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Unplayably low fps even on minimum settings!


rhnexus

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I have just purchased and installed Skyrim Special Edition via Steam and have found it to be completely unplayable for my machine.


Even on the lowest possible settings (which make it look considerably worse than the original Skyrim on xbox did!), my FPS is incredibly low. Just in an empty landscape with little to no moving NPCs, I receive 15-20 fps. During combat or entering a town, this quickly drops even lower still.


I have tried many things to fix this including:


- Trying many variations of the display settings

- Manually setting up my graphics card to use the high-performance NVIDIA processor rather than integrated processor

- Installing NVIDIA Inspector and setting it to limit Skyrim to 120fps and then manually overriding Skyrim prefs to set "iVsyncpresentinterval=0" and Skyrim.ini to set "bLockFramerate=0" under the [display] tab (I have no idea if this was successful but I have seen this on related threads).


This cannot be due to CPU, Memory or Disk bottlenecks as I have been running resource manager and none of them ever exceeded 50-60% capacity.


My laptop is not top of the range but significantly exceeds your minimum requirements with 8GB RAM and 2GB Video Memory (twice what is declared for minimum specs). I recently reformatted the computer and currently there is only the core OS software, Google Chrome, Steam and Skyrim installed.


Are you able to offer any advice to significantly improve my frame rate such that the game might become playable?

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It would be helpfull if you would post your specs here too.
Laptops normally limit themselves, when not connected to their power supply. Did you tried it on battery mode and while charging?
Also, even with the correct settings in the nvidia control panel your .ini settings could be wrong. Did you check them? If Skyrim started the first time with the internal gpu (intel hd), these files could be screwed up and you would have to correct them. (somewhere in your skyrimprefs.ini with "sD3DDevice=") If correct, your nvidia gpu should be listed there.

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Hi thanks for getting back to me!

 

Full laptop specs: Processor Intel® Core i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz, 2001 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB Total Physical Memory 7.85 GB Available Physical Memory 5.43 GB Available Virtual Memory 7.13 GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M Adapter RAM (2,147,483,648) bytes HDD Free Space 646.54 GB (694,216,138,752 bytes)

 

It's no spring chicken but I just reformatted it and was expecting to get better graphics on that than my old Xbox360, not substantially worse with 15-20fps!

 

Laptop was plugged in (never use it unplugged now).

 

That's a good find with the ini file! It's still slowing as "Intel® Graphics 3000" which sounds like the integrated to me. How do I reset/override this? I wouldn't know exactly what to type in there for it to pick up my NVIDIA GPU. I could reinstall completely but I just downloaded and cleaned a load of mods (currently all deactivated whilst I sort the fps issue) which would probably all need redoing!

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Unfortunately, the Options on the launcher does not give me the choice between the two Graphics options. With NVIDIA's help I have managed to ensure that the NVIDIA card is being used by Skyrim but this does not seem to have delivered any uplift in performance at all. Still low FPS on low and shocking fps on high or ultra.

 

Total list of things I have tried so far that haven't worked:

 

- Overriding settings on NVIDIA control panel so that Skyrim and Skyrim Launcher both use "High-performance NVIDIA processor" NOT "Integrated graphics"
- Downloading D3D9Gen b3, running, typing in my video card name then moving the created dll file into the Skyrim folder
- Opening Bios to try to override (there was only options for "Switchable" or "Integrated" graphics, no option for NVIDIA only)
- Updating Drivers for NVIDIA
- Updated Intel Drivers (after this I was finally able to confirm that the NVIDIA card is being used by Skyrim vs the integrated GPU but no improvement in performance)
- Running Steam and Skyrim in administrator role
- Running Laptop in "High Performance" mode under battery settings
- Disable Steam Overlay
- Disable All Mods
- Complete reinstall of the game
Edited by rhnexus
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The GT540M isn't very powerful. To get fps values in range of an xbox (~30fps), you shouldn't go above a resolution somewhere around 1280x720 and not near high settings (especially settings settings like godrays or ssao will get you down).

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