I have a friend who's just getting in the Skyrim. He has a low-end laptop that barely runs Vanilla skyrim. I can make this game more stable by cleaning plug-ins, unofficial patches, and setting him up with a decent mod manager. I've never really had to worry about low-end performance. Not having the experience I'm reaching out to those that share his plight! What options are available for increasing performance?

While you're at it, if you know of mods that don't really have a performance and enrich the game post them here.

Turn off shadows, they look crappy anyway. You can the do it with the .ini or use this mod.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/16464/?

that gave me the biggest FPS boost.

try this?



http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17137/?tab=3&selected_game=110&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodimages%2F%3Fid%3D17137%26user%3D1%26gid%3D110&pUp=1

Please don't follow Funnybunny's suggestion unless you're desperate. Unless frame rate is more important to you than anything else, it's probably not necessary to use it. I ran Skyrim on a very low-end computer for years and was able to get decent performance while using lots of graphics mods (and others)

They are several things you can try. "Bethesda High Performance Textures" by Gamwich (there are two files, so look for both) is a must have, even if your system is higher-end. It replaces hundreds of textures with smaller files that in most cases actually look better.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/42360/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43921/?

Another must have is "Skyrim Project Optimization", which uses occlusion culling to reduce the number of things that Skyrim has to render in interiors (things you can't see anyway). http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32505/?

You can try "HiAlgo Boost", which dynamically reduces texture resolution when you're moving. If his game becomes a slideshow when he's in combat, for example, this can help make it playable. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15123/?

There are other programs and other techniques. Look for them. Experiment with settings (carefully....if something promises the moon, it's probably nonsense, dangerous or both) He should resist playing with ridiculously crap textures or without shadows or any of those "fixes" unless absolutely necessary.

Playing in windowed mode will help. There's a way to still make it appear full screen too.

Windowed may help or make it worse. I know for me any Bethesda game runs worse in windowed mode.

I was in the same boat for a long time. I'll second everything Corwin suggested, especially HiAlgoBoost. For shadows, I personally recommend "http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/10789/?", which does a better job of staying consistent with the original lighting while still disabling shadows in interiors. Doesn't work for exteriors, but there I would just lower the shadow resolution a lot in the .ini settings.

Weird. Did you ever figure out why?

Very odd. I tried full-screen off and on over the years.... my FPS tanks. I use windowed mode 1440x900, and never go lower than 60 FPS.

[Um. Entering a caveat - I've never played games (other than WoW years back) on a laptop. I have a desktop....]

Other people have the same issue. For some Fullscreen works better and for others it does not. I would rather have it my way and that Fullscreen works better as it should.