The Elders Scrolls V - Skyrim Optimization Guide

I'm a huge fan of the "The Elder Scrolls" series, I really am! Even in the lowest setting possible, the games never cease to amaze me, although I tell you, Skyrim, the latest singleplayer-only installment of this saga, is an really computer burner for low end pc.

Most games we come across today are more about GPU (Graphics) than CPU and RAM (Mathematic and Rendering Calculations). That is why low end pc exist, they reduce graphics so the game gets lighter. But Skyrim is not your usual game, and to prove that I tweeked my version of the game with all sorts of mods. Performance mods, reducing texture quality, removing effects, fogs, smoke, everything I could do and all I could achieve was a almost perfect 45-55 fps only inside (houses, caverns, ruins, etc), while keeping up at 25-31 fps outside, which is not what I wanted, but renders the game much more playable. Either way, let's start with this guide!

For starters, let's take a swifter turn by downloading this tool first. This way you don't need to tweak the 2 ini files and it gets much simplier to explain. My sincere thanks topfannkuchen_gesicht, for this essential tool!

- Run the game once, I believe you need to launch a new game for it to create the 2 ini files we will be needing.

- First, click here, then, under mains files, click download manually.

- Extract the contents with a compressor (Winrar, 7zip, Winzip, etc) into a folder into your desktop.

- Run Skyrim_Config

If it fails to open any of the ini files, go to Documents > My Games > Skyrim and uncheck the read only marker for Skyrim and SkyrimPrefs ini files (Do so by acessing Properties under the right click menu and unchek "read only"), then reopen the Skyrim_Config

Let's start!

Screen: Custom Resolution, then input 640 x 480 in the respective textboxes

Uncheck V-Sync for a greater gaming experience slide Field-Of-View to 100 (you'll like it)

Uncheck any kind of MSAA, Tranparency, Blur and Depth field.

Jump to Textures tab:

Reduce to the minimum the Anisotropic Filtering and the texture quality to very low (if you're desesperate for frames per second) and check threaded

Reducing Max. Particles is a great boost but it renders your spells in game invisible at lowest numbers, I recommend 180/190 with threaded. Also uncheck any kind of decals and reduce draw distance

Tweak draw distance as you like, although I would recommend ticking Actor Fade to the maximum if you're a archer or a long range spellcaster. Grids only causes problems if you raise it (from 3 to 5 or 5 to 7 for example), reducing doesn't cause problems and it's a good boost. 3 gets the game a little instable I heard, but much more playable. Check all the boxes to the right

World tab helps wth exterior. I don't like to reduce that too much because it makes my game "unnatural" (I have a good pc to support this, so I don't want to be that drastic), but you can tweak this as you want.

Trees are a huge graphic comsuption in any game, especially if they are animated, reduce that and check "threaded". Draw is the graphical world for the minimum distance you need to be for it to render and load distance the same but for a higher texture quality and the animation process

Grass, your main antogonist since TES IV! Reduce it, completly remove it! Uncheck Grass Shading

Shadows... Reduce everything, same as water, it still looks fine with everything off and low

Go to Controls upper tab, disable Mouse Acceleration

In the Game/Launcher, tick "Enable File Selection"

Savegames Tab is optional.

Now pressed Apply in the bottom and go to Documents > My Games > Skyrim and apply Read Only Attribute to the both ini files (it's the inverse process of the described above). This will keep the game from changing your ini in the options menu in game.

Open Skyrim.ini in the mentioned path and add these after the last line:

[Papyrus]
fUpdateBudgetMS=800
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=800
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=500.0
iMinMemoryPageSize=150000
iMaxMemoryPageSize=5500000
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=1800000000
bEnableLogging=1
bEnableTrace=1
bLoadDebugInformation=1

This will optimize your papyrys (Skyrim's Script Engine) for a slightly greater Cache Memory usage, reducing lag

Now, MODS! :D

Create an account on Nexusmods, seriously, you'll need it and you'll like it.

Download Nexus Mod Manager and login inside it.

Open, choose Skyrim and add these mods:

Some are here: http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/1xrxle/mods_to_increase_performance/

Also, download HiAlgo's Booster, and as I mentioned in the TOCA Race Driver GRID guide, install Razer Game Booster, which is now called Razer Cortex.

Razer Cortex

HiAlgoBoost Skyrim Edition (Yes, there are other mods like this one)

Be aware to install the HiAlgoBoost in the root folder, not in the Data Folder, so don't use NMM (Nexus Mod Manager) with this one. Backup any file that you're asked to overwrite as it may crash your game due to compatibility problems with any mod you may have installed.

Also install SKSE and SkyIU which can make the menu experience less jerkier and provide support for 80% of today's Skyrim mods.

Why Razer Cortex? It shuts down everything that's not needed while playing, giving close to 100% focus of the computer in the game you're playing.

Why HiAlgoBooster? In GPU stress situations it increases the size of pixels, slightly reducing quality for a few seconds, just the enought to counter-balance frame rate drops.

Take in mind most of these tweaks are area focused. Some will not provide a general frame rate increase, but reduce lag in certain areas. For example, water based performance tweaks will increase/reduce lag when you're near water, get it?

And that's it. If you still can't play skyrim, I have the solution for you, but it makes the game ugly as hell.

ULG - Ultra Low Graphics Mod for low-end PCs

TOCA Race Driver GRID - Performance Optimization

We all 90's folks remember and know the TOCA racing games. And it's true that TOCA as being around for longer than Gran Turismo, even if just a few months.

They came from this:

Toca Touring Car Championship - The First One

To this:

Toca Race Driver: Grid - The third most recent title

And now this:

Toca Race Driver Grid: Autosport

You may thank TOCA for the rewind system in a racing game, they were the ones who invented it.

Enough history, let's tweak this things.



First of all. Set:

Resolution to 640x480 (the lower the resolution the smaller textures are, so the faster the game will load them)

Disable:
Anisotropic Filtering (reduces textures treatment)

Anti-Aliasing (Decreases diagonal tearing)

VSync [optional*] (Syncs the FPS rate to the monitor refresh rate [if 60Hz, means it can only show 60 fps, more than that is an expense of GPU power])

Mirror (grants you rearview mirror, but remember, in games, mirrors are 3d models, not reflections, reflections are too expensive for GPU so they avoid that so the game is playable)

Shadows: Seriously, who needs shadows? first thing to turn down when doing performance tweakings FOR ALL GAMES

All those weird named stuff -> Low or Off, not even bother searching the meanings, it all counts to increase graphics are slow computers down.

*Vsync: This has to do with the end user of this guide. My game ran at 25 fps and after fully tweaking it I'm getting 60/85 fps. If your game is ALWAYS above 60 fps, I recommend you turn on Vsync. If your monitor only supports 60 fps (60 fps = 60Hz Refresh Rate), more than that is useless.

Advanced Tweaking.

Ever thought why GRID looks so different than its predecestor Race Driver 3? Well, that's because Codemaster used a feature called PostProcess (Screenshot in the previous post), that's what gives the game that yellowish look.

Let's code!

In Windows 7, open Documents/Codemasters/GRID/hardwaresettings

Open hardware_settings_config with wordpad or notepad++ (not notepad)

set <multisampling option="on"> to "off" - This is a special kind of antialiasing designed for fullscreen. You won't need it.

set <shadows enabled... to false and the size to 512 (or even lower, as long it is dividable by 4 (1024, 512, 256 and so on) maskquality to 1 too

set particles to false (in Wordpad, the search hotkey is Control +  L by the way, thought it would be useful

Set crowd, cloth, postprocess, blur, ground cover to false.

If you hate trees and love performance tweaks, set trees visibility to 180, low 180, high 60, lodquality to 0

If you want ghost cars to race, set vehicles character quality to 0 and lod quality to 0, so the 3d model for drivers is not rendered in every vehicle (specially heavy for 15+ opponents races)

reflections? Zero! Size 256. I believe forcebilinear increases the performance, since bilinear is the lightest texture compression method of all time.

Real man look behind, forget mirros! set mirrors to false, the other two are optional, set for true and 256 if you still want your mirror

 Skidmarks? Why? false
dynamic... You probably understand by now that everything that's dynamic is evil for low end computers...
reflections give the game a cooler look, but it pins down the performance, set to false

Not sure what that psysics stuff does, but set it to false. vehicle damage to false

motions enabled set to false. it probably means motion blur.


As always, I recommend using Razer Cortex to squeeze a couple more fps for your game and avoid stuttering, it's simple to set and download, I use it myself. The link is here

Introduction

In this blog I'll be covering performance wise tweaks, patches and everything that can make a game run faster, in total expense of graphic quality. Things like Bloom, dynamic shadows and lights, anti-aliasing and everything else that makes games look great also make your low end computer incapable of running those games or maxing them.

Imagine a game as if it was a human being: in here, we strip everything to the bone, so it gets lighter and runs faster.

Unfortunately, I'm on a rush right now and I won't be able to upload my own screenshots, but as soon as I can I'll do it!

For every low end friend out there, have a good game on me! :D

Toca Race Driver Grid - Deactivating postprocess - result: no more yellowish filter and a raise in fps by about +/- 20 frames
how to do this? Stick around, this will be my first guide!