Figured this mod really deserves more attention (and downloads).

The http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9080 by Vano89!

Have the official High-Res texture packs but find out too late that you can't really run them all? This mod helps by giving you more options with the extent of the high-res textures you want to use!

The complete optimized Hybrid option makes a sensible compromise with the official high-res texture pack. Which is this basically: if there was a 512 texture in vanilla Skyrim, instead of ballooning it up to 2048 texture all of a sudden (which is default resolution for the DLC) a more reasonable but still much prettier-than-vanilla 1024 version is made.

Strapped for vram? The mod has an option for 1024 across-the-board-capped textures, hand-picked and hand-compressed from the official texture packs, to replace the truly hideous 512 textures. You might be desperate for vram, but not that desperate! This option is a great compromise to give low-end specced computers a less blurry looking Skyrim!

Finally my personal favourite option of the bunch, for the discerning medium rig mod user, the Hybrid + Vanilla normal maps option! Using the same high resolution mix of 1024 and 2048 textures as the first option, but with a clever use of vanilla normal maps underneath them in order to reduce vram usage at virtually no visual quality loss.

Within installation, you can even select certain 'secondary' areas where you don't really care how sharp say, some clutter looks, or some NPC clothing looks.

Please read installation instructions on the main page (you still need the actual .bsa files for 2 of the options).

If you have less than 1.5GB VRAM this mod is a no brainer.

As a person with a 1gb VRAM that looks like a great mod (but I use NMC's personally just liked NMC since FO3)

Yeah, it's an awesome mod. I'm going to download it as soon as I can figure out how to schedule nexus downloads, 'cause it's almost 1gb.

Yeah i just got this last night and i no longer have FPS dips in certain places. Using Hybrid + Vanilla.

I don't quite understand. Do you mean to say that the official texture pack will not run well if your card has 1GB VRAM?

It runs ok in general but you will experience stuttering in area's where many of the textures are loaded at once (causing your VRAM to "overflow"). If you want to use other Hi-res mods as well something has got to give. This mod is a good compromise.

Go to the center of whiterun market in daytime and spin around quickly, this will cause all of the textures to try and load at once and demonstrate the issue in 1GB cards. Probably any market will do now I think of it, Riften probably the best.

Its times like this that make me wish i could have afforded a 2gb card

Yeah, last I checked, getting a card with more than 1gb Vram was rediculous overkill and nothing more than a money sink and/or (Waaay) futureproofing.

My card has 1gb and there is absolutely 0 performance drop using the HD textures, so I'm not sure how accurate that statement is...

Actually it's a bit more complicated than that. The real answer is 'it depends'. I have a Radeon HD 5750 1GB (not a modern, high-end graphics card by any means) and I run Skyrim just fine at 60FPS on 1440x900, with about 12gb of texture mods installed. No stuttering. But this same card will experience stuttering if I try to run it in 1920x1080. So, the amount of VRAM Skyrim uses depends on many things, screen resolution (higher=more textures eating up VRAM) being one of them. So, someone could run the texture pack very smoothly if the VRAM usage wasn't that high to begin with. I think the best way is to experiment and try both versions of the official texture pack (original and this one). If you don't see any stuttering, you don't need to be concerned about the reduced-resolution textures. You can use the original, higher-res version just fine.

I never mentioned a performance drop... I mentioned you should try spinning in town and see if you need it to prevent stuttering.

Also there are tons of cards available today with lots of VRAM for an extra $40 you get another GB of VRAM, its true that only Skyrim (and pro graphics/video editors) can actually make use of it as of today, but I have no doubt more games will be released with higher resolutions in the future. We can only hope that the new gen of consoles will come with 2+GB of VRAM and push the whole industry into the future.


That's a good point, I have a monitor that looks like crap if I drop resolution below 1920x1080 so I tend to forget the whole dropping resolution solution.

Of course, LCD monitors have a fixed native resolution and anything below that will look blurry. I think what he meant was to match your graphics cards ability to the native resolution for your monitor. For a 19'' monitor running natively at 1440x900, a HD5750 1gb should be more than enough for any amount of large texture packs... Shouldn't cause stuttering at all. But for a 24'' monitor with 1080p resolution, it would lag behind badly. So, since a lot of use play skyrim at that resolution, I think it's sensible to recommend more than 1gb vram for gaming at 1080p. For lower resolutions, 1gb cards should do fine.

The microstutter issue seems to be fixed for most by using a frame rate limiter to cap your frame rate at 60fps.

Not sure if my SSD helps with this, but in my case I didn't notice a drop in frame rate after installing the high res texture pack and a couple of additional texture replacement mods. (Running Skyrim on a laptop at 1080p with 1GB GPU)

Agreed. This package saved my [censored] on my 1 GIG GTX895 SLI setup. Since got a 680GTX and I STILL use it.

link?

I'm checkin this out, thanks for the post, my Crossfire 5850's 1gb need some memory room.

I downloaded this mod. But, do i need the original Bethesda DLC texture pack installed? Or do i just need the Optimized pack? Thanks.

Depends on which version you use. If you went for the 'Full 1024' option, you do not need the Bethesda texture pack. For the other options, you do need the Bethesda texture pack DLC installed.

I don't think NMC released anything for Skyrim yet?

I think a big factor is whether you also have upped your grids to load setting.

I play on grids to load =7 and 1680x1050 res. and the combination of the following mods has me hovering between 800-990 meg vram for virtually my entire playtime. (i have 1GB Vram)
- Realistic water texture replacer (running isoku's old school version, which was the predecessor to "Water" as it has never given me problems) - 1024 version
- HD DLC optimized - 1024 hybrid version.

I really wish my 560ti had the 2gb version available when i purchased !

Uhh... Why hasn't it been mentioned, that if you wish to play in a lower resolution but do not want the blurriness that comes when you use a non-native resolution, you should be able to set your video drivers to do "centered timings". Then if you use a lower res your video card will center the image on the screen instead of stretching it. Or you can simply just set SkyrimPrefs.ini to a lower res and disable full screen (run in windowed mode). Problem solved

Ug thats a worse immersion killer than slow fps for me, better just to be careful of your ini settings and what mods you install. But for some it may be just the ticket.