Is i7 920 great for Skyrim?

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Blarzor

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Nov 1, 2011
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Hey guys, I own i7 920 for 2 years now and I'm wondering if it does great job with Skyrim, because recommended CPU is i5-2500k. Is i7 920 still a great choice?

I will be most likely using Sapphire Radeon 6950 2gb dirt 3 edition with it.
 
I have it running on an X6 with 5850'd in CF and it runs great.

I also installed it on this box (q6600 / GT260-216) and it is ok.

I installed it on an E450 this afternoon to try but I have not had the chance to finish it due to dinner getting in the way.

Gee it downloaded from the server slowly on Friday night ... took 24hrs and we have an 8Mb connection here ... must have been a lot of people purchasing and downloading at the same time I guess?

Check Don's definitve benchmarking here for further information:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074.html

According to Don "This game clearly relies on CPU power, and you need a Sandy Bridge-based Core i3 at 3 GHz or a Phenom II at 3.5 GHz to provide a minimum 30 FPS".

On that basis your selection is fine.

I'm a bit worried the E-450 I am installing it on might have to be set on "old blind guy" graphics details now ...

Hope this helps.

:)
 
I have a i7 920 @ 3.8 and am unable to play on ultra with it...it seems completely cpu limited.

I'm not sure if there is something else at play, but as i approach the first village coming down the hill in the carriage at the very start i am getting fps in high 20's low 30's on ultra.

What sort of fps are others getting with this cpu?

I have 580 SLI, but the cards are hardly used (whether in SLI or not), and changing resolution or increasing AA makes no difference to fps.

It only uses about 50% of my cpu, but then i've heard it doesn't scale well across more than 2 cores.....

I've been thinking of upgrading my cpu for a while, and I think i might actually do it now.
 


I have a 920 @ 3.6ghz and my single 580 runs at 99% almost all times during BF3, with CPU running 80%+ on all cores. Skyrim can't be more demanding than BF3...
 


I guess you haven't tried skyrim? If you do let me know what you get.

Battlefield is fine on my pc also...solid 60 on ultra with occasional dips into the 50's.

But then i think battlefield probably scales better across cpu cores. Skyrim is essentially never using more than half my cpu. I even tried limiting the game to run on just two cores, and the fps didn't change (if i limit the game to two cores it basically maxes out two cores and others are obviously low, if i use 4 cores windows shares it out so its roughly 60% usage on three of them, less than that on the last one.. Either way the overall cpu usage is never more than 50%).
 


http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/11/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweaks-improve-graphics-disable-vsync-change-fov-and-more/

That page tells you how to disable v-sync.
 


sorry, just understood your meaning.

I guess consoles don't need four core scaling either.
 

No, I don't have Skyrim. Is it fully using your GPU, how about when you only use one 580? No game currently maxes out a 3.8ghz core i7, so your GPU should have plenty of room to stretch itself.
 
It isn't fully utilizing my gpu either in single or SLI, which is why i figure there must a bottleneck elsewhere.

And it isn't maxing my cpu either, but i think that is the problem. The cpu is more than enough, but the game hasn't been made to scale over dual core it seems. It only ever uses about 50% of overal cpu.

Perhaps there is a bottleneck elsewhere, but i can't think what else it could be. There's plenty of RAM left.

Also, if i lower the resolution the fps doesn't change, if i increase the AA the fps doesn't change, and if i enable SLI the fps doesn't change which sounds like cpu bottleneck right?
 


This is because battlefield 3 is almost completely dependent on raw gpu power. Because of the engine design skyrim is meant to utilize a powerful cpu while relying less on gpu power. So One is more demanding than the other for different hardware.
 
To the OP: I am running on an i920 @ 3.5ghz with a GTX 460. The game plays smoothly for me at "high" settings, which are the only ones I've tried. There have been several times where video has slowed down dramatically, which I fixed by quitting and restarting. I think this is a bug in the game vs. a lack of hardware -- the exact same spot will play smoothly after the relaunch.

To davegl: have you actually played past the opening scene so you could get a sense of how well the game played overall? That opening scene has special gameplay mechanics in a number of ways, I'd at least want to be sure I'm seeing more of the regular game before I did a whole bunch of investigation or hardware purchases. There's also a new beta nvidia driver that mentions Skyrim in its release notes, I'd try that too. As you know there is currently no SLI support in the released driver and I wonder if having two cards is in fact causing a problem, even if SLI isn't turned on. Finally, consider trying High vs Ultra or a custom setting between the two -- I bet you can get 95% of the visual splendor of Ultra at 60fps no problem if you tinker a bit.
 

In short its a console port meaning its cpu dependent more than anything else
 
Guys, to how much should I overclock my i7 920 so it won't bottleneck my 6950 when I recieve it ? I currently have my i7 920 on stock.
 
for skyrim, i would say to OC the 920 to about 3.6 ghz.
and you should disbale HT in bios if it would increase the OC. as skyrim uses only two cores.
it is highly dependednt on raw CPU speed.
 
@gmcizzle exactly the same cpu % in SLI as in single gpu. Which isn't technically 100% but 50% of my cpu seems to be all this game will use.

@brucek2 i have the latest nvidia beta drivers. If it was an SLI issue I surely woulnd't have exactly the same issues with one card? Though you have a point. I should probably play a bit longer...but i can't help but think that opening scene can't be that demanding when considering what the rest of the game has to offer...its a carriage and a few ncp's rolling into a sparse town.

still dontcrosthestreams seems to contradict what i've been experiencing...
 
GPU % usage, not CPU % usage. You can measure GPU % usage with MSI Afterburner, EVGA Precision, etc. If your CPU is not at 99% I don't see how it can bottleneck you in any way. If Skyrim is only using a max of 50% CPU usage on any core, then your CPU is more than enough to handle all tasks Skyrim gives it. Heck, you could run 2 instances of Skyrim at the same time and barely be at 99% usage. Again, check your % GPU usage just to be sure.

It could be that Skyrim is just a terrible console port and refuses to use more than 50% CPU usage. I remember a few older games like that, where it just would not utilize the hardware very good, but I can't believe Skyrim would be like this. Might also be a driver issue with the game of some sort.
 
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