Low Resolution Particles

What It Does

This mod lowers the resolution of rain, snow, and leaf particles to improve performance.  These particles are so fast-moving that most people can't tell the reduction in quality, and it frees up some resources for other things--like more mods.

Who Should Use This Mod

So I'm going to straight up tell you that most of you reading this probably don't need or want this mod.  Most people, for one reason or another, will see no benefit.  In my case, it's because I have a pretty old monitor (good old 30" Dell monitor that was totally baller about 10 years ago), that can only do 60Hz, and I'm perfectly happy enabling vsync through the nvidia control panel with triple buffering and calling it a day.  It's good enough for me, and my video card can power it with everything at ultra with tons of headroom to spare.  So this mod does nothing for me.

However, there was a thread on Reddit from an xbox player asking for a mod to help with framerate drop in Riften.  A couple of people suggested a mod that hadn't been ported over (Skyrim Performance Plus, by Vergis).  I took a quick look at that mod and saw that it simply downscaled the Bethesda particle texture files.  It was very simple to remake this for SSE and post for xbox users, and I decided to post it for PC at the same time.  But, again, the use case for PC is much more limited.  Only if you are gaming on a laptop or a really old GPU is this mod likely to make a noticeable difference.  If you are in that camp where you are experiencing framerate issues in heavy weather or with lots of leaves falling, this mod is worth a try.  It's only a few texture files, so it won't break anything if you uninstall it.

Credits

This mod is a remake of Skyrim Performance Plus for original Skyrim, by Vergis.

Permissions

This is an incredibly simple mod with just a few texture files from the game saved at a lower resolution.  You can modify, redistribute, or do whatever else you want with this mod.  The easiest way to edit the files is if you have Adobe Photoshop.  Download the free Nvidia Texture Tools for Adobe Photoshop plugin.