Are flora and grass mods worth using?

[Captialism]

I've tested out flora mods like Skyrim Flora Overhaul and grass mods like Verdant and even mods like Bigger Trees. While I like them, the performance hit can be too much sometimes. I get about 40 fps max with these mods enabled and it can sometimes dip as low as 10-20 fps in random locations.

 

I'm close to starting my first official play-through of Skyrim and I've only actually explored the areas around Riverwood, Whiterun and a little bit around Riften so I don't know what sort of changes to the landscape these mods make to other locations. Are they amazing like all the videos make them out to be? Is vanilla Skyrim's flora so awful that it would be better to use these mods than without?

 

My question is: Do all the big flora and grass mods make significant enough changes to Skyrim that they would be worth the performance hit or am I better off with vanilla or more light-weight options?

[Rogue1024]

I would consider doing without the grass mod. I have found these to be more intensive then the tree mods on my game. Plus I found modded  trees  make a bigger visual difference, Vanilla trees are a little scrawny in my opinion.

 

While I would consider 40 fps playable if you are getting regular dips to 10-20 fps definitely not worth it.

 

If you have not already done so try removing shadows from the grass in the ini files might give you a bump in fps.

[Captialism]

That's some good advice. I only get the occasional dip here and there but it's very annoying when it happens.

 

I'll try removing shadows from the grass. Thanks!

[dult]

"Worth it" is rather subjective. . . but honestly flora mods can make a bigger difference to the feel of the game than texture ones. That said, if your choice is between a flora mod or being able to run something like a lighting mod or an ENB(Or getting good FPS in general) I'd def skip the flora mod. It can help with immersion, but FPS issues kill immersion fast so . . .

[Guest]

A luxury definitely. One I'll willingly pay the cost for but I compromise by using Verdant and setting density to 80 with shadows off.

 

I aim for a minimum of 35fps outdoors, anything that causes me to consistently dip below that gets thrown overboard. 

[Captialism]

Removing shadows from all the grass causes weird visual glitches. It's probably because of my enb but I don't think I can ignore them. Oh well.

 

I might just stick to using one flora mod and removing grass mods completely. I don't know if I can make a choice between bigger trees or a complete flora overhaul mod...