Elder Scrolls Skyrim - low fps

My R3 with the older 6970m easily runs the game on ultra 4xAA 16xAF using the stock drivers from Dell's website. I have the 1600x900 screen but the 6990m should have no problem with 1080p.

 

This...

Though I have been addicted to Arkham City and Revelations recently.

 

Awesome. Obviously you picked the 6990 for a reason... the 580 is also 2Gb and is the same price. Any reason for one over the other?

 

The 580m will get you higher 3dmarks if you care about that...BUT, just beware, and I warn all people that want to buy the 580m, it suffers from a stupid 2 stage throttling scheme...a power throttle when you hit 67c and a thermal throttle when you hit 77c. When the throttle hits, performance on the card is cut considerably...the temps go down temporarily. Then the cycle starts over again.

There are methods found on this forum that stop the power throttle, but there is no way to stop the 77c thermal throttle (except for repasting the GPU and keeping the thing cool)

Plus Optimus, although great in theory, is bad in practice on the m17x.

The nvidia card is great otherwise.

 

Do the Nvidia cards run hotter or cooler than the AMD's? If they run the same, then 77C is on the upper end of acceptable, but its still acceptable. When you're in a massive skyrim battle or something like that, your card may hit 77-80 for a few minutes then go back down. That should be fine in most situations.

What the hell is wrong with alienware? Why the hell would they put a card into their system that THROTTLES when gaming? Do they just not test these damn things? I feel like they've released so many systems that have severe issues. When I got my m17x I couldn't unplug or put it in hibernate. I remember when the m15x released it had serious throttling issues as well. I really don't understand these people. If there was another company that made high end laptops that looked as sleak as these (I thought about the clevo when I got my m17x last year but that thing is ugly as hell) maybe alienware would have to give two sh**s so the competition doesn't take them over. Since there really is no competition for high powered laptops, they can do whatever they want. /rant

 

Bro, i completely agree with you. The throttling is there to prevent huge warranty costs plain and simple. They should put a huge disclaimer on the dell website so that people are at least aware of the issues before they buy.

BRO! xfire 6990's? When the heck did that happen?

 

Bout a week or so ago I had some issues with one of the cards but now they're working FLAWLESSLY. Stock clocks all around, and running @ .96V. 3dmark 11 score consistently about 6300. GPU temps idle around 40C on both (as long as I don't have my external plugged in then its about 48-50 on my master) and they seldom get hotter than 70-75C (only playing skyrim does the shader temps go about 75C during massive battles because I have xfire disabled for it and the second card doesn't help offload any of the work). I had to open this thing up a few times and repaste and reseed due to a tech installing them the first time. I have a bad hand and I didn't think I'd be able to do it by myself. The only thing that he did that I couldn't was get the c clamps off the 5870 screws. Other than that, I redid every single thing he did including the repasting of the CPU and both GPU's. I'm running 12.1 with 11.11CAP3 and everything runs really well. I'm not sure if I got better performance than I did with the 12/3 11.12 beta, but at this point its so marginal its not worth the hassle. When unanimously better drivers come out that support xfire in skyrim, I'll be very happy

 

That's awesome dude! Congratz on the new cards. You better be posting some benches in the m17x benchmark thread!

 

hey SlickDude, do you think you could post some gameplay footage on your ATI card so we could see what framerates you're getting?

 

what youtube? I can...maybe when i'm on my Christmas vacation I'll have sometime to play around with that

 

Thought I'd post this here also cause it's amazing.

GUYS CHECK THIS OUT

TESV Acceleration Layer at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community

Removes all of the lag you get in cities thanks to some CPU optimization

It has completely removed all the lag for me when looking down at Whiterun from Dragonsreach

Lag was caused by poor PC optimisation (areas with lots of NPCs) so most of the time your CPU would bottleneck (even powerful desktops) - not anymore

 

Has anybody installed the 1.4 patch?

 

No, wasnt aware of it, when did it come out? Apparently the Acceleration Layer will only work with ver 1.3? I updated to something through Steam yesterday, and the acceleration layer still works, so I am assuming I am still on 1.3 and 1.4 was just released? How can I tell?

 

On my 6970m, I'm getting 60fps on skyrim on ultra. Except in heavy combat situations with magic and debris flying everywhere.

12.1 Preview Drivers.

Though for skyrim im still on 1.1 due to not wanting to update it.

 

Haven't read the whole thread but does anyone else have this rising and falling framerate thing?
I have an R1 with all the latest drivers and patches but while I'm playing Skyrim the framerate is constantly changing between 59 and 20. Up and down and up and down no matter what the game situation.
Anyone else getting this? Very odd.