The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Performance discussion

Just Wanted to add that this game look FANTASTIC on my 50' plasma from my PC... No witcher 2, but what is... I think the level of detail and care in hand placed environments in this game of this magnitude more than make up for some muddy textures and minor bugs... but man.. with a backlight behind my t.v... and all other lights off, this game is nothing but a big bag of eye candy...
 
Does anyone know what the average VRAM usage in Oblivion was after prolonged play? Because Koroush Ghazi writes that this one goes over 1gb after just a few minutes on Ultra, and that's with the garbage-resolution textures in a 4gb install.

Another thing. Not sure if it's just me, but when I use saveini in the command console the game saves the complete version of skyrim.ini with around 1,450 lines of variables in it. The version compiled by the launcher doesn't have nearly so many.

This bit in particular seems interesting:

[BudgetCaps]
uActorMemoryBudgetCap=10485760
uCityLODBudgetAdjustment=5242880
uWastelandLODBudgetAdjustment=20971520
uLoadedAreaNonActorMemoryBudgetCap=185597952
fMaxMsUsagePerFrame=28.0000
fMsHavokTriCount=0.0010
fMsDecalCount=0.0010
fMsLightCount=0.0100
fMsLightExcessGeometry=0.0100
fMsWaterCount=0.1000
fMsTriangleCount=0.0001
fMsGeometryCount=0.0100
fMsEmittersCount=0.0100
fMsParticlesCount=0.0010
fMsAnimatedObjectsCount=0.0500
fMsActiveRefCount=0.0500
fMsActorRefCount=0.2450
fMsRefCount=0.0210
uHavokTriCountInterior=5000
uDecalCountInterior=500
uLightExcessGeometryInterior=5
uLightCountInterior=10
uWaterMemoryInterior=10485760
uTextureMemoryInterior=104857600
uGeometryMemoryInterior=10485760
uWaterCountInterior=10
uTriangleCountInterior=100000
uGeometryCountInterior=1000
uEmittersCountInterior=50
uParticlesCountInterior=5000
uAnimatedObjectsCountInterior=50
uActiveRefCountInterior=100
uActorRefCountInterior=20
uRefCountInterior=1000
uHavokTriCount=5000
uDecalCount=500
uLightExcessGeometry=100
uLightCount=10
uWaterMemory=5242880
uTextureMemory=20971520
uGeometryMemory=5242880
uWaterCount=10
uTriangleCount=100000
uGeometryCount=1000
uEmittersCount=50
uParticlesCount=5000
uAnimatedObjectsCount=50
uActiveRefCount=100
uActorRefCount=20
uRefCount=700
 
TheOctagon said:
Does anyone know what the average VRAM usage in Oblivion was after prolonged play? Because Koroush Ghazi writes that this one goes over 1gb after just a few minutes on Ultra, and that's with the garbage-resolution textures in a 4gb install.
I quickly go to about 1.7 GB VRAM with this one on Ultra.

Will be fun to see what the inevitable High Res textures will do.
 
Johnny2Bags said:
Just Wanted to add that this game look FANTASTIC on my 50' plasma from my PC...
I almost agree. If only the textures had been better and the shadows of a higher quality I would agree unconditionally.
 
Hi, I'm MxR on Youtube and I make Skyrim videos.

I love that you made a thread dedicated to Skyrim on the PC.
I would really appreciate it if you could promote my Weekly Mod series by posting a link to it on the thread.

Here is the first episode that I just uploaded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EN8oeXFZWs

And here's the top 5 mods at launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvngfbiRh6o

The series will serve as a way to allow players to see the mods in action, in game while I comment and then make their own decision about whether or not they want to give it a try themselves.

Thanks!
 
TheOctagon said:
Does anyone know what the average VRAM usage in Oblivion was after prolonged play? Because Koroush Ghazi writes that this one goes over 1gb after just a few minutes on Ultra, and that's with the garbage-resolution textures in a 4gb install.

No idea why, but Koroush is full of it on this count. With 8x MSAA + Transparency MSAA, Ultra everything at 1080p the max VRAM usage I've hit is 950 MB.

And Dennis is confirming the same thing, since 1.7GB/2 = 850 MB.
 
DennisK4 said:
I almost agree. If only the textures had been better and the shadows of a higher quality I would agree unconditionally.

Yeah for me the shadows are sufficient.. wish the distance was further however... someone made a really good point when they said that tree shadows are just that.. shadows, with minor detail on the edges, with the exception of noontime shadows and such.. they SHOULD be a little blurry if they are going for realism... I'm sure it wasn't the reason it ended up that way and rather a technical inadequacy on Bethesda's part that gave us these shadows however,

Also, both myself and my g/f while playing/watching the game both came to the synonymous conclusion that it's beauty was different than Witcher 2's... (which sits High atop the best looking game pedestal for me personally), and that the open environments and reason and feasability based environments (Huge cave fits inside a large mountain exactly as it should, complete with adjoining skylight that can be seen from above) adds to the game, and it's own form of beauty...
 
I have tried every mouse tweak available, but it still feels like the vertical motion is effected by my FPS. No matter what I do it takes too much effort to look all the way up or down.

Did I miss something or is this the best it gets for now?
 
Treemonkeys said:
I have tried every mouse tweak available, but it still feels like the vertical motion is effected by my FPS. No matter what I do it takes too much effort to look all the way up or down.

Did I miss something or is this the best it gets for now?

No fix for that as far as I know. Wait for a patch.
 
TheOctagon said:
Does anyone know what the average VRAM usage in Oblivion was after prolonged play? Because Koroush Ghazi writes that this one goes over 1gb after just a few minutes on Ultra, and that's with the garbage-resolution textures in a 4gb install.

Another thing. Not sure if it's just me, but when I use saveini in the command console the game saves the complete version of skyrim.ini with around 1,450 lines of variables in it. The version compiled by the launcher doesn't have nearly so many.

This bit in particular seems interesting:
Can You post ini at pastebin.com? Thanks.
 
As far a I know, the best solution to the vertical mouse sensitivity is iPresenInterval=0, with D3DOverrider vsync + triple buffering (or ingame vsync + triple buffering with iPresentInterval=1 if you like that better).

Also, a friendly reminder to everyone:
Since it sounds like Bethesda is working on at least one patch, make sure you back up any ini files or game files that you have modded, since Steam may overwrite them without warning if a patch shows up. The only way around this is permanent offline mode, or possibly running TESM.EXE while Steam is shutdown, something like that.
 
Blizzard said:
As far a I know, the best solution to the vertical mouse sensitivity is iPresenInterval=0, with D3DOverrider vsync + triple buffering (or ingame vsync + triple buffering with iPresentInterval=1 if you like that better).

Also, a friendly reminder to everyone:
Since it sounds like Bethesda is working on at least one patch, make sure you back up any ini files or game files that you have modded, since Steam may overwrite them without warning if a patch shows up. The only way around this is permanent offline mode, or possibly running TESM.EXE while Steam is shutdown, something like that.

You can just set Steam to not auto-update Skyrim if you're worried about that. Right-click Skyrim in Steam library, -> properties -> updates.
 
Wallach said:
You can just set Steam to not auto-update Skyrim if you're worried about that. Right-click Skyrim in Steam library, -> properties -> updates.
That is exactly why I keep warning people about games, since some people probably don't know how it works.

If you change that setting and then try to launch Skyrim, it WILL force you to autoupdate it. The only thing it turns off is autodownloading patches while you're not actually playing the game. This behavior is for all Steam games as far as I know.

If you leave that option turned off and manually run TESM.EXE or whatever, you might be okay if Steam doesn't know about it, but I would still back up my modded files to be safe.
 
LiquidMetal14 said:
Can more folks test these out

fDefaultWorldFOV=XX (ex.fDefaultWorldFOV=85)
fDefault1stPersonFOV=XX.XXXX (ex.fDefault1stPersonFOV=85.0000)

Would like to see more confirmations of it working.
holy shit... I think it worked... I have both of them in my perfs and ini files. I have it in steam -fov 85 I didn't type 85 either. I use the map fast traveled everything and they both stayed. :) :P
datamage said:
What does this do exactly?
takes away the clouds on your map
 
Can anyone tell me what is causing this to happen:

FA0FFAB28C73C45218E94AC5C5C7D76E47121ECC
 
AEREC said:
I remember seeing that on one of the first few pages of this thread and tried it...even put it 8.000 and it did not change a thing.

Odd, my first concern with the game was that its sound output was too low. I currently have it set to 5.000, and it definitely made a difference. *shrug*
 
Game works great on my 5 year old C2D 3.3GHz 8800GT rig. Running on high settings @ 1920x1080 and using a 360 controller.
 
Ok, got the game to use over 1GB of VRAM... by forcing triple buffering + vsync with D3DOverrider.

Once high res textures come out, people will definitely need at least 1.3-1.5 GB VRAM (optimally 2 GB) to use them safely.
 
BoobPhysics101 said:
Ok, got the game to use over 1GB of VRAM... by forcing triple buffering + vsync with D3DOverrider.

Once high res textures come out, people will definitely need at least 1.3-1.5 GB VRAM (optimally 2 GB) to use them safely.


SLI vram don't stack. Also the 8xmsaa stands for like 1000mb of 1500 at 2560x1440, totallt superfluous and a resource hog
 
Wow so my system is getting killed by Skyrim. See my specs below:

Intel Core I7 950 3.0 GHZ
ATI Radeon 5850
OCZ 4 GB PC 1600 RAM
Win 7

On the opening scene once you ride to the gates of the town I am getting between 20-25 FPS, and once you get into town the best I am getting is 30 FPS.

I have everything running on Ultra with FXAA off. I have tried running on high, turning off AA, using the FPS limiter fix for ATI cards, and nothing works. Nothing seems to impact the performance at all. This is vanilla Skyrim, using the 11.11 drivers with the latest profiles. The only change I make is setting the FOV higher.

Any ideas on what can be done to fix this? Is there a way to check FPS in game without FRAPS so I can see if that is causing the issue?
 
hlhbk said:
Wow so my system is getting killed by Skyrim. See my specs below:

Intel Core I7 950 3.0 GHZ
ATI Radeon 5850
OCZ 4 GB PC 1600 RAM
Win 7

On the opening scene once you ride to the gates of the town I am getting between 20-25 FPS, and once you get into town the best I am getting is 30 FPS.

I have everything running on Ultra with FXAA off. I have tried running on high, turning off AA, using the FPS limiter fix for ATI cards, and nothing works. Nothing seems to impact the performance at all. This is vanilla Skyrim, using the 11.11 drivers with the latest profiles. The only change I make is setting the FOV higher.

Any ideas on what can be done to fix this? Is there a way to check FPS in game without FRAPS so I can see if that is causing the issue?
What resolution are you running at? With a 5850 (but much worse CPU, still 3.0 GHz), I would say I get playable 30-50 fps outside with medium settings for most things, high textures, and 4xMSAA.

*edit* I forgot to mention I run at 1680x1050 and use mostly vanilla settings.
 
Blizzard said:
What resolution are you running at? With a 5850 (but much worse CPU, still 3.0 GHz), I would say I get playable 30-50 fps outside with medium settings for most things, high textures, and 4xMSAA.

Same thing I run everything at 1920x1200. I am gonna be pretty peeved if I gotta go down to medium to run the game considering what the recommended specs were...
 
wow never-mind my post... I just reset again every-time I go in my map. :\ I'll just wait for the patch damn it..... sooo annoying. I swear if beth doesn't fix this. I hope someone is complaining on their forums.
 
BoobPhysics101 said:
That's total I believe. If you're using SLI, divide that number by the # of cards you have.

SLI uses the same amount of RAM on each video card at the same time. So yes, it really is using nearly 1.4GB there.
 
neoism said:
wow never-mind my post... I just reset again every-time I go in my map. :\ I'll just wait for the patch damn it..... sooo annoying. I swear if beth doesn't fix this. I hope someone is complaining on their forums.
Have you tried it with just those two lines in the Skyrim.ini? Maybe the fact you have it in other places is making things worse...
 
hlhbk said:
Wow so my system is getting killed by Skyrim. See my specs below:

Intel Core I7 950 3.0 GHZ
ATI Radeon 5850
OCZ 4 GB PC 1600 RAM
Win 7

On the opening scene once you ride to the gates of the town I am getting between 20-25 FPS, and once you get into town the best I am getting is 30 FPS.

I have everything running on Ultra with FXAA off. I have tried running on high, turning off AA, using the FPS limiter fix for ATI cards, and nothing works. Nothing seems to impact the performance at all. This is vanilla Skyrim, using the 11.11 drivers with the latest profiles. The only change I make is setting the FOV higher.

Any ideas on what can be done to fix this? Is there a way to check FPS in game without FRAPS so I can see if that is causing the issue?
Try turning down shadows first. Mine went from 5-10fps at the intro to 60fps changing shadows from high to medium.
 
hlhbk said:
also my god are the shadows terrible on medium.

The shadows are terrible full stop, requires a fair amount of .ini tweaking to even get them running semi decent looking and even then meh......

The shadows are also being processed by the CPU and not the GPU, epic fail. (inb4 shitty port!)
 
Desaan said:
The shadows are terrible full stop, requires a fair amount of .ini tweaking to even get them running semi decent looking and even then meh......
I'm pretty happy with ma shadows now, both in interiors (where they are pretty much perfect) and in exteriors.

Desaan said:
The shadows are also being processed by the CPU and not the GPU, epic fail. (inb4 shitty port!)
This is obviously wrong, and everyone who believes it has no idea how a 3D engine works.
 
Happy to read the FOV fix worked!

nemss said:
LiquidMetal14,

I downloaded RadeonPro and configured it using the settings listed in the OP with the new 11.11 drivers released. Coupled together, I did see a big improvement in my FPS while in town, averaging mid 30's, rather than the low 20's I was seeing before.

Besides RadeonPro was there anything else worth configuring for my system? It defaults to high, and as of now, it looks great, and plays much better.
Leave it on high but make fshadowdistance 6000 and see if you take a hit.
 
l1nkown said:
Hi, I'm MxR on Youtube and I make Skyrim videos.

I love that you made a thread dedicated to Skyrim on the PC.
I would really appreciate it if you could promote my Weekly Mod series by posting a link to it on the thread.

Here is the first episode that I just uploaded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EN8o...el_video_title

And here's the top 5 mods at launch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvngf...feature=relmfu

The series will serve as a way to allow players to see the mods in action, in game while I comment and then make their own decision about whether or not they want to give it a try themselves.

Thanks!
I linked you in the LINKS section of the OP.
 
I have a big dark round shadow following me.. everywere i move i can see the ground getting darker a little..

What setting will i tamper with to sort this ?
 
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