My PC is lagging on Skyrim even though I should be playing at Ultra

[TheShredder4018]

Hello,

Im having a lag problem in skyrim,

My PC is lagging super hard on skyrim even though it is very capable of playing it on ultra. I play Crysis Warhead on Enthusiast Settings at 60 fps but Skyrim is running at like 20fps. Anyone know why? I think it is my version of skyrim (1.1.2.0 or something like that). I don't have fast internet at the moment to download any patches so yea.

My Rig:

AMDFX-6100 @ 4.2ghz (Overclocked) 40c Temp
16gb ddr3 Ram @ 2400mhz (Overclocked)
Sapphire Ati 6770 1gb ddr5 (Overclocked) 39c - 54c Temp
- 900mhz GPU Clock
- 1215mhz Memory Clock

Please if you have any suggestions, Do right them down below. Thanks in advance

 

[kid93]

could be the internet problem but doubtful as skyrim is single player - but could still be the issue

try the patch when u can and if it doesn't help, try a repair and/or a reinstall

have u actually checked out how hot ur temp is? i know u said what it does but a fan might be broken or not working properly

some things it might be

 

[HEXiT]

the game needs to be fully patched if you want smooth play. if you cant get the official patches that are sizable then try the community patches over at skyrim nexus.

 

[tekmage]

I remember reading some articles about the FX series performing very poorly in Skyrim. I'm unsure if they fixed this or not. You might want to see if there are any solutions on Google. I run Skyrim at mixed high/ultra settings with over 100 better texture/model mods installed at a fairly smooth framerate and my hardware is fairly aged so there is definitely something going on with your pc.. I'm guessing it's either the FX series issue with Skyrim or a software issue of some sort.

 

[bwrlane]

Ok, here's my experience. I had horrible performance on Skyrim with all the latest patches, etc. I had no idea why it was so terrible given that my system should have eaten it for lunch. Basically in the cities, the frame rate would sometimes go down to slideshow levels. I tried everything under the sun to fix it, but nothing worked.

For reasons that are too long-winded and boring to go into here, I upgraded my system. Note that the reason I upgraded was not to get better performance - it was due to a hardware fault with my old motherboard, necessitating an upgrade.

On paper, most people would say that my new system should perform in the same ball park as the old one. Certainly, there's no real rationale about why it should be so utterly different. But different it most certainly was. Now whatever I do, I simply cannot make the system show even a hint of stutter. All movement, regardless of the complexity of the scene, is just silky smooth and the system doesn't even feel vaguely stretched, let alone stressed.

I cannot explain this and nor can I put it down to any individual component. For this reason I've more or less given up advising people on how to improve their Skyrim performance because my experience with different hardware configurations defies all logical explanation.

But for the record, here are my two systems. Firstly, the one that gave me hours of grief and endless slideshows:

Core i7 920 @ 4GHz, 6GB Ram, Asus Rampage II ROG X58 motherboard, 2*GTX 560 Ti SLI. Should have performed great in Skyrim on ultra, right? Wrong. It was not even in the same universe as acceptable. After hours of research I had given up trying to explain what on earth was wrong.

And now for the system that DOES perform great:

i7 2700k @ 4.9GHz, 16GB RAM, Asus P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3 Motherboard, GTX 680 (single card).

Why is the 2nd config's performance on a different planet from the first? Yes, it's a bit more powerful in every department, but not enough to explain the order of magnitude difference I experienced. So I give up. Skyrim just seems to be one of those games that works well on some systems but not on others.

In your case, I'd say your GPU is a little on the weak side and probably not adequate for Ultra settings. A 7970, 7950 or a 680 would probably fix it but you're talking about an expensive upgrade. Maybe try and make do with lower settings for now.

Sorry about such a verbose response - this one has had me exercised for a while now.

 

[tekmage]

I've seen so many posts people saying their i7/good gpu combo say Skyrim runs like a slideshow.. Are folks getting this poor performance due to texture settings on Ultra? I thought it was low, medium, high textures.

 

[bwrlane]

I've seen so many posts people saying their i7/good gpu combo say Skyrim runs like a slideshow.. Are folks getting this poor performance due to texture settings on Ultra? I thought it was low, medium, high textures.

Dunno. One thing I wondered was my 560 Ti SLI config was suffering due to having only 1GB RAM. At least that's one thing that's different between my new system and old one that's most likely to explain why performance is so different. Performance improved significantly when turning off hi res textures, which lends weight to that argument. In all other games besides Skyrim and BF3, my 680 performs somewhat better than the old 560 Ti SLI combo, but still in the same ball park. Only in the above two games is performance so dramatically different.

Evidence is pointing to the theory that Skyrim wants a dollop of VRAM to run on the highest settings

 

[bystander]

Are you using any mods? I've heard a lot of the mods take tremendous amounts of v-ram.

I run an i7-920 and get great FPS, but I do not play it at stock clocks, as the first series of i7's were very low clocked.

 

[HEXiT]

i get super smooth performance 2 again, i7 920(sig)..

my guess is the SP have a 560ti bios problem that screwed the performance of at east 1 card causing the rest of the system to act up...
if your getting sucky performance then turning down your oc to see if it either gets worse or improves should be the first step.

 

[TheShredder4018]

the game needs to be fully patched if you want smooth play. if you cant get the official patches that are sizable then try the community patches over at skyrim nexus.

Thank you for that HEXit. I grabbed one of the patches over on SkyrimNexus and now I play Skyrim on Ultra with ENB Series 30 - 60 fps. 😉
Though I will get the official patches when my internet renews.

Cheers

 

[TheShredder4018]

Best answer selected by TheShredder4018.