I MADE A THING. The thing is a Let's Play!

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Bulldog

Active Member
I work in IT and build computers for friends all the time. I just recently built myself a new rig to run skyrim with 4k textures/ENB.

I could help you poke about for an affordable PC that would suit your needs. I assume from your posts you would want a tower, rather than a laptop, and also, would you be opposed to building one?


We might become best friends. LOL. My wife does photograph stuff on the side. She has a laptop for most of it, but she has been considering a desktop lately. I talked to my dad about my old desktop, but he doesn't think it has the ability to be upgraded like it needs to because it is so old. He is suppose to check on a tower my brother left when he moved out. Should be big enough just needs some minor upgrades. After all he played COD with all the different aftermarket map packs.

I would like to run the same mods she is running. I would also like to add some armor mods. I really would like one of the texture mods, however, being as I have been playing skyrim on the vanilla graphics it isn't a big deal.
 

Bulldog

Active Member
Before I really take a look, just price out components on amazon/newegg, I think you'll find you can build something that would run skyrim on ultra settings for around $500. Now, with that being said, you could run mods that add NPCs/quests/followers/gameplay changes, but you wouldn't really be able to retexture all of skyrim, or run any ENBs, my new graphics card alone cost ~$700 (EVGA GTX 780ti SC 3GB) and it still struggles with 2-4k textures/Full ENB/2k+ landscapes/Flora Mods. But in reality, vanilla skyrim is not that taxing on a system, and you could run everything she's running with no issues.

I would bet for $500, you could run the HD Texture pack optimized mod and still be fit as a fiddle when it comes to performance.

As far as graphical mods go, unfortunately as you start to creep up towards the highest quality in terms of graphical mods in Skyrim, the system requirements seem to grow exponentially. The gap from a Mid-range ENB and a few texture mods, to a Full version ENB with everything redone with tesselation and 2-4K textures is astronomical.

My old pc was an i5-2500K, SLI GTX 560ti 2gb, and 8GB of ram, and I could run a lite ENB and a few landscape mods and would be between 50-60fps, but anything more, and it would become unplayable. MY new one blows it out of the water, on paper, but still runs into some issues is highly forested areas.

I just might post a before and after video.


Please do. I would like to see it.
 

TheNatural

Active Member
I work in IT and build computers for friends all the time. I just recently built myself a new rig to run skyrim with 4k textures/ENB.

I could help you poke about for an affordable PC that would suit your needs. I assume from your posts you would want a tower, rather than a laptop, and also, would you be opposed to building one?


We might become best friends. LOL. My wife does photograph stuff on the side. She has a laptop for most of it, but she has been considering a desktop lately. I talked to my dad about my old desktop, but he doesn't think it has the ability to be upgraded like it needs to because it is so old. He is suppose to check on a tower my brother left when he moved out. Should be big enough just needs some minor upgrades. After all he played COD with all the different aftermarket map packs.

I would like to run the same mods she is running. I would also like to add some armor mods. I really would like one of the texture mods, however, being as I have been playing skyrim on the vanilla graphics it isn't a big deal.


Once you figure out what is in your brother's old tower, post the specs, and I'll see what you can do to get it going.

Right now, if you really want to get a great skyrim experience with mods (probably not heavy ENBs, however) This would be a good setup.

It would run ~$550-$650 Depending on your choice of graphics cards.

CPU: i5-4460 - $180@Newegg
GPU: GTX 760 - $240 or $208 Refurbed (this is the big one, you could go with a $150 750 ti, but that would somewhat limit your graphics options, although vanilla skyrim + Beth texture packs would be fine. Also, I have no problems with AMD cards, as they are usually cheaper when looking for the same performance as a rival Nvidia card, however, for modding games, especially skyrim, I can't recommend them.)
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance Blue ~$80
PSU: A few decent brands @500-600W - $50
MB: Since you likely won't be overclocking you could find one for less than $100 to do your bidding.
Case: Your Brother's :p

It's not easy to build a gaming rig within this price range, and to guarantee a good experience, these would be the specs I would recommend. You could go with an AMD card and an AMD CPU if you wanted to shave some bucks off of the top, but frankly, for gaming stability and performance, I would stick with Nvidia and Intel. I've gone both routes with skyrim since the game came out in 2011, and for a myriad of reasons I continue to choose Intel/Nvidia over their AMD counterparts.
 

Manmangler

Well-Known Member
Well 2 GB is not problem yet unless use much 4K textures. I run out of Vram in GTX 670 windforcex3 2 GB version.

So most AMD 280/280x and above is 3 GB VRAm. (Check this, I maybe wrong with this). AMD maybe good is playing battlefield 4 (mantle).

Laptop is always twice expensive when compared desktop at same gaming power.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2020688,00.asp
 

TheNatural

Active Member
I have the 3gb version of the 780ti, and I am close to the vram cap. But even with tweaked enb inis, I don't think you can use more than 3gb of vram when playing skyrim.

As a matter of fact, in the memory size portion of the enblocal.ini, the max you can enter for ram+vram is 10240mb. The general rule of thumb when altering them yourself is RAM+VRAM-2048=What you enter in that field.

I'm not sure what you're saying though, because both cards at the prices I listed are 2gb cards.
 

Manmangler

Well-Known Member
I know peoples that run out of vram 7970 GHz edition (3 GB).

You have to use SKSE or something else to remove 3.2 GB limit (skyrim is 32 bitt exe).

Still when you extend to Vram to ram, it is usless. VRAM is much more fassteer than Ram, it start stutter or blurry textures.

I want card last other new games, 2 GB card is not option. Maxed out Watch dog need 3 GB Vram.
 

TheNatural

Active Member
Even with SKSE, unless you raise your ugrids to something obnoxious, or are running multiple monitors and a crazy resolution, you shouldn't run out of vram. I've heard stories of people maxing vram without ENB, and to be frank, that's virtually impossible. I used ugrid at 23 once once with EWiI's Ultra pref inis and did not max my vram.

Also, you must not have much experience with ENB, because if you put just your VRAM in the VideoMemorySizeMb portion of your enblocal.ini, you're gonna have a bad time. Nad leaving those settings to autodetect is also a mistake, as it seems to be bad at it. The memory allocation withing windows is intelligent enough to not use regular DDR3 ram for intensive graphics, so if you are getting stutter with extending that portion of the ini, it's not likely to be a vram issue if your card has 3gb.

The fact is, for 99% of modders and users, 3GB of VRAM+8GB of ram will take advantage of Skyrim more than adequately. What bottlenecks most users are the extremely heavy CPU requirements for ENB Ambient Occlusion, Grass Shadows+heavy flora mods, etc. When I am actually playing and want to keep my frames at a solid 60 with all of my graphics mods, I actually have shadows down to high, and just take out ENB Ambient Occlusion altogether (to be honest, I can tell the difference with it On/Off, but I'm not convinced that it looks better either way, especially considering the performance hit, some scenes look ever-so-slightly better with it on, and some with it off, so while playing, I leave it off). It also helps if I want to record videos on the go, as shadowplay tends to be a drain on my system on occasion, but hopefully the new update will fix that.
 

TheNatural

Active Member
Hopefully I didn't come off as a dick there, that wasn't my intention, I think we're kinda saying the same thing, just using different words :)
 

Manmangler

Well-Known Member
Sorry been long offline, no Inet at all.

Dont worry almost same thing.

Point that 2GB card is not wise future games or skyrim modding without ENB and texture optimizer. Long time ago I put 4k textures many diffrent sources, Dynavision, SweetFX, 230 other mods etc but no ENB or TO. You can quess memory usage RAM and VRAM. Even SKSE awas older, no change go over 3.2 GB limit of Skyrim exe.

Now waiting new epsiode of Lets Play
 

TheNatural

Active Member
Well I only have a 3gb card and I use several (some very heavy) ENBs, Multiple Texture and landscape mods (2k at least), as well as water and weather mods, and I have no issues at all. I don't actively monitor my VRAM usage anymore, but I am playing at 60FPS 90% of the time.

I just don't want people to get the wrong idea.
 

Manmangler

Well-Known Member
Point for post , Aug 15, 2014 at 3:22 PM was that all not use ENB, then memory and Vram allocation is worse.

Yep point is that 280 have same amount VRAM like you and me (3 GB) and cost almost same than 760,
R280 is faser and more memory than 760 2GB version.

I run full Realvision ENB
Almost all mods that Nexuspage (missing only 2)
Tweaked settings
780 runs 50 - 60 FPS.
 

AS88

Well-Known Member
Staff member
3027518.jpg
 

TheNatural

Active Member
Point for post , Aug 15, 2014 at 3:22 PM was that all not use ENB, then memory and Vram allocation is worse.

Yep point is that 280 have same amount VRAM like you and me (3 GB) and cost almost same than 760,
R280 is faser and more memory than 760 2GB version.

I run full Realvision ENB
Almost all mods that Nexuspage (missing only 2)
Tweaked settings
780 runs 50 - 60 FPS.


I totally agree, the R280 is faster and has more memory. I don't think I posted it in this thread, but I did post somewhere that when modding games that are poorly optimized to begin with, especially graphically, I have had better success with nvidia card in the past, and couldn't recommend in good conscience an AMD card. I have build many PCs with both brands of cards, and I have to say, for stability and performance I would go intel CPU/nvidia gpu.
 

Manmangler

Well-Known Member
Yep AMD/ATI have own tricks. When my 4890OC start doing weird things, I just turn off or lower Shadows. That do trick many games. No problem with Oblivion, Fallout 3 or new vegas modding. Many wont like turn off shadows but that was price smooth play.

Personally I go too Intel/Nvidia combo like Main Compu 3570k@4.2 Ghz, 16 GB, Asus 780OC 3GB an second compu Intel I3 3220, 8 GB, Gigabyte 670 OC 2GB.

Only one computer That I have build friends have AMD CPU/GPU and that because he want it.

AS88 dont worry, we are discussing with polite manner while waiting next episode I made a thing :)
 
Forgive me here as I'm posting from my phone, but can someone tell me imaginepageant's YouTube username? YouTube isn't working right on my phone but I want to subscribe to her channel on my PC. Unfortunately I can't find her and my phone insists on opening the video in the built in player, not the web browser. :/ Any help would be appreciated.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Dabiene Caristiana

Your friendly neighborhood weirdo
A wild Let's Play appears!


Wild Let's play uses 'Amusing view!'

...

It's Super Effective!

And for ecozombie: imaginepageantvideos

Glad you decided to make more videos! They're very entertaining! :)
 

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