nightswatchicefire Posted August 11, 2012 Share Posted August 11, 2012 When I first got Skyrim my computer automatically changed the graphics settings to medium so that my computer could support it. I played it and I wasn't bothered by the look of it. The performance was also decent, far more than I had expected my laptop to handle. I would get some frame skips when i was raiding caves and tombs but it was still playable. Still, I wanted a better performance, wanted the fps to be smooth whether i was in or out of a cave. I changed it to low quality and left the aspect ratio & resolution as they were (16:9 widescreen and 1280x720 [letterbox] respectively). From here things were pretty smooth till i started getting ctd's. I thought it was my graphics card so I decreased aspect ratio to 4:3 and the resolution to 800x600. I was now at the lowest possible settings, it looked terrible and didn't even help with the ctd's. The ctd problem was taken care of after bethesda released a few patches, I don't get those ctd's anymore, do not give me tips on how to prevent ctd's. Anyway now if I try to improve the resolution i suddenly get poor fps and frame skips. i try to play at low quality but the resolution seems to be more of a problem. If I try to change the aspect ratio to 16:9 i get bad performance, even if the overall quality is set to low. Basically, I'm not looking to play on ultra (that would be impossible), just low quality on widescreen because the standard aspect ratio has terrible textures. Low quality looks okay to me but only in widescreen but that messes up my performance. here are my specs: OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit (6.1 build 7600)Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Raedon HD 4250 (miracle that i initially ran it on medium, i know)RAM: 4 GBProcessor: AMD Turion II P540 Dual-Core Processor (2 CPUs) ~2.4GHz I know my computer sucks so kindly save the hate. I know well enough that my cpu isn't good for gaming either. Gamebooster didn't help too. I do plan to change my graphics card soon but for now I want to know if I can improve skyrim's performance without any change in hardware. Are there any settings or mods that will help? Once again, I want my game to run smooth in widescreen mode, quality can stay at low (its the standard aspect ratio i have a problem with). I'm not looking to play on high quality or anything so if theres any way i can improve my skyrim performance let me know. :ohdear: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgiegril Posted August 11, 2012 Share Posted August 11, 2012 Here is a website that talks about tweaks for both low and high end systems, and discusses effects on both performance and quality. Maybe it could help? RookieNoobs Skyrim Tweaks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nightswatchicefire Posted August 11, 2012 Author Share Posted August 11, 2012 didn't really make a difference, surprised because it made me make so many changes in skyrimprefs... but somehow its almost exactly the same! guess i'll have to buy a new graphics card Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgiegril Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Are you sure you went to the correct skyrimprefs? There are two. The one that actually makes changes in the game is at username/documents/mygames/skyrim (in Windows7, in XP it is slightly different but still in the documents rather than the one in program files/data). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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