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Help - Appropriate STEP configuration


DimSh

Question

Hello friends.

First of all, I’d like to thank the STEP team for creating this wonderful mod.

Now, which STEP configuration would you recommend for these?

 

A. Desktop

CPU:  i7-2600 3.40

RAM: 6GB DDR3

MB: GIGABYTE GA-P67A-D3-B3

GPU: GeForce GTX 560 Ti "Golden Sample" [1GB DDR5]

HDD: SEAGATE 1TB BARRACUDA 7200.12 SATA3

RES: 1920x1080 

 

B. Laptop – Dell Inspiron 15R 7520 SE

CPU: i5-3210M 2.5 - TurboBoost

RAM: 6GB DDR3

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7730M [2GB DDR3]

HDD: 1TB

RES: 1366x768 

 

Notes:

A+B: Windows 7 64-bit.

A+B: No overclocking - got no such knowledge.

A+B: Steam installed in special partition other than the OS one.

A+B: Excellent condition (defragmented/no errors etc).

A: Any hardware upgrade recommendations are very welcome.

B: Cooling support - Enermax Aeolus Premium.

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I wouldn't say Skyrim itself is worth an upgrade from your current rig. The obvious benefits would come from adding an SSD and upgrading the graphics card, but neither is necessary to enjoy the game.

 

You'd be best using the baseline STEP, cutting down on ultra resolution mods (4K, sometimes 2K) due to VRAM limitation, but it shouldn't be much of an issue at this resolution anyway.

 

I don't know much about laptop GPUs, but my bet is STEP isn't the guide for a laptop with such a weak graphics card. 2GB VRAM would be meaningless since the card doesn't have raw power to render detailed scenes.

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Besidilo thanks a a lot for your suggestion. I'm gonna go for STEP Baseline.

Could you please explain what do you mean by "but it shouldn't be much of an issue at this resolution anyway".

I'm not familiar with texture quality and resolution. Thanks again.

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I have a 2500k and an AMD 6870 (1GB VRAM) and I can run the game swimmingly by just using the lite/performance/<2k resolutions for everything, which is basically Baseline, so you should be fine with that.  If you wanted to go through DDSopt or the other texture optimizations, you can probably get away with some higher resolutions, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.  Search the forums/Wiki and you can find several threads about all that.

 

Could you please explain what do you mean by "but it shouldn't be much of an issue at this resolution anyway".

I'm not familiar with texture quality and resolution. Thanks again.

Basically, everything that's being rendered has to be stored in VRAM (your graphics card's RAM), and the problem with all these super-HD mods is that each texture is now a few megabytes (vs. <1MB for the vanilla 512x512 files) and when that 1GB of VRAM gets filled up, your rig has to do more work to move files off of VRAM and load them from the HDD more often, which causes the stuttering and lower FPS.
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Thanks a lot Farlo.

Sorry for not answering, just show your reply.

One more thing please:

Any suggestions about the laptop?

I tried CORE on it and I must say I'm quite impressed; didn't expect it to run smoothly.

The problem is whether it's gonna be normal to keep playing in such a high standard.

Would mod-gaming usage eventually cause overheating regardless my cooling support?

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Thanks a lot Farlo.

Sorry for not answering, just show your reply.

One more thing please:

Any suggestions about the laptop?

I tried CORE on it and I must say I'm quite impressed; didn't expect it to run smoothly.

The problem is whether it's gonna be normal to keep playing in such a high standard.

Would mod-gaming usage eventually cause overheating regardless my cooling support?

If it's running well on the laptop that's great, I generally wouldn't hold my breath on those.  If you're worried about overheating, I'd suggest you grab the free version of HWMonitor (made by the CPU-z guys).  It'll let you see the temperatures of your CPU, GPU, and any case sensors the laptop may have.  Every machine is different and of course lower is always better, but you're usually safe as long as it's not going above 75C.  If you plan on gaming on it, just make sure it's on a desk with plenty of ventilation and nothing obstructing the fans.  Depending on how old/used it is, it might also be a good idea to get in there with some canned air and a vacuum to get the dust out.
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