In the past few months, we’ve seen a respectable number of HD Texture Packs for Skyrim Special Edition. However, these packs were not compatible with the original version of Skyrim. Thankfully, modder “kartoffel” has released a massive 19GB AI-enhanced Texture Pack for those that are still playing the original Skyrim.
Going into more details, the modder has cleaned of compression artifacts all the textures of Skyrim Legacy Edition. In order to achieve that, kartoffel used AI-enhanced techniques. To be more precise, he used ESRGAN’s BC1smooth2 mode.
According to the modder, this HD Texture Pack requires 0.6-1.6GB more VRAM than the original version with Bethesda’s HD Textures. Thus, and if you stay below the hard VRAM limit of 3.5GB, there will be no performance impact.
Do note that Skyrim Legacy Edition is a 32-bit game. As such, the game cannot use more than 4GB of VRAM. According to reports, an up-to-date version of ENBseries mod for Skyrim can use all of your GPUs VRAM. However, I haven’t tested it myself so I don’t know whether this is indeed possible.
Lastly, this mod HD Texture Pack comes in two versions. The first version features only the normal maps and is 10GB in size. The second version features everything, and is 19GB in size. Both of these versions feature uncompressed textures.
You can download this ESRGAN HD Texture Pack for Skyrim from here. You can also find some comparison screenshots below. Vanilla version is on the left, whereas the modded version is on the right.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Lovely. Another “AI” smeared texture pack. Just what the gaming world needed.
Yeah…I’m usually all for these texture packs, but this doesn’t even look good..
It removes most of the blocky compression artifacts. That’s a clear improvement as these artifacts are very obvious in Skyrim’s textures.
In no way does it change anything that’s worth a 19 GB download
I agree only because other texture packs are available. I literally thought the exact same thing you wrote and then remembered CoDMW is 180GB. RDR2 is 100GB. Modern games are damn heavy on the HD. I think Oldrim is 7GB out the gate and 5GB (unpacked) HD Texture pack they released. SkyrimSE is 20GB correct me if i’m wrong. So another this 20 GB, if you plan on doing vanilla, makes the whole of Oldrym and SkyrimSE about less than or just 40 GB. Again, NOT the textures I want, but might be another persons VANILLA cup of tea.
IF you plan on playing Skyrim again it would be worth it. If I was not playing SKyrim again I wouldnt even have it installed.
Yeah, but even if you want to install a new texture pack there are better options out there.
I wonder why you have downvotes.
It’s true there are plenty of handmade texture packs out there, and frankly, they’re infinitely superior to these “AI-enhanced” packs, which overall look pitiful.
These people need to clean their eyes if they think this looks good.
what a phenomenal waste of time.