[GTX 580] Help me maximize my Skyrim settings

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OldM3ta

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 6, 2004
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OK, I didn't get a chance to play the game this weekend, but it's at home, installed, and ready to go.

I don't want to spend hours testing changes and benchmarking for ideal FPS. I just want to get the game running smooth and at Ultra. My specs are:

Sandy Bridge i5-2500K @ 4.0GHz
8GB RAM
Win 7 x64
GTX 580 1.5GB (with a driver from like two months ago)


For some reason, the system suggested high instead of ultra. My monitor's max res is 1920x1080. What are the few things I need to do before getting my gaming on to help the smoothness of my game without taking away from quality? Thanks!


PS. For BF3 and Skyrim, is SLI 580 worth it at 1920x1080P?
 
I set Ultra, then added in the the land and object shadows via the .ini tweak, then turned on transparency AA and ambient occlusion (performance mode) in Nvidia Inspector. Looks pretty good, and still gets good framerates.

SLI isn't worth it for Skyrim, and only marginally so for BF3 at that resolution.
 
I had the same suggested setting with my 570. I said pfft let's start at ultra/max with FXAA on and go down from there if needed. Without any fps counters, the intro cart ride seemed ok and the game itself seems fine. It has that smooth mouselook feel so it has be in the 40-60 range. I also updated my driver to the beta that came out on the 10th.
 
Thanks guys... keep the info coming. I'll just do what my friends here on the forums suggest, and then get gaming! I appreciate your time and suggestions!
 
So, can anyone comment on AA vs FXAA? (isn't FXAA the ATI one?) Have people forced MLAA?
 
I don't get why people with high end cards set the game to 'ultra', you do know that the game's ultra settings is not the maxed settings right?
 
People with high cards set the game to ultra because they paid for high end cards to play games at the highest quality they can manage. As far as your question, I don't understand. If you are implying that ultra settings are not the max highest settings, that's fine. I just would be happy to run at whatever Bethesda thought Ultra is.
 
IsaacMM said:
I don't get why people with high end cards set the game to 'ultra', you do know that the game's ultra settings is not the maxed settings right?
Click to expand...

Pray-tell then, what should they do without file editting?

I'm curious to where this troll is going...
 
chockomonkey said:
So, can anyone comment on AA vs FXAA? (isn't FXAA the ATI one?) Have people forced MLAA?
Click to expand...

FXAA seems like an edge-detecting AA. It does a great job of softening alpha/transparency edges such as those on trees and foliage, but also tends to blur textures too. Look at the roof tops in the following:

FXAA Off
fxaaoff.jpg


FXAA On
fxaaon.jpg


It's not so noticeable on close-up surfaces, but it seems to be counteracting anisotropy. The trade-off is worth it though.. foliage looks bad without some form of transparency AA.
 
I heard that the latest Nvidia driver allows for better multi-GPU performance (SLI) than the AMD counterpart (Xfire) because Nvidia didn't drop the ball like AMD did (I have an AMD 5870 card) and actually put out a driver for Skyrim to optimize it, and more than likely, more optimizations will be forthcoming from Nvidia, and AMD will put out their drivers as well.

If you truly want to maximize Skyrim, graphically, you'll have to wait for a texture pack, like the ones Qarl made for Oblivion and Morrowind. Once Skyrim gets a texture pack, you will be able to push the shit out of your hardware, and it will look a looooooooooooooooooooot better.

As it is, the game does look pretty good, but it would definitely look noticeably better with a high res texture pack.
 
Guys. I moved my installation over to my SSD using Junctions. Then, I set my game to 1080, and went ultra. And then followed the instructions on how to tweak the ini file that was on the link I posted earlier. I didn't check FXAA since I didn't see any differences in the above pictures. Lastly, I followed instructions here http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=134 to get the game working with more than 2GB RAM.

Gameplay was great. I didn't monitor my FPS with fraps, but everything felt smooth. Indoors and outdoors. The one thing I noticed was the awful shadows. The shadows in this game are hard and suck.

Other than that, wow.. beautiful. Thank to all who posted suggestions.
 
MeTaSpARKs said:
Guys. I moved my installation over to my SSD using Junctions. Then, I set my game to 1080, and went ultra. And then followed the instructions on how to tweak the ini file that was on the link I posted earlier. I didn't check FXAA since I didn't see any differences in the above pictures. Lastly, I followed instructions here http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=134 to get the game working with more than 2GB RAM.

Gameplay was great. I didn't monitor my FPS with fraps, but everything felt smooth. Indoors and outdoors. The one thing I noticed was the awful shadows. The shadows in this game are hard and suck.

Other than that, wow.. beautiful. Thank to all who posted suggestions.
Click to expand...

Here's a thread with shadow tweaks. http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1257566-potential-shadow-fix/page__st__40

I went through all of them last night, and unfortunately they hit my FPS too much--but there's definitely improvement to be had if your computer can take it.
 
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