Skyrim FPS & Graphics card issue

[john8077]

As the title states, I have horrible FPS when playing Skyrim. After spending a week trying to figure out the problem I found out that the graphics adapter the game uses is "Mobile Intel® HD Graphics". I'm relatively new in computer related stuff but here are my laptop's specs from dxdiag,

 

Processor: Intel® Core i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz

Memory: 4096MB RAM

Display:　Mobile Intel® HD Graphics

 

Here's my problem: According to device manager, I have a second graphics card (AMD Radeon HD 6630M). From what I read at other sites, the graphic card should at least give me medium settings on skyrim. I have tried everything for the game to recognize the other card, including changing the skyrimpref.ini, trying to change it in the BIOS, and disabling either graphics card just leaves the option part where i supposedly choose from 1 of 2 cards blank. Before I did any tweaks on the game, it runs at a whooping 5 ( estimated since i didn't have fraps yet). The last resort from the internet was to change the game to High Performance from the Catalyst Control Centre, the FPS increased to about 7~8...but when I ran the program with the setting in CCC to save power instead, I got around 15 fps. Why must you make it so difficult for me, Bethesda? I just want to play the game relatively smoothly..its difficult enough to aim at dragons with an arrow at 5 fps as it is.

 

My laptop is the Sony Vaio VPCCB17FW I got a year ago, I googled it and it didn't have a lot of information on the hardware and i can't figure out what other information would help solve the issue sine my laptop's in a different language. If more information is needed, please tell me where i can find it, thanks

 

It seems that not just skyrim is being run on the Mobile Intel HD Graphics card...is there any way of changing which graphic card the games are run on so I can get "supposedly" better performace?

[xeon14]

Better late than never, I suppose-

 

But on the off chance you still are having the issue, and are still watching this thread (which I highly doubt)- you should be able to change what graphics device Skyrim uses via the 'options' menu in the Skyrim launcher. If the device is registered as a graphics card, it should show up under the 'Graphics Adapter' section. Simply select what device you wish to use and see how it works.

 

That is all in theory however, and it may turn out to be completely different for you- in which case this response would probably be best never, as apposed to late.