Skyrim? Or Skyrim SE? Help Me Decide!

[Xelriel]

Alright, So i have done massive modding in both games and i have been searching the web for Presets and Armor, Now sure you can convert most armor, As well as .nif files, But sometimes you come across something you consider a gem and well, you can't convert it, i have converted dozens upon dozens of things for personal use during play through but It has been long enough to where i can't remember every little thing i had to deal with on Oldrim and Newrim, So, I come to the community asking what YOUR personal opinion is and WHY you think i should choose one over the other, Here are a few examples to help form an opinion based on what i do and do not want!

 

TL;DR - I can have 300+ mods but still crash, So i was never able to fully optimize either Newrim or Oldrim.

 

1. Presets Galore, RP Characters, and of course Story lines for recording purposes!

2. Conversions are fine, But if it's impossible, Nope.

3. Basically any modding from start to finish, nifs, textures, quests, items, npc,s You name it.

 

One thing for a bonus, is ( Yes i have searched and never felt comfortable i found the right guide ) If anyone knows the near perfect modding 101 guide for Newrim and or Oldrim, That would be Very appreciative.

 

And last but not least, i would love as many foreign mod sites as possible, i know there is a BUNCH of gems out there and im not exactly good at finding those awesome sites, now i looked at most that i found in a thread here on LL but im sure there has to be dozens more, Bonus Kudos for links!

[AWP3RATOR]

Oldrim for me currently.  There are around 10k mods either ported to or created for Newrim though.  I haven't yet gotten around to modding it up as yet to kick the tires.  To be sure, there is far less available from this site however.

[AgentCarolina]

Oldrim for me as well, I don't really need anything that the SE has to offer, because I already have it.

Plus i think my game looks good alreeady

[Xelriel]

7 hours ago, AWP3RATOR said:

Oldrim for me currently.  There are around 10k mods either ported to or created for Newrim though.  I haven't yet gotten around to modding it up as yet to kick the tires.  To be sure, there is far less available from this site however.

 

7 hours ago, AgentCarolina said:

Oldrim for me as well, I don't really need anything that the SE has to offer, because I already have it.

Plus i think my game looks good alreeady

 

Both Very good points How did you both go about stabilizing Skyrim though?

[Veladarius]

If you want to stabilize Skyrim start with these:

 

- Check the papyrus log and look for errors. Any mods that cause constant errors either need fixed or tossed.

- Look at your mods, specifically ones that scan the area and the actors in it, if it updates more than once per 20-30 seconds then reduce the time between scans (if possible).

- Adjust the ini to give papyrus more time to run scripts:

Quote

fUpdateBudgetMS=1.2
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=2.0
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=1000.0
iMinMemoryPageSize=128
iMaxMemoryPageSize=512
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=76800

- Give the game access to more memory, I have mine set to access up to 8gb instead of the normal 4:

Quote

iPreloadSizeLimit= 8388608000

- make sure your game isn't pushing your hardware to its limits constantly. Use the Skyrim Performance Monitor or something to check the CPU and especially the GPU load. If the GPU load is always at or near 100% it can make it unstable.

 

 

I spent months off and on going through all the mods I had and weeded out the ones causing instability and either setting them to use less resources or dumping them entirely. I am still running 240+ esp's, have most all settings maxed out and still get 30-60 fps (increase in memory available helped a lot) with a ugridstoload of 9

[AgentCarolina]

6 hours ago, Veladarius said:

If you want to stabilize Skyrim start with these:

 

- Check the papyrus log and look for errors. Any mods that cause constant errors either need fixed or tossed.

- Look at your mods, specifically ones that scan the area and the actors in it, if it updates more than once per 20-30 seconds then reduce the time between scans (if possible).

- Adjust the ini to give papyrus more time to run scripts:

- Give the game access to more memory, I have mine set to access up to 8gb instead of the normal 4:

- make sure your game isn't pushing your hardware to its limits constantly. Use the Skyrim Performance Monitor or something to check the CPU and especially the GPU load. If the GPU load is always at or near 100% it can make it unstable.

 

 

I spent months off and on going through all the mods I had and weeded out the ones causing instability and either setting them to use less resources or dumping them entirely. I am still running 240+ esp's, have most all settings maxed out and still get 30-60 fps (increase in memory available helped a lot) with a ugridstoload of 9

wat

where are those at in the Skyrim ini???

I don't think I've done any of these

[Veladarius]

1 hour ago, AgentCarolina said:

wat

where are those at in the Skyrim ini???

I don't think I've done any of these

They may not be there, if not then just add them as there are a lot of things that can be done in the ini file that isn't listed as mine are heavily modified.

 

The first set goes under the papyrus section and the other can go anywhere (I have it in the general section).

 

 

These are my modified files, if toy look they are very different from the standard ini files. I don't suggest using them directly unless you know what some of these commands do as there are some that are specifically for a quad core cpu.

Skyrim.ini

SkyrimPrefs.ini

[AgentCarolina]

2 hours ago, Veladarius said:

They may not be there, if not then just add them as there are a lot of things that can be done in the ini file that isn't listed as mine are heavily modified.

 

The first set goes under the papyrus section and the other can go anywhere (I have it in the general section).

 

 

These are my modified files, if toy look they are very different from the standard ini files. I don't suggest using them directly unless you know what some of these commands do as there are some that are specifically for a quad core cpu.

Skyrim.ini

SkyrimPrefs.ini

ima swipe yours. I have a quad core 16gb of ram 6gb of vram as well

[Veladarius]

I have an i5 2500k running at stock speed and an AMD 280x w/ 3gb ram and my cpu and gpu usage still have room to spare though I don't use large textures, usually 1k for landscape. A lot of things are set at very high values as well, some double the Ultra settings.

 

 

Edit:  It will increase the load times between indoors and outdoors, sometime by quite a bit.

[Frankfranky]

12 hours ago, Veladarius said:

with a ugridstoload of 9

Have you had any of the weird stuff happen with 9? I read horror stories of broken quests... stuff. I recently went to ugrids 7 with absolutely no side effects. I have system resources to burn. I was thinking of going to 9, or even higher.

[Veladarius]

2 hours ago, Frankfranky said:

Have you had any of the weird stuff happen with 9? I read horror stories of broken quests... stuff. I recently went to ugrids 7 with absolutely no side effects. I have system resources to burn. I was thinking of going to 9, or even higher.

No, and the only sort of things this will set of is conflicts between groups of npc's who are triggered to act when loaded. Nearly all quests are triggered either by you entering a triggerbox or a location (which can vary in size) or by interacting with npc's. If anyone has a horror story then I would like to hear specifics of what happened because all I hear is 'don't do it, it causes problems'. Hell, most of the things I have done to my Skyrim game are things they say not to do. Look at my ini files and you will see all the edits made to them, everyone says don't do that either but here I am running ugrids to load of 9, draw distance of double the max of what the configurator can set and have better performance than most people.

 

Besides, with FO4 I use the Personal Vertibird mod so I fly all over the place, this would cause the same issues with a ugrids to load of 5 in the places that I fly over and I have not heard anything about that. Same would happen when using the BoS Vetibirds.

[Veladarius]

6 hours ago, AgentCarolina said:

ima swipe yours. I have a quad core 16gb of ram 6gb of vram as well

Let me know what your results are when using these, I am interested to know if it improved things for you or not.

[Frankfranky]

26 minutes ago, Veladarius said:

If anyone has a horror story then I would like to hear specifics

Wait, you want specifics from the "a texture mod broke the civil war" community? Well I am enthused by your reply. I am going to set ugrids 9 now. And if that doesn't slow things down ... (I suspect Mr 1080 will take it in it's stride like everything else I try to fry it with. I get the feeling it is laughing at me "you're pathetic. You think a few extra models are going to phase me? I do zbrush with 32 mill poly's before breakfast" ) I will go to 15. I will update with anything more interesting than ZOMG THIS IS INCREDIBLE.

[Veladarius]

1 hour ago, Frankfranky said:

Wait, you want specifics from the "a texture mod broke the civil war" community? Well I am enthused by your reply. I am going to set ugrids 9 now. And if that doesn't slow things down ... (I suspect Mr 1080 will take it in it's stride like everything else I try to fry it with. I get the feeling it is laughing at me "you're pathetic. You think a few extra models are going to phase me? I do zbrush with 32 mill poly's before breakfast" ) I will go to 15. I will update with anything more interesting than ZOMG THIS IS INCREDIBLE.

For a long time people have been saying 'don't do this' or 'don't do that', I have done all of it and my game runs better than FO4 and is more stable and my FO4 game is only lightly modded. Unless someone can give me specifics then I attribute it to people listening to people that have no idea what they are doing.

 

Considering I just have an R200 280x and half of my enb is disabled (the heavier effects) and I get 30 - 60 fps even in the forests and my GPU is generally at 60% - 80% at most.

[Frankfranky]

ok. so here is what I have so far.

 

One of the toughest areas in my game is around dragon's bridge. JK .... I love you jk .... didn't you put a lot of stuff in dragon's bridge though .... add that to all my 4k textures and high poly trees .... so I went tearing around there to see how it performed. (I am capped at 58 fps)

 

ugrids 7 -  58fps all day

ugrids 9 - down to 45, briefly when spinning the camera around like a lunatic. otherwise 55+ Looks amazing

ugrids 11 - as low as 25. mostly in the high 30's. Never more than 45. Completely playable. Looks amazing. Better than 9? idk. I made huge LODS in DYNdolod. At the longest distance I am not sure what was a LOD and what was a model.

ugrids 15 - 1 ctd, 3 ils leaving the inn to have a look. I gave up.

 

I also tried to bump the uExteriorCellBuffer. STEP says (ugrids +1) squared. I have always had it at 36 (default). When I tried to bump this up according to the STEP equation I got ILS every time. At 36 there were no problems. Maybe if I allocated some more memory in SKSE ... maybe. I don't get any stutter atm though. I think I am happy not to break something that is working.

 

So I am going to run with ugrids 11 for a while. See what happens over he course of a playthrough. I expect it will be fine. Ty for the encouraginy replies Veladarius

 

[Frankfranky]

The obligatory "from the standing stones" shot. ugrids 11. Looks pretty great. ugrids 5 you can see the line in the water at that first island. Is it worth 20fps? I am not sure. I know I am a bit spoilt, but "you learn to spend what is in your pocket" as they say. I am so used to a solid 58fps, I really notice the drop. Coming into Riverwood I was very briefly down to 12. It came back up to the mid 30's quick enough .. but ...

 

oh and it is a imgur post. you might have to copy the link and paste it into a new window.

 

Sorry to hijack your thread Xelriel. But to answer your first question, yes I do know a rock solid oldrim 101 modding guide. STEP has one. If you start with a fresh install, and follow exactly what they say to do, exactly, you will have an amazing looking game that is completely stable. There is a lot of stuff in there that I wouldn't really have chosen. My advice is install it all anyway. Just do what they say. Then, when you have it all working you can drop some of the ... stuff ... and start adding in the important things, like glamazons and whips.  http://wiki.step-project.com/STEP:2.10.0

 

 

 

 

https://i.imgur.com/F9oe7Ld.png

[/img]
 

 

[faky]

as i understand it SE is more stable and enjoys some engine improvements but it has none of the script magic stuff since skse isnt out or some such

[Frankfranky]

51 minutes ago, faky said:

SE is more stable

*was more stable. Then we got the Fall Creator's update to Windows and were able to use all our VRAM. As I see it the choice is between vanilla skyrim with a few ported mods (SE) and skyrim with everything you could possibly imagine, and a lot you never even thought of (Oldrim)

[faky]

well then you should have said that in the beginning!

but SE also supposedly better supports multiple NPCs and the makers of beyond skyrim (bruma) said that bruma is the only expansion they are releasing for oldrim because of that

as for skyblivion/skywind i dont know if they even decided yet

 

as for the screenshot - i think there was a person experimenting with really high ugrids number, toggling freeflycamera and doing shots of skyrim landscape from very high above

and it looked glorious

[Xelriel]

Not sure how to multi-quote everyone here but i do say that i am very intrigued how this post went in a slightly different direction, None the less, it is Very useful information for sure! And i also picked up your ini files as well and im going to take a look at them, But, One thing i noticed is not one of you aside from one of the last posts offered to suggest which version of Skyrim but from my guess, i would assume Oldrim? One thing i do have a hard time with is leaving behind is an ENB that i dearly love called Re-Engaged for Newrim that i feel i can not live without, i could NEVER find an ENB ( tried over two dozen ) for Oldrim i could call my own, even after hundreds of tweaks. And with myself using an i7-7700K, 1060 6GB, and 16 gigs of ram i was running 300+ mods ( some heavy graphical ) and full quality ENB settings, was still sitting inbetween 45 - 60 frames constant with Newrim.

 

Long story short, im still not sure which to pick