To all you folks at Bethesda,

I just want to say thanks for keeping up with the updates to Skyrim and doing your best to make the game great. I haven't played it in a while, but I made some mods and downloaded a few for fun. I really like the 1.5 update with the newer kill cams and other effects (underwater looks very realistic now :D). Along with this latest update and the Hi-Res texture pack that was released with the Creation Kit, I think you at Bethesda really stepped up for us video game lovers. I am now really looking forward to Fallout 4 !

Again, thanks much,
Tommy

Here here! Well said!

I also cant wait for fo4...actually i can because i need to play skyrim lots first!

Gratitude!

Good to see some positive feedback for a change. I have said this many, many times and I'm sorry if it seems like I'm rubbing this in peoples' faces, but this is the truth for me - I am not exaggerating.

First up, some basic specs:

Intel i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz (I know I said 2.4 in some other threads; that was a mistake, I tend to forget my clock speed heh)
3 GB DDR 3 @ 1066 MHz
nvidia GTX 480
Vista x64
All hardware running at stock settings

This is a rig built in 2009, as you can see, it may not be as powerful as most beefed up PCs most people are running these days...

As for Skyrim, I hit the "Ultra" preset in the launcher, then went into the INI and changed the shadow map resolution to 2048. That's it as far as INI tweaks. I don't touch anything else.

I generally don't like overmodding my TES games (and definitely no Lore-unfriendly garbage), so my mod setup is very basic. Bare essentials, I'd say:

HighResTexturePack01
HighResTexturePack02
HighResTexturePackFix
Unofficial Skyrim Patch
Static Mesh Improvement Mod - SMIM
Fixed Eye Adaptation
Shadow Striping Fix
Improved Skill Books Classic
Alchemy Enhanced XP 1.01 - WG
Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers
Crimson Nirnroot Quest Markers

So how's my gameplay experience? Yesterday I played a straight 10-hour session with NO CTDs. Fast travelled too, everything just works.

The ONLY gripe I have is somehow average FPS has decreased a little, probably due to grass shadows. Where before I was averaging 60 FPS in the Tamriel worldspace in a scene with lots of grass, now the FPS will sometimes dip to the 50's. IT'S NO BIG DEAL. I appreciate that the Skyrim renderer is more "heavy" than the Oblivion and Fallout renderers (eventhough it's the same) so some FPS loss is to be expected - not to mention I am cranking things like anti-alias and anisotropic filtering.

Despite some minor FPS loss (which I'm sure I can fix with a graphics card upgrade if I had cash to blow... as it is, it doesn't bother me so I dont' want to waste my money), the game has been otherwise amazing.

With the barrage of fixes from the Unofficial Skyrim Patch plus Beth's native fixes, the game has become much more enjoyable.

I am thankful that they continue to update their game and provide us with free fixes where most game companies would charge money for them. Thank you Bethesda.

Grass shadows also dropped me some fps, before was getting about 40fps outside on average but now its more like 30-40fps. But its still smooth with no lag so am not bothered.

Playing on ultra except shadows on low (kills fps) and aa off and fxaa on. And heavily modded, have about 15 texture mods including skyrim hd full and have about 57.esp's plugin mods.

Not to bad for a laptop