Hi,

I am graphically obsessed since I bought my new PC. I can see the smallest fault in graphics and like everything perfect.

I was looking around on the internet trying to find a way of reducing my vram usage in Skyrim as I was maxing my GTX 580's 1.5GB vram. I had been using the best textures available as listed in S.T.E.P. (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11). The maxed vram on my card was causing stuttering whilst turning and running through the fields and a little in towns.

I had two choices. 1) Deactivate the listed STEP mods by activating the HI-RES DLC textures in 'Data Files' or 2) Find another way of reducing VRAM.

If I used the HI-RES DLC textures my vram usage would go down roughly 150mb which was enough to stop the stuttering, however, even though they look really nice with 8xQ and 2x Transparency Supersampling I wanted to use the STEP textures. Funnily enough 'lowering' the quality of the textures reduces VRAM usage, which as a noob I thought made sense. So I changed texture quality in the skyrim launcher from High (as I play on Ultra except High on shadows) to Medium.

I can honestly, tell you now there is no visual difference between High and Medium. You might find a screenshot proving otherwise on the internet but look for yourself and without tricking yourself or wanting to inflate your PC ego lol try and tell me you can see a difference.

Vram usage when from 1500-1530mb usage down to 900 and often lower and it looks the same.

I know play with these settings;

Ultra (except shadows on High and textures on Medium)
8xQ, 16AF and 2x Transparency Supersampling (set as 'override application's setting' in nvidiainspector. Note: must any AA or AF in launcher for any override to work, you can't have nothing).
Ambient Occlusion set to 'Quality'
55-60fps everywhere.

I occassionaly dip down to 55fps because Ambient Occlusion @ Quality maxes my GPU Usage so I'm currently looking into trying to lower that so I can keep this

Quick tip though: I usually play at 1080p but I tried 1650x1050 and it looks more or less the same and I get a 8-10% reduction in GPU usage and increase fps. I am going to try and play with it a few hours without a fps counter on and just get used to it.

You claim to be able to 'see the smallest fault in graphics', and yet you don't see the difference between 1920x1080 and 1680x1050 (which isn't even the same aspect ratio)?

Heh.

^Beat me too it.

Anything less than your native screen resolution will look blurrier because it's not pixel for pixel, so 1920x1080 will look much better than a lower resolution. I can tell the difference and why I always play everything at 1920x1080.

For me, I think this is a great idea because I feel that increasing the transparency aliasing levels makes the game more visually appealing than decreasing the blur of the textures at close range. I love applying AMD's true Supersampling at a high level, it takes away most of the "crawling" I see on distant objects and makes the world way more smooth to look at. Fortunately the only thing I have to do is refrain from eye humping boulders and flowers and I won't notice the blurriness.

"I usually play at 1080p but I tried 1650x1050 and it looks more or less the same" and "... I am going to try and play with it a few hours without a fps counter on and just get used to it"

I mentioned here that I did notice a difference in resolutions and I was going to try and get used to it. However, my claim of texture quality at medium looking the same as high is very certain. So please don't twist what I said.

I know you can see the difference in resolutions as well and I mentioned this in my post. However, I was discussing texture quality mostly, have you tried it?

Yes and the textures look better and sharper on high. I usually put image quality before performance and would rather sacrifice some frame-rate for higher quality.

Indeed it looks a lot better.
Medium: http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-Textures-medium.png
High: http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-Textures-High.png

Yeah, there's no way around it - if you want a sharp, beautiful game (from being able to max textures and AA) get a decent video card with a 2GB frame buffer. I'm unfortunately in the 1GB camp at the moment and don't want to upgrade until AMD and Nvidia's new mid range offerings come out this spring.

Yep, I'm seriously thinking of getting a 2GB card next upgrade. GTX560 Ti 2GB probably.

Hey,

You guys might be right. I couldn't see the difference by changing the settings and then going in game and looking at the same spot so took screenshots.

The images look a lot better on High although they still look great at medium.

I'm using 1gb cards and have plenty of mods with no issues. There is a limit, but to have stutter on a 1.5gb card would be fairly difficult lol. I'm running with the HD DLC optimized, Flora overhaul (HD), HD NPC clothing, HD weapons and shields, HD Furniture and Barrels, HD water (RWT), a few ini tweaks that go beyond Ultra, and not only am I not stuttering but my GPUs run at around 50% capacity. The only "stutter" I get is when I have to load a new area, like when I leave Breezehome and then there's about a half second where it lags as the textures get swapped in VRAM.

If I instal Skyrim 2k on top of these I'll get stutter issues.

OP, try reducing your AA to 4x? I'm running just 4xMSAA+FXAA because with AMD card transparency AA is fubar. SSAA looks only a tad better but it takes a big toll on performance and VRAM usage.

Think that would be difficult?....I just spent a day trying to see what it would take to Overfill my 3 GB cards....not an easy task ..but i did it!..386 MB over the 3GB 580's. System humming along filling both cards past 3 gb and Skyrim using 3.2 on its own.


Think past 2 Gig cards for Skyrim..its a beast . ^^see above

Yeah, consider getting a 7950 or higher for Skyrim. It needs it.

I'm considering getting the 7970, but I've only had my GTX 580 for 6 months. My card is selling for ￡410 on Amazon so if I could sell it for ￡350 then I would only need to drop ￡180.00 for the upgrade. Looks like it has a clock speed of 925 over my 782 and twice the vram not to mention all the other things it has thats better. Hmmm... might wait a few months and buy a GTX 600 series if out by then.

Kaze, the 7970 also overclocks like a monster. I have mine sitting at 1060/1575, but there's reports of people getting much higher core clocks than that at stock voltages, some even above 1200.

OP you may consider dropping MSAA from 8xQ to 4x instead of dropping textures from High to Medium to free up some VRAM as someone else mentioned. Personally I don't skimp on texture quality, right now I run 2xMSAA+2xTSAA+FXAA to compensate for the HRTP VRAM usage.

Also for you guys thinking about upgrading vid cards, you may consider waiting a few months, as rumor-mill is saying the mid-range performance ($300-400) part should have 2GB in its default config and offer performance similar to the GTX 580. Just something to consider. Either way, it should drop the price on the entire stack of cards available right now.

Hey!

Thanks for the tip! I did what you said and I've been runng around outside out Whiterun and my Vram never exceed 1500mb. This is good as before I was maxing it (1536mb) constantly and it was causing stuttering. I get no stuttering now. Thanks!

I definitely will be getting one of those or the GTX 600 series in a couple of months. Finishing Uni in April so will buy one a couple weeks after working full-time. Looking forward to the new power! PC gaming is an expensive endeavour but a fun hobby!

I'd be wary of that. So far nVidia is having issues getting good yields, and there's rumours that the top end 600s may be pushed back to July or later.

@Kazekage If you want to gain performance by using a resolution lower than 1080p, 1600x900 would be a better choice than 1680x1050. It'd be a little less defined, but at least the geometry would be correct (as it's the correct aspect ratio).

Well, I wouldn't consider getting a new card just for Skyrim, it runs great on my 460, it's just that a few more games are benefiting from having more than 1GB of VRAM,

I have 1 gb of vram and only 2gb of system ram, so not much to spare to texture mods etc.

I have tried these to reduce the memory usage:

Disable AA, use http://mrhaandi.blogspot.com/p/injectsmaa.html instead.
Use shadows at medium and tweak them to look better: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=283
Try http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9080, which greatly reduces the vram usage if you still want to use the dlc, (the mod can be also used as a standalone).

There is also http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=47. Haven't tried it so can't say how much it reduces image quality. Altough it states in the desctiption:

Also, if I download a texture mod like the "Realistic Water Textures" I always get the medium quality.