So I've been trying out several ENB profiles(v0.102), and the one that's felt best for me personally is the CLENB-profile. However, a thing I've noticed is that every profile flickers. Some less, others more. It's not occurring all the time, but on certain times of the day and in certain locations. Some flickers at day in Whiterun, others at night. CLENB made The Warrens bright, so bright that I couldn't see anything but the floor, while flickering at night outside. Sometimes it was severe flickering, sometimes it was minor, just enough to make your eyes irritated.

I tried several profiles including tweaking the files, and running the original ENB-profile untweaked with no success whatsoever. While it wasn't flickering all the time, it sometimes started, until I alt tabbed, and tabbed back in. Then it might have stopped for a while. Also, regarding The Warrens in CLENB. If it was not flickering or anything outside, then entering The Warrens, and then exiting, the brightness that occurred in there would be permanent until a restart of the game.

I've tried enabling and disabling various options in the files with no difference whatsoever.
I'm running a Crossfire setup by the way, which is more or less essential for me. Without Crossfire I'm experiencing quite displeasing results in terms of performance. With it enabled I'm at a constant 60FPS(12.2 preview drivers, Patch 1.4b). A friend who's running a single-card setup is not experiencing the flickering however.


Anyone know what might cause the flickering? Is it the game itself, with the 1.4b patch that is causing it due to optimization, or is it ENB which isn't optimized with crossfire setups as for now? Which wouldn't be surprising considering the lack of crossfire-support for Skyrim to begin with. Whatever the cause, is there anything I can do to fix the flickering, or should I simply wait for a patch for either the game or ENB to be updated? Or go straight to the point and consider defeat and face the consequences of crossfire and just ditch it and wait for a proper single-card solution.

Thanks in advance.

It's crossfire itself. I run a 6990 (same thing as crossfire) and every version of enb flickers. Not only that there is a huge performance hit. Enb is like skyrim, it's nvidia biased. I am not just saying this with no proof either. I can go into very exacting detail about it if someone requests it of me.

If you plan of prioritizing skyrim as something you will be playing more than other games. Get a nvidia card. They microstutter less. They are pro-bias in elder scrolls games. They support forced ssao. They have drivers that fix things in the end.

Skyrim still microstutters on crossfire amd cards with vsync. It does not on nividia cards.

Amd will never fix this. Amd crossfire is too much of a minority for bethesda to care about. End result = microstutter forever. Nobody gives a [censored].

And i am saying this with NO nividia card, and 1x 6990. An expensive card, that most people would rave about to protect the ego invested in their purchase.

However I am far beyond this point.

6990 = ebay


The question is, do I wait until 6xx or get sli 580's.

And it's a solid question.

That said. When i disabled one of my onboard gpu's and got enb to not flicker. It did not impress me enough to warrant the performance hit. I find the real nights + hdr injector I am using to product cleaner results. Less blur. Enb is a taste thing, rather than guaranteed better visuals.

If you are patient, the eventual skyrim stutter remover will remove the microsutter. And SKGE (skyrim graphics extender), will offer far better results than enb ever did.
That's exactly what happend with oblivion. Everyone was using enb because it was all they had. OBGE came along. BOOM. Game-Life changing better.

I'll put that in mind next time I'm considering an ugprade. Bought a second card in order to boost performance in games, specifically BF3 and Skyrim. But so far, out of all those I've tested, it's only been useful in Battlefield 3. Otherwise it's REDUCED my performance. (although the 1.4b patch does decent work I guess)

Perhaps I'll replace these two cards with an nVidia card sometime, perhaps when the Kepler-series from nVidia are released. Not that I have anything against AMD, but I've been curious about nVidia for quite some time now. Always been an owner of an ATi card so...something new should be fun. Still, this svcks.

Also, point taken regarding OBGE. I guess I'm left with no other option but wait for the time being. Thanks for the responses.

You could probably get better results just playing with driver settings than using ENB. Also, try running the game in windowed mode and see if it does not alleviate the problem.

For me at least, I can't run with one gpu without reducing all the settings dramatically. Since I run at 2560x1600. So I need the benefit of two cards.

When you raise the resolution, include some aa, and fix the shadows. Suddenly you are using 89% of each gpu. So if you ran skyrim borderless window you would A: get lower performance due to single gpu (crossfire = single gpu while windowed) B: still get stutter due to now inconsistent fps and C: have to run at low settings on a high end rig because of A and B.

That's worse than dealing with duel gpu issues.

That sounds suspiciously like you need to change a Skyrim.ini setting:

[Display]
iPresentInterval=1

You shouldn't be getting any flickering at all (except shadows depending on your config), and the brightness is a classic sign of iPresentInterval being set to 0. All ENB configs require setting it to 1.

If that doesn't work, or it's already set, you should experiment with turning off AO/SSAO, and maybe Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering (temporarily). If you're forcing any of these types of settings in your video card driver, try disabling them and check out the results.

But first thing to do is to check iPresentInterval.

I'll give it a shot since I'm desperate. I'll report back for the results.

Edit: So I've disabled any forced settings in CCC, disabled AA, FXAA and AF in the game options, as well as tried with it enabled.
I tired disabling SSAO, Adaption and bloom separately, and all of them at once, to see if it made any change. Well, nothing besides more flickering apparently. The thing is, which I just noticed, is that if I enter The Warrens with ENB enabled it gets EXTREMELY white. Especially the fog in the ceiling. However, if I save and restart the game while in there, it appears normal, as the mod SHOULD look. No flickering, no extreme whites or alike. However, if I exit The Warrens I get the extreme white outside instead suddenly. Again - fixed by a restart. This goes on and on...

OK, I'm leaning towards believing this may be ATI or ATI + Crossfire + ENB. (And caveat: I'm not an ATI expert.)

Have you tried AFR mode?

More hassle for you, but google tells me that Catalyst 11.10+atiumdag.dll may solve flickering.

May I ask what 'AFR' is? I can't seem to locate it in the CCC if it's an option you toggle. Googling it gave me a result of something I've not heard of before as well. Alternate Frame Rendering, right?
Driver 11.10 won't work with crossfire though. It scales worse than 12.2 preview, worse than a single-card even so that's a no go. atiumdag.dll I can try though, although I have to find a location that's not Megaupload any longer, since that's been brought down... Anyone got a mirror for it?

There is a non ENB solution. It does not use shaders so it's not biased to only certain gfx cards. I tested this last night and it looks really good.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=4323

Edit: And it does not cost you any FPS either.

I do agree that the mod does make the lighting better from Vanilla, although what I was after wasn't a realistic lighting at all. CLENB offers like it's name says, a cinematic look to the game. The vignette, colors and even the blur is to me stunning. At night the fires give away a certain warmth. Same goes to the colors and with SSAO enabled, waterfalls, rocks, trees, even the sky and dungeons. It doesn't feel realistic, it feels like a fantasyworld which is what I prefer. Realism in terms of visuals is to me quite uninteresting and dull in the long run, I prefer unrealistic, painting like effects. CLENB made Markarth look fantastic when I was greeted to it. It did shine up in a comfortable way. The river near Whiterun, the corridors of The College of Winterhold.

Although I seem to be left without options. Perhaps I'll just have to accept that. Maybe I can try and go for some texture packs to compensate for this. I'll have to make due, I guess. That or wait, or get a new graphicscard, but then I'll rather wait for nVidia's Kepler series.

One good thing with the "realistic lighting" mod however is what you say, it doesn't have an impact on FPS.

Edit: Oh yeah, I did try out an atiumdag.dll file, not sure if they differ. It did reduce the flickering a little bit, but it's still very noticeable. All in all, it didn't solve the issue.

Out of curiosity, what is you GFX card?

Two(crossfire) HD5850.

Played around some more and I got some pretty good results by using the mod I suggested and then enabling Bloom in the SkyrimPrefs.ini. Make sure to turn HDR off if you have it on.


It's probably not all you want but it's a bit more fantasy than without the Bloom effect.

No luck. at first it seemed to be working, but apparently after exiting the area. Well...it made the flickering even worse.

Yeah, it's alternate frame rendering. It was available in 12.1, so it should be in 12.2. Look for: CCC -> 3D Application Settings -> AMD Crossfire X Mode for 3D Applications -> AFR Friendly
The drop-down widget should have options like, Disabled, Default, AFR Friendly, Optimize 1x1, etc.

From what I've heard, AFR messes up some games, but can be a huge performance improvement in others. It solves certain types of issues, because each GPU renders a single frame rather than sharing. The default setting, SFR, splits each frame horizontally between the cards, and each renders approximately half of the frame.

Wait. You are getting the flickering with no ENB mod installed when you enable Bloom? If so then it sounds more like a driver / card issue than anything game related. Perhaps test this without any mods at all running and just Bloom enabled? Also did you make sure to delete the d3d9.dll file and other enb files from your Skyrim folder and reset your .ini files?

Oh, no. I'm getting the flickering with ENB. I guess I just missunderstood you if so, I did it with ENB enabled. Without ENB it's running just fine.

Tried enabling it. It didn't seem to reduce the flickering, at least not by much. I did drop to 24 FPS as well, although this might be because I'm running quite many mods to try and get the best out of it. Seeing ENB-CLENB again sort of discourages me to play without it. (Yes, I like it. A lot.)