Skyrim Graphics Options - Which ones are resource hogs?

[Adolif4]

Hello. This isn't a very urgent question or anything, but I can't find (very much) information about it anywhere on the web.

 

See, I have an older graphics card...an NVidia Geforce 9800 GT.

 

When all graphics are set to their minimum, I get a solid 60 fps (graphics-wise...I still get cpu bottlenecks here and there). I wanted to raise my graphics settings to as high as they can go on this card.

 

Obviously, some settings take more resources than others when maxed out.

My quesion is...in the advanced settings, which options are the real resource hogs? I want to max out the options that wouldn't really make a difference and keep the resource hogs at their lowest settings.

 

Thanks in advance.

[PLASMA_WIZARD_77]

I would like to have this information as well.

[scruples]

Shadow quality is by far the single most resource intensive since it is offloaded to the cpu and the game is already cpu bound.

[BeckyRAT]

Grass is another one. I turn it completely off. Why it's higher than the item threshold anyway I will never know.

[Adolif4]

Well...I found the weirdest discovery.

 

Skyrim runs at almost full speed on my 9800 GT when it's underclocked to half its stock speed, even when most of the settings are maxed out.

 

I have grass disabled, FXAA disabled, shadows set to low, and distant object lod set to low. Everything else is maxed out.

 

I was mostly worried about how hot my card was getting when running Skyrim at higher settings, but the underclocking seems to fix that. Mix in a little fan speed override, and I'm golden.