Hard|OCP INITweaks Guide Write-Up : V

» Wed May 16, 2012 11:51 am

May be a repost, but I just noticed Mark posted this http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/23/tweaking_skyrim_image_quality/1 over at Hard|OCP.

TL;DR below:

Now it's time to see everything all put together. We've taken all of the tweaks from the previous two pages and put them all in at once.

In SkyrimPrefs.ini, we have set the following commands:

bDrawLandShadows=1

bTreesReceiveShadows=1

iShadowMapResolution=8192

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

fGrassStartFadeDistance=14000.0000

And in the Skyrim.ini file, we have added one simple line:

uGridstoLoad=7

Screenshots: http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMTk4MTE4MWNsTEtneUV4aktfNF82X2wuanBn and http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMTk4MTE4MWNsTEtneUV4aktfNF83X2wuanBn
Performance http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTMyMTk4MTE4MWNsTEtneUV4aktfNF8xX2wuZ2lm

Test rig:

Intel Core i7 920 overclocked to 3.6GHz
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard
6GB of Corsair DDR3-1600
CoolerMaster Real Power Pro 1250W.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580

» Wed May 16, 2012 2:13 pm

Can a mod put a space between "INI" and "Tweaks" in the title please?

» Wed May 16, 2012 7:32 pm

Good read, it does a lot of things different than other ini tweak guides, like only adding uGridstoLoad=7 and not changing or adding the other numbers (unless i didn't read it correctly) and they didn't even go into any of the water tweaks or tree/cloud fade distance tweaks, guess they just didn't have enough of an effect to even mention.

» Wed May 16, 2012 11:37 am

Good read, it does a lot of things different than other ini tweak guides, like only adding uGridstoLoad=7 and not changing or adding the other numbers (unless i didn't read it correctly) and they didn't even go into any of the water tweaks or tree/cloud fade distance tweaks, guess they just didn't have enough of an effect to even mention.

Increasing the preload cache doesn't seem to be quite as necessary in Skyrim as it was in Oblivion and Fallout 3. The engine has been optimized so that it now loads new cells very easily, whereas in the previous games you would often encounter stuttering and pauses every time new cells were loaded.
I experimented a bit with increasing iPreloadSizeLimit and uExterior Cell Buffer, but the only difference I noticed was longer loading times upon fast travelling. These settings may become more useful once high definition texture overhauls are released and cell loading becomes more demanding.

» Wed May 16, 2012 4:52 pm

Caution is warranted with uGridstoLoad=7. This setting played havoc in Oblivion and since this is still the same underlying engine, one needs to keep an eye out for the bouncing landscape bug.

My guess is the 14% performance hit came solely from this setting alone since it loads 49 cells into memory instead of the default 25. If you weren't pressing your luck on memory issues before, you will be now.

» Thu May 17, 2012 1:19 am

bouncing landscape bug.

Ok, now I'm curious!

Regarding uGridstoLoad=7, I have been using it for quite a while without any crashes after installing the LAA patch. This is on a system with 4gb of ram and a 1gb hd4870. Of course mileage may vary...

» Wed May 16, 2012 8:22 pm

iShadowMapResolution=8192
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=32

Oh dear lord that looks nice.