Hey, I can't seem to find a good graphical explanation article. What are the best settings to decrease to get the frame rate higher without impacting on image quality too much? I would like to have full draw distance if possible, it defaults my settings at 'high' but with no water reflections, shadow quality low and draw at about half... which seems a little harsh considering I only game at 1680 x 1050... Thanks for any advice
I'm mostly high too. I have: 4x antialiasing 8x antisotropic texture: high Radial Blur Q: Medium (I don't like a lot of blur effects) Shadow detail: High Decal Q: High FXAA: on Water Reflect: land objects trees <on Distant OBject Detail: High My 460 gets some chuggy frames only in v'few places. Like the place with the mines and the silver blood family in charge. Occasionally when there is a big expanse with water falls. Otherwise it's pretty solid. I don't know about properly optimising it though. I can't be bothered. I'd rather just play!!! Most games I hate the blur effects on high so normally turn it down. A little, but not none. Plus I think blur effects do give a little hit. I'd dig out some facts about that, but we might as well wait till someone confirms it's true or nonsense. < Yes I'm lazy
can try this.. tweaks I'm running in the ini Code: [General] fBrightLightColorB=1.0000 fBrightLightColorG=1.0000 fBrightLightColorR=1.0000 iStoryManagerLoggingEvent=-1 bEnableStoryManagerLogging=0 fdefaultfov=95 [Imagespace] bDoDepthOfField=1 [Display] iBlurDeferredShadowMask=5 fInteriorShadowDistance=3000.0000 fShadowDistance=2500.0000 iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024 iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048 iShadowSplitCount=2 iMaxAnisotropy=8 fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=4600.0000 fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=3600.0000 fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=3600.0000 fGamma=1.0000 iShadowFilter=3 fDecalLOD2=1500.0000 fDecalLOD1=1000.0000 fSpecularLODStartFade=500.0000 fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000 fLightLODStartFade=1000.0000 iTexMipMapMinimum=0 iTexMipMapSkip=0 bTransparencyMultisampling=0 iWaterMultiSamples=0 iMultiSample=0 iShadowMode=3 bTreesReceiveShadows=0 bDrawLandShadows=0 bDrawShadows=1 bFull Screen=0 iSize H=900 iSize W=1600 fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000 fMeshLODFadeBoundDefault=256.0000 fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=2048.0000 fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=2844.0000 fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=3072.0000 fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=4096.0000 iScreenShotIndex=2 bShadowMaskZPrepass=0 bMainZPrepass=0 iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=3 iMaxDecalsPerFrame=10 [Grass] b30GrassVS=0 fGrassStartFadeDistance=3500.0000 fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=7000.0000 fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000 [Water] iWaterReflectHeight=1024 iWaterReflectWidth=1024 bUseWaterReflectionBlur=1 bUseWaterDisplacements=1 bUseWaterRefractions=1 bUseWaterReflections=1 bUseWaterDepth=1 bReflectExplosions=1 iWaterBlurAmount=4 bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0 bForceHighDetailReflections=1 [MAIN] bGamepadEnable=1 bCrosshairEnabled=1 fHUDOpacity=1.000 bSaveOnPause=1 bSaveOnTravel=1 bSaveOnWait=1 bSaveOnRest=1 [GamePlay] bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1 bShowQuestMarkers=1 iDifficulty=2 [Interface] bDialogueSubtitles=0 bGeneralSubtitles=0 [Controls] fGamepadHeadingSensitivity=1.0000 fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0125 bAlwaysRunByDefault=1 bInvertYValues=0 bGamePadRumble=1 bMouseAcceleration=0 [Particles] iMaxDesired=750 [SaveGame] fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000 [AudioMenu] fAudioMasterVolume=1.0000 fVal7=1.0000 uID7=0 fVal6=1.0000 uID6=0 fVal5=1.0000 uID5=0 fVal4=1.0000 uID4=0 fVal3=1.0000 uID3=0 fVal2=0.4000 uID2=466532 fVal1=1.0000 uID1=554685 fVal0=0.8000 uID0=1007612 [Clouds] fCloudLevel2Distance=262144.0000 fCloudLevel1Distance=32768.0000 fCloudLevel0Distance=16384.0000 fCloudNearFadeDistance=9000.0000 [TerrainManager] fTreeLoadDistance=25000.0000 fBlockMaximumDistance=100000.0000 fBlockLevel1Distance=32768.0000 fBlockLevel0Distance=20480.0000 fSplitDistanceMult=0.7500 bShowLODInEditor=0 [NavMesh] fObstacleAlpha=0.5000 fCoverSideHighAlpha=0.8000 fCoverSideLowAlpha=0.6500 fEdgeFullAlpha=1.0000 fEdgeHighAlpha=0.7500 fEdgeLowAlpha=0.5000 fTriangleFullAlpha=0.7000 fTriangleHighAlpha=0.3500 fTriangleLowAlpha=0.2000 fLedgeBoxHalfHeight=25.0000 fEdgeDistFromVert=10.0000 fEdgeThickness=10.0000 fPointSize=2.5000 [Trees] bRenderSkinnedTrees=1 uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20 [Decals] uMaxDecals=100 [LOD] fLODFadeOutMultObjects=5.0000 fLODFadeOutMultItems=3.0000 fLODFadeOutMultActors=6.0000 [Launcher] bEnableFileSelection=1 I get dips running shadows ultra.. so tweaked it out a bit and aa is tweaked mainly for performance, but that config gets me silky smooth frame rates and pretty good quality- those pics posted in game is what I see.. have the control panel use application for managing aa and af and aa quality is set to performance (I see jaggies but it's not bad for a single gpu =]) other than those everything else is pretty much ultra sets- guess could move the draw distance a bit more- you could probably go a bit farther if you wanted too.. you should be able to bump the shadows a bit more at 1600x.. haven't seen what it's like on nvidia.. after seeing videos of rage, I've seen nvidia is either cheating for higher frame rates and letting thier customers see ass to the face on non twimtbp games.. or they just don't care about image quality on certain titles maybe try using an older driver before optimizations and see if you get it looking like the devs intended.. or rename the exe to testimage.exe and see what it looks like without optimizations.. compare before and after I'm running a older ati driver myself.. if your gpu has enough grunt to run without optimizations to the driver
I think 'ugridstoload' outdoors is almost certainly going to be the main bottleneck. I can do almost anything to the video with no real difference until I go to a very high AA; indoor specific settings barely seem to matter. This is with a worse system than you though. As I understand it, there's no way to get it to draw distant objects with more detail without simulating all the ai etc within the grids loaded, which is why it's so CPU bottlenecked.
Thanks for the replies, I will try a few of the suggestions including the ini... i remember doing the same for morrowind. Shame bit tech hasn't done an article about it
RPS and PCGamer both have fairly extensive coverage of the ini tweaks you can do in Skyrim, bit would just be re-treading old ground.
Try this http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide fairly heavy reading but seems to cover everything.
My favourite ones I have are a better inventory UI, a pretty night sky and a small mod to show a clock on loadscreens. Also got a couple mods that change textures and a couple of the ones which improve faces. Couldn't imagine going back to vanilla inventories now though, that one is very good.
Awesome game, but every time it automatically updates (even though i told it not to) it removes the .exe until i verify the game cache roughly 5 times then installs the update.
The fully zoomable 3D map "mod" (more of just an ini tweak) is awesome. I was always annoyed you basically can't see any detail at the default max zoom level. The 4GB patch is awesome. Kind of torn with using the high def water pack. On one hand it makes the water look amazing (especially marshes) but I feel it loses some of that "glossy" look that the default water has.
does the 4gb pack offer much improvement? I might try some on the weekend when I can be bothered to look at them all.
As i like to use the arrow keys to move character, i remap those keys instead. However if you remap the "A" key the lockpicking screen wont work using the a key. Only an issue since the 1.2 and 1.3 patch. Just had another ctd error, so seems 1.3 doesent fix this issue (well not in my case). Gtx 580 at max settings running at max of 36c, so not a heat issue. Oh well perhaps in version 1.4 maybe. Im still enjoying the game though despite the ctds.
Installed 1.3 last night at 18:30. 22:30 and I still didn't have one single ctd - though all my grphics are on low\normal
I was still receiving CTD's every hour or 2, I think the memory hole is still very present and ive noticed a trend with the crashes with quite a few of them being AMD chips, I still think the hyperthreading needs sorted on it but tbh if you switch off all reflections you will get a noticable increase in FPS overall. I also use nvidias own settings to handle the anistrophics and anti-aliasing and turn them off in the game setting panel. Huge in increase in FPS in ragged flagon after this.
