adembroski Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 (edited) Ok, so I have a fairly low-end lap top, admittedly, but it's plenty good enough to pull 30-40 FPS out of Oblivion at max settings, and it runs most games pretty smoothly at some point. Skyrim is killing it... worse, this is a recent development. I stopped playing regularly a while back and when I came back to the game, I got stuck at about 10 FPS and no matter what settings I use, it never goes much above that. If I spin in place rapidly, it drops to around 8, if I stay perfectly still at minimum settings in a low traffic area, I might get 12-14. This is at minimum and ultra. Going to options from the launcher, the Graphics Adapter field gives me two identical options; NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS... which I don't have, nor ever have I. This same name appears in SkyrimPrefs.ini What I do have is an AMD A4-3300M APU with Radeon HD 6480G. I have edited SkyrimPrefs.ini and added the correct name (I actually had a backup and just copied it directly) and that did nothing. Again, I realize this isn't anything powerful, but it's what I could get on my budget and I needed a laptop for work. I was able to maintain 30 FPS with reasonable settings (above medium, below high, mostly optimize for maximum draw distance, as I care far more about that than texture resolution; buildings popping up 100 yards in front of me is a pet peeve of mine and one of Skyrims more crushing disappointments) a few months ago, and I have no idea what's changed. I simply didn't play it for a while, and when I fired it back up, it didn't work. I have a sizable collection of mods, mostly overhauls and immersion stuff, very little graphical, knowing my system wouldn't handle it. I have disabled all mods, deleted the .ini files (including backups), uninstalled and reinstalled skyrim... all the same issue. I've found this is a fairly common problem for Nvidia cards with a relatively easy fix (set Skyrim to high performance in the Nvideo control panel), but integrated Radeon GPUs don't have nearly the breadth of options in their utility suite and I can't seem to figure out how to mirror this. Any advice? Edited February 27, 2013 by adembroski Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belial666 Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 Are you using modified DLL for speed increases?There's some that have a preset adapter info in it.Also,disable all mods,and the hires pack if you got it,and remove ENB,if installed.Did you change the memory allocated to the video in the bios?It's probably set to 512,but should be atleast 1024.You'll be lucky to get 15FPS,though with that chip on Skyrim,there's a few ultralow res texture replacers that might help more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adembroski Posted March 2, 2013 Author Share Posted March 2, 2013 Are you using modified DLL for speed increases?There's some that have a preset adapter info in it.Also,disable all mods,and the hires pack if you got it,and remove ENB,if installed.Did you change the memory allocated to the video in the bios?It's probably set to 512,but should be atleast 1024.You'll be lucky to get 15FPS,though with that chip on Skyrim,there's a few ultralow res texture replacers that might help more. Again, the same thing happens on a clean install... and I was getting 30-40 FPS before this started happening on vanilla medium settings. Hell, I once had it heavily modded and loading 7 grids and it still stayed between 25 and 30 fps. This is a recent development on the same machine. Right now, nothing is modified, it's a completely clean install. When I'm running the game, none of my video memory is being used... none, it stays at 0%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belial666 Posted March 3, 2013 Share Posted March 3, 2013 If you're not using any video memory that's bad.It means either it's using system (cause it's laptop) or dedicated ram for videocard is bad from pushing it too hard.I'd test other games and see if they are fine,and dig into windows and make sure nothing infected it,or is running hidden.I'm hoping it's more a software issue,like need to use older drivers,or some app can be disabled,etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adembroski Posted March 3, 2013 Author Share Posted March 3, 2013 (edited) If you're not using any video memory that's bad.It means either it's using system (cause it's laptop) or dedicated ram for videocard is bad from pushing it too hard.I'd test other games and see if they are fine,and dig into windows and make sure nothing infected it,or is running hidden.I'm hoping it's more a software issue,like need to use older drivers,or some app can be disabled,etc.Yeah, Skyrim appears to be the only thing that's affected. The other games I have installed right now (Battlefield 3, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Oblivion, New Vegas, Dragon Age: Origins, and The Witcher) all are running fine and using the video card as expected. I have Norton, but to be honest, I don't know enough to dig into windows, as you say. Edited March 3, 2013 by adembroski Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belial666 Posted March 3, 2013 Share Posted March 3, 2013 Do you use the DVD or straight through steam to install?Maybe the latest 1,8 is doing something to your game.Looking on http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-games.html looks like Skyrim isn't supported,so you'll probaly not get it much better.On another board someone suggested "Go into the TV menu and select the 3D options => 2D to 3D and put it on Maximum." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataRomance Posted March 3, 2013 Share Posted March 3, 2013 Did you update your graphics drivers? &Make sure norton isn't scanning or doing anything in the background when your game is running as that can make your fps drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adembroski Posted March 4, 2013 Author Share Posted March 4, 2013 Do you use the DVD or straight through steam to install?Maybe the latest 1,8 is doing something to your game.Looking on http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-games.html looks like Skyrim isn't supported,so you'll probaly not get it much better.On another board someone suggested "Go into the TV menu and select the 3D options => 2D to 3D and put it on Maximum." :/ it's not an nvidia card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belial666 Posted March 5, 2013 Share Posted March 5, 2013 If the fake 3d mode don't work for you on tv,then I guess not much else anyone can do,unless someone make a update/hack to skyrim to use 3d mode for 3dtv,or AMD adds it to drivers for oyur card. :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adembroski Posted March 11, 2013 Author Share Posted March 11, 2013 (edited) Ok, got it working. Thanks for your help. Getting 30-40 FPS again, on medium settings with maximum draw distance... so the power of the card is sufficient to run the game, even if not great. That said, can't wait to get my damn desktop moved down here from Minnesota:( To anyone else who might run across this thread, here's what I did (Win7 64bit). 1. Go to C:\Users\owner\Documents\My Games\skyrim2. Delete Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini3. Disconnect any external monitors4. Cycle power (power down and disconnect from power sources for 3-5 minutes)5. Turn laptop back on6. Run Skyrim from Steam It should now detect the video card. Once you hook it back up to an external monitor, it will still run, but sometimes it wont pick up on the correct GPU if you're connected to an external monitor. I ran through this process a few times to verify this is what was happening. Edited March 11, 2013 by adembroski Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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