High-resolution issues, no mods

[noneother030]

Hi there!

 

This is actually my first time posting within these forums to ask for assistance, but I figured this would be the best place to go for suggestions and help.

 

Before Skyrim was released, I purchased and installed an nVidia GTX 560ti card so that I could experience Skyrim in all it's glory. The card is powered fine, runs very well, and delivers serious performance with most games.

 

However, with Skyrim, I was dead-set on running on maximum graphics- max resolution at least, with 1920x1200 being my goal. With all settings as high as they will go, this setup works fine, and Skyrim looks absolutely gorgeous. I don't use any mods which would impact FPS, my mods include such visual enhancements as IMAGINATOR and REALISTIC LIGHTING w/ CUSTOMIZATION.

 

However, after roughly 30 minutes of play, and usually when exiting or entering an interior, my framerate will suddenly plummet to the point where the game seems to respond sluggishly, and play is entirely impossible. It just snails out on me, without much of an explanation. This issue SOMETIMES corrects itself if I wait, or if I go in and out of cells once or twice, but eventually gets so bad that it won't stop, and I'm forced to save and quit. It only occurs during gameplay, not while the menu is open, and completely resets if I close Skyrim and re-open. As far as my computer is telling me, it's not running out of memory or experiencing overheating of any kind.

 

If I run Skyrim at 1440x900, it runs just fine, and never experiences any graphical issues, with or without FPS-impacting mods. But for some reason, 1920x1200 is too much for my comp, in this game only. My best guess is that I'm experiencing some kind of memory bottleneck after a certain amount of gameplay. I'm willing to explore modding options to fix this issue, if any exist.

 

If anybody can offer advice or a fix, I'd be incredibly grateful. There are entirely too many good visual mods out there to be playing Skyrim on a lower resolution, if I can help it. I didn't pay a few hundred for this card for anything :D

 

Thanks!

[SFBryan18]

Could be anything. A computer is like a car, with many different parts and one could be excellent while something else could be holding it back. I have a 560m on a ASUS G74SX laptop, and I run everything past Ultra and get a fairly stable fps rate on 1920x1080. Try visiting Nvidia's website and update your driver. Then, look up their recommended Skyrim tweaks. Good luck.

[Georgiegril]

I don't use any mods which would impact FPS, my mods include such visual enhancements as IMAGINATOR and REALISTIC LIGHTING w/ CUSTOMIZATION.

Not sure why you think these won't affect your fps--Lighting mods can cause major performance hits.

I don't want to sound critical, but the 560ti is a pretty mediocre card, and can vary depending on the manufacturer. (unless you meant 560 ti SLI, then I take it back). I have a 9800 GT, so I am not speaking down to you, your card is a little better than mine. Still, you shouldn't expect to play on the most demanding settings.

 

My recommendation is to look at the Geforce Tweak guide and play around with the settings until you find something that works as well as possible. Like I said, I have an older card, with half the memory (assuming you have 1GB VRAM), and I have a pretty game , but there are definitely trade-offs I made, and it took some time to make it work--I suspect you can get medium settings at least, depending on your manufacturer and other variables.

 

If you are "dead-set on running it on the highest settings possible", though, I think you will need a better card.

[Staind716]

You should also try the latest 306.02 beta driver from Nvidia. Works really well for me and haven't heard of anyone having trouble with it. Make sure you completely uninstall your current driver and do a clean install. :thumbsup:

[stabbykitteh]

You should also try the latest 306.02 beta driver from Nvidia. Works really well for me and haven't heard of anyone having trouble with it. Make sure you completely uninstall your current driver and do a clean install. :thumbsup:

 

Yes, this driver works very well.

 

If you're running with shadows on ultra, try turning that down first. Shadows take a big bite out of fps with Skyrim and there seems to be a huge difference between high and ultra with little graphic improvement. Your card is much better than mine (460 SE) and I can run the vanilla game smoothly with most settings on high.

[Georgiegril]

Here is the Geforce recommended settings for your driver.

 

However, since there appears to be as much as 10% perfomance differencebetween various manufacturers, you may have to alter these settings depending on your specific card.