Skyrim only uses 4gb right?

[Copywrite85]

Does this include Vram and system ram? Let me explain. I recently bought a GTX 680 2gb oc, I also have a fx 8350 and 16 gigs of DDR3 and an ssd to run my operating system etc. My rig is pretty beastly. I just downloaded the 2k HD textures and im running Enhanced Shaders (the enb 149 version). I also monitor skyrim with every performance metric via a mod. The last thing to consider is checking my system I see my computer is willing to give over 2 gigs of system to turn into vram if needed...so effectively I SHOULD have 4gb of vram and well over 8gb of system ram. Ever since the 2k HD textures i get drastic fps drops, especially when close to water. It sux. According to my monitor both my system ram and vram max out at about 2gb and then i start slowing down all over the place. I was about to get depressed I didn't get the 4gb edition of the 680 when I realized, Maybe skyrims ram usage is 4gb including both system and vram...meaning its technically impossible to have all the graphics mods I do and have this game playable. I am so confused and I could really use clarifying and maybe assistance with certain things. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[prod80]

Skyrim is a 32-bit application, so theoretically you can use 4GB of memory, however the game will CTD when you go over 3.1GB. Dont dedicate system RAM to your Videocard... System memory is slow as hell compared to your video...

 

- As for water, have you modified your Skyrim.ini/Skyrimprefs.ini settings under [WATER] ?

- Have you modified your Skyrim.ini [GENERAL] settings?

- Do you run any water mods?

- Which version of Skyrim HD do you run? Beastly as it may - if you run the 4K textures your system will burn if you run anything next to that mod (like ENB + other mods and uGridsToLoad >= 7 in skyrim.ini)

Edited May 6, 2013 by prod80

[gsmanners]

There is also the fact that hires textures uses 4x the storage on your hard drive, and Skyrim only runs as fast as your slowest hardware (which is probably the hard drive at this point). In other words, to get a super fast, hires output might require a really slick SSD (for the game) on top of everything else.