Video Card Advice for Modded Skyrim

D

dj_2004

Supreme [H]ardness
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Oct 9, 2004
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Between the 2GB GTX 680 and the Radeon 7970, which would be the better bang for the buck when it comes to playing a heavily modified Skyrim? By heavily modified, I mean HD texture packs (1024x1024 and above textures), ini tweaks such as increased ugrids, new villages that do not use interior cells, possibly ENB, etc.

Seems that used 7970s go for ~$430-450 now while new GTX 680s are ~$500 + shipping + tax when they are in stock.

Judging from the reviews that I've seen, the GTX 680 is a better performer in Skyrim but that is an unmodded Skyrim so VRAM limitations (right now, Skyrim is easily maxing out my 1.28GB VRAM and that is without ENB, AO, and some other intensive mods) and extra processing demand aren't introduced. Plus, a used 7970 is currently about $70-100 cheaper than a GTX 680. I play at 1920x1200 resolution with 16xAF and 2xAA. My computer specs are in my signature.

Or would it be better to just wait a month or two to see how the drivers mature and if the prices stabilize?
 
Highest I've seen on Skyrim was 1600MB at 1900x1200, 8x MSAA, everything on ultra, and the high resolution texture pack installed. The GTX 680 won't be vram limited and it looks like you'll get better performance out of it. I'm CPU limited with my configuration.
 
From what I've seen, Nvidia wins hands down when it comes to Skyrim, the game just runs a lot better on the green side.

If the 2GB VRAM won't cause any issues with heavy graphic mods, I think it'll be best to get the GTX680. I have no idea what Nvidia has done, but those things can run super high x3 monitor resolutions without VRAM issues so I don't think you'll face any in Skyrim with the resolution you're using.

I think it's best to make your final judgment after confirming how the GPU runs with heavy graphic mods, ask in these forums or other Skyrim related forums how 680 owners are doing with the game using the mods on your mind.
 
With 1.25 GB of RAM I was able to run:

Skyrim Ultra + heavy .ini tweaks + official HD pack + many more 2K HD textures + other mods + 4xAA @ 1920x1080

And was not VRAM limited. 8x FSAA pushed it over the limit, but...do you really need 8x?

That said, I was using 1.25 GB, not 2 GB. So there should be no problem.

I've heard vague accounts of people getting 3 GB+ VRAM usage but nothing confirmed and frankly it sounds like, if even true, they were just using a ton of 4K textures + 8x AA or higher to try and force it over the limit anyway.
 
I've seen Skyrim use over 2.5 GB of the ram on my 6970 with tweaked INI settings and HD pack and ultra in game settings, FXAA + 8X EQAA

On that note try the official WHQL 12.3 drivers that came out today

"Skyrim: No longer displays flickering and texture corruption."

There are some kick ass settings in the ini to enable DoF, HDR Lighting, Radial Blue, and real time sky updates/lighting. Then you'll see Vram usage go crazy.
 
Hmm, sounds like a 2GB GTX 680 will be fine then as I am okay with 2xAA (I've never cared all that much about jaggies) and I doubt if I'll be going past 1920x1200 resolution anytime soon. Now to wait for the EVGA branded card to get in stock...

Thanks for the posts!
 
blandead said:
oh you're right, my bad... I got confused with all these 7970 reviews....

BUT, the memory usage is hitting the wall it's literally maxing out the 2GB of ram with the described scenario
Click to expand...

What resolution do you play at and do you know if the VRAM goes below 2GB when your AA is only 2x?
 
I run Skyrim at 2560x1600 with my 7970 OC @ 1125/1575, with 8x AA and 16x AF. The only setting not maxed is shadows, which I've read is more of a CPU limiting factor than GPU. And when I say maxed shadows, I mean ini tweaks, not just setting shadows to ultra. As for mods, I use the Bethesda HD texture pack, 2K texture pack (2048x2048 textures for whatever is possible), and any other high res texture pack I can find (water, rocks, blood). I get a pretty consistent 60FPS (capped at 60 to avoid the buggy physics problem), even during fights with 5-6 enemies. However, I do randomly get slowdowns in caves with wind effects. It happens very rarely, and I'm also not sure if it's a GPU factor or not.

So I can vouch for an OC 7970 being able to smoothly run heavily modded Skyrim. I'd bet the GTX680 should be able to perform similarly; even a modded Skyrim doesn't seem that intensive on GPUs.
 
I run those with a 448 but more 4096x4096 texture packs. Any of those will be fine.
 
skyrim runs fine on 6970 series with your mods, but if you wanna spend the money, 7970 runs it a little better.
 
oldmanbal said:
skyrim runs fine on 6970 series with your mods, but if you wanna spend the money, 7970 runs it a little better.
Click to expand...

So many choices. :(

I am not a person who upgrades every year but instead every 2-3 years so I want something that will last for a while. But I don't play many games besides the TES series, strategy games, and sometimes a single player FPS (like Hard Reset). FPS games are often fairly undemanding besides BF3, strategy games play "fine" with a low FPS, so that just leaves modded Skyrim and maybe Oblivion.

So, I am not really sure what to get now. A used 6970 is about half the price of a used 7970. Will I notice that much of a difference while playing modded Skyrim? I would prefer my FPS to stay above 35 in most areas so I'm not looking for 60 FPS smoothness. Right now, I get about 20 FPS while walking through Pinewood Village (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12851) and that is without AO and ENB. 20 FPS is unplayable.

If anyone has any more suggestions on which video card would be suitable for fulfilling my requirements, please let me know.
 
No, you won't notice that much of a difference. Skyrim plays beautifully on a 6970 with mods, high resolution, and tons of AA.
 
With modded Skyrim as the game, how can a 6970 be so much better than a GTX 470? Isn't it comparable to a GTX 570 which is about the same as a GTX 480? And the GTX 480 isn't all that much better than a GTX 470. Is it the extra VRAM that is helping so much?
 
A 20% gain, which is what I expected, is insignificant when I get 20 FPS on my GTX 470. Unless the extra ~700MB of VRAM in the 6970 is immensely helpful, which it may be, a 6970 would not be fast enough.

The problem I am having is figuring out what is bottlenecking me so much. My VRAM and GPU usage are both maxed out so I have no idea which of the two (or both) is the cause. If it is VRAM then I can just pay $200 and purchase a used 6970 or something, else I am looking at an expensive 7970 or GTX 680. I could wait for the GTX 670 but then there will likely be another better card just over the horizon and I am tired of waiting.

In Anandtech's bench comparison between a GTX 570 and a 6970, the 6970 does much better than the GTX 570 in the 2560x1600 resolution bench (55 FPS compared to 39). In the benches in lower resolutions with only (very) high settings, the GTX 570 wins by a decent margin. As such, it does sound like my GTX 470 is being held back mostly due to its 1.28GB VRAM and not so much its processing power, which makes the 6970 a seemingly good replacement.

Again, thanks for all the helpful posts everyone. I'll probably wait a few days to see if anyone has more stuff to contribute to the topic and then make my decision.
 
Something to consider is the review numbers from Hs 7870 review -
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/04/amd_radeon_hd_7870_7850_video_card_review/7

The version is not tweaked or modded beyond the high res texture pack but it is at 2560x1600 and 8x MSAA (4x for the GTX 570) versus your intended 1920x1200 at 2x MSAA.

Also can you do Ambient Occlusion (I assume this what you meant by AO) with AMD cards now?

What happens if you drop your shadow setting down to high? And can you tell the difference visually?

Have you tried SkyBoost?
 
I've got Skyrim and 6970 lightning, I noticed FPS drops using ultra shadows compared to high after the recent patches, they both look like shit to my eyes anyway so I use high lol.

If you want, let me know which areas you want me to test (+video settings/mods) and I'll report back with how much FPS I'm getting.
 
limitedaccess said:
Something to consider is the review numbers from Hs 7870 review -
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/04/amd_radeon_hd_7870_7850_video_card_review/7

The version is not tweaked or modded beyond the high res texture pack but it is at 2560x1600 and 8x MSAA (4x for the GTX 570) versus your intended 1920x1200 at 2x MSAA.

Also can you do Ambient Occlusion (I assume this what you meant by AO) with AMD cards now?

What happens if you drop your shadow setting down to high? And can you tell the difference visually?

Have you tried SkyBoost?
Click to expand...

In the Apples to Apples comparison, the GTX 570 does better than the 6970. I am now confused again.

And I forgot that AMD can't do AO unless that changed recently. My last ATI/AMD card was a 9800 so I'm out of the AMD loop. Truthfully, AO isn't that big of deal to me. I wanted to get the point across that I plan to run a heavily modified and 'demanding' Skyrim.

No clue about the shadow difference. I have a few shadow ini tweaks so I I'm not sure what my shadow settings are when compared to ultra/high.

SkyBoost does nothing for me so it shouldn't be my CPU bottlenecking me, at least too much. AFAIK, in non-extreme mode, no GPU optimizations are included in the mod.

metallicaband said:
I've got Skyrim and 6970 lightning, I noticed FPS drops using ultra shadows compared to high after the recent patches, they both look like shit to my eyes anyway so I use high lol.

If you want, let me know which areas you want me to test (+video settings/mods) and I'll report back with how much FPS I'm getting.
Click to expand...

I think I will go try playing the game with the high shadow setting instead of whatever I have now (I selected ultra then modified my ini). Perhaps that will put enough stress off my GTX 470 and then I don't have to spend anything. :)

If you have time, please test out the Pinewood Village mod - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12851. Just do a quick tour of the village and see if you get below 30 FPS as well as recording your GPU and VRAM usage. Or install ENB with the fancy settings (dynamic DoF and that one lighting setting that I forget the name of) and run around a forested area. ENB would probably be a better test since Pinewood Village adds a lot of NPC to the village causing more CPU usage, but ENB is more time consuming to install.
 
dj_2004 said:
In the Apples to Apples comparison, the GTX 570 does better than the 6970. I am now confused again.

And I forgot that AMD can't do AO unless that changed recently. My last ATI/AMD card was a 9800 so I'm out of the AMD loop. Truthfully, AO isn't that big of deal to me. I wanted to get the point across that I plan to run a heavily modified and 'demanding' Skyrim.

No clue about the shadow difference. I have a few shadow ini tweaks so I I'm not sure what my shadow settings are when compared to ultra/high.

SkyBoost does nothing for me so it shouldn't be my CPU bottlenecking me, at least too much.
Click to expand...

You will want to note this line in the review -

The GeForce GTX 570 was playable at 4X MSAA plus FXAA at 2560x1600. When we tried to play at 8X MSAA plus FXAA the game was laggy, and there were some bad performance drops that can be described at choppiness as we played. Keep in mind the GTX 570 has 1.2GB of VRAM on board, while the HD 7870 and HD 6970 have 2GB on board.
Click to expand...

Basically at point it seems like the vram limitation kicked in.

The other thing to note is that with the numbers in that review it does suggest that the 7970 and 680 type performance would not be required. Although not modded it is running at 1.7x+ the resolution and 8x vs 2x MSAA.

The only caveat is maybe if someone could test that specific piece of custom content you posted.
 
I don't know what mods these people are running who say they don't max out 1.25GB cards... But they must not be running much. I upgraded from a 1.5GB 580 to a 3GB 580 Classified Ultra because I was hitting the VRAM wall pretty hard. The only games that I hit VRAM limitations with the 1.5GB 580 were BF:3 (rarely), Skyrim (severe), and Fallout 3/New Vegas (severe). I now run with everything on max with 8x AA & 16x AF. I game on a 23" 1920 x 1080 monitor, the most memory I have seen used has been 1.8-1.85 with Skyrim. To give you an idea of the mod load I was running:


(I opted for the very highest quality version package for each of these mods)

Caliente Non Nude Female Body Replacer (nude was a nice novelty but gets old and makes you feel a little weird when you're constantly looting dead girls).
SkyUI
Quality World Map
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures
Better Circlets
Deadly Dragons
Detailed Faces
Detailed Lips
Dragonbone Weapons
Realistic Water Textures & Landscapes
No More Blocky Faces
Glowing Ore Veins
Enhanced Blood Textures (usually leave this off as there have been some conflicts)
Jaysus Swords
Enhanced Night
Dovahkiin Hideout
High Quality Eyes
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Improved NPC Clothing
Lockpick Pro (So nice after you finish your first run-through)
Lush Grass
Midas
FXAA Post Process Injector
Nicer Snowflakes
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Deadly Spell Impacts
Serious HD Retexture
Shadow Striping Fix
SKSE
Sounds of Skyrim the Wilds
Sounds of Skyrim the Dungeons
Deadly Serious Shrouded Armor
Visible windows
Weapon Retexture
Weathered Warpaint & Improved Dirt
Skyrim Enhanced Shaders
Sunglare
Detailed Bodies
Lush trees
HiRes legible Road Signs

And a few more but I can't recall their names as I deleted the Zip files for them. :/
 
Fixall said:
I don't know what mods these people are running who say they don't max out 1.25GB cards... But they must not be running much. I upgraded from a 1.5GB 580 to a 3GB 580 Classified Ultra because I was hitting the VRAM wall pretty hard. The only games that I hit VRAM limitations with the 1.5GB 580 were BF:3 (rarely), Skyrim (severe), and Fallout 3/New Vegas (severe). I now run with everything on max with 8x AA & 16x AF. I game on a 23" 1920 x 1080 monitor, the most memory I have seen used has been 1.8-1.85 with Skyrim. To give you an idea of the mod load I was running:


(I opted for the very highest quality version package for each of these mods)

Caliente Non Nude Female Body Replacer (nude was a nice novelty but gets old and makes you feel a little weird when you're constantly looting dead girls).
SkyUI
Quality World Map
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures
Better Circlets
Deadly Dragons
Detailed Faces
Detailed Lips
Dragonbone Weapons
Realistic Water Textures & Landscapes
No More Blocky Faces
Glowing Ore Veins
Enhanced Blood Textures (usually leave this off as there have been some conflicts)
Jaysus Swords
Enhanced Night
Dovahkiin Hideout
High Quality Eyes
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Improved NPC Clothing
Lockpick Pro (So nice after you finish your first run-through)
Lush Grass
Midas
FXAA Post Process Injector
Nicer Snowflakes
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Deadly Spell Impacts
Serious HD Retexture
Shadow Striping Fix
SKSE
Sounds of Skyrim the Wilds
Sounds of Skyrim the Dungeons
Deadly Serious Shrouded Armor
Visible windows
Weapon Retexture
Weathered Warpaint & Improved Dirt
Skyrim Enhanced Shaders
Sunglare
Detailed Bodies
Lush trees
HiRes legible Road Signs

And a few more but I can't recall their names as I deleted the Zip files for them. :/
Click to expand...
I run no problems with a 448 which has like 1. something GB of ram have HD DLC pack installed 19x12 then:

Clipboard01.jpg
 
dj_2004 said:
If you have time, please test out the Pinewood Village mod - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12851. Just do a quick tour of the village and see if you get below 30 FPS as well as recording your GPU and VRAM usage. Or install ENB with the fancy settings (dynamic DoF and that one lighting setting that I forget the name of) and run around a forested area. ENB would probably be a better test since Pinewood Village adds a lot of NPC to the village causing more CPU usage, but ENB is more time consuming to install.
Click to expand...

There are so many ENB mods I didn't know which to use. As for pinewood, that thing is crazy CPU intensive, I only used my PC monitor quickly (I play on my HDTV) to test with a resolution of 1680x1050 using x2AA and max settings + the 2K HD textures mod, the "Memory Usage (Dedicated)" option in GPU-Z which I'm assuming is the VRAM would easily reach 1800-2000 MB while walking through Pinewood, I'm not even using a very big resolution!!

FPS was fluctuating (28-60) so it wasn't very smooth running through the place, I was also being bottlenecked by my CPU.
 
limitedaccess said:
You will want to note this line in the review -



Basically at point it seems like the vram limitation kicked in.

The other thing to note is that with the numbers in that review it does suggest that the 7970 and 680 type performance would not be required. Although not modded it is running at 1.7x+ the resolution and 8x vs 2x MSAA.

The only caveat is maybe if someone could test that specific piece of custom content you posted.
Click to expand...

Seems I skipped over all the text in the review. :p I will be going with a 2GB+ card then. Even if Skyrim does not utilize that much, it should help in future games.

metallicaband said:
There are so many ENB mods I didn't know which to use. As for pinewood, that thing is crazy CPU intensive, I only used my PC monitor quickly (I play on my HDTV) to test with a resolution of 1680x1050 using x2AA and max settings + the 2K HD textures mod, the "Memory Usage (Dedicated)" option in GPU-Z which I'm assuming is the VRAM would easily reach 1800-2000 MB while walking through Pinewood, I'm not even using a very big resolution!!

FPS was fluctuating (28-60) so it wasn't very smooth running through the place, I was also being bottlenecked by my CPU.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the NPCs add a lot of load on the CPU. Still, the information you provided is very useful concerning video cards so thanks for doing that run through.

For ENB, I'm guessing this http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12180 will get the job done for benchmarking if you want to give it a try. Or a more simple installation is http://enbdev.com/enbseries_skyrim_v0103betainjector.zip. Either one should give a good idea but I am not sure if the enbdev link contains the Bokeh filter ini. And according to the site, "bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 must be set in SkyrimPrefs.ini file to make this mod (ENB) work." A good testing place is running around Evergreen Grove as it is one of the more demanding areas. It is a lot of work so it is fine if you do not want to test ENB out.
 
In the end, I decided to go with a GTX 680 as it seemed like a good choice, and it is EVGA which is about the only video card company I like.

Anyways, with Unreal ENB (no SSAO, Matso's DoF), no AA, 16xAF, the game still murders the card at times as I get FPS in the high 20s in some areas. That DoF is very, very demanding and perhaps it is causing my CPU to bottleneck me... :eek:

Skyrim does max out the 2GB VRAM in a few areas, though most of the time it stays around 1700-1900MB. I am glad I did not go with a 1.5GB card as a lot of these textures are only 1024x1024. I can only imagine what would happen with the 2048x2048 versions.

I'll spend some time overclocking the card this week to see if I can get a few more FPS out of it.

Edit:
In the places that my FPS drops into the 20s, my GPU usage goes below 100% (areas where I get ~50+ FPS the usage is close to 100%) and instead goes into the 80s and 70s. I thought it was VRAM because one place I go over 2GB but the other troublesome spot is 1759MB. CPU usage was in the high 50s. I guess my CPU is the bottleneck even though I've seen CPU usage in the 60s before. I can't think of anything else that would cause the FPS drop.
 
Last edited:
dj_2004 said:
In the end, I decided to go with a GTX 680 as it seemed like a good choice, and it is EVGA which is about the only video card company I like.

Anyways, with Unreal ENB (no SSAO, Matso's DoF), no AA, 16xAF, the game still murders the card at times as I get FPS in the high 20s in some areas. That DoF is very, very demanding and perhaps it is causing my CPU to bottleneck me... :eek:

Skyrim does max out the 2GB VRAM in a few areas, though most of the time it stays around 1700-1900MB. I am glad I did not go with a 1.5GB card as a lot of these textures are only 1024x1024. I can only imagine what would happen with the 2048x2048 versions.

I'll spend some time overclocking the card this week to see if I can get a few more FPS out of it.

Edit:
In the places that my FPS drops into the 20s, my GPU usage goes below 100% (areas where I get ~50+ FPS the usage is close to 100%) and instead goes into the 80s and 70s. I thought it was VRAM because one place I go over 2GB but the other troublesome spot is 1759MB. CPU usage was in the high 50s. I guess my CPU is the bottleneck even though I've seen CPU usage in the 60s before. I can't think of anything else that would cause the FPS drop.
Click to expand...
That is interesting, I am in the same boat as you as I have a 1.5gb 580 gtx and need to upgrade as vram usage is 1.5gb.. everywhere I have hundreds of mods. I am also at the same processor/OC as you. Do you think waiting for the 4gb version would be better is I plan on the the extreme textures such as the 4k ones?
 
Fixall said:
I don't know what mods these people are running who say they don't max out 1.25GB cards... But they must not be running much. I upgraded from a 1.5GB 580 to a 3GB 580 Classified Ultra because I was hitting the VRAM wall pretty hard. The only games that I hit VRAM limitations with the 1.5GB 580 were BF:3 (rarely), Skyrim (severe), and Fallout 3/New Vegas (severe). I now run with everything on max with 8x AA & 16x AF. I game on a 23" 1920 x 1080 monitor, the most memory I have seen used has been 1.8-1.85 with Skyrim. To give you an idea of the mod load I was running:


(I opted for the very highest quality version package for each of these mods)

Caliente Non Nude Female Body Replacer (nude was a nice novelty but gets old and makes you feel a little weird when you're constantly looting dead girls).
SkyUI
Quality World Map
Skyrim HD - 2K Textures
Better Circlets
Deadly Dragons
Detailed Faces
Detailed Lips
Dragonbone Weapons
Realistic Water Textures & Landscapes
No More Blocky Faces
Glowing Ore Veins
Enhanced Blood Textures (usually leave this off as there have been some conflicts)
Jaysus Swords
Enhanced Night
Dovahkiin Hideout
High Quality Eyes
Skyrim Flora Overhaul
Improved NPC Clothing
Lockpick Pro (So nice after you finish your first run-through)
Lush Grass
Midas
FXAA Post Process Injector
Nicer Snowflakes
Realistic Smoke and Embers
Deadly Spell Impacts
Serious HD Retexture
Shadow Striping Fix
SKSE
Sounds of Skyrim the Wilds
Sounds of Skyrim the Dungeons
Deadly Serious Shrouded Armor
Visible windows
Weapon Retexture
Weathered Warpaint & Improved Dirt
Skyrim Enhanced Shaders
Sunglare
Detailed Bodies
Lush trees
HiRes legible Road Signs

And a few more but I can't recall their names as I deleted the Zip files for them. :/
Click to expand...

I was thinking of doing the same and buying a 3gb version, I would be only losing $50 but my vram usage is at max at all times, do you think it would be worth it?
 
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