There are many different types of tests you can run to check the stability of your game. We list a few well known ones here to help you out. Some players have told us that these tests made a tremendous difference, while others don't reap any real benefit. They are what they are; do with them as you wish.

TEST #1:

     The first is a performance stress test. (A special thanks goes out to vurt of the famous Skyrim Flora Overhaul mod for posting this on his page). The following quote is taken directly from vurt's mod page:

"After getting into the modded game (you should do the stress test in the exterior cells), go into the console and enter:

player.setav speedmult 1500

TCL

     Then I "fly" around the landscape to see if the game eventually crashes. This fast flying puts a huge stress on both your hardware and the game engine itself since you're now loading cells (and graphics, scripts etc) at a much quicker rate than normal. Even so, the game should not crash using this method, even after 5 minutes of flying. Usually, with an unstable .ini edit or mod, it will crash within a minute (instead of maybe 30 minutes when playing without these console commands). The game can crash due to a single faulty mesh, so don't fool yourself thinking you have a stable game until you've encountered a huge portion of the game, this flying helps with that too. "

TEST #2:

     Test #1 is great to see how well Skyrim handles your mod load. Our second test is the "28 Step Test" supplied by Oisaco1, one of our own SoT Spartans. His test requires only normal play, but the test itself requires loading exterior as well as interior cells, loading scripted scenarios and fighting against multiple loaded enemies. If you can past his test, more than likely your mod order is all clear to go. More info about it and the steps for the test can be found on our Nexus forums site.

TEST #3:

     The final test we offer you is the script latency test. SoT comes with a debugging option (kindly supplied by mitchalek, author of Convenient Horses) that turns this test on. The test will show you how quickly your script processes are running as well as how much they are lagging (if any).

Results between 50 and 75 are optimal.

Results between 75 and 100 are safe.

Anything past 100 is not preferred.

That sums up our little optimization guide. If you perform the above tests successfully, please understand that it DOES NOT GUARANTEE your game is 100% stable. However, that being said, you should feel pretty confident in that you can run Skyrim successfully with many mods to add to the enjoyment. If you still want some help, or advice, we have some tutorials listed in our final chapter, Chapter VI: Tutorials.