Best Upgrade for PC to improve Skyrim?

[JRHT]

I'm considering upgrading my PC at the moment and I would like to hear people's thoughts about that component I should upgrade if I want to improve the performance I get playing Skyrim.

 

As it is now, I'm getting about 40 FPS running through Solitude with the game on the "High" setting using 1920 x 1200 resolution. This isn't bad, but I would like to run the game on "Ultra High" settings and still keep a decent FPS (currently it sits around 24 and drops to single digits when changing direction and the like).

 

Currently, my PC has the following specs:

Intel Core i7-930 @ 2.80GHz

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel Mainboard

12GB RAM

3 x Asus ATI RADEON 5830

Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB

 

I was considering getting a solid state drive or a new graphics card to replace the crossfire setup, but as I said, I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others.

 

Thanks!

[VileTouch]

lol wow.. you know? my system es not even half those specs and i get much better performance (at 1440x900 of course) but then again, the speed of a computer is equal to it's slowest component, and while yours is pretty much all over the place, mine is quite balanced in each component's performance

 

so i would say get yourself an NVIDIA video card with a performance according to your proccessor (yes, nvidia, not ati. why? ati works better with amd proccessors, go figure) and get a bigger hard drive (even if slower rpm, the bigger the disk, the higher the bandwidth)

[EvilDeadAsh34]

One thing that will most likely immediately help you is disabling crossfire/trifire. It does not work well with this game in my experience. I have two 6970's that i try to crossfire and i always have problems when it's enabled. Same with my brother who has two 6870's. We both have to disable crossfire or else we get lag and stutter.

 

 

If you have the money i would invest in a new card. A single higher-end card. That's my two cents.

 

 

Edit: I just re-read your post. The turning stutter/slowdown is definitely caused by crossfire. Disable it.

Edited May 20, 2012 by EvilDeadAsh34

[SubjectProphet]

Lol, my Intel i5 gets perfect 60 FPS in Solitude on Ultra.

 

 

 

Crossfire= OFF

 

 

Might have some RAM that needs to be freed up. I actually have a thread on improving performance in the "Hardware and Software discussion" area, it'll tell you how to free some RAM up.

 

 

But the main thing is probably turning off crossfire.

[JRHT]

Thanks everyone.

 

I originally posted here indicating that removing Crossfire helped, but after I did so - I realised that my observation was more anecdotal than based on a reliable measurement of FPS.

 

I set a save game outside the Blue Palace and measured the FPS as my character ran to the gate of the courtyard of Castle Dour and found the following.

 

On the "high" setting, my game was averaging about 55 FPS

 

On the "ultra" setting, my game was averaging about 32 FPS. Disabling Crossfire dropped this down to 28 FPS. I tried boosting the available RAM as Subject Profit outlined in his topic, but this didn't change the FPS and this stuck at 32 FPS.

 

With this in mind, I'll be re-enabling Crossfire, but I'd still love to hear any suggestions or thoughts about how to boost my FPS on the ultra setting, either through tweaks or suggested hardware purchases.

 

Cheers!

Edited May 20, 2012 by JRHT

[EvilDeadAsh34]

Crossfire works great when you're going forward. It's the turning around that is horrible, chop city.

 

 

Anyway, I still suggest you buy a more powerful single GPU. Crossfire is great when it works but most games don't seem to utilize it properly or at all half the time. On a personal note, I wish i had gone with a single 6990 than two 6970's.

[Rennn]

Your cpu is by far the weakest part of your pc, so initially I'd tell you to replace that.

 

However, Skyrim is terrible with crossfire for most people, so maybe that's the real problem, as others have said.

 

My cpu is stronger than yours (it's in my sig), and I still get turning stutter with a single card, so it's hard to tell whether the real problem is your crossfire setup or your relatively weak cpu.