Skyrim and Drivers

mornal

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Nov 11, 2011
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Currently trying to play Skyrim but after playing for anywhere from less than a minute to 2 hours my screen goes black and my monitor says it isn't receiving a signal. I believe that this is a graphics driver problem but haven't had any luck fixing it.

This same exact problem occurs with Fallout New Vegas when entering VATS. Also, while I'm lucky to play Skyrim for 30 minutes I can play Battlefield 3 on high settings until I ragequit.

I also used Hardware Monitor to take temperature readings.
While I'm typing this my graphics card is 96F (36C).
Loading up the exterior world of Skyrim and then closing puts me at ~155F (this is also roughly the same temperature that the card runs at for Battlefield 3).
Playing in an interior cell of Skyrim was ~140F.

Specs:
i5 2400 3.1GHz
AMD Radeon HD 6870
8GB RAM
All drivers up-to-date
(Can post more if needed)

Solutions tried so far:
Putting it on low.
Disabling Steam Overlay.
Rolling back AMD drivers from 11.10 to 11.9
 

dentjunk

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Nov 12, 2011
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I have similar specs

i5-2500k
AMD Radeon HD 6950
8GB RAM
Current drivers (11.10)
750 watt power
Windows 7 64bit

and mine will stutter and freeze no matter what setting and res I use. Eventually the whole game crashes and I receive a notice that the video driver has crashed and been restarted or some such thing so I think the problem is simply AMD dropped the ball on releasing a performance driver for this game (like Nvidia was kind enough to do for their customers on 11/10, and from what I've heard they have no problems playing Skyrim). Now the waiting game begins for AMD's updated driver to come out...
 

Eldd

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Sep 6, 2008
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I am currently running on a 5770 with 11.9 drivers and the game is smooth, no artifacts, screen flickering or anything else. Game resolution is 1920x1080, 55-60 FPS, all details on High, no AF, no AA.
 

MundoDragon

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Apr 18, 2009
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Just a heads up here. This issue does not appear to be ATI related as I have a 9800 GTX+ and am experiencing this issue as well. It's crazy annoying to be crashing/blacking out in a game this fun. Get about 15 mins. of game time, then screen freezes, blacks out for a sec, recovers. After about 4 or 5 of these, crashes to the desktop with the driver error.
 
i have no crash/graphical issues running 11.10 and a 6850, i dont think its the AMD drivers, maybe just an incompatability with some systems. A game dev cant account for every combination of hardware/software prior to release of their software, im surer therre will be a fix for your issues soon. There are plenty of people playing happily with AMD cards.
 

brotha1

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Nov 14, 2011
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i have the exact same problem

amd 3.1 dual core
4gigs of ram
have HD6870
650w corsair psu
150gig raptor hdd

crashes 30mins-3hours screen goes black, then hear a repeating sound and then i power off the computer.

only problem is today it seems to happen every 5 mins. it NEVER crashes when in a dungeon, ever. only in the world.

also i have tried running on High - Med - Low with same results, and it stutters a bit on all of them except when i really put it high up there it begins to lag, but it crashes the same on all settings. makes no difference.

an quite pissed am thinking of asking for a refund for the game on steam.

FYI there is a very large thread about this here:
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/456889-skyrim-complete-pc-crashes/page__st__130
 
I've been playing Skyrim a lot. And following the Skyrim Bethesda forums. Lots of folks are having CTD issues, but I have not seen anyone having their monitor shut off. That doesn't scream driver error to me. Sounds more hardware.

Folks having the CTD issue generally find this fix works:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1255753-update-11-for-skyrim/

It involves switching Window's audio settings to 24bit 44100mhz (not 48000mhz). Worked for me and my wife's system. That forum thread is a Sticky posted by Bethesda Moderators.
 

warezme

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Dec 18, 2006
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Interesting fix, I will have to try this. My copy runs fanstastic but only in Window mode even set to Ultra. When I try full screen it just black screens on me and crashes hard. Oddly it appears to do it right as the sound comes on so this may be the issue. I run 3 monitors in vision surround so that is another possible issue altogether. I have gotten so used to the window mode that I don't miss the full view that much anymore.
 

i dont have the issue, but then again, im using a dedicated sound card SB Audigy 4.
 

daviddoff

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Nov 17, 2011
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Hey i got a CF iccue, my FPS is down to 20 and up to 60.. Do anyone now where i turn Vsynk off, The game shuld run smoth, really smoth :) BTW i run on High settings, CCC 11.11. 1920x1080 Thx

AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition OC 4.2Ghz
Zalman CNPS9900 NT
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula, Socket-AM3
Corsair XMS3 Vengeance DDR3 PC16000/2000MHz CL10 4x2GB
XFX Radeon HD6870 HDMI Dual-DisplayPort Dual-DVI 1GB
XFX Radeon HD6870 HDMI Dual-DisplayPort Dual-DVI 1GB
Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750W
 


Could be a power management setting -- try turning off any power saving settings and see if it still happens ( I know my system was shutting down during video playback when watching movies on the system because it thought the system was sitting idle and would shut down the monitor until I turned off the setting)
 

Lephys

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Nov 17, 2011
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They don't have a "disable Vsync" setting in the settings list for the game. You have to edit the .ini config file in the Skyrim folder. Lemme find the link that explains the process...

Here we go:

"Go to your Steam Directory, then steamapps, common, skyrim and select Skyrim again. Create a backup of the SkyrimPrefs.ini file. Open the file and add iPresentInterval=0 to the bottom of the [Display] section. This can improve a sluggish framerate and eliminate instances of mouse lag."


Also, whenever you think you might be experiencing graphics problems with a new game, make sure to check your Catalyst Control Center settings (or Nvidia's equivalent, for I know not what it is called). Those settings can override the settings of game software (such as Vsync on or off, or anti-aliasing settings, etc, when you uncheck (Use application settings) checkbox. I had a problem with this in Starcraft 2. I thought my system couldn't run it on max settings, 'cause I kept having crappy framerate issues. Even when I turned the settings in-game down to low! But, it turns out it was some of my CCC settings overriding Starcraft 2's settings, and the game was not happy with them at all.

Also also, as was suggested above, there seems to be an audio setting fix in Windows for some problems with Skyrim. SOMEtimes, when you think you're having a graphics issue, it's actually an audio issue. You can always try disabling all game sound and playing the game that way to see if you have any problems. If all your issues go away, then start with trying to update your audio driver (maybe even clean install), and searching for audio-related issues on forums such as these.
 

Freddy Fog

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Nov 17, 2011
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I have the exact same card and I'm having this issue as well. I've been minimizing it, but it still hits me once in a while.
 


Actually that is the wrong copy of the Skyrimprefs.ini -- the one you want to edit is located in the My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\ folder ! And the setting is already there so you want to change it from =1 to =0 instead of adding it.
 

daviddoff

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Nov 17, 2011
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Thx for helping, i will test it now and replay som results :)