Is i7 920 great for Skyrim?

[jimmysmitty]

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.

You can probably do ultra but will need to do what I did. To get ultra settings, you need to kill AA and AF and enable FXAA. Before I did that, I was only able to do high. But now I do ultra on a Q6600 @ 3GHz and a HD5870.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

enabling 16x AF should not have any effect on FPS. at most 2 FPS. probably lesser.

 

[NITROGEnarcosis]

I have a core 2 duo e7200 @ 3.6ghz and a 6870 and it runs just fine at all ultra ( shadows high ) at 1680*1050.

 

[Blarzor]

Well I play @ 1280x1024, soon upgrading to 1920x1080. With 4890 oced a bit and stock i7 920 settings, I play at high settings with some .ini tweaks. I play smooth with some random lagg at some places. After long time playing I get a bit of stuttering. Plays fine overall.

 

[gnomio]

GPU Observer gadget for Windows 7 gives you a constant look at your video card's temperature, fan speed
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/gpu-observer-gadget.htm

CPU Meter III
http://pcsupport.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=pcsupport&cdn=compute&tm=74&f=00&su=p504.6.342.ip_&tt=3&bt=1&bts=1&st=11&zu=http%3A//www.softpedia.com/get/Windows-Widgets/System-Utilities/CPU-Meter-III.shtml

All CPU Meter
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/all-cpu-meter-gadget.htm

 

[mayankleoboy1]

could the stuttering due to older drivers?

 

[blade86sam]

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 an i7 920 C0 @ 3.8GHz as well, combined with a Matrix HD5870 Platinum @ 960/1250 and im running skyrim on ultra with not a single hiccup... pretty much a constant 60fps. As for cpu.. i never end up getting more then 30-40% cpu usage in most of my games... that includes metro2033 at very high settings...

kinda finding it strange and sad that some of you guys with this cpu are having problems... but im glad to say mine hasnt let me down in the 2.5yrs of owning it and having it at 3.8GHz this whole time also sitting on a rampage II extreme board (latest bios rev)

 

[esrever]

skyrim will not run too well on a i7 920 at stock but it will do.

You can run on high no problem but it will be a bit slow in towns and such.

 

[jhan817]

I have had skyrim since it has came out with a stock 920 and i have always been able to play on ultra never having a problem with anything. I can play bf3 on ultra while recording and still constantly have 60 fps. Running on a asus pt6 with 8g corsair vengence and evga gtx 580.

 

[hotshot2797]

Just get a 3570K and with the price get a 7950 if not a 7970 which will awesome.

 

[lysinger]

Just get a 3570K and with the price get a 7950 if not a 7970 which will awesome.

I agree with hotshot. You could get an i7-960 (3.2ghz per core) or get an ivy bridge that will cost a bit more but still be faster (more than a bit if you factor in the MB swap time). Less work with the 960, but ivy bridges are fast. haswell is 4-5 months away. It all depends on your level of patience.

 

[FlintIronStagg]

Yes the i7 920 is just fine.
Skyrim is much less CPU bound after the updates