Skyrim LAG

I have an ASUS G73JW laptop which I'm using to run Skyrim.

Awhile back I cold run it on high settings at around 30fps which the occasional lag here and there.

Now it runs at less then 15fps everywhere. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAY.

I've seen videos of people running it on high settings on the same laptop and the performance is almost flawless.

I NEED HELP. PLEASE. I can't play the game like this D:

 

This is what I did mate:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/640441-asus-n45sf-skyrim-gt555m.html#post8259656

 

I've done everything in your post but it hasn't done anything to help.

I'm still at around 15fps...

Alright well it did something. The main menu now runs at around 100fps and the ingame menu runs at around 600-700. Giant improvement from the 60fps I had before.

The game still runs insanely slow

 

I know this is pretty obvious, but is your power setting set to anything but high-performance? also, are you gaming on battery power, if you are, that's your problem, the internal battery can't supply the wattage needed to drive the graphics card at full power, so it automatically downclocks it's self.

 

I wasn't on high performance, I fixed that and still get around 15fps. I'm also running with the charger.

Even on LOW settings at 1366x768 I get 15fps.

I DON'T GET WHY IT'S SO SLOW D:

So out of desperation, I put all the settings AS LOW AS THEY CAN POSSIBLY GO.

I'm at about 20fps now. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THIS LAPTOP CAN ONLY HANDLE 20FPS.

 

Try starting a new game. Save files can get quite cluttered.

 

That is weird.. is it possible that skyrim is running onboard video instead of your GTX?

You can force .exe's to run with a specific GPU in NVIDIA control panel:

Manage 3D/Program Settings:

Add TESV.exe and SkyrimLauncher.exe

Ensure your GTX is selected.

 

either that or his GPU is downclocking itself to 2d. What are your temps while running Skyrim? Download a program called "GPUZ" and check your clocks while gaming. I also recommend you disable powermizer with "powermizer switch" program. You can google both and download them easily.

 

What part of the world are you at? In some cities my fps will drop to the 20s but outside I get 60 fps. I don't think the i7-740qm handles skyrim very well.

Also the g73 doesn't have graphic switching so it is running on his gtx 460m not integrated.

 

Right now I'm inside Riften. Around 15fps all the time.

Outside Riften it goes down to around 10fps.

 

I don't think that's a GPU-specific issue; my desktop with a 4GHz i5 and a GTX 580 has those drops in a few places.

 

Anything else I can do to fix this...

So it's a 740
NVIDIA GTX460M
6GB RAM

 

what is your skyrim patch version and what is your nvidia driver version?

 

Do you have shadows on ultra? Search for ini settings that give best quality and best performance.

With high settings and these shadows:
iShadowMapResolution=2048
fShadowBiasScale=0.1500
iShadowMaskQuarter=4
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
fShadowDistance=2500.0000
iShadowFilter=3
fShadowLODStartFade=500.0000

I get 45-60 fps outdoors, 20 in Whiterun

If I change iShadowFilter=4 I get 1-5 fps in the intro lol

 

I changed the settings and still get around 20fps outdoors.
My drivers are the beta 290.53
I'm not sure about what patch I have going.

 

have you tried running Skyboost from Skyrimnexus.com , I get 60 fps regardless of the town, inside or outside world, I do have an i7 2720QM, ati 6770M gpu but the skyboost mod really does give a big performance boost

 

Yes, I already have this running.

 

Did you try my suggestion of starting a new game?

 

What are your power settings on your computer right now. On my laptop, if I'm not on performance mode, it will run on integrated graphics

Not sure if you have the equivalent settings on your laptop

 

Seems patch 1.4 improved performance so if you're not dependant on mods then i would give it a go.
Just remember to remove Skyboost before launching 1.4 beta update.

 

I have the 460M also (OC to 729/1250 ;-) for stability with Skyrim. Riften is more fps heavy than other maps. I'm using 290.53 driver also.

At this setting;

Sample screens of Riften with fps. 100% browser zoom.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/8285/tesv2012012417140362.jpg
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/7214/tesv2012012417124500.jpg

Whiterun and Riverwood;
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/4706/tesv2012012417250500.jpg
http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/7656/tesv2012012417220988.jpg

 

Doesn't make sense. I get 30-45 fps on medium/low at 1080p on my GTS 360m.

 

Skyrim itself could be the cause, on the Skyrim forums its littered with issues and bugs. Did you try creating a new game as previously suggested? It is well known if the save file size gets large enough it slows everything down.

I would try that and a different game before I blame the notebook.

 

If I can't keep my save, why play the game?

I've also noticed now it's not running ANYTHING except vital Windows components.

The GPU temp is at 80 degrees celsius. When running something like Skyrim it goes up to 90.

Is this normal...? I don't think it is.

 

No, 90 is never normal. Check to see if your vents need cleaning, your fans turn on, and if necessary repaste your GPU.

 

I figured so.

The fans turn on fine, both turn on. The vents are actually pretty clean.

I started a new save, started at 15fps on normal then went down to below 10 in about 5 seconds. GPU was at around 86 degrees.

It's cooled down to 65 now after closing Skyrim. I started it up again and played for maybe 1-2 minutes, 88 degrees.

 

Eh 88 isn't that bad but 90+ is oh noes!

 

Maybe the temp is fine but the framerate isn't

 

Just to consider.., My GPU temp. on Skyrim after 1 hr. of playing with the 460M only registers 73*C (due to low OC.) CPU around 65*C.

My highest GPU temp. after 2 hrs. of playing Crysis 2 or The Witcher 2 Arena registers 80*C by GPU-Z/Afterburner/NVInspector (GPU OC'ed to 826 core/1663 memory on TW2 Arena).

These temps. are normal for G73SW (xt1, a1, xa1 etc.. with the 460M) Normal idle temps. even with 290.53 beta driver are 39-42*C gpu idle temp., internet/youtube videos GPU temps. 39-46*C, gaming 73-76, 73-78, 73-80*C..

 

I get around 85 degrees max with an 6990m and I have everything set to ultra with 16x anistrophic, FXAA injector, improved shaders and hd textures... shadow resolution set to 8mb... I think it is pretty ok...
EDIT: using a cooler and stock paste... no fan cleaning since August (date of purchase).
Will clean and repaste within a week.

 

doombug, what kind of FPS are you getting with all of that enabled?

 

It depends. Some areas in cities dip my FPS under 30. I heard there are some issues with the code for these areas and FPS usually drops in these situations. Usually, it hovers around 40+ with all these enabled. In dungeons I get 50+ and 60 break Vsync point most of the time.

 

Anybody play Skyrim since 1.4 was released?

They definitely optimized the code. I'm getting 40-60fps in towns where I used to get 30 average. When I fist tried Skyrim in November, I was disappointed almost from the start at the lag. Especially in that first dungeonish area (forgot the name) where it was in the teens in some places. Those rough spots are now in the mid-20s which isn't great but it is an improvement. And to be fair, those areas are very rare. This is even with the High-Res textures released yesterday!

If you're having lag, it is most likely the shadows. They have the biggest performance impact, especially with gaming laptops. I've experimented with a plethora of different tweaks and settings. The best settings I came across are as follows:

Start with a vanilla ini without any tweaks (in the my games\skyrim either move the .ini files out to save potential tweaks you may have used, or delete them). In the launcher select 'ultra'. Make sure the res is your native res for best quality (1920x1080 for me). Turn off both AA and AF. AF at 16x has no performance impact, but it is best to set AF in your driver. AA has at any level has a bigger performance impact on Skyrim then other games, but there is another AA method. Select advanced and put a check mark on FXAA.

Some hate FXAA because they say it is a post-processing effect that blurs fine detail. No detail or resolution is compromised. The perceived detail is usually jaggies in alpha textures. Using transparency MS has a similar smoothing. FXAA is nearly as good as smoothing jaggies as 4xAA. They are both different, and your taste may vary, but FXAA has more pros than cons. Performance wise, it is far superior to any form of transparency MS in conjunction with AA. It is also better performance-wise with Skyrim than 2xMSAA.

I have shadows set to Medium, but I tweak them in the .ini to what I call medium-high. Exit the launcher and in the mygames\skyrim folder, open the skyrimprefs.ini and look for iBlurDeferredShadowMask= and change it to iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6. Then find iShadowMapResolution= and change it to iShadowMapResolution=2048. This gives you the shadow maps of the 'high' shadows setting with the draw distance of medium shadows/lightning. This also makes the shadows render slightly more clear and the mask settings smooths them. IMO, this is a great compromise between quality and performance. If it chugs on your setup, keep the iShadowMapResolution= and 1024. Also, if it still chugs, lower the resolution. The other settings have a very negligible performance impact.

Set the AF to 16x in the driver. In the nvidia driver, you can set texture quality to 'high quality' and together with the new high res textures, this looks pretty amazing. Good fps on my 460m.