New PC - Soliciting Help on Skyrim rebuild

[gooser]

Hey folks, for the longest time I've been using a Win7 machine, with 8GB of memory, 3,2 Ghz i5-4570, and a poooor GeForce GTX 650 Ti with a paltry 1GB of memory.

 

Now I have a new Dell XPS, Win10, with an 8th gen i7-8700, 16GB of mem, and a GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB of memory.

In the past, I've been running ENBoost for stability but no ENB, and I've always sought the lowest texture packs (5, 1K) and avoided larger textures (2k and 4k) in armor mods, skin mods, etc.

 

What should I now do with all this capability? I don't want to go overboard. 

Is there anything I should change or more importantly, stop doing, going from Win7 -> Win10 ? Any pitfalls?

Thanks

[Guest]

I don't have any problems with Win10. I just disable a couple of things, like Cortana.

Your hardware is excellent to run Skyrim, also with a strong ENB. you can use 2K textures without any problem.

But you did not specify the resolution of your monitor. If it is a 1080, then you can go max on everything. If it is a 2K, then still you should be OK on all. But on a 4K it may not work perfectly with ENB.

[donttouchmethere]

using win10 and skyrim LE for a while now, I am not an expert with stuff like that, but thats what interfered with my skyrim play

> after some windows updates I needed to update microsoft virtual basic (or got ugly error warnings in skyrim)

> if you play skyrim fullscreen its good to switch off as many windows messanges and pop ups as possible or skyrim gets stuck

> I use a lot more 4k textures than before, still suprised that it doesnt slows skyrim down (because of skyrim limitations not the hardware limitations)

 

[gooser]

6 minutes ago, CPU said:

I don't have any problems with Win10. I just disable a couple of things, like Cortana.

Your hardware is excellent to run Skyrim, also with a strong ENB. you can use 2K textures without any problem.

But you did not specify the resolution of your monitor. If it is a 1080, then you can go max on everything. If it is a 2K, then still you should be OK on all. But on a 4K it may not work perfectly with ENB.

2560x1440.

[dankmemesxd]

I am using rudy enb or snapdragon and my rig is exact like yours, I get 120fps on average but on full hd. I have mostly 2k textures, but 4k/8k on armors, bodies. I am using w10, no problems. Just configure the enblocal perfect and u should be good to go.

[Pauduan]

You should mod all the weapons, armor, and creatures - aMidianBorn is a good way to get everything without being too taxing.

 

Noble Skyrim, Flora Overhaul are essential for indoors and out. I use verdant as well, for a more lush grass but it saps performance significantly. JKs Skyrim should also get a look in, but is quite the resource hog specially when partenered with Noble Skyrim or SMIM. Be sure you can run it properly. 

 

Weather and lighting - for your system I would go with NLVA, or a combination of ELFX and Climates of Tamriel. The latter is more performance friendly outdoors and little more taxing indoors.

 

ENB - Rudy ENB is compatible with both the above systems but runs a little slower than Caffeine (which is not fully compatible with the first). I prefer a hand-tuned preset for 2560x1440, specially if you have a monitor capable of 10-bit colour and is hardware calibrated. Most presets will put you off simply by their very strange colour consistency. Be prepared for tweaking.

 

You should still set shadows to High from the default Ultra that you would probably be defaulting to, and decal quality should also be set to high. This way you'll get a decent experience with little/no visual difference. Some small tweaking of the ini files and the enblocal, and you should be in the 50-55 fps region all day outdoors and locked 60fps indoors.

 

Just to be very clear on the 7 vs 10 question, 10 runs everything just fine but you lose about 3-4 fps across the board, but runs slightly smoother so it's not all bad. Apart from that you should have no problems except when Windows decides it needs to update itself, at which point you'll become a passenger. 

[gooser]

10 hours ago, Pauduan said:

You should mod all the weapons, armor, and creatures - aMidianBorn is a good way to get everything without being too taxing.

 

Noble Skyrim, Flora Overhaul are essential for indoors and out. I use verdant as well, for a more lush grass but it saps performance significantly. JKs Skyrim should also get a look in, but is quite the resource hog specially when partenered with Noble Skyrim or SMIM. Be sure you can run it properly. 

 

Weather and lighting - for your system I would go with NLVA, or a combination of ELFX and Climates of Tamriel. The latter is more performance friendly outdoors and little more taxing indoors.

 

ENB - Rudy ENB is compatible with both the above systems but runs a little slower than Caffeine (which is not fully compatible with the first). I prefer a hand-tuned preset for 2560x1440, specially if you have a monitor capable of 10-bit colour and is hardware calibrated. Most presets will put you off simply by their very strange colour consistency. Be prepared for tweaking.

 

You should still set shadows to High from the default Ultra that you would probably be defaulting to, and decal quality should also be set to high. This way you'll get a decent experience with little/no visual difference. Some small tweaking of the ini files and the enblocal, and you should be in the 50-55 fps region all day outdoors and locked 60fps indoors.

 

Just to be very clear on the 7 vs 10 question, 10 runs everything just fine but you lose about 3-4 fps across the board, but runs slightly smoother so it's not all bad. Apart from that you should have no problems except when Windows decides it needs to update itself, at which point you'll become a passenger. 

What about ETaC vs JK, etc. ?

[Pauduan]

JK is dicey. Not used ETAC, so nothing to compare it to.

 

By itself JK  should be fine. But once you upgrade meshes and textures using SMIM or Noble Skyrim, all those meshes are used by JK. This pushes the draw count up quite significantly and causes even powerful systems towards lag - not because of the system, but the draw call limits of the game engine are breached. I don't think ETac will be any different unless it uses custom assets with lower poly meshes. I don't believe it does.

 

I am running two Zotac 1080 Amp Extreme cards in SLI (hitting about 75% max on each card, so plenty of spare power) and with JK and Noble Skyrim I am down to 30fps when looking from Dragonsreach to the Whiterun gate. I run a similar resolution and have basically maxed everything out to test the limits of the setup. Some optimisation should get me 5-10fps more, but I suspect the game engine is hitting its limits rather than the hardware. In your case it is possible to max out the hardware - when I was running a single card I noticed additional 10-12fps loss across the board - but only outdoors.

[isb_mmtribe]

If you like to tinker (at least some) you could also give dyndolod a shot. It takes a little bit of time to get set up but well worth it.

 

I also Love ENB Man https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57620/

 

It makes it super easy to try out different ENBs, especially when used alongside Mod Organizer. It also makes it simple to switch between gameplay and screenshot profiles/ENBs, if you're into that sort of thing.

 

All the other suggestions are great and I'll add the Rustic and Majestic retexs as well. I'll also throw Caffeine ENB out there. If I'm remembering right it's basically a mashup of Rudy and Snapdragon with a lot of customization potential, so you can turn off a lot of resource heavy settings for gameplay then crank up the eye candy if you want to take screenshots.