Devastator193 Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 Okay now most of you people are boasting a gtx card and an i7 proc... not me. i dont have the money for that yet... so I have a 520 gt and an amd athlon x2 250I was thinking that the graphics in some places were sinking in fps so i decided to get a new graphics card and monitor in july... but then i looked at task manager and it says that my cpu is the one bottlenecking... now what can be taking up all my cpui know its a lower end cpu but my specs areSkyrim: low setting, no AA, all settings low besides textures which are on highCpu: 100% on both cores at 3.4ghzresolution: lower than my monitor, 1024 \ 768 Now i am getting a new graphs no doubt about it... maybe a gtx 570... im not planning on maxing the settings just playing the game...now do i NEED the new cpu or is there some way to dumb down the hit on my proc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgiegril Posted June 5, 2012 Share Posted June 5, 2012 So this is just my opinion, of course, but I have a crappy graphics card (GeForce 9800GT, 512MB) but a pretty good processor (i7 Quad core,[email protected], 6G RAM,--not the best but fast enough.) I am able to play smoothly on Medium at 7 gridstoload and a lot of graphics mods after working on my pref.ini. I think it's easier to push the graphics up if you have a a processor that can handle it, a weak processor might not be able to handle a powerful graphics card. From my own experience, a crappy graphics card is painful but it can be worked around until more money falls from the sky....(still waiting...) Maybe you could sell some plasma? ;) Because obviously be best solution is to get both! Oh, also, probably obvious, but have you closed all background process when playing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devastator193 Posted June 5, 2012 Author Share Posted June 5, 2012 Yes... all other programs are closed and i am no noob to graphics cards and computers... what i am new to is processors... i replaced my 9500 gt with this 520 gt.. so if you can handle it with a better proc than i guess i will be able to... now the highest i can upgrade this mobo is a AMD ATHLON XII x4 645... which is quad core at 3.1ghz.. is this going to be enough to run on medium... keep in mind i want to pear it with a single gtx 570... which is overkill for medium but who cares xD... also i want to do 3D so is 3.1 quad enough for 3d at medium Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyZ0G Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 Skyrim uses the CPU for things like shadows so if you have shadow detail on high you will get a big performance hit look in your prefs.ini for all the settings for shadows that you could try turning down or off (shadowmaps of 1024, 2048 or 3072 instead of 4096. you could even try 512 or 256)I'm sure you can turn off shadows on trees as well as land shadows and, iirc, all shadows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devastator193 Posted June 6, 2012 Author Share Posted June 6, 2012 Oh thanks... I thought shadows were a graphics process... i guess its different rendering in 3ds max than it is real time xD... are not particles also a cpu process? and does skyrim have a variable for particles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyZ0G Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 (edited) shadows should be a GPU process but Bethesda, in all their wisdom, shoved all that load onto the CPU. yes there is a particles variable and you can take that right down with no apparent loss of quality (values under 200 work fine). and on a side note, I turned off all shadows in my prefs ini (but kept the shadowmapresolutions at 4096) and there is no loss of quality (as far as I can see on my game running SSAO through nVidia Inspector and dynamic shadows and striping fix esp)I think I am getting a little less stuttering and the z fighting (flickering on distant mountains especially west of Whiterun) is noticeably less than it was (although it is still there, it has improved) later on, if I remember, I will test without dynamic shadows and see if SSAO puts in decent shadows with better performance Edited June 6, 2012 by mighty zog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MightyZ0G Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 well, I did my test and if you have a nVidia card that supports SSAO then you can turn off all the shadows in the prefs.ini and it looks great and as the CPU is no longer working so hard on shadows, the game feels better.still has the occasional hiccup when it has to load in a load of new cells and there is a little shadow striping in places like Breezehome (but nowhere near as bad as vanilla). conclusion, don't let Skyrim do the shadows on your CPU, make your GPU do the work instead Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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