» Wed May 30, 2012 11:09 am Just thought I'd post a quick message about Skyrim and 32bit. This post is mainly for those who have crashing difficulties and are on a 32-bit OS and just trying to help out.
Basically this is my story (well, a pretty short, nerdy story). I had Windows 7 32-bit and the hardware is a Samsung laptop with 4GB of RAM, i5 and a GT520M. Now when I had vanilla Skyrim, everything went OK, I did get crashes the more I played though, but the crashes weren't that often.
Now as time went on, all these mods came out. And what did I do? I grabbed them and started installing them, thinking that everything would be all super duper awesome. For the most part - everything went OK. But after a while, Skyrim kept crashing. Like often. Like two minutes after loading a save.
I spent days taking mods off, finding out what caused it. And it came down to these mods:
- Flora overhaul
- Lush grass
- Lush trees
On the bad side, these are the mods I really wanted.
Generally either mod (well, texture mod) by itself caused the game to crash. Most of the time I could reproduce by starting a new game, go into Riverwood, kill the chicken and then get everyone coming after me. After a while, the game would crash. Waiting in a spot or fast travelling (before I had the disable mod) would also cause a crash.
I also put a post at:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1355916-a-really-big-thanks-to-the-modders/
Which lists all the mods I used which would cause the crash.
I researched the problem and found that memory (or lack of) would cause it. I knew previously that my machine had 4GB of RAM, but Windows 7 only used about 2.7GB of that. And I think the OS uses at least 2GB of that. Which left 700MB for other processes.
So I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit. Couple things happened after doing this - I noticed a difference in RAM intensive apps and I noticed that all my 4GB of RAM became usable. And Skyrim stopped crashing.
That's with all my mods - no crashing.
With the texture mods (note, no HD textures), the game runs a little slower - but it's worth it. The FPS is still playable. The world is so much more immersive (already was!) and walking through marshes actually has more of a... vibe to it.
Anyways, just thought I'd post this if anyone else is having crash difficulties with a 32-bit OS. Took my days to figure this out and thought I'd try and help others out.
On another note, the modders are unreal. They spend their time making these awesome mods for Skyrim for nothing but perhaps recognition. And also thanks to Beth for making a game (and previous games) that supports modding to this degree.
So if you can afford and have the hardware (and drivers) to go 64-bit - go for it.
