Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance Thread

none if your computer can at least manage 2x AA.

Other wise, the performance hit should be the slightly less than turning on 2xAA.

This is because the mod is using a FXAA which has much better performance than regular AA.

But you should be able to run this mod no matter what. Sacrifice other aspects of graphics if you have to because the mod will make the game look a lot better.

Here are some of the things you can turn down to save alot of fps.

Shadows ---> low. Huge performance boost if you had shadows at high.
Turn off AF/AA
Decrease draw distance.

 

Tried it, the sharpening hurts my eyes (it's pretty for taking screenshots but for playing the actual game I like the vanilla amount of sharpness), and it cut my framerate to pieces.

 

Hi, i´ve just bought this wonderful game, but there is a slight issue.
The game will not kick in my nvidia m540gt automaticly, it continues to use the intel hd3000 graphics. I have an Asus u46sv with optimus, and i assumed it would turn on the 540 automaticly. For now i have to force it in nvidia controlpanel. Any thoughts?

 

and it still doesn't work?

you forced steam to have an nvidia preference in the control panel?

 

I tried and looks horrible. Colors are ugly, contrast is too high and it looks like cartoon. No thanks. Also Fps drop 8fps (I used fraps to show fps and pressing "pause" could turn on/off that mod to see the efect). You cant use graphics boost mod with this one.

 

I just use the FXAA to disable the bloom. Helps a little. Disabled the junk DOF and terrible blur.

 

Has anyone else tried any of these .ini tweaks?

 

You could go to your bios setup, one of the option concerns your GPU, switch it from dynamic to fixed. Fixed will have your computer stuck on your didicated GPU.

 

Depends on your preference I guess. But there are so many different profiles based on FXAA, they all look different with different degree of sharpening, etc. not sure which one you used.

also, when you installed FXAA injector, did you remember to turn off AA? Because the mod also replaces your AA. If you dont have regular aa off, they will conflict and produce wierd pictures.

 

just force it in nvidia control panel, as you've already done...

works fine, doing the same thing myself

 

The game itself works fine (actually really well, considering) when I do this, but if I try to install the FXAA injector it absolutely refuses to use my dedicated card (and yes, both TESV.exe and TESVlauncher.exe are on the nVidia control panel whitelist for using my dedicated card).

Anyone had luck with this?

 

Yup i have the same problem, not only with FXAA but also with ENB series (for all other games)..

The reason is that optimus drivers use the d3d9.dll located in the sys32 folder; when u add the new d3d9.dll which comes with mods like FXAA or ENB series to the game folder; either
a. The game will start with the card but the mod wont work or
b. The game will start with the mod but with HD graphics

So basically we need someone who knows how to tweak dll files to identify the exact conflict between d3d9.dll and optimus..

 

Yea u def can run it; i was running a test with skyrim on my 1gb GT 420M and realized its never using more than 400-500 mb of memory (high settings 2xAA 16xAF); the gpu is OCd to 700mhz so it could use more.... it seems skyrim is optimized for 512 mb cards

Ur Hd 3670 is stock clocked at 680mhz, so medium shouldnt be a problem, u may even be able to play at high settings!

 

Anyone else have huge FPS dips in towns? But, not all of the town, just like a specific street when you're facing a certain direction?

Specs in sig - I can run it on High at 1920x1080 with some settings cranked all the way up (so almost ultra) and get a minimum of 30FPS outside and even usually 60FPS in dungeons. However, some towns will always leave me in the low 20s if I look at a certain view, for no discernible reason. Lowering the fade distance of items etc. doesn't seem to help... weird.

It's playable as there's no combat in towns (usually). Just annoying.

 

Sigh...I really hope someone fixes this.

 

I now got around 54 hours of gametime tracked in Skyrim and i love every minute of it.
Should probably climb up the mountain and meed up with the Greybeards but damn sidequests keep sucking me in.

Wish i could be as exited as this when i played The Witcher 2.

Game runs well enough on my single 6970m too, so no performance issues here.

 

Yeah especially towns like Markoth, where if I point toward the waterfalls the fps dips below 15. Who knows.

 

unfortunately, there's very few options for this type of performance loss. I think this is primarily due to light/shadow distancing (not object distance) and shadow quality. Try turning those down, you should see increases in fps.

On the other hand, if these performance dumps are few in places between, you can also just try to ignor it.

 

is it possible to disable optimus? I know for ATI Mobile GPUS, one of the essential steps to overclocking is to disable dynamic gpu switching. Maybe this can be resolved the same way.

 

If anyone knows of a way to do this, that would be amazing. In general Optimus causes a lot more trouble than it's worth.

 

i get 40-60fps on ultra. with aa off and af at 16x

6990m@800/1000

 

Hi I've been thinking of getting the Malibal Nine X7200 but I also want to play games like Skyrim on ultra settings. 1 Nvidia GTX 560M runs it on high give or take a few, so I was wanting to get a 580m however that alone is $500 extra so I was thinking perhaps I'd just go for the 560M in SLI. If I had 2 would that be able to run Skyrim with Ultra settings and shadowing? Or at least Ultra minus shadowing?

 

one 6990m runs it on ultra

 

Do as godly_skillz says. 560m in SLI is about same performance as 580m, but with the headache of SLI.

HD 6990m is a slight step down from 580m, but not by much, a lot cheaper, and one hell of a powerful card..

 

I think the numerous, countless posts, in some games HD6990 is stronger, some games the 580 is. That's all you can say about it, neither is the reigning fastest mobile king right now.

 

Regardless, in any case the whole point is that the 6990m is the best choice because it's cheaper than both 560m SLI or 580m and has comparable performance.

 

If you play mostly in third person, even a second tier card like the AMD 5830m can run it on Ultra at 1920x1080 (even with some ini tweaks to improve grass distance, etc.), it just slows down a bit in Riften, Markarth and the forest area near Falkreath. Skyrim on Ultra settings at 1080p runs much better for me than Witcher 2 on lowest possible settings.

In most locations I get higher frame rates in third person. The game is still playable in first person, but if I was going to use it for anything other than archery, I would consider reducing the settings more.

 

Go meet the Greybeards immediately. Do it. It's totally worthwhile.

 

^^^

Yeah, you'll have lots of fun climbing those 7000 steps...

And bring some Fire magic or else you may find yourself getting owned by that damn Frost Troll.

 

i love my new laptop. runs every game high/maxed

 

For the non-mage builds out there, the alternative is to learn Fire Atronach, and have it chip away at the troll while you kite it around.

 

I'm having massive fps dips in cities or in the open world around large structures..
Lowering setting doesnt seem to affect these much. When i monitor gpu usage i notice it dips down to ~30-40% usage..

Is it getting cpu throttled, something wrong with my setup or just a problem with game/drivers..?
Can someone else test this out to corroborate my findings?

Use the steps coming down from Dragonsreach towards the tree in Whiterun as a refrence point.. Just test to see if you get a dip in fps and gpu usage there.

Thanks

Edit: just read the last few pages and see that other people also having fps dips, could you guys please monitor gpu usage and see if that's going down too and if it is does anyone know what that means/any fixes for it.

 

What GPU are you running? And rest assured everyone is having the exact same issues. I find my FPS dips when I have more than 3 light sources in one frame, and they could even just be candles. Theres a patch coming soon so hopefully some stuff like that will be addressed. I hope AMD does some work with their next drivers aswell for this game.

I was really hoping for atleast DX11 code optimization for the game, even if they didn't turn on Hardware tess, I would have been happy with smoother FPS with the more optimized DX11 code.

 

I'm having the excact same issue. Standing at the top of the stairs looking down at the tree I'm getting abround 20 fps and low gpu load.

I would be very interested to see someone with a 920xm do a cpu scaling test at this location to see the impact on framerate.

 

I have an ATI 5650 running Win8 dev, 8GB RAM, 900p and I run High with 2x AA and 2x AF just fine.

I've just tried two performance tweaks:
Skyrim Better Performance at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community

and LAA

 

I had these lines added to my skyrim.ini on the documents folder of skyrim and game me less stutters on huge cities, made the game a lot smoother for me:

[Papyrus]
iMinMemoryPageSize=100000
iMaxMemoryPageSize=5000000
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=1800000000

 

What do these do? Will these values work with my laptop's specs?

 

It will allow more RAM usage for the game making it smoother. And it will work on the laptop in your sig.

 

Tried it and it did not offer any noticeable performance improvement in towns, sorry.

 

Guess it works for some and wont for some.

 

It's 32 bit game, limited to 2GB.

It's much easier to mod the .exe file to use more than 2GB of ram...

 

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.

 

I force Vsycn and Triple buffering in all my games and video playback applications through D3Doverrider. Great tool, get the great fps of having Vsync off while keeping the ugly tearing effect off all of my games.

 

I have not been following this thread, however, I feel like my performance is not as good as it should be. My specs are in my signature and I am only getting 30 fps outside on high settings. Some buildings/ cave I am getting 40-45 fps, but sometimes it just the 29-30 that I get outside. Any suggestions?

 

I hate Riva Tuner. Radeon Pro is better anyway if you are an AMD user.

 

you can run D3Doverrider.exe as a standalone without rivatuner

+1 to that..

 

Added new sections in the OP

Complete Shadow Fix

Personal Guide to changing FXAA Post Injector settings to customize the game you want.

 

How much of a performance hit did you get from the shadow fixes?

 

5-10 fps. Its pretty huge.

 

Hi I ve been getting terrible lag around fire or any where where there is loads of particles. Is there a way to fix this? My specs are 2630qm 6970m 8gb ddr3 ram and 128 m4 ssd.