There was a thread floating around here a month or so ago (couldn't find) where a user installed the Official Texture Pack, decided against using it due to performance issues, but couldn't get it removed from their account without contacting Steam Support directly and jumping through a bunch of hoops. Apparently they could deactivate the texture pack, delete the file from their hard drive, but whenever they went to launch Skyrim, Steam would automatically detect it wasn't present and re-download it to their computer due to it being associated with their Steam Account. As I have Skyrim installed on a SSD with limited space, this is a concern if I ever opt to not want to use it (the texture pack).

I have a robust rig (see sig) and am sure if this was the only texture replacer I ever used, I wouldn't have an issue. But I plan to install texture mods from The Nexus and know all too well it's easy to "go over budget" and run into performance issues. So what are most people doing in this situation? Is the Official Texture Pack any good to begin with? I think I've read some people not noticing much of a difference. Should I avoid it altogether and only install fan-made texture packs, or should I install it, then install other fan-made packs in conjunction with/over the top of Bethesda's Pack? Thoughts? Mucho thanks in advance.

Simple solution, if you download the DLC and decide that you don't want it, then just uncheck the ESMs in the Launcher and no more Hi Res Pack.

Yes, if you try to remove it from your install, Steam will re-download it as it is tied to your account. The only downside is it takes up HDD space. Also, there is a way to break apart the BSA's and use parts of the pack if that is all you want, but you have to have them in the first place for that.

So, unless you have little to no HDD space left on your machine, there is no real reason to not try it out.

Note, have a 64bit OS if you are going to use the Pack, it is unstable on 32bit OS's.

From reading several different forums, I think one of the biggest issues people experience when running the texture pack is the amount of video ram on their card. From the looks of your system, I would say you should not have a problem running the texture pack, and from screenshots I have seen, it does make the game look better. It seems that to run the texture pack you need at least 1 gb of ram on your card and even then you may run into issues. From the looks of nvidia inspector when I'm running with the textures 1.5 would probably be even better.

I'm using them and I don't regret it. My computer has the basic requirements: dual core CPU 2.2 Ghz, 1024 Mb of VRAM, 4 Gb of RAM and I run the game on ultra settings. I'm sometimes having fps drops but they happened before I installed the packs.

This is sorta my issue with limited SSD space.

Thanks for the responses guys! Leaning towards installing the pack but wanted to *bump* before make my final decision in case others have anything to add...

Try them. You'll be able to uninstall them if something goes wrong.

Well this answers MY question about whether to use the pack or not!!

Reasons not to use ...

See this research by Brumbek http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1343691-info-detailed-anolysis-of-highres-pack-click-to-learn/

I dont know if gamesas have updated the bsa's since, or if they will in future to solve those problems.

Load ordering is no longer a problem since the 1.4.27 patch to the game (loose files now override BSAs), so the people out there who have taken the DLC BSAs apart probably have a better set of texture replacers than the original BSAs and in the correct locations to replace the original game files.

I was one of those who got valve to remove them from my account, clutter I no longer wanted in the data folder which was not getting used, and quite a lot of those textures are un-necessarily large giving no real benefit for the size they are.