Worth playing with 660Ti?

[JohnnyGui]

Hey all,

Got the game for free since I own the LE. I was eager to play this version but when I looked at the recommended specs I noticed that it needs a way more powerful GPU than my old GTX 660Ti.

I was wondering if anyone here has a similar GPU and how the game is running for them fps-wise and how much the cost of graphics settings is to make the game run smooth (50-60fps)

Specs:
660Ti
i5-3570K CPU
8 GB RAM
1 TB HDD
Windows 10 Pro x64

Am I better off playing the Legendary Edition with graphics mods with this GPU?

[Sherb]

Exactly the same setup as me and i get 60 FPS on high settings. Should be good to go.

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by Sherb:

Exactly the same setup as me and i get 60 FPS on high settings. Should be good to go.

Wow, are you sure? Sorry for bothering you with this but I'm curious what graphical settings you've chosen in the Advanced Settings (Detail & View Distance Tabs).

[Malaman]

I have a GTX670 with a slightly better CPU than yours (i5-4570) and I play with 40-60 fps on ultra + some graphic enhancing mods like Noble Skyrim and SMIM. On interiors it's a constant 60 fps.

Turns out SSE is very well optimized and runs like butter even on low-mid end PCs as long as you know how to keep it running properly.

[Sherb]

Yes im sure and as for detail; Shadow quality - Medium Shadow distance - High Decal quantity - Medium Godrays quality - Medium. Now for view distance I have the sliders half full apart from object fade & actor fade they are full. I obviously get some frame drops here and there but nothing major usually tp the low-high 40's but that may be because of the amount of mods im using currently.

[Rafael Freeman]

Shadow Distance is a performance killer and Shadow Quality doesn't look that bad on Medium or even Low.

Godrays can of course be completely disabled. They look nice, but the game looks good without them, they are more of a bonus.

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by Sherb:

Yes im sure and as for detail; Shadow quality - Medium Shadow distance - High Decal quantity - Medium Godrays quality - Medium. Now for view distance I have the sliders half full apart from object fade & actor fade they are full. I obviously get some frame drops here and there but nothing major usually tp the low-high 40's but that may be because of the amount of mods im using currently.

Thanks a lot for the info!

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Shadow Distance is a performance killer and Shadow Quality doesn't look that bad on Medium or even Low.

Godrays can of course be completely disabled. They look nice, but the game looks good without them, they are more of a bonus.

Yeah, I was really wondering about the settings that are usually the biggest framerate killers.
Are draw distances usually very demanding as well?


What I'm weighing out is, if I'm able to get the Legendary Edition to the same level as the Special Edition, graphics-wise, will I suffer from a worse fps or a better one?

[Hox]

the difference is not that high between the versions,except that there is no hardware antialiasing(msaa) available only post aa
performance should be fine

[Rafael Freeman]

Originally posted by JohnnyGui:

Originally posted by Sherb:

Yes im sure and as for detail; Shadow quality - Medium Shadow distance - High Decal quantity - Medium Godrays quality - Medium. Now for view distance I have the sliders half full apart from object fade & actor fade they are full. I obviously get some frame drops here and there but nothing major usually tp the low-high 40's but that may be because of the amount of mods im using currently.

Thanks a lot for the info!

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Shadow Distance is a performance killer and Shadow Quality doesn't look that bad on Medium or even Low.

Godrays can of course be completely disabled. They look nice, but the game looks good without them, they are more of a bonus.

Yeah, I was really wondering about the settings that are usually the biggest framerate killers.
Are draw distances usually very demanding as well?


What I'm weighing out is, if I'm able to get the Legendary Edition to the same level as the Special Edition, graphics-wise, will I suffer from a worse fps or a better one?

Difficult to say. 'Old' Skyrim runs very well on a GTX 660 Ti and looks quite nice with everything maxed out (with the possible exception of shadow quality, because shadows in Skyrim rely on the CPU). But something like texture mods might tax the 2 GB Vram of the card.

To be honest, since you will have to lower quite a few settings to get a decent frame-rate with the Special Edition, the SE version isn't going to look that much better, but the better shadows and improved lighting are a real plus. Plus the AA on the foliage is nice and forcing it in the old version is resource hungry.

If you question if you can get the old version to look as good (or better) as the new version, I'm going to say: don't bother. It's going to look different. Only you can decide whether or not a heavily modded old version will look as good or better than the new version.

If I were you, I would give the new version a try at medium/high settings since you already own it.

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Originally posted by JohnnyGui:

Thanks a lot for the info!




Yeah, I was really wondering about the settings that are usually the biggest framerate killers.
Are draw distances usually very demanding as well?


What I'm weighing out is, if I'm able to get the Legendary Edition to the same level as the Special Edition, graphics-wise, will I suffer from a worse fps or a better one?

Difficult to say. 'Old' Skyrim runs very well on a GTX 660 Ti and looks quite nice with everything maxed out (with the possible exception of shadow quality, because shadows in Skyrim rely on the CPU). But something like texture mods might tax the 2 GB Vram of the card.

To be honest, since you will have to lower quite a few settings to get a decent frame-rate with the Special Edition, the SE version isn't going to look that much better, but the better shadows and improved lighting are a real plus. Plus the AA on the foliage is nice and forcing it in the old version is resource hungry.

If you question if you can get the old version to look as good (or better) as the new version, I'm going to say: don't bother. It's going to look different. Only you can decide whether or not a heavily modded old version will look as good or better than the new version.

If I were you, I would give the new version a try at medium/high settings since you already own it.

Yeah, I read that ENB Series in the Legendary Edition could choke my 660Ti as well.

You're right, I should give it a try first and see how it runs.


Thanks a guys for your info and advice!

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by Debaser:

GTX660 here and I have no FPS issues (I don't monitor it though). I get away with High settings on vanilla, and generally add a lot of tweaking mods (ENB, Climates, Vivd Things etc). If you steer clear of any mods with high-detail 2K+ I guess, you should be fine.

Things start to go south with me and the GTX660 when I start clicking Ultra detailed mods or 2K+ type ones.

That's good to hear! High settings should probably look quite a bit better than the Legendary Edtition, I think

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally posted by Debaser:

GTX660 here and I have no FPS issues (I don't monitor it though). I get away with High settings on vanilla, and generally add a lot of tweaking mods (ENB, Climates, Vivd Things etc). If you steer clear of any mods with high-detail 2K+ I guess, you should be fine.

Things start to go south with me and the GTX660 when I start clicking Ultra detailed mods or 2K+ type ones.

That is not completely accurate. Many of the base game textures for Skyrim SE are 2K - 4K depending on the texture. Using texture mods might actually be better, since SE textures are upscaled 2-4K and mods will be true 2-4K.

But if anyone has problems running the base textures, there are optimized versions of Bethesda's textures available to help improve performance.

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten:

Originally posted by Debaser:

GTX660 here and I have no FPS issues (I don't monitor it though). I get away with High settings on vanilla, and generally add a lot of tweaking mods (ENB, Climates, Vivd Things etc). If you steer clear of any mods with high-detail 2K+ I guess, you should be fine.

Things start to go south with me and the GTX660 when I start clicking Ultra detailed mods or 2K+ type ones.

That is not completely accurate. Many of the base game textures for Skyrim SE are 2K - 4K depending on the texture. Using texture mods might actually be better, since SE textures are upscaled 2-4K and mods will be true 2-4K.

But if anyone has problems running the base textures, there are optimized versions of Bethesda's textures available to help improve performance.

Are you saying that there are more detailed texture mods for SE hat even improves performance?

Originally posted by Debaser:

One thing I will say though, Special Edition has been behaving a lot better for me. I don't know if that's because I haven't tweaked it as heavily and the absence of SKSE, but it's the first time I've gotten enough mods together, and having it stable, so I'm happy.

Perhaps it's the recent update 1.2 that did the job?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally posted by JohnnyGui:

Are you saying that there are more detailed texture mods for SE hat even improves performance?

No, what I am saying is that Bethesda's textures are low res upscaled textures, which means they will offer you the same performance as any other 2K or 4K equivalents of the textures in question.

That means that since you are already running the game with Bethesda upscaled 2/4K textures, you are better off using a mod that has genuine 2/4k textures that aren't upscaled, because your PC will have the same workload, but not the same visual quality.

But because Bethesda's textures are upscaled, they can be reduced to a lower quality with minimal quality loss. There are a couple mods available that have already reduced and optimized Bethesda's Skyrim SE textures and using one of those mod will improve performance.

[Rafael Freeman]

Originally posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten:

Originally posted by JohnnyGui:

Are you saying that there are more detailed texture mods for SE hat even improves performance?

No, what I am saying is that Bethesda's textures are low res upscaled textures, which means they will offer you the same performance as any other 2K or 4K equivalents of the textures in question.

That means that since you are already running the game with Bethesda upscaled 2/4K textures, you are better off using a mod that has genuine 2/4k textures that aren't upscaled, because your PC will have the same workload, but not the same visual quality.

But because Bethesda's textures are upscaled, they can be reduced to a lower quality with minimal quality loss. There are a couple mods available that have already reduced and optimized Bethesda's Skyrim SE textures and using one of those mod will improve performance.

From memory: I once came upon a mod that used lower resolution textures with less compression. Never tried it myself, but apperently there was a slight performance improvement plus better image quality.

Bethesda can go a bit over board with compression (like in the audio files). So it seemed to make sense.

[JohnnyGui]

Originally posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten:

Originally posted by JohnnyGui:

Are you saying that there are more detailed texture mods for SE hat even improves performance?

No, what I am saying is that Bethesda's textures are low res upscaled textures, which means they will offer you the same performance as any other 2K or 4K equivalents of the textures in question.

That means that since you are already running the game with Bethesda upscaled 2/4K textures, you are better off using a mod that has genuine 2/4k textures that aren't upscaled, because your PC will have the same workload, but not the same visual quality.

But because Bethesda's textures are upscaled, they can be reduced to a lower quality with minimal quality loss. There are a couple mods available that have already reduced and optimized Bethesda's Skyrim SE textures and using one of those mod will improve performance.

Ah ok, I could use such mods if 2 GB VRAM on the 660Ti isn't enough.