Skyrim poor performance on 650m

I normally play Skyrim on my HTPC, but the other day I played it on my laptop for the first time. The vast majority of the time, it hums along nicely on "high" settings with MSAA off and FXAA on with 40-50 fps. However, I was doing the "Horn of Jurgen Windcaller" quest, and near the entrance to the underground dungeon, in a heavily wooded marshy area, my fps suddenly tanked to around 20-25.

Ok, I thought, my 650m can't handle all the trees, so I'll change settings to low. I only picked up about 5 or so fps, and I know a 650m should handle this game fine on low at 720p since the wife used to do it with a desktop 5570, which is weaker. I uninstalled the HD texture mod, also no effect. What's strange is this occurs only when I am looking in one specific direction, and doesn't appear to be a CPU problem because I shouldn't be having issues with a 3610qm, and fps remains horribly low regardless of whether I am in combat or not, and whether or not there are enemies around. Looking at the ground or sky gives 60 fps, even in combat in that area, and simply turning around to look at different trees increases my fps by at least 10. If I lower the res to 800x600, I can finally maintain 40 fps in this area, but that is obviously not an acceptable solution.

Can anyone with a 650m and Skyrim chime in on this? I'm unfortunately using 295.93 drivers, as anything higher causes Optimus to not work properly on this laptop.

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Is there a way you can turn off the Optimus in BIOS or in the power settings and force your laptop to use the dedicated card?

If you are only getting 20-25 fps with your 650m at 1366x768, something is wrong and I can only imagine perhaps your laptop is using the integrated graphics? I get an average around 40-60fps at 1920x1080 with my 5830m, which is a much weaker card than your 650m, although it does drop down to the high twenties in certain spots in Markarth.

 

*duplicate post

 

Unfortunately, I don't believe so. I have forced Skyrim to run on the dGPU and it gets hot so it is being used.

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Skyrim configurator at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim mods and community

This nifty program lets you change options that aren't all in the launcher. I also recommend enabling threaded AI and other things - this will also help your framerate.

 

Markarth actually runs fine, about 40 fps give or take. In fact, the only area I've seen perform poorly is this particular wooded swamp. I'll try going to a similar area when I get home from work and see how it fares. Also, I have noticed horrible mouse lag in this game. It does not happen on my wife's (also nVidia) desktop or my (ATI) desktop, nor are there any random slowdowns.

I tried all the .ini tweaks but I was getting crashes on my desktop, so I took them out. I seem to get the same fps with and without them. Besides, it runs fine on a 1045t which I think is weaker than my 3610qm, and I tried locking the CPU to 2.3 ghz and didn't lose any performance, so I think this is GPU-related.

Next thing I'll try is updating my nVidia drivers when I get home, hopefully it won't break Optimus. Some people report that the dGPU stays on 100% of the time with anything other than stock Clevo drivers.

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I see, so you are always running Skyrim on your integrated graphics because of the heat? That would seem to be the problem, then.

You may want to look into getting a laptop cooler. I use the Zalman NC-1000, and it works wonders for my envy 15, which has a metal alloy case and can get quite toasty otherwise.

 

No, I meant that the dGPU gets hot so I know its being used. I whitelisted TESV.exe to use the 650m because my Optimus settings force everything to run on the HD4000 by default, otherwise things like Acrobat Reader tried to use the 650m.

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Well, this is clearly a GPU issue. I installed MSI Afterburner so I can monitor GPU usage and it spikes at 100% in the affected area, while FPS has dipped as low as 22. If I'm not looking directly out over the marshes, GPU usage is ~60% and I'm seeing a constant 60 fps. I'll try updating drivers and then removing all mods, but I'm not sure why a 650m wouldn't be able to play this game even on low settings. I have to drop to 852x480 just to maintain 40fps in all areas.

There is no downclocking that I can see in Afterburner, either. GPU usage remains close to 100% for the entire duration of playing, but usually I'm at 40-50+ fps. Changing settings seems to have almost no effect on fps.

What gives; is Skyrim really so buggy and poorly optimized that a GPU that handles BF3 at 60fps on Medium can't get consistent performance at native res on any settings?

A weaker GPU (desktop 5570) also had no issues playing at 720p on med/low. Constant 50-60fps if I remember right.

EDIT: Apparently others with the same laptop and GPU are also having issues running Skyrim. Funny, because a MacBook with the same GPU (650m) is reportedly capable of playing at 1080p. Also, nVidia.com reports no drivers available for my GPU. I thought team green was supposed to be better than this?

 

Wait a minute, I've been playing Skyrim for the past week on my 650M and it's ran perfectly. I even increased the draw distance beyond the "Ultra" setting.

This game and Optimus do not play nicely with each other. Do you use mods and if so, have you tried running the game completely vanilla? Certain lighting mods are incompatible with Optimus and can only be run with integrated GPU's; even when you whitelist TESV.exe these mods use different launchers. Also, while it may sound obvious, make sure you're running at good power settings ("High Performance"). I've been tripped up by that before.

 

What drivers are you using? I have not tried running without mods yet, I will do so now. Failing that, I will completely reinstall the game. What FPS do you consider "perfectly?" Especially because we have the same laptop. I'm using "balanced" as my power profile and have modified it to use every power-saving feature available on battery but run at the equivalent of high performance when plugged in. The CPU is at 2.3 ghz when playing (max non-turbo speed to keep temps down) and the GPU is at 950/1900 (not sure about the memory but I think it's whatever the non-OCed max is) according to MSI Afterburner, so it's not a case of something not clocking itself up properly.

Can you try heading to Urkingsgrad or something like that at night and tell me what your FPS is when you look straight ahead and spin 360 degrees in a circle?

EDIT: It's not drivers. The latest beta I can get (with buggy optimus on battery) still gives poor performance in Skyrim. I'll try restoring my backup and then reinstalling SKyrim without mods.

 

Well, with a fresh reinstall of Skyrim, Dawnguard, and no other mods, I a

EDIT: Installed all non graphics-related mods. FPS remains unchanged. I don't need the extra detail on an 11 inch screen so I'll leave it alone for now. It's playable once again

 

I'm using driver version 295.93. I consider "perfect" to be anything where I don't actually notice a drop in FPS with my eyes. For me, this is actually around minimum 25fps+. Let me run the game with an FPS counter for you though.

For the "Horn of Jurgen Windcaller", I went to the area Ustengrav to test what you were saying.

Default Ultra Settings, Full-Screen 1366x768:
I get 30-50fps in most areas of the game. In Ustengrav at night, I saw the low 20's fps dip you mentioned.

Default High Settings, Full-Screen 1366x768:
In Ustengrav at night, I got consistent 30-40fps. It is around 40-60fps in other areas of the game, leaning towards 60. FXAA is turned off by default, but switching it on didn't make too big of an impact. Perhaps my FPS was around 1-2 fps lower, but that could easily be a fluke,

 

Well, I fixed it. I reinstalled the game and did not install any graphics mods, and I'm now getting 45-50 fps in Ustengrav (was 25 or less before), 60 almost everywhere else, on high with medium shadows, FXAA on.

Just going to leave it the way it is for now and enjoy it. I'll leave the graphics mods for the desktop.

 

That's good to hear. I'm actually worried about my eyesight now, because if it hadn't been for the FPS counter, I would not have noticed that drop to the low 20's FPS around Ustengrav. Thankfully that is the only area where I saw it happen. I thought the cities were the most demanding areas but they ran above 30 fps.

 

I only noticed because of the horrible mouse lag that accompanied it. I tried installing only the better LOD mods this time, and fps was back to ~25 in Ustengrav. Took them off, and I'm back to 45-50. Looks like they were the culprit. Playing with stock LODs and textures now.

Cities are CPU-heavy, but apparently Ustengrav and the surrounding marshes will stress your GPU.