Hello,

I've found a number of various "recommended" shadow tweaks for skyrimpref.ini; all listing different values for how to improve shadows.

The thing is, I have no idea what most of the settings even do aside from resolution and distance... I am looking for a balance of performance versus quality in terms of shadows. Two examples below.

http://itcprosolutions.com/skyrimguides/tweak_guide.htm

http://www.rcrncommunity.com/five-quick-skyrim-tweaks-you-may-not-know

Have you tried the suggested settings? Depending on your rig, it is going to chug, or not have much of an affect as the more modern video cards can process some serious data.

Worse comes to worse, if you hose the prefs file in My Documents/My Games/Skyrim, just delete it and the game will make a new one. Just don't mess with the one in the install folder. Or, just copy the lines you are going to change and paste them into a notepad file, then you can put them back if you need to.

However, these affect both CPU and GPU, so things like flicker would probably affect the CPU where the draw distance would affect the GPU. Most of these differences are obvious by what the line is doing. The ones that are not obvious, your guess is as good as mine.