Skyrim Lag in Cities

[TheCutting]

Skyrim runs fine on my pc anywhere outside of cities at ultra 60fps, but when I stare down the main road of a city/town it lags down to 40 fps, it is really annoying for a game that came out 5 years ago. Is it just an optimisation problem? Will a better RAM speed help?

AMD FX 8350 4GHz 8 core
1333 mHz 16 gb ddr3
MSI GTX 970 4GB
Windows 10 64-bit

 

[tenderous]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

 

[TheCutting]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

Normal 1080p all things up to high/ultra, tried tweaking the settings nothing helps

 

[tenderous]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

Normal 1080p all things up to high/ultra, tried tweaking the settings nothing helps

And this is vanilla Skyrim? (No mods)

 

[TheCutting]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

Normal 1080p all things up to high/ultra, tried tweaking the settings nothing helps

And this is vanilla Skyrim? (No mods)

yeah no mods

 

[tenderous]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

Normal 1080p all things up to high/ultra, tried tweaking the settings nothing helps

And this is vanilla Skyrim? (No mods)

yeah no mods

Have windows task manager running in the background with the "Performance" tab while you're playing in the city. After it lags, exit Skyrim and look at the task manager to see if either the CPU or Memory reached 100% for about the amount of time you were experiencing 40 fps. Also see disabling AA helps.

 

[TheCutting]

What resolution are you running it at? Unless you're running it at 4k that doesn't seem normal. RAM speed will for sure not help.

Normal 1080p all things up to high/ultra, tried tweaking the settings nothing helps

And this is vanilla Skyrim? (No mods)

yeah no mods

Have windows task manager running in the background with the "Performance" tab while you're playing in the city. After it lags, exit Skyrim and look at the task manager to see if either the CPU or Memory reached 100% for about the amount of time you were experiencing 40 fps. Also see disabling AA helps.

I didnt even reach 50% usage while I was in the city

 

[Xtergo]

Check CPU temps looks like cpu side to me

 

[TheCutting]

Check CPU temps looks like cpu side to me

Any recommended software?

 

[TerryLaze]

it is really annoying for a game that came out 5 years ago. Is it just an optimisation problem?

Well it being old means that it only runs with Dx9!!!
When it has to draw a lot of stuff on screen one single driver thread has to do a lot of talking to your GPU which is very demanding on single thread speed because it is very inefficient.