This is a small list of Skyrim Tweaks, Bugfixes and Workarounds. At this time it is incomplete and aimed mostly at the PC version of Skyrim.
Note: Console commands can reportedly be used on console versions if using a USB Keyboard.
Table of contents:
[0.000] Read this before you do anything.
[1.000] Driver Downloads
[2.000] List of Patches and Mods
[3.000] Settings and Tweaks
- [3.001] Sound Issues
- [3.002] Mouse and Physics Glitch Fixes
- [3.003] Shadows
[4.000] uGrids and Previous Versions of the Skyrim Executable
- [4.001] Using the older version of TESV.exe
- [4.002] TheOctagon's uGrids Tutorial
[5.000] NVidia Tweaks
[6.000] ATI Tweaks
[7.000] List of Console Commands
[
0.000]
Read this before you do anything.
Before applying any patches or modifications,
make a backup of your game saves and ini settings.
You can do so by backing up 'My Documents/My Games/Skyrim/Saves' and Skyrim.ini (or SkyrimPrefs.ini) located in 'My Documents/My Games/Skyrim'. You can also use
Dropbixifier to backup these files or you can use
RedawgTS's TES V Savegame Manager.
[
1.000]
Driver Downloads
NVIDIA 285.79 Driver
AMD Catalyst 11.11a (Works Best for Skyrim; May Fix 6xxx stuttering.)
[
2.000]
List of Patches and Mods
Performance and bugfix ENBSeries 092 Patch 5
Fixes bugs:
GRAPHIC: flame from dragons breath, other fire and magix fx invisible, volumetric fog, black dots on the screen or kind of black fence on it, other related to graphics (if you have them). Also it have property to increase quality of shadow texture for reducing "pixelation" (it's not a smooth shadows).
PERFORMANCE: this patch not increase performance as framerate (only for some WinXP or very specific systems), but it fix freezing of the game in about 5 seconds when traveling the world. Performance increased for shadow quality "Ultra".
GENERIC:
Some users noticed no black screens ar bsod any more.
[
ONLY INSTALL THIS IF THE PROBLEM PERSISTS AFTER INSTALLING the ENBSeries PATCH.]
Framerate Fix for ATI Cards (An alternative to this is
Skyrim Better Performance.)
Large Address Awareness (Alters Skyrim executable directly to allow use of 4GB of useable memory.)
4GB Skyrim (Mod version of the above method.)
Note: The Large Address Awareness Flag needs to be set to safely tweak uGrids. (See below, especially if you have the 1.2 or greater version of Skyrim.exe.)
[OPTIONAL] FXAA Post Process Injector (Adds Bloom, Sharpening, Sepia, and numerous other post-processing effects to the game.)
[
3.000]
Settings Tweaks
All of these tweaks are system-related tweaks or modifications to 'Skyrim.ini' or 'SkyrimPRefs.ini' located in 'My Documents/My Games/Skyrim'. For simplicity's sake, this file will be referred to as 'SkyrimPrefs'.
[
3.001]
Sound Issues
Sound issues like crashing to the desktop or static during NPC dialogue can be fixed by setting your primary audio device tot 24 bit, 44100Hz.
If that doesn't work, try fAudioMasterVolume=4.0000 in SkyrimPrefs.
[
3.002]
Mouse and Physics Glitch Fixes
Disable vsynx in SkyrimPrefs:
- Add iPresentInterval=0 under the [Display] section
Fix y-axis sensitivity and physics going insane at high FPS rates.
- Download >a href="http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34" rel="nofollow">FPS Limiter, extract to your Skyrim folder. Open antilag.cfg and set FPSlimit=60.
Fix mouse acceleration by disabling it in SkyrimPrefs.
- Set bMouseAcceleration=0 in the [Controls] section
Fix y-axis sensivity being different from x-axis.
- Add to following under the [Controls] section. If you don't have a [Controls] section, just add it.
fMouseHeadingYScale=0.0200
fMouseHeadingXScale=0.0200
Note: fMouseHeadingYScaleis another setting that you will just have to 'play with' until it feels alright in-game. It may end up being different from fMouseHeadingXScale as well.
[
3.003]
Shadows
The further the distance (ie: 8000), the lower the resolution. The closer the distance (200), the higher resolution shadows will be but they will also be drawn far less.
Change 'iShadowMapResolution=XXXX' to something like 4096 to 8192. (
Note that this setting requires a bit of testing to see what performs and looks best on your hardware.)
[
4.000]
uGrids and Previous Versions of the Skyrim Executable.
[
4.001]
Using the older version of TESV.exe
Firstly, disable automatic updating for Skyrim if you are using the Steam version.
This method uses Windows 7 with System Protection enabled on the drive where Skyrim was installed to retrieve the previous version. If you do not have this enabled,
KKRT00's DRM Free Executable at the NeoGAF Forums may be used instead, though you must register and be a member in order to see the link for it.
1. Navigate to the Skyrim folder (\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim)
2. Right-Click the Skyrim folder and choose Properties
3. Click the Previous Versions tab
4. Find version of the folder from before today, highlight it and click Open
5. Copy the TESV.exe file and paste it into your game directory
[
4.002]
TheOctagon's uGrids tutorial
Note: Credit for this section solely goes to TheOctagon at NeoGAF.
uGridsToLoad should be a harmless setting to play with if you know how to restore your saves.
As said before, your save becomes effectively 'bound' to the value you specify and will crash the game if you try it with a lower value.
What you need to do is load the save with the value it was saved at, then rewrite and refresh the ini, then save again.
Here's how:
1) Load game with uGridsToLoad at the 'safe' setting - the one it was at when you saved.
2) Load the save, which should load correctly.
3) Open the console and type the following:
setini "ugridstoload:general" 5
saveini
refreshini
This has restored the uGridsToLoad setting to its default while your save is already open.
4) Save the game. The save you create now will work at any uGrids setting from the default up.
A Large Address Aware patch to the TESV.exe is essential for safe uGrids tweaking, and even then the results are entirely subject to your system specs and the drive you're running the game from.
You're totally overloading the game's streaming system by doing this, so you'll probably need the entire game installed on an SSD for stability and performance.
The aforementioned exe is a 32bit application that can't use more than 2gb of RAM. This is insufficient. Follow this method so you can give Skyrim full access to all the RAM it needs, provided you have enough:
DOWNLOAD
Doing this can solve a whole range of problems, from instability when taking screenshots to random CTDs. One thing it won't do is create problems. If you're getting them afterward, the problem is elsewhere.
I'm playing the game at 2160p with FXAA (no multisampling - that's a performance killer) and it's smooth as butter, so these tweaks do work.
As with Oblivion, though, once you've taken all the necessary steps, only the intricate configuration of your PC can really determine how stable they are.
Something else to bear in mind is that this is with a vanilla install. In all likelihood, once a significant HD texture mod arrives, uGridsToLoad will become a much more volatile thing to play with.
One other thing regarding uGridsToLoad. You should probably read and apply this information from the excellent TweakGuides.com. This is for Oblivion but evidently applies to Skyrim as well.
Memory Tweaks:
uInterior Cell Buffer=3
uExterior Cell Buffer=36
The above values determine how many cells (whether for interior or exterior areas) are buffered into RAM.
Note that usually the value of the Exterior Cell Buffer variable is automatically set by the engine based on the size of the uGridstoLoad variable.
The higher that variable is, the higher the engine will raise this value. However if you want to smooth out your FPS, try manually setting a higher value for both of these, depending on how much RAM you have.
For 1GB I recommend doubling the values (6 and 72 respectively).
For 2GB of RAM, I use 16 and 102 respectively. For higher amounts of RAM, try raising them higher, however note that you should also raise the iPreloadSizeLimit value below.
iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400 - This setting appears to determine the maximum amount (in bytes) of RAM allowed for preloading game data. The higher the value, the more chance you have of reducing stuttering.
The default value equates to around 25MB (divide the setting by 1024 to get KB, then by 1024 again to get MB). For those with 1GB of system RAM, try doubling the variable to 52428800.
For those with 2GB, try double again at 104857600 (100MB).
You can raise these values even further to experiment, however note that raising this to a large amount doesn't force all the game data to sit in RAM, and can actually cause crashes.
I suggest the maximum anyone should set this to should be around 262144000 (250MB), even for 2GB of RAM. Make sure to raise your Cell Buffer values accordingly (see above).
Good initial test settings
In Skyrim.ini
[General]
uGridsToLoad=7
uInterior Cell Buffer=6
uExterior Cell Buffer=64
iPreloadSizeLimit=262144000
Higher end- Fast CPU/GPU recommended
[General]
uGridsToLoad=9
uInterior Cell Buffer=17
uExterior Cell Buffer=102
iPreloadSizeLimit=262144000
580 TRI-SLI UGRIDS Tests and comparison
[
5.000]
Reserved for Nvidia-Specific Tweaking.
[
6.000]
Reserved for ATI-Specific Tweaking.
[
7.000]
Console Commands
Below are in-game console commands that can be used to mitigate some glitches and bugs you might run into (like disappearing or unreachable items, etc.)
List of TES V: Skyrim Console Commands
