Question: What hardware do you use for Skyrim?

[Mushashi7]

Stupid question maybe, but I've played Skyrim for more than 1.000 hours now.

I just love all the mods. That's what's turns the game into something extra.

 

So, when looking at some of all these mods I can imagine some people have quite the hardware for it. Some of the overhauls demands pretty much, and if you have many you need some power to keep up framerate and resolution. If you also run the high detailled texture pack, well...

 

I have some framerate issues and 'freeze breaks' now and then after I started using lots of mods. My game crashes when it uses aprox. 1,4 GB RAM.

 

I'm simply asking if you think I have enough hardware or should upgrade to get a better performance. Is it needed?

Double the system RAM and buy a GeForce GTX 660?

 

Just for information I have an

 

Intel Core i5-3450 CPU 3.1 GHz x4 @ 64 bit (Model DH77KC)

8 GB RAM

GeForce GTX 560

 

Windows Experience Index rates it

CPU: 7,5

RAM: 7,7

Graphics: 7,7

Game graphics: 7,7

Primary HD: 5,7

[Mushashi7]

OMG! That was obviously not a good idea.

I just bought an eVGA GeForce GTX 660 with 2 GB RAM, and now my game gives me sudden black screens and drops FPS after that. With my old GeForce GTX 560 (Poi Of View) I had no problems at all.

This is really wierd as these upgrades should give a much better performance.

I did have some problems by installing the card drivers from the beginning. I think it was because I just express installed the driver disc. The PC would only run 800 x 600 resolution, and very blurry with yellow spots. I uninstalled the drivers and downloaded the newest from the NVIDIA homepage. It helped in general, but not while running Skyrim. I made sure the new card is set to 'Maximum Performance' in the power supply options.

Everything worked just fine with the GeForce 560. I never had any issue with Skyrim at all. Neither any mod.

Now it feels like Skyrim has become sensitive. Installing high detailled textures is totally unplayable and gives me a noisy color mish-mash. There are blue pixelations and FPS drop (mouse lag).

I removed 'Vurt's Flora Overhaul' as it seemed this caused some conflicts. It helped a bit. But there is still problems. I can't play very long. As soon as I go outside the problems start.
I removed all mods but the problem is still there. After a short while the game starts lagging, I get a black screen for a couple of seconds and the lag continues.
If I fast travel or go inside a house the problem is gone.

I've been searching the net. Some says it could the a bottleneck, other that the settings are set too high and I should try to lower them. I just get more confused of all these posible solutions.

[Georgiegril]

Hi,

My computer set up is much worse than yours, and I am able to coax out a nice game with some tweaking.

I may be able to help you, I will try.

 

First off, you probably never needed that extra RAM, but memory is cheap, so...however, RAM sticks work better as sets, so if you are mix-and-matching RAM sticks, that can actually slow things down. I would remove the extra RAM for the moment, just so you can focus on one problem at a time.

 

Now, to the graphics--I am concerned by from your description is that you have had significantly worse performance since replacing your card. I wonder if your problems may be caused by faulty hardware or installation?

I am assuming you researched the card you bought and made sure you had sufficient voltage, etc?

Did you install the new card yourself? If so, you might try again--very carefully reinstalling the card, or taking it somewhere to have this done for you by professionals.

When you installed the drivers the second time, did you do a complete uninstall from the control panel, and a complete clean installation?

Did you test the card after installation using something like Furmak or 3dMark? It's possible you just got a dud card, it does happen. EVGA seems good about handling RMAs, IMO.

 

This is a newly updated guide on the EVGA forums that has tons of useful info on how to set up and configure all things NVidia. I'd especially check out the detailed installation guide and monitoring sections, and also has sections on gaming and configuarion, if you find the problem is not hardware related but rather just a matter of configuration.

[Mushashi7]

Hi, Georgiegril

No, don't worry, I bought a whole 8 GB Kingston Hyper RAM kit (DDR3), and put the old 4 GB on my bookshelf to rot. Yes, they are cheap.

Everything worked just fine with the GeForce 560 i had before. I never had any issue with Skyrim or any other game at all. Now I have problems with all games. I play The Witcher 2 as well. Same problem.

I did have some problems when installing the graphics drivers from the beginning. I express installed from the disc without uninstalling the old ones, and then the PC would only run 800 x 600 resolution in Windows. Ok, that can happen sometimes, so I uninstalled the these drivers (via the uninstall but also from the Control Panel/Remove Program) and downloaded the newest from the NVIDIA homepage. It helped. Now I could have 1440 x 900 resolution in Windows as normal. But my games are totally screwed up.

Playing with high detailled textures in Skyrim is not posible. It is totally unplayable and gives me a noisy color mish-mash. There are blue pixelations and FPS drop (mouse lag).
I can't play for very long with the normal resolution textures either. After a minute or so the problems occours. In The Withcer 2 my game even frezees - not the sound though, so I am sure it is a graphics problem.
I get a black screen for a couple of seconds and the lag continues.

It feels as if it is some kind of bottleneck, because I can start up a game normally. My problems arrives after aprox. 1 minute of play. It is as if my PC has eaten too much and needs a short break. But after the break it is so exhausted it can't really go on. If you get my picture.

I also get a message when returning to Windows desktop that said 'my grahpics driver had stopped working'.

I installed the card my self. Made sure it was in place.
If it gets power enough? The old card had two power sockets, this one only has one, so I assume it doesn't need more power than the old one?

Running 3DMark gave me no answers but more questions.

I tested my system with the 'Fire Stike' and 'Cloud Gate' test. The message rurned was to contact their support.

The tests starts and after a minute it crashed to desktop after a black screen. It returned the following message:

"Unexpected error running tests.
Workload work failed with error message: Process exited unexpectedly"

plus this result:

"Problem receiving your result
Error message: Result file contained no scores.
If this problem persists and you cannot resolve it, contact Futuremark Support with this error information.
Error code : 16
(problem id: 15500217)"

[moffthrawn]

i am having the same problem with runing skyrim mods i built a coumputer to run any game and had no issues with it till i started modding skyrim i admit i got a copy off the internet worked good moddedsome file graphics it worked nice no issuses and realy loved the game so i uninstaled my crack version and spent the $40 to get a legit copy then thats where the bugs and crashes started i am running a slight overclock 3.3 ghz amd fx- 8120 8 core cpu 2 mushkin silverline 4 gb ram for a totel of 8 2 western green 2 tara hd 1 crucial m4 512 ssd this is where my os and games are installed and a evg gtx 550 ti fermi 1 gb my power supply is a rosewill stallion rd 700 i cleanedout my system changed from apperncetoperformance still crashes i even went from 3.3 ghz to 4.6 ghz overclock and still crashes so i dont know what to do was thing to stepping up to 680 or titan and doubleing the ram and watercool to keep it cool for the 4.6 ghz but if youguys have suggistions before i drop anthore thousand i all open ears the mods i want to install is the graphic mods and i went through all of the mods to trouble shot if it is just one mod thats doing it but with no mods it runs smooth

 

[Mushashi7]

I ran a system memory test this morning. My system RAM is fine.

 

I decided to removed my graphics card and put it back in. Just to be sure. Then I installed the drivers again (Clean Install). I launched Skyrim and was able to play for about ten minutes without problems. This time even with high resolution textures and all the mods I used before with my GTX 560.

I Launched 3DMark and ran the 'Fire Strike' (incl. demo). Again my graphics driver failed after a minute or so. I had to terminate the process via Task Manager.

I didn't give up and started the 'Cloud Gate' test. This time all went well. Demo and test succeeded. I guess 'Fire Strike' is too heavy for my PC?

 

I assume the problem is solved. I can only wait and see.

 

Here is what 3DMark returned of the 'Global Gate' test:

 

Score: 14028

Graphics score: 33805

Physics score: 4603

Graphics test 1: 141.95

Graphics test 2: 152.38

Physics test: 14.62

 

This is my system info:

 

GRAPHICS CARD

 

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

Vendor: Unknown (is eVGA)

# of cards: 1

SLI / CrossFire: Off

Memory: 2.048 MB

Core clock: 549 MHz

Memory clock: 3.004 MHz

Driver name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

Driver version: 9.18.13.1422

 

PROCESSOR

 

Processor: Intel Core i5-3450 Processor

Processor clock: 3.492 MHz

Physical / logical processors: 1 / 4

# of cores: 4

Package: LGA 1155

Manufacturing process: 22 nm

TDP: 77 W

 

GENERAL

 

Operating system: 64-bit Windows 7 (6.1.7601)

Motherboard: Intel Corporation DH77KC

Memory: 8.192 MB

Module 1: 4.096 MB Kingston DDR3 @ 667 MHz

Module 2: 4.096 MB Kingston DDR3 @ 667 MHz

Hard drive model: 1.000 GB ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device

 

Thanks for your help, Georgiegril. Yoy pointed me in the right direction.

 

Mush

[Georgiegril]

I'm glad! You are welcome!