Sad that the article focused on this particular mod. It’s aimed at textures for low-end systems, yes, but there are 2-3 others that are aimed at systems across the board and use stock textures with simple config file changes. They’re all tweaks with options that are in the game but unavailable on the menu, and they do vastly improve performance without a drop in quality.
A better headline could have been “Modders fix in days what Bethesda didn’t do with years”.