The Elder Scrolls 5 : Skyrim

So you have a decent rig and you want to get the best from Skyrim, huh?

Let's start from tweaking the INI!

-Check the screenshots for comparative images, download them and watch them from your rig, the Nexus image slider makes difficult to spot the differences. I will add more screen in the future.

My Rig:
OS: Win7 Ultimate, 64bit
CPU: Intel i7 Core 860, 2.80 ghz
RAM: 4gb ddr3, 1600 mhz
Video: GTX 560 TI, oc'd 900mhz, 1gb ddr3
*I'm using the last nVIDIA beta drivers 285.79

-The frame loss is quite modest, in the "EndTutorial" screenshot it is 55, dropped to 50 after the tweaks. In the "River" screenshot it is 51, dropped to 48 after the tweaks.
-So it's an avarage of 3-5 fps loss, and I find the game always extremely playable.



INI TWEAKS GUIDE:

First thing to do, change your game graphics settings from the game Launcher:

-Set "Ultra" settings and max out Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filter.

-Go in Advanced:
Max out everything BUT leave UNCHECKED "FXAA" and "Object Detail Fade".
*FXAA makes the screen very blurry, Object Fade makes the details fade from a certain view distance.

-Ok and exit.


-Now, go in "Documents/My Games/Skyrim", make a copy of the file "SkyrimPrefs.ini" and name that copy as you want, it is a backup.

-Open the original "SkyrimPrefs.ini" with a txt editor, find these lines and change them if you want:

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3 (change to 1) - Greately improves the definition of the shadows with no FPS loss (for me at least). If you think they are too sharp, set the value to 2 instead of 1.

fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=0.0000 (change to 10000000.0000) - Improves tree LOD distance (experimental).

iShadowFilter=3 (change to 4) - Probably slightly improve shadow filtering (experimental, doesn't harm anyway).

fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000 (change to 1000.0000) - Improves the LOD distance of shadows.

bTransparencyMultisampling=0 (change to 1) - Enables Trasparency MS (experimental, needs more testing).

iWaterMultiSamples=0 (change to 4) - Improves water AA sampling.

bTreesReceiveShadows=0 (change to 1) - Improves the tree shadowing by enabling shadows ON trees!

bDrawLandShadows=0 (change to 1) - Enable land shadowing, larger shadows are unaffected, this is a subtle effect.

fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000 (change to 400.0000) - Improves minimum grass fade distance (experimental).

iWaterReflectHeight=512 and
iWaterReflectWidth=512 (change both to 1024) - Improves the water reflections resolution.

bMouseAcceleration=1 (change to 0) - Disables mouse acceleration, which causes mouse lag with Vertical Sync, just be sure to also raise the mouse sensitivity in the game options.

uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20 (change to 40) - Renders more tree's skins/textures (needs more testing).


-Now add these lines at the bottom:

bUseWaterReflectionBlur=1
bReflectExplosions=1
iWaterBlurAmount=4
bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0
bForceHighDetailReflections=1 - These 5 improve the water rendering.

fBlockLoadDistanceLow=50000.0000
fBlockLoadDistance=125000.0000
fHighBlockLoadDistanceLow=20000.0000 - These 3 improve the mesh on long distance.


-Save, exit.


IMPORTANT: Forcing Anisotropic Filter 16x from your video card settings IMPROVES WATER FILTERING, also if the games already uses AF 16x!


Please let me know about new INI tweaks you discover, and report any problem these tweaks may cause, this will become a bigger and better guide thanks to you!



v1.1
-Added shadow fildering experimental tweak


TheCompiler.