Maximizing FPS + Highest Quality

[Stormcrown]

How would people go about increasing their average FPS while keeping as much quality in the game as possible?

 

For example: Reducing quality of shadows: You won't see much impact in the game, but HUGE benefits to FPS.

 

Just to brainstorm ideas so people can maximize their FPS.

 

-Turning off shadows (Or shadow enhancers, etc)

-Anti-Aliasing at 2 (Or something)

-Etc

[JimboUK]

Shadows in Bethesdas games tend to be a bit rubbish anyway so they're no great loss, depending on your resolution/screensize 2xAA can be enough to give a decent image. I'd rather adjust them than reduce draw distance, things popping in doesn't like very nice at all.

[superjeno]

getting a better system so you can enjoy the wonderfull graphics in full :P

ye just droppin shadows and more importantly draw distance always help a lot

[RejectedCamel]

In order of priority:

- Resolution has the biggest impact on performance. If you don't mind everything looking a bit blocky, reduce your resolution whilst maintaining the same aspect ratio. For example, I have a 1920 x 1200 screen, so that's 16:10 ratio. If I were to reduce my resolution, 1280 x 800 would maintain the same aspect ratio, so the image wouldn't become deformed.

- Anti-aliasing also kills performance on cards that lack sufficient bandwidth for it - mostly built-in graphics cards (Nvidia put M on the end of the model, AMD call them 'Mobility', e.g. GTX 460M and Radeon 5650 Mobility). Turn it off if you're having FPS problems.

- Reduce the draw distance. It's intensive on the processor and the graphics card, no matter what model you have.

- There's a huge amount of clutter in Skyrim, and everything has its own shadow (except grass). That's a lot of calculations to be done. Reduce the detail in shadows, especially if you're using a built-in graphics card.

- Texture resolution will rarely affect performance now-a-days, unless you've got a graphics card with less than, say, 512 MB, and a very slow hard drive. Texture quality should be the last thing to be toned down if you're having performance problems.

[JimboUK]

Resolution is the last thing I'd reduce, you could get away with it with the old CRTs but flat panels look terrible at anything that isn't their native resolution.

[RejectedCamel]

Resolution is the last thing I'd reduce, you could get away with it with the old CRTs but flat panels look terrible at anything that isn't their native resolution.

 

Indeed, but if you're seriously struggling for FPS, that'll give the biggest increase in performance, by far.

[JimboUK]

Resolution is the last thing I'd reduce, you could get away with it with the old CRTs but flat panels look terrible at anything that isn't their native resolution.

 

Indeed, but if you're seriously struggling for FPS, that'll give the biggest increase in performance, by far.

 

If its anything like Oblivion there should a be a load of options for those struggling, I remember playing Oblivion on a 6600GT/P4 2.8 and I found it was the object draw distance that had the biggest impact.

[Stormcrown]

My first PC is running 2x GTX 570 (Fermi) in SLI, so that one won't have any issues.

 

But my second pc only has a AMD 6870, which struggles after installing high res textures, better cities, unique landscapes, etc for oblivion.

[Mediolanum]

In most cases it is better to maintain the native res of your screen vs graphic card instead of downscaling it. I have a 24" monitor and a GTX 570, and I've figured out in Crysis it prefers calculating the 1080p res instead of the 720 for example.

 

BTW, cutting down the AA a little bit, shadows and draw distance would be the smartly option to increase FPS though.

Edited November 9, 2011 by Mediolanum

[superjeno]

"only 6850" ? my 4890 on my desktop can run oblivion with pretty much all graphics increasing mods on max... not perfectly smooth, but smooth enough :P

draw distance actually affects everything else, since it has to load less... so that's the best thign to do... and while resolution has the biggest impact, lowering it really damages the graphics a LOT, while you can live with draw distance.