Slow Skyrim on high end hardware.

[WideAndNerdy]

Basically, I have lots of low fps in Skyrim, particularly in areas with heavy shadows. I'm considering upgrading my hardware but my hardware is already good and I figure I might be missing something.

MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III PE/OC GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127582

But I don't know if upgrading using my current motherboard is a good idea or should I just start from scratch with a new motherboard (possibly with a new CPU since my current one uses the discontinued LGA1366 socket, i7 Bloomfield). Or if I'm barking up the wrong tree altogether.

This is the motherboard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188074
EVGA 141-BL-E757-RX LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard

I have this memory ( 6x2GB, so each slot is filled)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225

Is it just a problem with Skyrim you think? Should I rightly expect more from my current hardware?

 

[rad666]

Your hardware looks fine, Skyrim is generally CPU bound and prefers Intel chips. Your i7, even and older one, should be more than enough.

Try turning down the shadow settings from the launcher (it's under "Advanced" IIRC), try one setting lower than where it is right now (my AMD based system has a similar issue with water in Skyrim, so I know how you feel).

That said, Skyrim can be very touchy about system condition, especially registry fragmentation. Try running CCleaner followed by a through system defrag and see if that helps.

 

[swifty_morgan]

disable shadows. what happens?

disable shadows and lower the gaming resolution. what happens?

 

[WideAndNerdy]

Thank you both, I will try both suggestions tonight when I get home. One thing I noticed in another thread is someone mentioned that Skyrim uses about 1.8 GB of VRAM on their card. My card, in spite of being high end only has 1280MB.

The other thing is I use a lot of high end texture packs (some from mods) and I just saw in that other thread that textures can cause problems (I knew this but I didn't realize that it might be the prevailing issue.). I will try unloading all but the HD Texture pack DLC and see what happens. Thanks again.

Should I even dare to try Oculus Rift?

 

[sn4ks]

Basically, I have lots of low fps in Skyrim, particularly in areas with heavy shadows. I'm considering upgrading my hardware but my hardware is already good and I figure I might be missing something.

MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr III PE/OC GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127582

But I don't know if upgrading using my current motherboard is a good idea or should I just start from scratch with a new motherboard (possibly with a new CPU since my current one uses the discontinued LGA1366 socket, i7 Bloomfield). Or if I'm barking up the wrong tree altogether.

This is the motherboard.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188074
EVGA 141-BL-E757-RX LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard

I have this memory ( 6x2GB, so each slot is filled)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225

Is it just a problem with Skyrim you think? Should I rightly expect more from my current hardware?

Sounds pretty typical Skyrim, since It's release there have been many optimization and bug tweaks done on the driver side of things. Be sure you have the most updated version of your nvidia drivers - and check out the patch notes on the beta drivers to see if their is any advantage to giving it a try.


This may also prove quite relevant, http://www.geforce.com/optimize/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1#1

Good luck.

 

[rad666]

Thank you both, I will try both suggestions tonight when I get home. One thing I noticed in another thread is someone mentioned that Skyrim uses about 1.8 GB of VRAM on their card. My card, in spite of being high end only has 1280MB.

The other thing is I use a lot of high end texture packs (some from mods) and I just saw in that other thread that textures can cause problems (I knew this but I didn't realize that it might be the prevailing issue.). I will try unloading all but the HD Texture pack DLC and see what happens. Thanks again.

Should I even dare to try Oculus Rift?

If your card has less than 2gb of memory, you'll probably have to loose the texture packs. Most likely that's the cause of your lag, since those packs are usually huge (2k textures or more, including the shadows.) and less than 2gb usually won't cut it.

 

[17seconds]

You might have an unusually high level of Transparency Antialiasing enabled. You would probably be running best at 2x TrSSA or off. Don't turn shadows off or lower the resolution, focus more on your antialiasing settings. Also keep the official texture packs, but get rid of the user-made mods.

Do you change settings from within the Nvidia Control Panel game-specific settings, or do you only use the in-game settings menu?

The other thing, Skyrim, even without mods, is going to use more VRAM than your GTX 570 can provide. My GTX 580 with 1508 MB gets maxed out frequently, and I'm almost always running above your 1280 MB limit. Lowering antialiasing will help reduce your VRAM usage.

Here's a tweak guide (again):
http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide#1

 

[sn4ks]

Thank you both, I will try both suggestions tonight when I get home. One thing I noticed in another thread is someone mentioned that Skyrim uses about 1.8 GB of VRAM on their card. My card, in spite of being high end only has 1280MB.

The other thing is I use a lot of high end texture packs (some from mods) and I just saw in that other thread that textures can cause problems (I knew this but I didn't realize that it might be the prevailing issue.). I will try unloading all but the HD Texture pack DLC and see what happens. Thanks again.

Should I even dare to try Oculus Rift?

Mods can be a pain as well.. What I usually do is once I have a a list of mods I am happy with, I will disable them all and tweak my game video settings until they are where I want them initially. Than I will slowly start enabling my mods (section by section) than quickly launching, and confirming video/game stability after each section enabled. If suddenly you are experianceing video issues after a certain group of mods - than you know exactly what you need to be focusing to fix stability.

 

[JRAtk94]

If you are using the "2K textures mod", use the "lite" version instead. My card has 1gb of GDDR5 and runs nice with the "lite" version, but goes horrible with the regular version.

Hope this helps 😀

 

[WideAndNerdy]

Yes I am using that mod. Can't remember if I'm using the regular or lite version. I'll give it a look tonight. Thank you JRA

 

[swifty_morgan]

Don't turn shadows off or lower the resolution,

what do you mean. it's the easiest thing to do for the OP to get involved in figuring out what the problems might be.

It's real easy for me to say the processor isn't delivering adequate throughput or the more obvious lack of proper architecture within the video card to produce the right results with the game in question.

how's about if we ignore your summations....... after all, everything you said IS a waste of time.

 

[WideAndNerdy]

Is this a uniquely Skyrim problem? (I ask because I've heard a lot about the bugginess of the game) If I buy other new AAA titles with current gen graphics, should I expect that my hardware will do better with them.

I guess what I'm asking is, we've already identified my VRAM as a possible bottleneck. Is a new video card with a larger VRAM going to going to be needed in the immediate future or is it just needed to run Skyrim the way I'm currently trying to run it?

 

[17seconds]

Don't turn shadows off or lower the resolution,

what do you mean. it's the easiest thing to do for the OP to get involved in figuring out what the problems might be.

It's real easy for me to say the processor isn't delivering adequate throughput or the more obvious lack of proper architecture within the video card to produce the right results with the game in question.

how's about if we ignore your summations....... after all, everything you said IS a waste of time.

Those suggestions are too drastic, when it's likely some simple tweaking will resolve the issue. Clearly he has a VRAM issue and all the mods are blowing up the VRAM. Lower the settings, try some other things that won't be as noticeable as would a change in resolution or completely turning off shadows. He and I play on similar systems and a lesser remedy should be within reach.

 

[JRAtk94]

Don't turn shadows off or lower the resolution,

what do you mean. it's the easiest thing to do for the OP to get involved in figuring out what the problems might be.

It's real easy for me to say the processor isn't delivering adequate throughput or the more obvious lack of proper architecture within the video card to produce the right results with the game in question.

how's about if we ignore your summations....... after all, everything you said IS a waste of time.

Those suggestions are too drastic, when it's likely some simple tweaking will resolve the issue. Clearly he has a VRAM issue and all the mods are blowing up the VRAM. Lower the settings, try some other things that won't be as noticeable as would a change in resolution or completely turning off shadows. He and I play on similar systems and a lesser remedy should be within reach.

I agree with matto. And swifty - that was just plain rude

 

[swifty_morgan]

bummer................

 

[WideAndNerdy]

I took out the third party texture packs and lowered the shadow detail from Ultra to High. That helped but didn't completely fix the problem. Then I saw that I had vsync turned on but not triple buffering. So I turned on triple buffering and performance is acceptable now without much or any noticeable impact on appearance.

Thanks to all of you. Each of you gave me things to consider and my solution used different parts of several of your suggestions. Probably the other stuff I didn't do would have helped too but things are just right at the moment so I'm not tempting fate.