resulting from using higher quality textures) ?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

DrkShadow22

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My Specs:

System: Windows 7 (64 bit)
Processor: IntelCore i5 2500 K
GPU: ASUS GTX 560 DirectCU II TOP (925 MHz/4200 MHz) 1GB
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 1866Mhz, 8 GB RAM

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[uglykidcid]

If you use loose files instead of BSAs your loading times will speed up. This is because the game has to uncompress the BSA into memory before it can be used. I have only two BSAs: Animations and Update. I discovered that the behavior files in both of those do not play well with FNIS and those two BSAs are better left untouched. I unpacked the non animation portion of the Update BSA and installed it loose though. I saw noticable performance gains particularly from the texture and mesh packs. Scripts inside BSAs are known not to function properly. I personal recommend, based on years of experience, loose files. I also optimized the remianing BSAs with BSAopt. I optimized the texture pack with DSSopt as well but left it as an archive. Use the instructions for both of those programs from STEP not from the download site.