NMCs Texture Packs Cleanup and Combine

[Lyndi]

Another problem with running everything through Ordenador is that it breaks some normals and is generally not recommended by anyone I know. It's a tool that should be avoided.

Dammit, I did just that with my current Skyrim setup. I selected "reburn forced" for Mipmaps and ran every single texture through it: both vanilla and from mods.

Any other tool you would recommend for resizing and optimizing beth textures?

My recommendation is leave them alone. There aren't any tools out there that give magic performance boosts.

For NMC;s and texture packs like this specifically, if you can't get acceptable performance with the lowest resolution pack available, then you're better off without.

[Lyaneri]

My recommendation is leave them alone. There aren't any tools out there that give magic performance boosts.

For NMC;s and texture packs like this specifically, if you can't get acceptable performance with the lowest resolution pack available, then you're better off without.

Ye, that's my train of though too.

Think I'm past that point in FNV/Skyrim modding where I blindly add random Joe's tips to get "magic performance boost".
I'm still using Ordenador after so many years because I do get less stuttering on my setup after scaling down textures.

Well honestly I was hoping you would share some bad experiences with Ordenador and do DDSopt sales pitch

[jlf65]

Ordenador works great. The only issue I ever saw (and I used it for everything from FO3 to Skyrim) was that it made books/notes harder to read. After scaling the textures, it's best to install a book/note texture replacer, or to not override the original book/note textures. The point of scaling the textures isn't to make things faster, since it doesn't, it's to use less video ram on cards with less vram, or especially with systems with shared memory, like Intel or AMD integrated video. It's vital to reduce the textures in size or you run out of vram too fast, limiting how long you can play before textures start disappearing. Once I got my 1050Ti, I quit that... in fact, now I use NMC. But if you don't have at least 1GB of vram, you really need to scale the textures down, especially Skyrim.

While you can use ENB to extend the vram using system ram, now you're making the system swap textures in and out of vram, and resizing the textures is again better since now you don't have to swap as often, and the textures being swapped are smaller, making them faster to transfer.

[Lyaneri]

Yup, exactly what i'm using it for. To scale down textures and free some vram. I'm not installing big texture overhauls and then down scale textures, I'm just using it for small touches here and there. I used it mainly for "Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul", "Clothing and Clutter Fixes" and "Unique Uniques".
ENBoost doesn't rly work on my system. I tried it several times over the years and it just reduces performance on my PC.

I'll keep on using Ordenador but just for scaling down textures in mods. Will not touch vanilla game textures. On my current Skyrim installation I forced reburn mipmaps so it touched every single texture it could find.

[Lyndi]

Ordenador is far from great. I used it before and thought it was fine too, until I ran into areas where it had left a corrupted file and had to spend hours trying to figure out what was causing the problems. It also completely destroyed the power armor textures for some other mods I was using, causing them to glow so bright you couldn't look at them.

Go ahead and use that crap if you want, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll break textures used in an area you never go into.

[jlf65]

To each their own, I guess, but it's not nearly as bad as you say. Nearly 24,000 people agree with me.

[Risewild]

The experience I have with Ordenator is that it's a tool to be avoided. And can actually increase use of vram, instead of decreasing it.

I can't remember who, but there was someone on the team that hated Ordenator even more than I do. It might have been Roy.

[Lyndi]

To each their own, I guess, but it's not nearly as bad as you say. Nearly 24,000 people agree with me.

Doesn't mean it isn't shit. Most of the people in the comments section for that program are idiots. Just go through and read all the praise for FPS increases which we all know is BS. I'd wager you could upload an exe that did absolutely nothing, claim it boosted performance, and get a bunch of endorsements on Nexus for it. Just like all those "performance" esp files that disable rocks and crap. We all know they're useless yet they still get a load of endorsements.

[Lyaneri]

Well dammit. What about DDSopt? Is it less buggy alternative to Ordenador? Anyone used it?

[jlf65]

Ordenador is the newer better version of DDSOpt.

And I say you should simply use Ordenador and see for yourself what happens. It worked great for me on Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim. Other than issues reading notes, I saw not one problem. It improved the stability of the game, allowing me to play for hours before textures started to disappear where the original textures only allowed me to play for maybe 15 to 20 minutes before texture issues.

As long as you use MO2 and make the downsized textures an installed mod via MO2, you don't risk any corruption of the game itself. At worst, you disable the downsize mod entry and keep playing. I don't see any reason not to at least try it. It worked for me, it MIGHT work for you. You won't know for sure until you try.