I was wondering if anyone has tried upgrading the textures on Skyrim? Is it possible to do this without affecting the performance too much on Steam Deck?
I actually haven’t played the game since the original release, so if it’s possible to run it now with extra enhancements that would be a great incentive for me to get back into it.
What mods would you recommend, and how hard is it to get them running?
Textures are a little weird because they don’t affect performance how you might expect. Once you load a texture into memory, it doesn’t take any effort to keep displaying it. The main ways textures will impact performance is the time it takes to actually load them - typically through game startup or loading screens. In theory you can also run into stutters while trying to load textures on the fly, e.g. Skyrim loads objects in a cell system, so you’re always loading the next thing in front of you as you walk. If your big textures get paged in and out too much you might notice it.
For the Steam Deck’s purposes, this basically means that as long as you have enough VRAM to load all those textures, they’re basically free to install. Bad things will probably start happening if you run out of VRAM though. There’s probably a way to configure the MangoHud onboard the Steam Deck to show how much RAM+VRAM you’re using at any given point. If you have enough headroom, I would feel free to install some texture packs and maybe give them a few stress tests in a city or etc.
As for “what mods should I install” that’s a giant subjective rabbit hole. You could try a 1-click modlist setup from Wabbajack, or just use one as inspiration.
Thank you, this is very insightful! I believe the Steam Deck has 1GB of VRAM assigned by default - would that be sufficient for most purposes?
Most guides for the Steam Deck seem to focus on installing Vortex. If I understand correctly, Vortex has it’s own ‘collections’ (i.e. modpacks) whereas Wabbajack modlists are installed using the alternative program ModOrganizer2. Speaking of Wabbajack, I did find this specific guide for Linux/Steam Deck. The Dragonborn modpack in particular sounds interesting…
As another alternative, you can also install mods using the built in mod manager? I’m guessing that is a lot more limited.
1GB is nothing - I would be surprised if that’s the most you can get. As for mod managers I’m not sure how best to do it on a Steam Deck. You can get Mod Organizer working tmk, but it’s not native. I’m not sure what the built-in mod manager is but yeah I would stick with Vortex and MO2
I know you can turn up the VRAM to 4GB if you like. When I eventually give the modpack a try, I’ll see how I get on with the default first.