So, i'm a PC Player.. I'm thinking into adding some Mods such as Realistic Water, and other like that..

But does this kind of mods affect the performance ? Mods that adds more density to the cobwebs, more density to the grass to make a more wild looking wilderness. Mods that makes objects more detailed, Mod that makes the water more realistic, etc... this kind of mods.. Do they affect the performance ?

Thanks in Advance.

Depends on what kind of hardware you have I would imagine. If you can run everything on Ultra to start with it shouldn't be a problem.

They will have small impacts on your performance as you get more and more mods. Some of those mods will affect your performance more than others. Most packs usually have a lower res option that will have less of an impact on your FPS. ALWAYS back up your games files to a separate location before modding though.

Realistic water is great though. I downloaded the medium pack to be safe as my laptop only handles high-ish settings. If you can handle Ultra settings you should be fine.

Uhm...Yes. When you're loading textures larger than the default, it will effect performance. When adding more objects to load, it will effect performance. When modifying shaders, it will effect performance. Nobody can say how much though, however many of the mods that retexture water (or anything else) offer the default texture size of 512x512 (or somethin' like that...) which shouldn't effect performance at all.

Top two got it right, if your PC is slow with ultra or less already then it will make an effect but your PC would have to be a bit outdated to do such

Here's a thread in the mod forums about the water: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1310354-why-does-water-in-morrowind-still-look-better-than-skyrim/

A little off-topic from your question, but relevant nevertheless.

I can run on Ultra with rarely a little lagg, and on High with no lagg, smoothly..

So ? What do you think ?

I think you'll have no problem with most mods currently available. Have fun!

If you are looking at mods, particularly of the improved texture variety, you'll need a 4GB LAA or your computer will laugh then pee on your leg instead of launching Skyrim. Yes, they effect performance - if you have a good rig, you likely have lots of headroom with this game so you should be good to go. With certain mods, you may see severe and instand performance hits, so you'll be constantly balancing ultra settings with your fps targets and your desire to have certain mods. Most have very little hit.

The good thing about the modding community for Skyrim is that it has been around for many years, and they have 'protocols' that most follow, regarding clear install/uninstall instructions. I haven't run into anything that overwrites anything from out-of-box Skyrim - therefore, everything you do can be easily undone if you don't like it.

Multiple mods running at max settings with no issues. Re-textures for both land and water as well as LAA.

Thanks..

I'll be buying a new and better PC soon, so when the Mods starts to get more "heavy" and affecting my performance i'll probably have a new PC.

Yes some mods will affect preformance, you just have to try them out to know. Some mods will be big and large if you know what i mean. Mods are good dont get me worng but the more you run the more you drag down the game in preformance and stability, mainly stability. You hear about people running 200+ mods in oblivion but for me it sounds dubius, im sure they are putting up with some kind of defect.

Johnnybegood

is that the wild one?? enjoyed that movie.

I stay away from texture mods. I learned my lesson with Oblivion; I killed it. Vanilla Skyrim is fine for now.

The simple answer is yes, every texture and model mod will affect your performance. How much is up to your system, and how much it can handle to begin with. Adding NPCs, adding buildings, adding terrain, all of these things will have an effect.

If you're running with 4GB of RAM, be sure to use the mod that allows the use of all 4 gigs. Skyrim defaults to using just 2GB. That should take care of most performance issues.

I'm running everything on MAX settings with tons of HD texture mods and whatnot, trust me you want the LAA for that.
Being restricted to 2 GB ram (spit on.....) kinda messes it up, so get the LAA if you're getting alot of "heavy" texture mods.

Could someone give me a link ?

I have 4GB on my PC, but soon i'll buy a better one with 8GB and better processor...

Does using this LAA won't prejudice my PC ? I mean, it'll use all the 4GB and i only have 4GB... isn't it bad ? or i'm completely wrong ? If i'm wrong, please give me the link to this thingy there.. Thanks

plz ?

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013


If you're worried about performance, the only textures so far that impacted me so far were facial-replacements. They tend to go a lot higher res than most (depending on which ones you're downloading).

Thanks.