Laggy Skyrim

[treebie]

When i first installed skyrim it ran perfectly not a nitch or any choppy scenes at all. Once i got comfortable with the game I added quite a bit of graphical mods to the game, after a while the frame-rate shot down dramatically, but the Cpu usage never Increased.

Is there something im missing on the new 4gb patch that i need to activate or something because the cpu usage never passes 1gb of usage but it still has a very choppy frame-rate

 

 

Computer specs:

ATI Radeon 5700 series

8gb RAM

Dual quad core i7 processors

Edited January 2, 2012 by treebie

[Vootins]

CPU most likely has very little to do with it. I'm running Skyrim just fine on an old Core 2 Duo at 3.0GHz. If the change happened because of texture packs and whatnot, you're probably facing a Graphics Card limitation. With the latest version of Skyrim and 8GB RAM you should have plenty of memory room for all those textures (thus no crashing), but that doesn't mean your graphics card is robust enough to handle it. I have a Radeon HD 6850 and even so I'm pushing that thing to the limit at times.

[treebie]

the mods used to work fine on my computer though, and even after i uninstalled all of the mods and even re-installed skyrim completely it still doesnt run at the same FPS as it used too

[Vootins]

Have you downloaded new video drivers? I've experimented with several different ATI drivers playing Skyrim and found this had made several major changes in the look (some, good, several bad). Right now I'm using the 12.1 preview drivers.

[maboru]

I believe you mean that your GPU usage never passes 1gb. However, if you only have 1gb of VRAM on your card, that's simply indicating that it's using all of it and is probably passing extra memory calls off to your shared system RAM which is slower and results in lag, loss of fps and stutter. I don't know why a fresh reinstall wouldn't have fixed that unless you're still playing with your old inis and saves.

 

Skyrim seems to be a memory sieve that fragments memory all over the place so the only thing I know of to help that is to shut down and reboot your rig every hour or so (to clear all the memory registers) or run a memory de-frag utility periodically.

[treebie]

Have you downloaded new video drivers? I've experimented with several different ATI drivers playing Skyrim and found this had made several major changes in the look (some, good, several bad). Right now I'm using the 12.1 preview drivers.

 

Is there any way i could save my old save files?

[Nirrtix]

Have you downloaded new video drivers? I've experimented with several different ATI drivers playing Skyrim and found this had made several major changes in the look (some, good, several bad). Right now I'm using the 12.1 preview drivers.

 

Is there any way i could save my old save files?

 

There is a possiblity that this has to do with the 1.03 patch... I am looking fora way to install the game without the patch. Unfortunatly I downloaded mine from steam, which only gives the 1.03 version. With the patch my machine barly runs the game where it ran it decently before at the same settings.

[PowderdToastMan]

You say "choppy frame rate."

 

What exactly is your frames per second? Are you using fraps or just guessing because it looks choppy?

 

I can help determine if this is a natural result of the mods or there is something actually wrong but you gotta post your actual pc specs.

 

I-7-xxx

Radeon-57xx

 

also, are you on a laptop?

[Nirrtix]

You say "choppy frame rate."

 

What exactly is your frames per second? Are you using fraps or just guessing because it looks choppy?

 

I can help determine if this is a natural result of the mods or there is something actually wrong but you gotta post your actual pc specs.

 

I-7-xxx

Radeon-57xx

 

also, are you on a laptop?

 

Mine is choppy with no mods and I am getting around 15-30 FPS in areas pre patch I would get 30-50 with the same settings....

 

yes I use a laptop.... but the specs are listed below and as I said the machine ran the game great prior to 1.03

Edited January 4, 2012 by Nirrtix

[PowderdToastMan]

This is what was advertised that the 1.3 patch did.

 

General stability improvements

Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs (PC)

Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles

Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly

Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes

Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading

Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate

 

I honestly cant tell you what in there would cause a drop in framerate.

 

But 15-30 is about right for that cpu and gpu set. Skyrim is very CPU core clock speed dependent. Take a look at the cpu benchmarks and their core clock speed on skyrim: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

 

Your CPU is operating at 1.6 ghz which is why you are barely getting 15-30 fps. If your turbo boost technology is on, your cpu shoud jump to 2.8 ghz and deliver more tolerable levels for playing.

 

To determine if your turbo boost is still working, go to your start menu and type - msconfig - and hit enter.

 

Click on the third tab which says - services

 

Click the check box in the bottom left corner that says - hide all microsoft services

 

You will see displayed all programs currently running in the background on your pc that are not related to your operating system.

 

You should have one that says - intel turbo boost technology. If it is labeled - running - then we can eliminate that as a cause for your fps drop. If it says - stopped - then that may be why your so slow.

 

Also, laptops can get very warm and will encounter problems if the gpu gets too warm. Download and install GPU-z. (its free) http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

 

Click the "sensors" tab and check the box in the bottom corner to continue refreshing...

 

Start the game and play for a few minutes. Then pause and hit alt+tab and go to the desktop. View your gpu temp on the sensor log. If it is above 80 then that can be a cause of the fps slowdown. This is not likely, but its worthy of checking. Normally you'll see screen issues first.