I've just purchased a new laptop and was wondering what you guys thought of it from a Skyrim modding point of view? Will it handle intense mods like Frostfall and Wet & Cold? How far will I be able to push graphics enhancements (ENB, SMIM, etc)?

Here are the details:


Any input is greatly appreciated

- Hypno

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXfHovmAKFY

Your GTX 860m has only 2GB of Vram. So things may be a little different. !!!

But more or less...

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Congrats for your new Laptop. !!!

The difference is, that the 2gb model is actually a maxwell card, the 3gb model is a rebranded 770m. Anyway, from a modding perspective, yes this thing is a beast. I have a similar setup (i7 4910, 765m). Yours should have no issues with script intense mods (thought it depends whether you cpu can keep maxspeed during gaming, mine stays at 4.1 GHz in Skyrim, which may make a difference), but go easy with retextures. You probably don't want to 2k everything, else you fill that 2gb real fast. But stuff like smim and the high res dlc will cause no slowdown, and there is plenty of room for more, especially since you gpu is a good deal more powerfull than mine.

With a handfull if performance textures and shadow tweaks, and a wide selection of high quality textures else, i often stay at 60fps. I do not use enb though, but i suppose if you use one without ao you may get similar fps than i get without.

Use FRAPS for monitoring the frame rates. Also pay attention to temperatures since it is a notebook.

Get an idea of baseline performance with Vanilla Skyrim. Add mods a bit at a time. Test often. Def start with

graphic mods and go from there. I always start with texture mods. Use NMM (nexus mod manager) for installing mods.

Are Frostfall and Wet/Cold really "intense" mods? When I think intense (taxing on your PC) I think texture mods, ENBs, and fire replacers.

Generally speaking they definitely aren't "intense" as some mods out there. This is speaking from a performance standpoint. The biggest hits will be from graphic mods like texture, weather, and ENB series.

You will also get significant hits from overhaul mods like civilwar mod. This is all relatively speaking as it really depends on your hardware/system.

Cheers mate, and thanks for finding the video

Thanks for the input. I'm not really too fussed about the graphics enhancing side of things to be honest, as you say I'll probably just stick with SMIM, Hi-Res DLC, aMidianborn's (spelling?) stuff and InsanitySorrow's various models. Only mentioned ENB to see if you guys thought I could actually comfortably use it

This is all good advice, thank you. I have been making mods since the ck came out, but I have never really had a good enough machine to properly enjoy the game with mods for myself (bought the game on Xbox then bought it again on PC for the ck). Recently I just felt like actually playing.

How exactly do I check temperatures? I might be the technical guy in my group of my friends but that's only because Google

Perhaps intense is the wrong word. As a mod author myself, I know that individually no mod is any more taxing on the systems then the vanilla content itself. It's just when you put a few of these big guns into one pot, then on a low end rig things would start getting sluggish. Frostfall was only really mentioned because it notifies you when your script system is bogged down so it's scripts might not be working as intended (but it is still a "big gun" in its own right).

- Hypno

For temps you can try HWinfo http://www.hwinfo.com/ or Speedfan http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

hw info is good, yes. you can also use nvidiainspector iirc. for FPS, I'd just use ENBs FPS overlay, it's less intrusive than FRAPS. you need the enboost feature anyway, independently of whether you will use enb visuals.

Script intense mods, and mods that add a lot of NPCs will tax your CPU, while graphics mods hit your GPU, so there is a difference in whether you add textures or script heavy mods. personally, I would try to keep enough headroom for your CPU, i.e. be rather GPU limited than CPU, or else the scripts will start to choke. HW info will be able to tell you, which part is taxed to which %, so it's good to see where you are standing with your mods. (as a warning, I personally found ethatrons high quality map and lod to be far more taxing on the CPU and GPU both than he claimed.)

in principle: don't worry, you should be able to add all what you want with the Laptop. some of the more demanding ENB features may be off limits (or bring your FPS down to 20) but otherwise you should be fine to go. neither that CPU nor that GPU are on the weaker side, if you are planning to go with reasonable ENB settings and fullHD. Full ENB-AO and 4k, different story

Thank you very much for all your input guys. I've been enjoying my new laptop for a few weeks now. It runs the modded game brilliantly.

My last question is brought on by the recent confirmation of fallout 4. Obviously we haven't got any specifications for fallout yet, but in general how well will this laptop run "next gen" games?

- Hypno

Your laptop runs The Witcher 3 at 1600x900 at 35 fps, with a reasonable setup of Medium/High options without Hair & Fur & HBAO turned on

You should get even 40 fps at 1366x768 (high settings).

I don't thing Fallout 4 will be equally demanding as The Witcher 3.

Don't forget that's a Laptop, but even so - i thing you can get a decent performance from that laptop, if you tweak the graphics a bit.

i run ck pretty smoothly on a e6500 dual core with a 2g geforce 760 (or even a gt240 before that),

so that machine of yours should do very well.

What's ck ???

creation kit

Ha, Ha okay, i thought it was a game you referring too.

I thought the OP just wanna play Skyrim with mods.

Also don't forget that's a Laptop, so hardware is way inferior, even comparing with desktop equivalent components. !!!

i'm certain there'll be _some_ game you'd abbreviate ck

...i happen to know the op to be a notorious modder from creation kit forum (takes one to know one)... ,-)

Ha - Ha couldn't know...

Haha, my reputation proceeds me . Oh boy, this laptop eats the CK for breakfast! Loading up a plugin + Skyrim.esm takes mere seconds compared to the tea break I used to have on my old laptop

- Hypno