Skyrim poor performance

[defjamv]

Hey there! My Skyrim is running on ultra high with the HD texture pack and sharpshooters ENB (best ENB i've experienced, i recommend it!) however, the game doesnt run all that well, yet I easily have a powerful enough machine to run it, my specs are

 

- ATI Radeon 6850 1024MB DDR5

- 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM

- AMD 760G Chipset (AM3+) Motherboard

- AMD Bulldozer FX-4 Quad Core 4100 3.60GHz Processor

- Windows 7 x64 Ultimate Edition

 

I can run Crysis on ultra, Mass Effect 3 on the highest settings etc etc, and my issue with Skyrim is it runs fine tbh, it just takes a while to get there, like when I enter a new cell, it'd lag and stutter like hell for a few seconds, run smooth, do it again for a few seconds, then i'll be at 70+ fps again, it makes for very inconsistent gameplay and quite frankly it's getting boring having to deal with it all the time.

 

Something of interest is that Fallout 3 and New Vegas also run similar, I've been told Bethesda just have a completely sh*t game engine, and people with thousands of £/$ rig's experience the same, but I've seen many videos on YouTube of people with low end rigs, with Gcards as low as 512mb with duo cores etc running Skyrim on similar settings but with absolutely no issues, I really need help :P

 

Thanks!

 

-DJV

Edited April 29, 2012 by defjamv

[jezamarie]

I have the same exact issue. Specs,

 

- ATI Radeon 6870 1024MB DDR5

- 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM

- AMD 970 Chipset (AM3+) Motherboard

- AMD Phenom II x2 unlocked to 3 cores OC'd to 4GHz

- Windows 7 x64 Ultimate Edition

 

From what I've read, though, is that, essentially, it's just because we have AMD hardware. That is the best explanation I've discovered, because I run a squeaky clean system and an Intel/Nvidia-based system with similar or lower specs does not have issues like this. Anyways, I was really hoping that the new 12.4 Catalyst drivers would solve this, but they don't, sorry friend.

[defjamv]

Well in all honesty, it isn't down to AMD to fix this, its down to Bethesda, how can a game's developer of any level release a video game that doesn't run well on about 33% of machines? AMD and NVIDIA are the two big ones, yet Beth dropped the ball. Thanks anyway, I was genuinely worried that my machine might be sh*t haha, I'm fairly new to computers, thank god Crysis runs perfect though, cannot get enough of that game :D

 

-DJV

[jezamarie]

Yeah, every other single game I play, I play on bleeding-edge maximum quality just fine. Maybe it drops to 28 fps in a few choice spots in a few choice games, but not even in the same ballpark as what happens in Skyrim. Too bad too, I love Skyrim. They won't get a dime for any DLC though until they optimize their engine. The mod Skyboost here helps so ridiculously much it's embarassing that Skyrim was released in such bad shape. However, he hasn't released it for 1.5 yet, though he has confirmed that he is working on it.

[defjamv]

Ah, I'm in 1.5 so I don't think it'll work, besides, if it's a d3d9 replacer, like most performance 'boosters' it'll interfere with ENB's, and while the lag is annoying me, I simply could not go back to playing Skyrim without Sharpshooter's ENB (I seriously feel like an advert -.- LOL) because it's tremendous, although I have one issue now that's popped up and I have no idea how to fix it xD; grass is very dark and dull looking around Whiterun, It never used to be :( !!

 

Do you know what that could be? :P

 

Thanks!

 

-DJV

[jezamarie]

It's not a d3d9 replacer, that's the best part. It works with everything, SKSE, ENB, FXAA Injectors so et al. It's actually only two little files you extract into your \Skyrim folder and it's all good. I strongly, strongly suggest you try it out. He only allows it to be released on his sight for creative differences with the Nexus but, hey, to each their own. I'm also currently looking into save game bloat in correlation with the lag issue. Still Beth's problem, but it doesn't look like they have any intention of fixing it. I have a couple save games that are 70+ mb and one specifically that is 114mb. But I still get the lag from files that are only 30 mb too, so I am going to do some experimenting. Check this thread, they talk about it here.

[defjamv]

My save for my character 'Conan' (uses the 'Atlantean' sword with the 'Warchief' armor :P ) is only 3MB large, I haven't played much Skyrim at all, as most of my gametime has been spent checking mods and generally play testing different settings, I've done the Bleak Falls Barrow quest, that's all :P

 

Also, I'll check that out now xD

 

-DJV

[fms1]

What are your HDD's, how fast they are might make some difference, considering higher res. textures can be 4x larger or more than vanilla.

My specs:

AMD 6 core @3.2g

16gb ram

HD 6870

HDD Sata II (3gb/s)

Win 7 x64

I run 50-64 FPS consistently (Skyrim), except when going through doors (loading) I get ~30 FPS, and I'm not running any high res. texture packs (but I will later).

[jezamarie]

Yeah, following my experiments with fast travelling and a new save and such, I can safely say it isn't due to savefile bloat. It's whatever they have against AMD hardware that is the issue here. If I were to go spend an extra $150 dollars on a similarly spec'd Nvidia GPU I might be able to do away with this. Oh and another $150 for a similarly spec'd Intel CPU. Hmm, more expensive hardware that is technically only just as capable as the hardware I have solves the problem? Conspiracy anyone? Ugh, I'll wait for Alex to release skyboost for free for 1.5 thank you very much.

[defjamv]

fms1, I have a terabyte HDD, that's all I know :/

 

jeza, try this http://imgur.com/I9BXx

 

When I'm next on my PC I'm going to give that a go, see what happens!

 

-DJV