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[Wired]

Fuck me, had decided to wait on this for a while since I have so much else to get through but I'm starting to cave... however I'm undecided if I should go with PC or the 360. Thing is that my PC is old as shit and I have no idea what to expect performance wise, so if anyone could give an opinion on that it would be great.

CPU: E8400 @ 3GHz (core 2 duo)
RAM: 4GB DDR2
GPU: HD4850 512MB

So yeah, should I even bother to try the PC version or just go with the 360?

 

[Enkidu]

By the way, does anyone know what setting causes these types of shadows?
http://i.imgur.com/4dKfK.jpg
They are really annoying, especially the way they flicker when the shadows are being updated.

 

[LabouredSubterfuge]

By the way, does anyone know what setting causes these types of shadows?
http://i.imgur.com/4dKfK.jpg
They are really annoying, especially the way they flicker when the shadows are being updated.

I'd like to know this too.

 

[furfoots]

How can I get the volume up?

None of the .ini variables worked for me so what I did was:

Right click volume control > Playback Devices, > Properties for your speakers > Enhancements > Tick Loudness Equalization

This provided a very noticeable boost in volume.

 

[Despera]

None of the .ini variables worked for me so what I did was:

Right click volume control > Playback Devices, > Properties for your speakers > Enhancements > Tick Loudness Equalization

This provided a very noticeable boost in volume.

Wow. This worked like a charm.

Thanks a bunch, Jr.

 

[BoobPhysics101]

I finally caved and had a play with uGrids using BoobPhysics' calculation guide: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32733748&postcount=3024

Comparison is zoomed 300% (full-screen, non-zoomed version here: http://www.abload.de/img/tesvugridcomparisonq87mb.gif), default uGrids setting is 5:

Results:

• I finally eliminated most of the shitty distance trees in my test area using uGrids=7.
• Performance decreased by 5-10 frames per second in multiple test locations using uGrids=7, and only 4-6 in the displayed area.
• uGrids=9 eliminated the remaining LOD3, zero-detail trees.
• Performance decreased by only ~9 frames per second in my test area compared to uGrids=5 due to there being only a few extra visible trees compared to uGrids=7, but in areas overlooking huge forests my frame rate dropped by about 20. This performance decrease may have been lower had I disabled other changes I've made to increase the draw distance of trees, effect and particle LOD, etcetera.
• Regardless, uGrids=9 crashed after about 30 minutes of running around and entering/exiting interiors. uGrids=7 did not crash in the hour I tried it for.
• Furthermore, I encountered several performance nosedives in some of the more demanding locations as my hard drive thrashed to load data. Again, this was not experienced with uGrids=7.
• The uGrids=9 crashing may be mitigated by Large Address Aware, though in my basic observations of system RAM usage during the test Skyrim never came close to hitting 2 or 3GB.
• uGrids=9 performance nosedives would likely be mitigated by using a SSD.

Given the above I will keep using uGrids=7 for the time being to up fidelity without compromising performance or stability.

Once again, this is my system for reference:

3-Way GTX 580 SLI, 1.5GB VRAM
i7-2600K @ 4.4GHz
8GB RAM
Western Digital Black WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0 C:\ HDD

I enjoyed your observations, and I'll add a little input.

Turning down your LOD/particle shit etc will NOT help the uGrid=9 performance loss. Neither will an SSD. I get the same performance hits on my GTX 570 OC'd in Ivarstead, and changing settings doesn't change a thing, and the SSD doesn't either. I think it's an engine limitation, and so is the instability.

I think maybe modders could fix it, like they fixed Oblivion's horrible stuttering and bullshit technical issues.

 

[SpidermanJones]

Does anyone have an idea why ugrid=7 is killing my performance in dungeons? D:

 

[kottila]

so i put in the memory thing in skyrim.ini and downloaded the ebns-patch to see if it would increase my performance. the only thing it did was that it crashes the game to the desktop after 30 seconds and it still does that, even after deleting all the files and changing skyrim.ini back to what it used to be.

edit: nvm, fixed it. doing a solid 14 fps in windhelm

 

[KKRT00]

By the way, does anyone know what setting causes these types of shadows?
http://i.imgur.com/4dKfK.jpg
They are really annoying, especially the way they flicker when the shadows are being updated.

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
or
iShadowMaskQuarter=4

I pretty sure it was Blur.. and must be higher than 1 to eliminate most of this effect.

 

[Enkidu]

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
or
iShadowMaskQuarter=4

I pretty sure it was Blur.. and must be higher than 1 to eliminate most of this effect.

Those were already set at 3 and 4 for me, and playing around with them didn't seem to do anything to the shadows

 

[coopolon]

Fuck me, had decided to wait on this for a while since I have so much else to get through but I'm starting to cave... however I'm undecided if I should go with PC or the 360. Thing is that my PC is old as shit and I have no idea what to expect performance wise, so if anyone could give an opinion on that it would be great.

CPU: E8400 @ 3GHz (core 2 duo)
RAM: 4GB DDR2
GPU: HD4850 512MB

So yeah, should I even bother to try the PC version or just go with the 360?

If I were you I'd still go PC. I have the same processor but a much better GPU (5870) and I am getting excellent performance - everything on high, 4xSSAA at 1080p with framerates varying from 30-60 depending on where I am but almost never dropping below 30. You're obviously not going to have that good of performance, but it tells you that the CPU is not keep you for getting very acceptable performance.

Actually I think Blizzard has an identical computer as you do and he's playing it on PC so maybe PM to ask him? (Creepy I know that I know his setup, but it's also my old setup before I upgraded the GPU which is why I remember.) e8400/4850 was a very popular build in 2008, so there's a lot of people out there with them!

I still think at 720p you will get significantly superior performance over a 360. And on PC you can use mods which heavily favors the PC even if 360 and PC were identical in performance.

 

[Betta Lines]

By the way, does anyone know what setting causes these types of shadows?
http://i.imgur.com/4dKfK.jpg
They are really annoying, especially the way they flicker when the shadows are being updated.

Ah yes. I referred to this earlier - Windhelm is bloody awful for shadows. They strike those white walls at slight angle, which spreads the shadow in a horribly low-res way. As far as I can see, the only way to reduce it is to turn up the shadow res - this pretty much puts those lines closer together. But this kills performance, and it still looks crap anyway.

If someone could figure out a way of blending them out properly, it would be great.

 

[SparkTR]

All the items in the loading screens have a strong red tint, i think it happened around the time i was messing with ugrids.. does anyone know how to fix this?

I got this when I reset my ugrid setting from 9 to 5 using the console. What happened was the game added a bunch of crap that was already in Skyrimprefs.ini into my Skyrim.ini. I just deleted all that stuff and copied over the contents of a backup of my Skyrim.ini (which only contained a dozen lines, instead of several hundred) and all was well.

 

[LabouredSubterfuge]

Don't know if it's been mentioned yet but Detailed Faces v2 is out on Skyrim Nexus.

 

[Truant]

Ok ok ok ok ok.

After hours of YT videos and guides, I'm ready to get my 920 up to 4ghz.

Wish me luck.

Ps. Fuck you, Bethesda. Fuck you.

 

[SparkTR]

Is there any way to smooth out the foliage without using FXAA? Even with x8MSAA it looks very jagged.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Where do I get started in terms of making armor and stuff?

Killed two dragons, but still wearing Novice Robes.

 

[Izayoi]

Is there any way to smooth out the foliage without using FXAA? Even with x8MSAA it looks very jagged.

Transparency multi/supersampling. There's an option for multisampling in the launcher/ini, but if you want supersampling you'll have to force it through your drivers.

 

[Phandy]

Transparency multi/supersampling. There's an option for multisampling in the launcher/ini, but if you want supersampling you'll have to force it through your drivers.

I didn't notice much (if any) difference from the ini multisampling option.
I did find that using Adaptive AA (radeon Pro for me to do this) got a good amount of smoothing into the foliage. And it is MUCH better performing than supersampling. SS does look very good though.

 

[Truant]

Doesn't transparancy AA make foliage look dithered?

 

[Haunted]

Bless you, modding scene.

Bless you.

 

[LabouredSubterfuge]

Doesn't transparancy AA make foliage look dithered?

Certainly not.

 

[MickeyKnox]

Weird and highly annoying things are happening in my game, namely, it's now randomly getting hit with precipitous frame rate drops followed by a hard crash to desktop while running around the world.

 

[Kentpaul]

Anyone got a link to a decent lighting set up.. I feel the lighting is off in my game, anything dark my guy puts on just all blends together.

 

[mikespit1200]

I've noticed a lot of instability since changing ugrids to 9. I like the effects but it seems like every time I hit a wide open plain my game crashes. I played a few hours last night so I don't know how to go back to an earlier save without losing a bunch of progress. I haven't made my exe large address aware if that matters, wasn't sure if I need to if I'm on x64 w/ 4GB of RAM.

 

[Truant]

I've noticed a lot of instability since changing ugrids to 9. I like the effects but it seems like every time I hit a wide open plain my game crashes. I played a few hours last night so I don't know how to go back to an earlier save without losing a bunch of progress. I haven't made my exe large address aware if that matters, wasn't sure if I need to if I'm on x64 w/ 4GB of RAM.

Just play with ugrids at 7. Looks basically the same, but runs a lot better.

 

[mikespit1200]

Just play with ugrids at 7. Looks basically the same, but runs a lot better.

Can I change it and go back to my latest save?

 

[MickeyKnox]

Ok so it looks like the crashing is directly tied to something that's murdering the frame rate, since in a stable place when I bring up the system menu my frame rate always shoots up, but doing so in a place that's giving me massive frame drops is an instant crash.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Up until last night, I've had no real issues with frame rate. Then I hit an area that caused some significant stuttering issues. It was the northern area near Solitude, while traveling

Spoiler

to the Wrecked ship during the Lights Out quest.

Anyone else have issues in that area. I've done very little modding, I have my settings somewhere between high and ultra. My specs are i7 930 @ 3.9 Ghz, HD 5850 and 8 GB ram.

 

[fanboi]

What is the things you need to do before changing the uGrid?

Backup all? Download something?

 

[Truant]

What is the things you need to do before changing the uGrid?

Backup all? Download something?

Make a real save, not an autosave, and back it up just in case you overwrite it by mistake. That's about it for me.

 

[Brannon]

Wow, just discovered something...

So after normalizing my gpu, I decide to look at the CPU section of Catalyst, and saw that it was limiting my Phenom processor at half its max power.

And it has been like that for months. Since I first got my new card.

It's like a brand new machine!

 

[PenguinPoacher]

Figured this might be a good place to ask my question. Whenever I play Skyrim my pc will randomly crash to the desktop it can be during a loading screen or just running around. I read the sticky post on the main forum and tried the sound tweak but it still crashes.
Here are my specs:
Core i5 2500k
8 GB Ram
Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7 64 bit

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

 

[reektann]

Figured this might be a good place to ask my question. Whenever I play Skyrim my pc will randomly crash to the desktop it can be during a loading screen or just running around. I read the sticky post on the main forum and tried the sound tweak but it still crashes.
Here are my specs:
Core i5 2500k
8 GB Ram
Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7 64 bit

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Lot of people having the exact same issue - it's mentioned on the official forums so will be part of a patch I'm sure. There are various 'fixes' .. I've tried them all but I still see this issue on multiple PC's

 

[Raoh]

Bless you, modding scene.

Bless you.

LOL Classic

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Ok so it looks like the crashing is directly tied to something that's murdering the frame rate, since in a stable place when I bring up the system menu my frame rate always shoots up, but doing so in a place that's giving me massive frame drops is an instant crash.

This happens to me minus the crashing. It's frustrating to have these issues present.

 

[AnkhWeasel]

Figured this might be a good place to ask my question. Whenever I play Skyrim my pc will randomly crash to the desktop it can be during a loading screen or just running around. I read the sticky post on the main forum and tried the sound tweak but it still crashes.
Here are my specs:
Core i5 2500k
8 GB Ram
Geforce GTX 570
Windows 7 64 bit

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Out of curiosity, what sort of performance are you getting when it's not crashing horribly?

 

[John]

Bless you, modding scene.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/433-1-1321518974.jpg[IMG]

[IMG]http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/441-1-1321527184.jpg[IMG]

Bless you.[/QUOTE]
YES

 

[LiquidMetal14]

CTD's should be sorted in the next patch. It's a big issue and seems random to say the least.

 

[Durante]

CTD's should be sorted in the next patch. It's a big issue and seems random to say the least.

It must be related to something, 44 hours in and I still haven't had a crash. The closest I got were 3 instances where, after hours of play, I had to restart the game since the framerate started to drop.

Is there any way to smooth out the foliage without using FXAA? Even with x8MSAA it looks very jagged.

If you are on Nvidia, just enable transparency MSAA using nHancer. Looks really good and has a small performance impact. Guide image.

 

[Sylfurd]

So many bad color adjustments and texture replacements in this thread !

Current modders don't know anything in texturing and color balance, it's hilarious !

 

[Calen]

It's like saying the Call of Duty games don't run on a heavily modified Quake 3 engine... Infinity Ward can say whatever the hell they want, but every COD has run on an engine with legacy Quake 3 code in it.

So what?

This isn't a comment on how new or old the engine Bethesda's using for Skyrim is, but I see stuff like this all the time. I have to wonder, why does this matter? Doesn't it depend on what the legacy code is?

Where do you draw the line? For example, math is math. There's no reason to implement a new math library if your "old" one works fine and is fast. In fact, it's very likely your old library is super optimized by now, and you'd be making things slower by starting over.

There's only so many ways to load a texture off of disk, or allocate the DirectX resources associated with the vertices of your mesh. If you rewrite shit like this you're absolutely just wasting everyone's time and a crapload of money that could be better spent genuinely improving things.

Why implement a new system for console variables if your old one works great and isn't a performance hit? I could go on and on.

Sure, if you're using 90% of the same model formats, rendering code, shaders, etc you're spewing BS if you claim something is new, but if something only qualifies as a "new engine" if you "mkdir omgnewengine" and start typing into empty text files from scratch without copying anything from your old source tree, I promise you there are NO new engines out there.

Somewhere on the continuum between starting from an empty directory and totally reusing all of your previous games' code is the point at which you would consider it a new engine. Where is that point for you?

 

[MickeyKnox]

This happens to me minus the crashing. It's frustrating to have these issues present.

What's fucking annoying is that there's no discernible cause for it to be happening now as opposed to through out my entire playthrough.

 

[sgi02]

Anyone make it to Markarth yet? I "awoke" there after quite possibly one of the greatest quests in the game. While the quest was truly great, my framerate was not. Hitting a lot of areas there = 10 - 15 FPS... Grrrrrrr

 

[Edvardelis]

CTD's should be sorted in the next patch. It's a big issue and seems random to say the least.

Any word about the sound issues? I still get background static while playing, even if I set my sound output to the recommended settings.

 

[bananaman1234]

Anyone make it to Markarth yet? I "awoke" there after quite possibly one of the greatest quests in the game. While the quest was truly great, my framerate was not. Hitting a lot of areas there = 10 - 15 FPS... Grrrrrrr

Yeah my fps in Markarth dips below the 30s if I'm on the upper levels of the city. 60 fps everywhere else though.

 

[moop1167]

Okay, so framerate drops in cities looking at certain directions is normal? Even for SLI GTX 580's? 60 solid basically everywhere otherwise minus a few random places.

 

[Edvardelis]

Oh I ran into a terrible bug with Bound War Axe - the thing didn't spawn, so I was running around with my hands out and no weapon. Even equipping other spells didn't fix the problem. Reloading the game didn't fix it either.

I'm not sure what I did to fix it, but it eventually went away on it's own. Maybe it was because a minute passed and the spell expired.

 

[Karak]

Ok ok ok ok ok.

After hours of YT videos and guides, I'm ready to get my 920 up to 4ghz.

Wish me luck.

Ps. Fuck you, Bethesda. Fuck you.

This should be easy sir. I have mine stuck at 4.2 and aside from Battlefield 3 it never crashes.

 

[Karak]

Anyone make it to Markarth yet? I "awoke" there after quite possibly one of the greatest quests in the game. While the quest was truly great, my framerate was not. Hitting a lot of areas there = 10 - 15 FPS... Grrrrrrr

Ya its my base of operations and so far by far my favorite city. Just an amazing feel to it.

Not getting that kind of FPS drops but I do notice it drops a bit there compared to other places so far.