Low FPS - please help me to fix it

[Vratyras89]

Hey guys!

Here's a list of my system specs and a screenshot of my installed mods. Do you know which one could be responsible

for letting my fps drop below 25 at times? The game is running on the highest possible settings of course.

I'm a little confused bc I recently acquired the graphics card and - on paper - it is a LOT stronger than my old GF-8800 GTS.

Here you go, and thanks a lot :smile:

 

CPU:: AMD Phenom X2 955 BE, 4x 3,6 Ghz

GPU: (ASUS) AMD HD 7870 @1100Mhz, 2 GB DDR5

RAM: 4 GB DDR3

All of my HDDs are pretty full, but apart from that my PC's running just fine.

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

I changed the FULL texture packs of "landscape", "towns" and "riften" to the LITE versions. Dramatically increased fps and I dont even see a big difference.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Vratyras89

[FiftyTifty]

Your VRAM was probably being filled.

[Xxbtztrl]

1. Try turning your resolution down if it's maxed
2. Try turning down Specularity Fade (down to around 25-50% recommended, below 25% and your game will look bad even to low-end PC standards)
3. If you dont care too much about grass, increase density to 80-128 and/or if you're using 4k-8k shadows or have Shadow Blur above 5, try reducing them (this mod can help configuring your .inis easier http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/814/? , more newcomer friendly than doing it manually).
5. Try turning off AA and Anisotrophy
6. Try this mod out http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/? , it's really easy to use, follow installation instructions, run the software, in the profiles option select minimum (safe), and click run. It frees up a ton of memory with a small amount of quality loss (I promise, I use it myself).

Happy modding :)

[Vratyras89]

Hey guys!

Thanks for the help so far, but as I said. its running much more smoothly now.

But this kind of bums me out - with a HD 7870 this shouldnt be happening at all, or am I mistaken here?

Can you tell which one of my components could be responsible for this or if one of the plugins I'm using is a known fps-killer?

[FiftyTifty]

The default textures are around 1024x1024 in size. They accumulate to have around 500-700MB footprint in-game. When you have a butt-load of 2048x2048 textures, you've increased that footprint by four times. Factor in meshes, facegen and the like, it's no wonder your card couldn't cope.

 

You would need around 3GB of VRAM to handle that without significant framerate drops.

[Vratyras89]

Ha! Got it now! For real, this time :D I googled some Skyrim-Benchmarks and noticed that the performance drop from 8xSSAA to 4xSSAA is MASSIVE. Didnt know that, changed it. Tadaa. ~60FPS.

[Rennn]

Ha! Got it now! For real, this time :D I googled some Skyrim-Benchmarks and noticed that the performance drop from 8xSSAA to 4xSSAA is MASSIVE. Didnt know that, changed it. Tadaa. ~60FPS.

 

Yep. 8xSSAA is massive overkill. If I was in your position, I'd just either go for 4xMSAA, or 2xSAA+MLAA.

I used to use 4xSGSSAA (Nvidia's answer to supersampling in Skyrim), but I found it to be just too inconsistent in Skyrim's engine. I now just use 4xMSAA again.

[Vratyras89]

Okay, I thought I had it, but now the FPS are back to where we started. The only difference to before is the lower CPU- and GPU usage. (Skyrim Performance Monitor)

With all the 4k textures and 8xSSAA they were maxed out/almost maxed out, with 2k Textures and 4xSSAA GPU is at ~45%, CPU at 40. I even switched to 4xMSAA to confirm this theory. Same FPS, but both CPU&GPU usages a lot lower again (GPU <25% this time).

So it's gotta be something else. Any ideas? I know I've only got 4 GB of ram, but it the game barely uses two according to SPM..

 

PS: My Skyrim Version is 1.4 btw. Are there any known performance issues with this build?

Edited February 22, 2014 by Vratyras89

[BlackRampage]

PS: My Skyrim Version is 1.4 btw. Are there any known performance issues with this build?

 

Well, there are some potential issues. Better let Steam update your game.

[Vratyras89]

I'm trying Skyboost for V. 1.3.10. now, which seems so be working better. Due to my very limited HDD space, updates will be a last resort.

In buildings/caves I get 60fps with a GPU usage of about 80% (= happy), outside the GPU usage drops to about 50%, but the frames are between 30 and 40 per second. I can play like this, even if it bums me out a little. The game looks impressive enough with all the mods, but should really make better use of the hardware... this GPU-usage problem seems to be a pretty common thing.