CPU saving mods?

[Shadowcade]

I have but little choice but play the game in burst. The reason, because the game puts considerable stain on my cpu for some reason. I've started actively monitoring my cpu usage and found at base it drive the usage all the way up to 80+% and at times when around some people goes further and nails 100. If it holds on the 100 for too long the game itself crashes or my computer crashes.

 

So I'm trying to find mods that might help the performance by doing something that might lower the assualt on my cpu. My efforts.... suck so I'm asking the professionals now.

 

Can anyone direct me to any mods that might let me enjoy the game longer then 10 minutes at a time?

[ArtMurder]

What quality do you play the game on? Turn it down a level or two. Also, do not install any texture packs, including the Bethesda released one. This has more of an effect on your GPU then your CPU, but it's the only thing I can think of that might work.

 

Also, make sure not to use any script heavy mods, if I'm correct your CPU handles scripts.

[Werne]

Post your hardware specs, we can't be too specific without those. Skyrim is quite heavy on the CPU but it can be playable once you make some changes and tweaks.

 

The first thing I would suggest is disabling all programs that use up your CPU cycles, like the antivirus, any file monitoring programs, etc, including your mod manager. Those can impact performance badly, disabling Aero and desktop compositing in general tends to help too.

 

Lowering settings would help, so would tweaking the ini files. Then you could get mods that clean up scripts (those are processed in mass numbers by the CPU), remove excessively used objects, etc, just look for "performance" on Skyrim nexus. Overclocking would also help, but that's not advisable if you don't know anything about it.

 

We can see about the rest once you post your specs.

[Shadowcade]

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.91 GHz

4.00 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

 

Err what all information am I looking for?

Would some of the things that go into the MCM be considered script heavy?

[Werne]

I'd say it's time for you to get a new CPU, Athlon 64 X2 5600+ at 2.9GHz is somewhere in the range of Pentium G620 (I believe even that thing is faster), and that's not nearly enough to run Skyrim. Even with a lot of game tweaking and CPU overclocking, you won't get much out of it, it just doesn't have the power needed to run many modern games, Skyrim included.

 

Lucky for you, the newer-gen AM3 CPUs (Athlon II and Phenom II) are backwards-compatible and can run on an AM2 and AM2+ sockets once you fiddle with BIOS. They aren't too expensive either, you can get an AMD Athlon II X2 245 for 40-50$, 200MHz FSB and 14.5x CPU multiplier. It's somewhere in the range of my Core 2 Duo E4500 on stock which runs Skyrim fine and mops the floor with it once overclocked.

 

For a budget gaming machine like yours, I'd go with an Athlon II, it's a cheap upgrade and the GeForce GT 520should handle Skyrim "well", though I'd personally swap it with ATI Radeon 6670, it's relatively cheap and much more powerful than GT 520.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Werne