Low Skyrim Performance?

[Rennn]

Specs:

 

GTX 660 GC 2GB DDR5 (core 1006mhz, boost 1072mhz, memory 6004mhz effective, 192-bit, 960 CUDA)

AMD Phenom II 955 (4 cores, 3.2ghz)

8GB Gskill Ripjaw RAM (1600mhz)

Hitachi HDS721010CLA SCSI Disk Device HDD (7.2ghz, 1 Terabyte)

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

M4N68T-M-V2 motherboard (AM3)

Antec 750w psu (of some kind)

 

I play at 1080p with 2x MSAA.

 

I'm only able to achieve an average of 55 fps in Skyrim. It drops as low as 42 fps when I approach Riverwood. Imo, this is pretty much unacceptable since Skyrim's load times bloat if I cap my framerate. I run Skyrim with everything on ultra, except for antialiasing, which is just 2x because anything else is a marginal improvement at 1080p. This is completely vanilla. It's a new save with no mods installed at all.

 

I play at a rock solid 60fps on ultra settings in most games, I don't understand why Skyrim is so hard to run. Sure, the engine is kind of bad, but Dragon Age 2's engine is bad as well, and I still get ultra at 60 fps in that. Even in the Witcher 2 I get ultra settings at an average of 55fps (minus supersampling), so I don't know why Skyrim is being so stubborn about it.

 

Any ideas on how to improve this framerate without lowering my settings (much)?

Edited May 4, 2013 by Rennn

[FiftyTifty]

You're getting standard framerates. There's no problem.

 

You could halve the shadow resolution (or disable shadows completely for a major performance boost; there are mods that can alter the lighting to compensate for the lack of shadows) by looking into your .ini files and dividing by 2 the values of anything that has "shadowmapresolution" in it.

[Rennn]

That's strange, as my 460 performed almost this well in Skyrim. In every other game I've tested (Metro 2033, WItcher 2, Dark Souls, etc) this 660 GC has been more than a 50% performance boost over the 460. Just in Skyrim they have similar performance. And I've seen Youtube benchmarks of stock 660s with allegedly lower performance than my 660 GC maxing Skyrim at 60 fps. This is just wildly inconsistent... Is Skyrim not optimized for modern hardware at all? Edited May 4, 2013 by Rennn

[Georgiegril]

According to the Tom's Hardware Benchmark testing with Skyrim, your card is performing more or less average for the card you have, and there are also threads of other people finding their 460 was higher performing than the 660 you have.

(also the 560 performed better across the board in benchmark testing)

You may need to consider turning down some settings if you are set on higher fps, or looking at a different card.

[FiftyTifty]

Also, Skyrim is not optimized for PC hardware. You can thank Bethesda's marketing strategy for that.

[Rennn]

According to the Tom's Hardware Benchmark testing with Skyrim, your card is performing more or less average for the card you have, and there are also threads of other people finding their 460 was higher performing than the 660 you have.

(also the 560 performed better across the board in benchmark testing)

You may need to consider turning down some settings if you are set on higher fps, or looking at a different card.

 

Hm. Well, I've looked at the Nvidia tweak guide for Skyrim and I've gained a few fps for no noticeable visual loss. I'm averaging 58-60 and dropping as low as 50 around Riverwood. This is tolerable, though I'm glad most of my other games are locked at 60. Getting a different card isn't an option...

[Rennn]

Also, Skyrim is not optimized for PC hardware. You can thank Bethesda's marketing strategy for that.

 

That's been made abundantly clear... I thought Dark Souls was badly optimized on the PC, but apparently the worst offender is actually Skyrim. Skyrim is one of the worst looking games to release in the last 3 years, and it runs worse than anything else I own.