Skyrim FPS Drop In Towns?

[undefeatedmonarch]

Hello everyone!

I'm not sure if this is in the proper section...

Anyways,

So I had bought Skyrim during this year's Steam Winter Sale, the Legendary Edition. Today, I decided to play Skyrim for the first time since I had it on PS3.

When wondering around in the wilderness and landscapes of Skyrim, I achieve a constant 60 FPS, which never drops. However, when I enter a town, like Whiterun or Riften, my FPS drops to as low as 30 FPS, but only when looking at the areas of the city where there are the most NPCs. For example, if I look in the middle of Riften, I get 30-40 FPS, if I look anywhere but the middle of Riften, I get 60 FPS. In Whiterun, I pretty much get 45 FPS everywhere.

I don't think that my specs have anything to do with this, but here they are:

XFX R9 390
AMD FX-6300 6-Core 3.5GHz
8GB DDR3
650W


Any ideas on a solution? Thanks

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

Also, ZERO mods installed.

 

[Retic3nt]

It's probably a CPU bottleneck NPC's if I remember correctly are CPU intensive and can bring weaker cpus down.

 

[thor220]

Skyrim mode creator here to tell you it's Skyrim that's the issue, not your rig. Skyrim runs mostly single core and even worse so on low IPC processors like AMD's.

The best option for AMD users is to reduce draw distances of trees, people, grass, ect.

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

It's probably a CPU bottleneck NPC's if I remember correctly are CPU intensive and can bring weaker cpus down.

Well, I doubt that it is a CPU bottleneck. I ran MSi Afterburner with some stats showing on my screen. The GPU usage fluctuates all over the place. The CPU usage, generally stays around 30-40%. 🙁

 

[thor220]

It's probably a CPU bottleneck NPC's if I remember correctly are CPU intensive and can bring weaker cpus down.

Well, I doubt that it is a CPU bottleneck. I ran MSi Afterburner with some stats showing on my screen. The GPU usage fluctuates all over the place. The CPU usage, generally stays around 30-40%. 🙁

I'm surprised you even got 30 - 40 percent. As I said, Skyrim will use mostly one core. You have a 6 core CPU so that's 17 percent (rounded up). Considering windows background processes, it's doing a decent job of utilizing a 2nd core as well.

There are mods out there that help AMD users with these issues but I don't know how well they work as I've got an intel CPU.

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

It's probably a CPU bottleneck NPC's if I remember correctly are CPU intensive and can bring weaker cpus down.

Well, I doubt that it is a CPU bottleneck. I ran MSi Afterburner with some stats showing on my screen. The GPU usage fluctuates all over the place. The CPU usage, generally stays around 30-40%. 🙁

I'm surprised you even got 30 - 40 percent. As I said, Skyrim will use mostly one core. You have a 6 core CPU so that's 17 percent (rounded up). Considering windows background processes, it's doing a decent job of utilizing a 2nd core as well.

There are mods out there that help AMD users with these issues but I don't know how well they work as I've got an intel CPU.

Sorry, but I've tried Googling about the mods that help AMD users, would you, by any chance, know where I can find them and/or what they're called? Thank you! 😀

 

[thor220]

Here is where you can find all the mods

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/?

Reducing draw distance of trees, grass, ect will definitely improve your performance.

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

Here is where you can find all the mods

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/?

Reducing draw distance of trees, grass, ect will definitely improve your performance.

I was asking about the specific mod that helps AMD users that you mentioned. And I tried bringing draw distance, grass, people, objects etc... down A LOT, and the performance increase was MAYBE 5 FPS. Thanks for the help anyways! I'll just pretend that when I'm taking a stroll through the cities, it's "cinematic"! xD

 

[thor220]

This is not the particular one I was talking about but it is the most popular performance mod

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59305/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D59305%26preview%3D&pUp=1

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

This is not the particular one I was talking about but it is the most popular performance mod

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59305/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D59305%26preview%3D&pUp=1

Didn't quite work, but I feel as though there is no real way around this. If only Skyrim utilized more cores :/

Thanks for the help though! Much appreciate 😀

 

[thor220]

This is not the particular one I was talking about but it is the most popular performance mod

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/59305/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D59305%26preview%3D&pUp=1

Didn't quite work, but I feel as though there is no real way around this. If only Skyrim utilized more cores :/

Thanks for the help though! Much appreciate 😀

Yeah, the skyrim community has tried to get skyrim to use more cores as many ways as possible. There are secret hidden settings that allow you to put sound, textures, decals, ect on separate threads but it looks like the engine was never programmed properly to run these thread on another core as they don't impact performance of the game. It's not surprising considering the engine Skyrim is based off of has been around since morrowind.

I just remembered, way back in the day I used to play oblivion on my AMD rig and had to lower shadows because they were done on the GPU, still the same for skyrim. Try lowering shadow draw distance and resolution and see if that helps any.

 

[undefeatedmonarch]

I just remembered, way back in the day I used to play oblivion on my AMD rig and had to lower shadows because they were done on the GPU, still the same for skyrim. Try lowering shadow draw distance and resolution and see if that helps any.

The thing is, shouldn't my R9 390 be more than capable?