CFG Maker

[Raistlin]

Hey guys, this is my first post here but i want you to ask a question. Honestly it is really confusing to me how much can be changed in the ini files.

 

I already worked with the STEP-Guide but when I am right there are much more possibilities to improve the graphic of the game via ini tweaking.

 

What i really would love if a newbie like me can post his rig and the professionals like you post their recommended ini. But please don´t get me wrong, i am not to lazy to try it out myself, but there are so much different changings you can do in the ini and for you it is mostly a short view and you can see a problem and point on it.

 

Or is there any rig related guide to configure the ini´s and I only missed it?

 

Thanks in advance

Raistlin

[frihyland]

Unfortunately Raistlin even with your specs, we would be hard pressed to do a much better job than step has already done.

 

The problem is that everyone notices different things, and is either impressed or annoyed by them, its like if you asked us to pick out a nice pair of clothes for you, it just wouldn't be you.

 

What we are apparently very good at, is creating "do it yourself" guides. Over the next few months you can expect our wiki to address these kinds of issues and to explain your options in plain english.

[MontyMM]

@Raistlin,

 

If you look in the STEP guide, in the INI tweaking section, there are two links to other guides that cover all the options very well. I don't think that people will really be able to offer a tailored profile to everyone that posts their system details. It would be nice, but it would take up a lot of time.

 

@Venkman

 

My logic (such as it is) is to test the texture mods with vanilla settings first. I find that they don't hit my framerate until I start to overload the VRAM, and it's good to have a clear view of where that point is. Then I mess around with the engine processing options - AA, AO and all that, and finally the 'extra-engine' post processors.

[Raistlin]

Ok i see and you are right. I read the two guides now and i think now i know some of the values much more.

 

Only one question which i can´t evaluate right now is about ugrids and my new graphiccard. Since 3 weeks i own a Radeon 7950 with 3GB RAM. Can i now use ugrids 11 without doubts or is this might a problem?

[venkman781]

@Raistlin - even with that 7950 and 3GB of RAM, there's no approaching any uGrids value without doubts. It all depends upon the configuration of your hardware setup, the mods your running, the other ini tweaks you've made, etc. None of us are really in the position to give you that kind of advice - but you can use the tried and true benchmarking tools available to you (FRAPS) to benchmark at vanilla to establish a baseline. Then incrementally add tweaks and mods, benchmark again, and repeat until you find the sweet spot for your rig that balances image quality with performance.

[stoppingby4now]

On a whim, I tried their max settings for everything (ugrids at 7). Couldn't load any save game, instant CTD. Fair enough, I didn't expect it to work anyway. I then loaded a new game and watched the scene in the wagon and it played through that ok. Average FPS was 55 - 60, with drops down to 48. And that is with pure HD vanilla. I'd hate to see what it would be like with STEP installed.

[z929669]

I run uGrids7 standard with my 1 Gb 6950s in Xfire and full step (LITE versions of FPS mods) with no issues at all (just a bit of lag from VRAM load in certain areas). For benchmarking and testing, I always run default STEP recommendations.

 

I think that uGrids7 should be pretty safe for most people with high-end cards. uGrids9 may be fairly stable for a 3 Gb card, but I suspect 11 will almost always cause issues. I can run it for about 15 minutes before CTD, 9 gives me random CTD and 7 gives me no issues as I said.

[stoppingby4now]

I'm with you, been using 7. I have a card with 3GB of VRAM, but when trying 9 the loads would just sit there forever forcing me to kill TESV.exe (with STEP install). I think 7 is a great balance though, so have stuck with it.

[MontyMM]

That fits with the article I saw (can't find it now) where they tested on a really silly super rig, but still found that anything above 9 would CTD after a certain amount of time. I think the chief culprit is memory filling up. Skyrim would be a very good candidate for a 64 bit exe.

[z929669]

Probably a bit of memory fill as well as demand from HDD with a really steep increase as you pile on uGrids from 7 to 9 to 11.

[MontyMM]

Yes. I'm pretty satisfied through my own testing with SSD vs regular HDD, that demands on disk transfer play a role in stability.

[doveman]

Hi

 

 

 

Just signed up and I wanted to chip in :)

 

 

 

With my 2GB 6950 and full STEP it used around 1.5GB VRAM and I've been running with ugrids=9 without any crashes or long loading times. I've recently been trying ENB mods (Sharpshooters most recently) and that has made loading times extremely long, to the point that I've given up and killed it on some ocassions (other times I've been about to and it's started, or I've alt tabbed out and it's started and grabbed focus back before I've had a chance to kill it), so I dropped back to ugrids=7 to see if that would help, but it didn't. I'll probably go back to ugrids=9 as I found in the screenshots I saw that far shores and other land masses can look a bit strange on 7 and I have noticed that in game since dropping down to 7. Obviously I'll have to keep an eye on my VRAM usage and if it gets much higher with new/extra mods I might not be able to use 9 anymore.

 

Whilst recognising that everyone has different visual tastes, I thought of an idea for sharing settings. We could have several different threads for different configs, so e.g. AMD Quadcore, 4GB, 6950/6970 GPU, SATA HDD and then give settings for that config that maximise quality whilst keeping FPS at around 60FPS, then list further tweaks that make a worthwhile difference and note what FPS drop they cause as well. Then people can decide if they're happy with e.g. 30FPS to use a number of these tweaks. I'm thinking more of groups of settings, rather than individual ones. Whilst there may be the odd setting that costs 10 FPS, if we could say e.g. "tweak 1+2+3 improve shadow distance and quality for a 10-15 FPS drop", that might be more useful to users.

 

Obviously this is going to depend on users with different configs being willing to do the testing and post their results. I guess the starting point will be whatever's recommended in STEP and then the tweaks should make a substantial difference from there. We'd have to decide how different a config has to be before it gets it's own thread as well, so for example it might be considered that 4GB and 8GB systems don't differ that much in terms of performance, so we'd just list it as 4GB+, similarly AMD Quadcore and Hexcore might not differ much, whilst Dualcore might be slower enough to justify it's own thread. I imagine the GPUs might be harder to group, but I think there's probably some scope for doing so and certainly by VRAM as that seems quite significant for Skyrim.

[MontyMM]

The ENB series can cause those very long loading times, but it's a bug unrelated to any other aspect of performance. One workaround is to press Shift - F12 to disable ENB during loading, and press again to re-enable once it's done.

[frihyland]

you can't just drop your ugrids back down, you need to make a new game in order to drop it back down once you've raised it. There are alternate ways to do it but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

[doveman]

 

The ENB series can cause those very long loading times, but it's a bug unrelated to any other aspect of performance. One workaround is to press Shift - F12 to disable ENB during loading, and press again to re-enable once it's done.

 

 

 

 

Yeah I know, but that's too much of a pain when you're playing on the couch with an Xbox360 controller ;)

---

 

you can't just drop your ugrids back down, you need to make a new game in order to drop it back down once you've raised it. There are alternate ways to do it but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

 

 

Well I guess I used one of those alternate methods then (basically load a savegame, edit and save the ini, open the console and type refreshini, make a new savegame) and it's been OK as far as I can tell. Certainly haven't had to make a new game.