Skyrim Performance

Is this shadow issue a problem with my gpu card or just an issue with the game itself? (maximize and look at the wall to notice it) I haven't had any issues with other games like withcer 2/ bf3...

Skyrim Shadow Flicker / Strobe Bug - YouTube

with my game it is happening anywhere with shadows outside only..a real drag considering how awesome everything else is and how smooth it plays, well other than a few time I fell through a floor or saw an npc teleport.

 

PROTIP: disable shadows! Shadows in Skyrim look ugly even on ultra and eat fps like a rabid cow. Not to mention the flickering which drove me insane.
This:
fShadowDistance=0.0000
fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000
Done.

 

I don't have any flickering thought. Some users are reporting it anyway on guru3d.
I just tested 3 mins of the game literally and since on my new clevo it performs like that without messing with the ini I probably can squeeze out more fps.
I need to decide whether I want to use AA or Fxaa as I'm running both..while having 45fps of average.
The power of this 485m is insane, I just realized it with my settings compared to some desktop builds.
Like having the witcher 2 maxed out with no über and still having 34-40 fps at 1080p.

 

It actually depends which settings you want to change. Some settings are in the steamapps folder, some others are in the documents folder.
You need to check it for every setting.

 

If you change the tree and land shadows in the Ini as mentioned in the tweak guide it will massively improve shadows, High to Ultra makes no difference the person, horse, self shadows are wack they are all blocky and do not change depending how high you change the shadow settings. I only notice the flicker when the time changes in the day and the shadows shift by the sunlight, Gothic 4 failed at this Skyrim has done better but certainly a patch is needed to sort out the blockiness.

A lot of hate online about the graphics but considering how vast the landscape is and the view distance it looks pretty damn good to me especially in the Winter cities. If this game had Witcher 2 graphics you would be running at 5fps max. High to Ultra AA+AF with tweaks on a 2 year old laptop running 45-60fps. Im not complaining about that

 

thanks for the tip. flickering had me mad too. I kept the inside shadows as it's not as batty as seeing the undulation every few seconds due to the sun shifting the shadows. they really went overboard with that. I could have put up with it every few minutes, maybe, but as seen in some of the youtube videos, it was just absurd.

I'd prefer shadows outside however, so I hope there is a remedy to the flickering soon.

 

I've got a G73jh and have been wrestling with Skyrim. It runs fantastic at the highest settings, but I've been having video card problems (I think). When the game first unlocked, I was only able to get about 10-15 minutes in before my laptop shut off completely. I did this three times to test a few things and to be sure I knew what the problem was. The thing is, it never got all that hot. So I went ahead and updated BIOS and everything I could find on the Asus page. But, the VGA driver seems to be really out of date. I decided to try using one directly from Radeon and that really helped a lot. I was able to get a good two hours or so before the same thing happened again; just long enough for me to let my guard down and start thinking I had solved the problem.

So my main question at this point is: is there actually a problem with not using Asus' tweaked drivers? Even the date seems to be wrong when I look in device manager, though only by a month or so. (12/17/09 driver vs 1/29/10 Asus website)

Also, is this indicative of a larger problem? I think I'm still under warranty and there's an Asus repair outlet within driving distance, so if it's something that thermal paste or something else covered by the warranty could fix, hopefully I could get a pretty fast turnaround.


Thanks for any advice you guys can give!

 

Mine runs as smooth as a babys backside at 900p for a couple of hours everything High but then i think my CPU must be getting hot cos the fans kick in and i get quite a few popups and it starts to chugs along. The 5870m temp never goes past 70oc though so i need to do a Dallers and buy a 920xm. BAH!!!

 

Those are reallllllly out of date 11.10 are the latest if you have the latest Vbios crap clean your pc and then install the latest from scratch.

A lot of people say it never gets hot but what are you referring to because you do not mention any temperatures.

Run HWINFO sensors and then Skyrim for a few minutes before it shuts down and check your temps, I bet they are hotter than you think for it to thermal shutdown.

Also check your fans are working (as you are facing the screen left CPU right GPU) because you could have a fan that is not doing its job.

920XM FTW.

 

So after using either fxaa or AA I get 60fps mostly everywhere, with some dips in 55-50fps range when there's alot of particles around.
Based on my tests fxaa does good as well as 2xAA, you don't really need 8xAA samples.
Fxaa blurry everything too much including those fps-hungry particles.
My advice is to stick with 2xAA and set everything to ultra, then set shadows and object distance to high under advanced.
I'm using fov of 82.5 which should be optimal for 16:9 screens, beside that I didn't lowered any shadows details in the config as with my card I don't need it at all.
Also is quite great what Bethesda did to gamebryo engine, visuals now are quite good, with some added effects that I would never expect on this "old" engine.
Shame that most of textures suck thought.

 

What are people using to measure fps? Is there a command in-game or a command-line or are people using Fraps?

So far I haven't noticed any slowdown on the detected High settings. The game looks pretty good, though sometimes the shadows aren't realistic (this is on low setting).

 

Fraps here, mostly.

 

No in-game fps measurement. Just use Fraps. From my experience, shadows look pixelated even on ultra and after modifying the config.ini file to make them look as best as possible. So I just turned them off altogether. This way I am able to play with everything on max settings and even 2x AA and FXAA, getting +28 fps even in towns.

 

I think to make this thread usable we should have a "standard" when reporting how the game runs, its very non-helping to just say "on my g73 it runs at 60 everything on max" that doesn't really say anything.

Model computer:
OC:
Resolution:
Settings in launcher:
Modified in .ini:
FPS:

If we could show these things it would really help I think.

Personally:
Model computer:
G73-JH-A1 (I7 720qm, (8gig ram, SSD)
OC: Gpu 750/1050
Resolution:1920x1080
Settings in launcher:
AA off, 8x AF, In "detail" everything on and everything high except "decal quantity medium. View distance default.
Modified in .ini: It may just be a default i don't remember anymore.
[General]
fBrightLightColorB=1.0000
fBrightLightColorG=1.0000
fBrightLightColorR=1.0000
iStoryManagerLoggingEvent=-1
bEnableStoryManagerLogging=0
[Imagespace]
bDoDepthOfField=1
[Display]
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=5
fInteriorShadowDistance=3000.0000
fShadowDistance=2500.0000
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
iShadowSplitCount=2
iMaxAnisotropy=8
fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=4600.0000
fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=3600.0000
fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=3600.0000
fGamma=1.0000
iShadowFilter=3
fDecalLOD2=1500.0000
fDecalLOD1=1000.0000
fSpecularLODStartFade=500.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000
fLightLODStartFade=1000.0000
iTexMipMapMinimum=0
iTexMipMapSkip=0
bTransparencyMultisampling=0
iWaterMultiSamples=0
iMultiSample=0
iShadowMode=3
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bDrawShadows=1
bFull Screen=0
iSize H=900
iSize W=1600
fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000
fMeshLODFadeBoundDefault=256.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=2048.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=2844.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=3072.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=4096.0000
iScreenShotIndex=2
bShadowMaskZPrepass=0
bMainZPrepass=0
iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=3
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=10
[Grass]
b30GrassVS=0
fGrassStartFadeDistance=3500.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=7000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000
[Water]
iWaterReflectHeight=512
iWaterReflectWidth=512
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1
[MAIN]
bGamepadEnable=1
bCrosshairEnabled=1
fHUDOpacity=1.000
bSaveOnPause=1
bSaveOnTravel=1
bSaveOnWait=1
bSaveOnRest=1
[GamePlay]
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
iDifficulty=2
[Interface]
bDialogueSubtitles=0
bGeneralSubtitles=0
[Controls]
fGamepadHeadingSensitivity=1.0000
fMouseHeadingSensitivity=0.0125
bAlwaysRunByDefault=1
bInvertYValues=0
bGamePadRumble=1
bMouseAcceleration=1
[Particles]
iMaxDesired=750
[SaveGame]
fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000
[AudioMenu]
fAudioMasterVolume=1.0000
fVal7=1.0000
uID7=0
fVal6=1.0000
uID6=0
fVal5=1.0000
uID5=0
fVal4=1.0000
uID4=0
fVal3=1.0000
uID3=0
fVal2=0.4000
uID2=466532
fVal1=1.0000
uID1=554685
fVal0=0.8000
uID0=1007612
[Clouds]
fCloudLevel2Distance=262144.0000
fCloudLevel1Distance=32768.0000
fCloudLevel0Distance=16384.0000
fCloudNearFadeDistance=9000.0000
[TerrainManager]
fTreeLoadDistance=25000.0000
fBlockMaximumDistance=100000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=32768.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=20480.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=0.7500
bShowLODInEditor=0
[NavMesh]
fObstacleAlpha=0.5000
fCoverSideHighAlpha=0.8000
fCoverSideLowAlpha=0.6500
fEdgeFullAlpha=1.0000
fEdgeHighAlpha=0.7500
fEdgeLowAlpha=0.5000
fTriangleFullAlpha=0.7000
fTriangleHighAlpha=0.3500
fTriangleLowAlpha=0.2000
fLedgeBoxHalfHeight=25.0000
fEdgeDistFromVert=10.0000
fEdgeThickness=10.0000
fPointSize=2.5000
[Trees]
bRenderSkinnedTrees=1
uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20
[Decals]
uMaxDecals=100
[LOD]
fLODFadeOutMultObjects=5.0000
fLODFadeOutMultItems=3.0000
fLODFadeOutMultActors=6.0000
[Launcher]
bEnableFileSelection=1

---------

Outside Winterfall (winterfall?) I´m getting 23-30 fps. Im not happy with this.
I have flickering shadows and have messed with the .ini but don't really remember anymore what I did and what I changed back. I haven't found anything from links on this page that has made any noticeable difference neither in visual quality nor performance wise.

I really need some help to get it to run good. It is very playable, but I wish we could find an optimum setting here together.

To me I need the AA even with FullHD its just too jaggy to be playable without. It hurts performance too much tho so AA off and FXAA on is a good price to pay to get the best of both worlds to me. It does get somewhat blurrier, but better that then jaggies "flickering/shimmering" which takes my attention away from the game.

 

Oh and turning off the mouse acc really helped my mouse. It was very laggy almost like the witcher2 in the menus. Thanks alot for the very first link in this thread that mentioned to turn this off as it made marvels. (still not as good as my desktop with a 4870 card where it is rock solid like in windows, but a-l-o-t better then default)

 

quite the custom resolution you got there.
only by turning off the shadows in the .ini you can get AA (while maintaining the frame rate decent) on the jh, assuming full hd resolution.

 

Just checked my fps with Fraps. I'm running Ultra with everything on High except Shadows on Low (tried with High, no visible improvement and ~30% decrease in performance), FXAA on, 4xAA, 4xAF. I'm in Riverwood right now. Most of the time I'm at 60fps, occasionally dipping into the 50's, and while entering the city I drop as low as 43 fps. I'm perfectly happy with this performance! Graphics look good except for the shadows, like around the fireplace. Also, I've seen better looking textures on people.

 

Please specify your resolution. I'm pretty sure you're on 1600x900 because of your sig and your fps, but that doesn't mean you didn't use a full hd secondary display; so please specify in the future.

 

Yes, that was at 1600x900. I do have a 46" lcd that I was also displaying on, but I was duplicating the displays at 900p.

 

ROFL I just typed wrong. it was supposed to be 1920x1080
hehe, I changed the original post now.

 

Sounds great. Really cool FPS at these settings. Im encouraged to try that resolution and see if it looks better then with a higher resolution and many things on lower settings. The FPS in itself actually sounds like its worth it, because I find it a PITA to battle with dips under 25.

Correct me if I´m wrong, but I thought you should choose either FXAA or AA. Both at the same time seems unnecessary. I thought FXAA was the "poor mans AA". Try it without FXAA and still use 4x AA and I think the picture will be crisper for you.

 

Do you mean everything on that page is out of date or the Radeon driver specifically? The 11.10 is a beta driver, right? And I used the BIOS flash tool on the Asus site to install the 213 build, though I see that this forum says to use the more manual procedure. Should I worry about reinstalling it?

True, I wasn't specific, though I meant it didn't get hotter in comparison to other games, not that it doesn't get hot. And yeah, I have no numbers to back it up, I was just basing it on how hot the exhaust felt. But now I've installed some utilities (like that one you posted, it's pretty great) that will actually give me useful information. It's definitely running a lot hotter than it should be.

As for the fans, I can feel exhaust coming out of both, but the right side is always hotter and faster. I had assumed this was because the video card is on the right side, but should the volume and temperature of air exhaust be the same?

Thanks for all the help!

 

11.10 have been out of beta for weeks now.

 

Oh yeah? I was going off of G73/74/53 Series Driver and Application Reference but it hasn't been updated for about a month. And AMD's site refuses to let me get drivers individually so all I can see is their stupid catalyst thing.

 

Just in case anyone took off vsync, and is experiencing these glitches like I am;

Skyrim Pro Tips that Help with Mouse Control and Physics Glitches linearskillz

 

This wont be updated because Chastity has been banished from the realm temporarily to return as a fully pledged Imperial Guard...

Yep 11.10 latest drivers you need if you still have issues make sure you are upto date on the Vbios not just the BIOS 213 and .93 you should have.

 

Banished? What did I miss....

 

She had to release a post a while back on AsusRog that she required company training before giving official support on the forum this included all other forums as well.

There was no official confirmation of this on NBR however but she will return just funny that as we all know she does not need training but its company rules and regulations im sure like every company has to protect themselves.

http://www.asusrog.com/forums/showthread.php?5244-Until-Further-Notice

 

on max settings fhd on oc 800 / 1600 / 1625 I get 20~25 FPS. what is the best settings to get 30+ (w/ and w/o an oc)

 

All high, no AA and no FXAA @ 1080p, with that overclock should deliver a nice perfomance.

Or try 1600x900, all high, no AA but enable FXAA.

 

nuh, normal settings + FHD is better then 900P with high settings

 

What CPU are you using? The 460M GTX should surely get better frames than that? I didn't think this game was optimised to either Nvidia or ATI.

 

NOW.....I use 1080p settings with 2xAA and 4XAF, then Bump everything up on the Right hand Pane (eg. Item Fade,etc) and the only .ini values i change are

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
iShadowMapResolution=2048

TO

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=512
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=512
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6
iShadowMapResolution=512

makes a world of difference (NO pun inteneded).....for me anyway it looks and performs SWEET. 45-50fps outside and 60fps indoors...90% of the areas

 

Hey guys, I need some help running Skyrim on my bts6. So, I am currently running with an OC up to 815/1700, and the game settings as follows:

AA: Off
AF: 8
AAFX: On
Water Effects On
Shadows: High (things turn horrid otherwise: usual blockiness and flickering issues which I haven't been able to solve- any help on these is welcome)

Now, the game runs nicely in general, over 40fps and it hits over 60 on plenty of areas; but for some reason, no matter what my settings are, I keep getting a drop to mid-low 30's and even high 20's in some areas-angles. Any idea what this could be about? This occurs irrespective of setting modification apparently. I have included a screenshot of where this happens to narrow down potential causes. FPS goes down to 31-33fps there, while it goes up to over 50 in most places. The drops occurs in considerable portions to be an issue. Since it always falls to the same lower bound fps and in such a dramatic scale (20+fps) I tend to think this is an issue external to the system:

The screenshot is with the above mentioned settings.

 

+1 for the RANDOM FPS drops, sometimes it'll be illogical places like a space between a house and a hill (not a busy or NPC heavy area at all). Very confusing.

 

Also these mods helped me and may help others.

You have to register and just folllow the instructions for each file install (obviously).

Large Address Aware at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community

The above lets you use more than 2gb RAM as that is all Skyrim at default uses regardless.



Skyrim Better Performance at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community

And this link inserts a d3d9.dll and is supposed to also improve performance.



Strangely on my rig the FPS is less but it is a lot smoother than before. NICE.

 

Thank you alot.
The DLL actually makes a world of difference like it happened with Fallout NV and Oblivion.
Same settings, i think ive gained alot of fps, even with further quality enhancements i made in the ini, like trees shadows and land shadows.
Thanks again!

 

Cat 11.11 are out, also a 11.11 CAP1 is out.
Download Driver: AMD Catalyst 11.11 WHQL driver download
Download CAP: AMD Catalyst Application Profile - 11.11 CAP1
Haven't yet installed em, but will do this evening.

 

Finished the game... a bit... lame ending. Just set Ultra settings... you won't see the different so much between this and max... (you will, but its not worth it...)

 

Dude, I didn't need to read "lame ending" in a thread about performances................

 

My setup is simple.

I find the FXAA Injector makes the game too vibrant, sepia, blurry, too dark, too bright, messes it up.

I set the game preset to high, then shadow to medium, and for LOD distance set it to max in the launcher options. Then I tweak the INI for shadow, tree, land, resolution to 2048. Then I tweak the .exe file to use more than 2gb of ram. Then I use the ENB d3d9 mod. I force triple buffering through Radeon Pro. I set the DOF and Radial Blur to zero.

Game runs great, smooth. Bloom is gone, clear, shadows are great.

 

Could you elaborate on these steps?

 

See one page back, Large Address Aware... is what he means with more than 2GB. No idea though if it actually helps something

 

any of your having problems with skyrim needing to be turned up to 11. the game audio seems a bit low by default. tell I read about a tweek.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-volume-too-low-maybe-fix-here-worked-me.html

do the new 11,11 ati drivers work well for this game?

 

Im getting around 30fps with all Ultra exept shadows High.. AA x2 no FXAA
With 810/1620/1625

 

I was around 34 FPS with those settings:
1920x1080
AA: 4
AF: 16
Shadows: High
Object Detail Fade: NOT checked
Everything else maxed out and checked.

I play on a G74Sx-A1. I sometimes get a drop in FPS, don't know why. What do you propose to make my FPS higher without loosing a lot on graphics quality?

 

Anyone else getting really crappy frames in towns?

I get 60fps on medium with some high settings in the wild but as soon as I enter a town like Whiterun or Solitude it goes down to 20-25.

I'm running 11.9 right now, will 11.11 make a huge difference? (I'm waiting for the new ATI drivers for Saints Row The Third)

 

Hello its been some time, .. I had Skyrim installed in my laptop since its release, though I haven't had the time to play it, busy at work. I've spent some time creating characters too of both sexes just to see how pretty they are.

Here's my setting on my G73SW-XT1. I didn't touch View Distance detail or any ini. file.




Some screenshots. View at 100% Browser zoom for real size and detail.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/9956/tesv2011112020525800.jpg
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7054/tesv2011112021035210.jpg
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/2904/tesv2011112020552635.jpg

My OC is quite low for stability, only 800 core/ 1600 memory. My highest GPU temp recorded by GPU-Z was 78*C. I also leave my NVidia Control Panel to "Let 3D Application Decide".. The game looks nice.

 

Yeah, I get loads of random dips, I don't know what's up. This is the only game I have played so far that does this to me, so I don't think my machine is to blame. Also, I tried that d3d9 file and it made things worse, so I removed and checked the integrity of the game cache to fix it in Steam.

I am running at all high (1600x900), all view distances all the way, object detail fade checked, FXAA on, no AA, 8x AF. I get anywhere from like 12-60 fps.

 

I tried these setting and didn't like it. It makes the already low res shadows look even more jagged and blocky.

Skyrim: Jagged Shadows Fix

This website recommeds going the opposite way. Turning up the 3 shadow map values to 4096 makes them finally look smooth and detailed like they should.
Of course this comes at a slight loss in FPS, but I din't notice the difference on my laptop.

Turning them down to 512 makes them look worse than stock for me. It might give a slight performance boost but to me it's not worth it.

That website also has a fix for the shadows moving and flickering but to me it's not necessary. Once the shadows are perfectly smooth the fact that they can move actually becomes an interesting affect.

Edit: Setting The iBlurBlurDeferredShadowMask to a higher value does compensate somewhat for the low shadow res by blurring the shadows so it's up to individual preference.

Here's a detailed discussion about what each shadow setting does.

http://forums.techarena.in/video-games/1441015.htm