Skyrim: Extreme Graphics INI tool

Brackle

Brackle

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Jun 19, 2003
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http://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/skyrim/

Can change anything you want, and makes a custom ini for you to copy into your skyrim ini full.

Made both my 6990 100% and I assume it would do the same to nvidia SLI cards, also used all 4 of my cores, and supports eyefinity/surround in the ini.
 
Very nice, I can't wait to try this out when I get home. This is why pc gaming kicks ass.
 
Be nice if it had some explanation of what the options do (or some advice on what settings to change to optimize things). I guess that'll all come out in due time.
 
Don't expect miracles but I'm going to say a got a nice bit of refinement out of it. The shadows are super demanding so be cautious there.
 
Does anybody know how to get rid of the flickering shadows and make them sharper? With my settings right now, the shadow edges are blocky and sometimes there are odd flickering shadows on rock faces.
 
Einhanderkiller said:
Does anybody know how to get rid of the flickering shadows and make them sharper? With my settings right now, the shadow edges are blocky and sometimes there are odd flickering shadows on rock faces.
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You should be able to max everything out on this ini based on your nice hardware. You can try and get a little greedy with the shadow settings too if you want although major law of diminishing returns kicks in after ultra settings and 2048 figures.


If you haven't done so, do these things:

1.) http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21

2.) http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31
 
Probably a dumb question, but why can't we get ambient occlusion with ati cards?
 
B2BigAl said:
Probably a dumb question, but why can't we get ambient occlusion with ati cards?
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Because its a Nvidia driver setting that works on a few games. I haven't tried it with Skyrim but with New Vegas it was hardly noticeable and caused a massive performance hit. I never use it and you aren't missing much.

The game has only been out for a couple of days. I highly doubt that anyone has really gone through and tested all of those settings in the ini. There has been a lot of misinformation about the ini settings in previous Bethsoft titles.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Because its a Nvidia driver setting that works on a few games. I haven't tried it with Skyrim but with New Vegas it was hardly noticeable and caused a massive performance hit. I never use it and you aren't missing much.

The game has only been out for a couple of days. I highly doubt that anyone has really gone through and tested all of those settings in the ini. There has been a lot of misinformation about the ini settings in previous Bethsoft titles.
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It is definitely noticeable in skyrim shots.
 
So awesome, finally get the video card up to 100%.
All of those controls should have been in the video settings by default, stupid Bethesda.
 
Hey guys, I was over at a friends' house and he couldn't run the game at his native resolution.. he tried both 2560x1600 and 2650x1440.. the game is uber zoomed in. If he changes down to 1920x1080p everything is fine.. any solutions?
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
Yes but are you sure that there aren't any unintended side effects like I've been hearing about some of the shadow tweaks floating around?
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Nope, looks gorgeous.

It's a massive, MASSIVE performance hit. Like, ungodly bad. Cuts my framerate in half, easily. But I can't play without it - the game just looks so...dated...otherwise.

SSAO Off:

2011-11-11_00006.jpg


Note how everything just seems to 'float' on top of each other...nothing really FEELS like it's organically 'connected'

Compare to...

SSAO On:

2011-11-11_00005.jpg


Note, specifically, the corners and 'under' or 'behind' things (for example, the weapons rack in the left-back of the room, and the beam next to it and stone projections on the wall above it...or under the various lamp posts...or in the floor seems over to the right).
 
I tried this and it jacked up my mouse. The x and y axis' are now inverted, even though it shows they're not in the settings and I can't change them back. Seems like it still needs a little work, but it's a good start.
 
B2BigAl said:
I tried this and it jacked up my mouse. The x and y axis' are now inverted, even though it shows they're not in the settings and I can't change them back. Seems like it still needs a little work, but it's a good start.
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Just go back into the game, and go into the game options and switch it back to inverted and lower the sensitivity. I did this to me too
 
dderidex said:
Nope, looks gorgeous.

It's a massive, MASSIVE performance hit. Like, ungodly bad. Cuts my framerate in half, easily. But I can't play without it - the game just looks so...dated...otherwise.

SSAO Off:

http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss326/xan_fulton/Skyrim Comparisons/2011-11-11_00006.jpg

Note how everything just seems to 'float' on top of each other...nothing really FEELS like it's organically 'connected'

Compare to...

SSAO On:

http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss326/xan_fulton/Skyrim Comparisons/2011-11-11_00005.jpg

Note, specifically, the corners and 'under' or 'behind' things (for example, the weapons rack in the left-back of the room, and the beam next to it and stone projections on the wall above it...or under the various lamp posts...or in the floor seems over to the right).
Click to expand...

Try turning it down to performance from high quality. I got a huge boost in frame rate and little to no image quality loss. Also try the oblivion profile for ambient occlusion over fallout3. looks better imo
 
DASHlT said:
Just go back into the game, and go into the game options and switch it back to inverted and lower the sensitivity. I did this to me too
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Problem is it inverted the x axis as well, and I don't see anywhere I can change it back. It also makes that stupid auto hardware detect thing come up everytime I launch the game and I have to update my settings again. I tried making the ini read only, but the game crashes if I do.

The game did seem to look a little better though. Might give it another shot tomorrow.
 
pandora's box said:
Try turning it down to performance from high quality. I got a huge boost in frame rate and little to no image quality loss. Also try the oblivion profile for ambient occlusion over fallout3. looks better imo
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The 'Oblivion' profile, meaning the compatibility mode of '0x00000011 (Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion)'?

If so, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. The 'Fallout 3' option provides MUCH more shadow and depth. Indeed, the 'Oblivion' profile I could have sworn disabled ambient occlusion entirely until I took another screenshot and directly compared it against the actually-disabled shot. It does, indeed, still have it enabled, but...so little, such a small degree that it's barely noticeable where it DOES appear...and it does actually not provide the shadows on many objects. The 'Fallout 3' option is definitely best.

That said - your suggestion on using the 'performance' mode is a solid one. I did, indeed, see a big performance improvement using that. And while you can see a (very, very slight) difference flipping back and forth between 'before' and 'after' screenshots...it is a SUPER minor difference, and definitely not noticeable in-game.
 
So if I just use this tool to max this out, will the game be playable on the system in my sig.

Also, does this tool increase outdoor draw distance?
 
Anyone else not seeing a change at all using this tool I used it and turned made the SkyrimPrefs.ini file a read only and I could not see a difference at all. IDK Call me crazy but it looks the same. Am I doing something wrong??
 
Stanfiem said:
Anyone else not seeing a change at all using this tool I used it and turned made the SkyrimPrefs.ini file a read only and I could not see a difference at all. IDK Call me crazy but it looks the same. Am I doing something wrong??
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I must be too, I didn't see any change except for the spastic mouse.
 
anyone care to post screens comparison of the regular ultra settings and dna extreme ones?
 
PanzeR- said:
anyone care to post screens comparison of the regular ultra settings and dna extreme ones?
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+1

I would like to see a comparison of regular maxed out settings vs custom extreme settings. :D

1920x1080 please!
 
To be honest The extreme settings made the game look like crap to me I saw a hit of maybe 10fps and things like the flames in my hands and everything else made everything pixelated. I took the file out and changed back to the default and it all looks better now. However I am getting this weird intermittent shadow "wave across things like rock walls and such. I wonder what is causing this anyone have any ideas?
 
Stanfiem said:
However I am getting this weird intermittent shadow "wave across things like rock walls and such. I wonder what is causing this anyone have any ideas?
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If you are talking about the shadows "jumping" every few seconds, it is caused by a poor implementation of shadows changing due to the sun moving. It is normal.
 
^I dug a little deeper and found out that it was a combination of my shadow detail being set too low and the effect of the sun moving. I was getting what looked like lines instead of a blanket shadow across semi distant landscape. I was worried I had screwed something up in my .ini when I set it back to default. But I then tried cranking the shadow detail up and it fixed the lines and made them into shadows again.

I must say that even without the mods (I tried the nexus mods and it seemed like overkill on the sharpening IMHO) I am thoroughly impressed with this game so far. I was worried this would be another Oblivion that was set in Bruma but the way they use the environment in this game is pretty incredible to me. Walking from falkreath to karthwasten I was in awe at the scenery. The developers really put some time into the development of the landscapes. It really feels like the actual world. I love descending from a mountian top covered in snow and stepping foot into an evergreen forest then looking over to my left and seeing a 30 foot waterfall. then as I exit the forest the trees get thinner and thinner until I have reached a city full of waterways. In oblivion it seemed like all the marshlands were marshlands and all the forests were forest, yet in skyrim ever mountian top/ middle/ and basin has a different feel to it. Not to mention heading up north was a twist of its own.

Plus the way they implemented the oblivion storyline into the quests, yet changed some aspects of the game to suit skyrim is really cool (remain silent). If anyone is on the fence about whether or not to wait and get this game you need to go ahead and buy it. Truly amazing! This also says a lot because I really was worried that this game would be a rehash of oblivion with a different story. It took me a little while to really get immersed into the game but I am now there. Not to mention I probably have about 30 active quests and have yet to visit all of the major cities and am only about 2% done with the main storyline
 
Blackstone said:
So if I just use this tool to max this out, will the game be playable on the system in my sig.

Also, does this tool increase outdoor draw distance?
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly, the best way to improve draw distance is to increase the number of grids to load. I did this in Oblivion and you could see Oblivion gates, buildings, and other features much further off in the distance but the side effect was that it was VERY demanding.
 
wow i just stated using this and set every thing to max and its using 1900+mb or vram on my 6950 at 1920x1080. il hate to see how much vram you would need for a 3 monitor set up
 
personnaly i use forced SSAO from the nvidia drivers with Nvidia inspector and the high quality setting. the framerate is very good 99% of the times and it look absolutly amazing...
 
Q-BZ said:
You should be able to max everything out on this ini based on your nice hardware. You can try and get a little greedy with the shadow settings too if you want although major law of diminishing returns kicks in after ultra settings and 2048 figures.


If you haven't done so, do these things:

1.) http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21

2.) http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31
Click to expand...

That AA sharpening mod makes my loader crash every single time until I delete the d3d9 file.
 
SilverSliver said:
That AA sharpening mod makes my loader crash every single time until I delete the d3d9 file.
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Huh. I've hadn't had any problems here but it's probably one of those hit and miss things.



Blackstone said:
Anyone else getting crash to desktop issues after starting to play with this?
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Sure. If you start taking things past "default" ultra settings you're begging for more instability.
 
Can anyone confirm that the Extended Ultra & Extreme settings look great?
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
Can anyone confirm that the Extended Ultra & Extreme settings look great?
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Nice refinements but honestly from what I could personally see not earth shattering improvements over "default" ultra.

The real unstable bitch is when you start increasing UGridsLoad. Be careful with that one.

EDIT: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.ph...-comparisons-and-explanation-default-57911/cv

Use this thread as a guide for UGrids.



Vsync: This is a detail about disabling it that I'm not sure a lot of people know and I just found out myself. I'm eager for his full guide.


http://tweakguides.com/

Let's take a moment to talk in more detail about Skyrim. It's obviously incredibly popular, and I think deservedly so. I'm working on a comprehensive Skyrim Tweak Guide right now, but it won't be up on for at least another week or two.

It takes time to properly test and document the advanced tweaks, but thankfully some of the decent tweaks are already widely available. There is also unfortunately a lot of confusion, which hopefully the guide will help clear up. The bottom line is that at present the game can definitely be made to look nicer, but some things like texture quality can't be improved much more regardless of tweaking. Some people have misinterpreted the answers extracted from this old interview with Bethesda to mean that a high-res texture pack will be released. That's not what they said: "The PC version also gets higher res textures, larger render modes, and a bunch of other effects you can scale up if your machine is a beast." They were talking about the features of the game prior to its release, so these are already incorporated into Skyrim on PC.

In terms of performance, there are a wide range of tradeoffs, tips and recommendations I have in the guide, but let's be clear: Skyrim is a CPU-limited game, which is why there are slowdowns in certain areas.

Performance articles like this one show it, but let me demonstrate it on my own i7 920/GTX 580 system. The following screenshots are all of an identical low FPS scene on my system, at the Ultra preset with 8xAA/16xAF, and FPS shown at top right: 1920x1200, 1920x1080, 1280x720. To save time I'll spell out the result: at all three resolutions, FPS fluctuates around 28-30. In fact if I go from 8x MSAA to no MSAA, the result is still the same. This is a classic example of a CPU bottleneck. And even with the relatively poor textures and shadows, I've also seen my Video RAM usage rise to in excess of 1GB after only a few minutes of gameplay at Ultra settings, not including any extra tweaks.

The fact that it performs much more smoothly than previous Bethesda games tends to indicate that the setting tradeoffs built into the PC version of the Creation Engine are not so bad despite the game's console-based heritage. In any case the guide will be out soon and you will have the option to alter a much wider range of settings. In the meanwhile, concentrate on enjoying this excellent game, faults and all.

Update: For people still not clear on what this all means - Skyrim only runs on the equivalent of 2 CPU cores; it cannot use more than 2 threads, so performance is CPU-limited.

Also a heads-up that places like PC Gamer have widely misreported the VSync tweak I posted earlier. To disable VSync you must add iPresentInterval=0 under [Display] in Skyrim.ini, not SkyrimPrefs.ini, otherwise it won't work.

Alternatively you can enable Triple Buffering, but that uses more VRAM, which is why disabling VSync is the easiest solution. Either way, it is a necessary step as VSync actually reduces overall FPS, not just caps it.
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Q-BZ said:
Don't expect miracles but I'm going to say a got a nice bit of refinement out of it. The shadows are super demanding so be cautious there.
Click to expand...
I was annoyed at the shadow detail so I turned it up to the max and watched my frame rates drop through the floor. The solution? Turn off AA and turn on FXAA. It looked better in my opinion and performance was smoooooth. I wish I could use ambient occlusion with my ATI card in this game. Aside from having higher resolution textures, that's my only other problem with this game, oh and the annoying menu controls, wtf is up with that?
 
If anyone is having trouble with crashing to the desktop randomly you should try Large address Aware. From nexus. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=202 I was getting crashes to my desktop with now indication of what was going on. Even on stock settings.

Well I installed the LAA (It allows the game to use more than 2gbs of system ram) and The game has not crashed once since then.
 
Stanfiem said:
If anyone is having trouble with crashing to the desktop randomly you should try Large address Aware. From nexus. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=202 I was getting crashes to my desktop with now indication of what was going on. Even on stock settings.

Well I installed the LAA (It allows the game to use more than 2gbs of system ram) and The game has not crashed once since then.
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.exe modifications usually invalidate Steam achievements, though.

Can you confirm if you've been able to get them since making that modification?
 
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