Well I know there isnt anyway to fully answer this. I know there will people who will say its not out etc. I'm just looking for a estimate, based on past experience with things like qarl's oblivion pack, and with current textures out.

I'm asking because as things slow down at work I'd like to get some more time in in skyrim. I might have one hour. Performance isn't bad right now on my rig. I need to oc video card, and bring my i5 up in clocks. I'm just trying to see roughly what impact it will have and if I should start looking at a second gpu.

Rig:
I5 2500k @ 4.2 under NH-D14 (just oc genie, haven't had time to get all test software on to get a stable 4.5-4.8)
Msi z68a-gd65 (g3)
16 gb DDR-1333
Msi twin frozr II 6950 2gb (unlocked shaders, need to edit bios for Volts to run at 6970)
Asus VG-236he

The game runs ok with minimal ini edits. Just shadow res, tree shadows, land shadows, grass distance. I see between 60ish and 127fps. I really want to be up in the frames. I can see the difference at 120 over say 70/80. So I'm wondering a rough impact of textures etc. will it be say 20fps combined?

I'm definitely thinking I'll need a second card.

Performance is usually not that much of a problem with a decent video card. But there are other problems due to the huge increase in vram usage. You will get much more loading stutter and crashes. Of course this depends on the amount and size of textures you use, but a lot of people releasing texture mods on Nexus are going completely crazy with the resolution. Like upscaling a 512x512 texture to 4096x4096. If you replace most textures with insane resolution textures like that it will turn your game into an unplayable mess. Even if the performance is not that bad when the game actually doesn't crash, stutter or freeze while loading the textures.

A reasonable texture mod like QTP (redimized) should work out really well with your hardware though.

Oh, and it's not recommended to play with vsync off. Causes bugs and Bethesda probably won't fix it since there is not even an option to turn it off in the ini by default. So unless you don't care that your time of day is completely off and that you get a weird bug while inside a dungeon with water for example you're stuck playing at 60FPS, even though I don't see the problem. You can see the difference between 80 and 120FPS? Sounds like all you do is watch the framerate instead of playing the game. I'm picky about framerates as well, but if 60FPS aren't enough for you that's a bit...neurotic?

My experience is, as long as you can avoid VRAM bottleneck, all is good. New Process Explorer from Microsoft shows GPU usage, I find it pretty easy to use. I have fixed my stuttering problems in Oblivion and Fallout(even Morrowind) with it.

http://i.imgur.com/IpMZ3.png

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

I can tell the diff between 80 and 120 because I have a 120hz monitor running at 120hz. Vsync on. So I'll notice when I'm in caves or buildings looking in corners or searching for containers, the load will drop off the card and it gets silky smooth, I take a quick peak at fps and it's in that 120 area. Other time the game runs just fine and is pretty good, I just look up to check temp and fps is next to it. Never having a 120hz monitor before makes me really notice it, as this is the only thing I have done on my pc since building it.

Sorry would have edited but mobile version of site doesn't have search or edit features.

I don't think VRAM should be an issue with my 2gb card. I don't think skyrim uses much stock. I just see a lot of blurry textures I'd love to be overhauled. Like the roots of trees, or wood surfaces etc.

Ah...never thought about a 120hz monitor, sorry. Never played on a monitor with 120hz, so maybe you can really see the difference there. But like I said, performance is not your problem I'd say.

Vram usage in Skyrim us surprisingly high IIRC (haven't looked myself). I think I've seen reports of more than 1gb vram usage with vanilla textures. If you play on high resolutions and replace most textures with highres ones you will reach the 2gb limit pretty fast I assume, but I can't say for sure since I never tried. Download the tool vstatek linked to and I guess you'll find out.

Oh I agree at no point is the game unplayable, I'm sure I'll see a good hit to performance. But i think I will be fine on VRAM as I play at 1920x1080. I think I read somewhere that it uses about 700-800 at that level, not sure what the surround/eyefinity boys and the 30" monitor guys use. I'll check next time I play.

Yeah 120hz is something else. Very fast feeling without blur. I'd recommend checking it out if possible. But with 120hz panels you give up a little color, and view angle. But I play single monitor, and always will. Oled displays will change it for me, but that's 3-5 years away. The current curved screens are only like 900 pixels tall


Hey figured out how to edit. Click on post gives you edit option in a popup

My GPU has 512MB VRAM, using High texture setting at 1280x1024 just fine

Haven't tried custom textures, though, and perhaps I'll jack on GPU-Z to see what's happening