The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim PC Performance discussion

Tried enabling SSAO in the new Nvidia drivers. On both performance and quality it looks pretty nice but I get this weird flickering in some places, and in others it doesn't work at all.

Weird flickering.



Every time that's happened to me so far I've found that if I wait for 45 seconds or more the person I'm talking to gets bored and wanders off. Don't know if that's the same issue though.

I get that too but in 3rd Perspective. Doesn't do that when I'm in first person.
 
I should have bought this on X360. I cannot believe they mention nothing about the CTDs. Tells me they don't know what is causing it. I have noticed that Steam popups cause CTDs. Also, when things get choppy or trees and/or people start showing up purple, a crash is imminent.
 
As a long time PC gamer I cringe when I see a comment like this. I can understand that someone would be accustomed to using a controller when playing an FPS, but the notion that it is somehow better than KB/M, even as an opinion, is such an alien concept to me. The inefficiency of thumbing frantically trying to line up a shot on a flying dragon would drive me nuts. With a KB/M I'd have killed it, looted the remains and sauntered off with it's soul in the time it would take me to get that one shot off with the controller. Trying to play an FPS with a controller always feels gimped to me.

This is going to come off extremely arrogant but I'm okay with that.

As someone who has been playing PC games with a KB&M since the original Quake and who has played in the competitive FPS scene for over a decade with titles like Quake 3 Arena and CS (1.3-1.6), it always give me a great laugh when someone tries to preach the disadvantages of a controller to me on a game I prefer it in.

If you are playing a RTS, MOBA, or FPS then you will be crippling yourself without the mouse. If you are playing a 3rd action adventure, platformer, racer, or virtually any other genre, your love for the kb&m is probably misplaced since you are very clearly just incompetent with sticks. If you feel the FO or ES series qualify as an FPS game then I seriously cringe. The fact is anyone close to half competent with a controller can breeze through these games on their hardest difficulty and coordination won't ever be a factor.

I guess I'm lucky since I'm close to 30 years old, I was around when FPS games started coming out, lived in a city and state that was arguably the epicenter of the competitive gaming scene in the western world, I've been around since the beginning use of kb&m and analog sticks in said games, and I've racked up far more than average experience with both.

/arrogance

Well maybe the person you originally quoted wasn't referring to performance, accuracy or efficiency. Both control methods have their pros and cons, so we don't need to look down on others for preferring one over the other.

And performance, accuracy, and efficiency are arguably all of one thing with the guy throwing out synonyms for leverage. In what way is the mouse more "efficient"? In what way is the performance better? The performance is only better in relation to the accuracy, so what he really means to say is that kb&m is more accurate.

So you are sacrificing ergonomics, comfort, more easily interacting with the UI and environment, and potential viewing positions all for the sake of accuracy in Skyrim, and here is where we reach the point I truly scoff at; Not just the idea that accuracy is an important factor in FO or ES, but the negligible (in a game where hitscan doesn't matter) difference in accuracy you give up for users who are competent with more than one control system.

And I apologize in advance for ultimate derailment but some things I can just look over as one persons ignorance / misconception / misunderstandings but when there were 10 more posts afterward still related to the discussion, I had to put in my real opinion.
 
rumsey have you played a magic user?

How would you describe the use of magic in combat if not by calling it an FPS? You line up your cursor with moving targets and time your shots in a way that the projectile you shoot will hit them. I'm not seeing how it's any different than a gun in a standard FPS.

I play plenty of console games and am fine with dual stick shooters, but to even hint that an analog stick is even comparable to a mouse is absurd. The accuracy just isn't there. That's not saying that setup can't work well within the context of individual games like Halo and Call of Duty.

And performance, accuracy, and efficiency are arguably all of one thing with the guy throwing out synonyms for leverage. In what way is the mouse more "efficient"? In what way is the performance better? The performance is only better in relation to the accuracy, so what he really means to say is that kb&m is more accurate.

So you are sacrificing ergonomics, comfort, more easily interacting with the UI and environment, and potential viewing positions all for the sake of accuracy in Skyrim, and here is where we reach the point I truly scoff at; Not just the idea that accuracy is an important factor in FO or ES, but the negligible (in a game where hitscan doesn't matter) difference in accuracy you give up for users who are competent with more than one control system.

And I apologize in advance for ultimate derailment but some things I can just look over as one persons ignorance / misconception / misunderstandings but when there were 10 more posts afterward still related to the discussion, I had to put in my real opinion.

I'm pretty sure it's a lot easier to interact with the UI with a mouse and keyboard then it is with a controller. You can do things much faster with the mouse and keyboard than you can with the gamepad. Comfort is obviously subjective, so I can't attack that one. What do you mean by potential viewing positions? What viewing positions can you get that are exclusive to the gamepad? The only benefit I can see besides the subjective comfort issue, is that you can have persistent analog camera panning, which can make for some cool cinematic scenes.
 
Anyone know if there's an ini setting or mod out there that fixes the damn mana regen?

It so stupid how nerfed it is in combat and then as soon as the guys are dead it's like zooooop instant mana. I have all this mana regen gear, but it's useless the way it is now.

I just want the regen to be the same in combat as it is out of combat.
 
rumsey have you played a magic user?

How would you describe the use of magic in combat if not by calling it an FPS? You line up your cursor with moving targets and time your shots in a way that the projectile you shoot will hit them. I'm not seeing how it's any different than a gun in a standard FPS.

I play plenty of console games and am fine with dual stick shooters, but to even hint that an analog stick is even comparable to a mouse is absurd. The accuracy just isn't there. That's not saying that setup can't work well within the context of individual games like Halo and Call of Duty.

I did play conjuration / destruction until my destruction was 40+ then I became disappointed in the damage output and lack of scaling.

Any game with a first person view and projectiles obviously qualifies as an FPS and I wouldn't argue that point, only that not all fps games require high hitscan and therefore do not *require* a mouse to be good at. Truthfully a controller can provide near equal accuracy of a mouse, only with a lower hitscan (in other words, slower).

And the fact you bring up games like CoD and Halo on the consoles just goes to show FPS games can be played competently on a controller, and I'm saying this primarily as a PC FPS player. It should only take you 5 minutes on youtube to find some AMAZING Halo players using a controller to pull off fantastic shots with high accuracy. I'm not trying to argue the same player could beat someone with a mouse, only that the level of play you will see in those videos will be so far above and beyond anything remotely required to succeed at Skyrim that it is laughable to suggest in a slow paced game in which your opponent is a computer that the skills those Halo players showcase are not enough to perform well.

I'm pretty sure it's a lot easier to interact with the UI with a mouse and keyboard then it is with a controller. You can do things much faster with the mouse and keyboard than you can with the gamepad. Comfort is obviously subjective, so I can't attack that one. What do you mean by potential viewing positions? What viewing positions can you get that are exclusive to the gamepad? The only benefit I can see besides the subjective comfort issue, is that you can have persistent analog camera panning, which can make for some cool cinematic scenes.

I'm not even close to the first person to suggest the UI works better with a controller in this thread, in fact I originally switched to a controller because I felt the UI was beyond terrible for a kb&m, and again I'm not the first person in the thread to suggest that, and the other people lodging that particular complaint were not even controller users. By potential viewing positions I mean that I can play with my legs kicked up on my desk leaned back on my PC chair, and when my 5yr old brother comes to visit and watches me play Batman or Skyrim, he can sit on my lap or I can roll the chair further from the monitor so anyone in the room can freely watch.
 
So is there a way to set FOV permanently now?

Edit: To rephrase the question, is the solution outlined in the OP permanent? Or does FOV reset when you run/check the map/reload/etc...?
 
I installed the performance driver ATI released a couple days ago that supposedly gave Crossfire Performance and the entire world has become so bright outdoors that isn't nearly solid white, and indoors everything flickers....so, no idea there. I disabled Crossfire and Voila, it's back to the way it was before installing the update.

Separate from that, I'm having a problem with walls becoming transparent when indoors, as I turn at different angles in relation to the wall. Also, banners hanging on walls become transparent or disappear completely. My bow all of a sudden turned purple/blue last night and started to flicker. It seems to have all just started happening. Apart from something the ATI update may have done, is there anything else I can do to fix this?

Using ATI 6970 x2 and an AMD 6-core processor with 16GB Ram.

I have done a few tweaks to shadows, but this problem happened well after those (days after) and the whole transparent thing didn't start happening until a day after I installed that new performance driver.

Any help would be appreciated - it's making any dungeon crawling maddening!
 
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1374

Heh, Dead Thrall summoning level cap removed. That should be fun to play with. Horribly overpowered of course, but it isn't like Dremora Lords aren't anyway. :P

Wow, this actually kind of makes me want to go back to my conjuration character. The game is already completely broken difficulty wise with 2 dremora lords, but 2 giants...that could be fun. Especially if the physics of their attacks is still intact (like when they kill you go flying over mountains and what not.)

I should have bought this on X360. I cannot believe they mention nothing about the CTDs. Tells me they don't know what is causing it. I have noticed that Steam popups cause CTDs. Also, when things get choppy or trees and/or people start showing up purple, a crash is imminent.

Yup, I have noticed both of these as well. Whenever textures start showing up purple I start quicksaving like a fiend.
 
The people saying that the game difficulty is broken, is that on master?

Yes. I played master the entire time and going conjuration the game is a cake walk. Without ever exploiting anything (unless just using enchanting is an exploit). In the end you get 2 dremora lords and using enchants they are free to summon, so while plenty of things in the world can kill a dremora lord, especially at higher levels after 50, nothing can kill 2 of them faster then I can summon them. I had to stop using them to preserve some kind of challenge.

I had more fun instead just raising two dead npc's to tank for me while I threw out fireballs. And that way you can still occasionally catch a stray arrow that will kill you.
 
I did play conjuration / destruction until my destruction was 40+ then I became disappointed in the damage output and lack of scaling.

Any game with a first person view and projectiles obviously qualifies as an FPS and I wouldn't argue that point, only that not all fps games require high hitscan and therefore do not *require* a mouse to be good at. Truthfully a controller can provide near equal accuracy of a mouse, only with a lower hitscan (in other words, slower).

And the fact you bring up games like CoD and Halo on the consoles just goes to show FPS games can be played competently on a controller, and I'm saying this primarily as a PC FPS player. It should only take you 5 minutes on youtube to find some AMAZING Halo players using a controller to pull off fantastic shots with high accuracy. I'm not trying to argue the same player could beat someone with a mouse, only that the level of play you will see in those videos will be so far above and beyond anything remotely required to succeed at Skyrim that it is laughable to suggest in a slow paced game in which your opponent is a computer that the skills those Halo players showcase are not enough to perform well.

The default 360 pad aiming feels off to me on the PC. I've messed with the in-game sensitivity options, but they are all varying degrees of pad when trying to be precise. Even more so than aiming with magic, it's annoying when you are trying to pick up specific objects in the world. It takes far more time than I would like to line up my cursor with the desired object I want to interact with on a cluttered desk, for example. It's obviously not game-breaking or terrible, but compared to the quick precision of a mouse, it's kind of annoying.

I'm not even close to the first person to suggest the UI works better with a controller in this thread, in fact I originally switched to a controller because I felt the UI was beyond terrible for a kb&m, and again I'm not the first person in the thread to suggest that, and the other people lodging that particular complaint were not even controller users. By potential viewing positions I mean that I can play with my legs kicked up on my desk leaned back on my PC chair, and when my 5yr old brother comes to visit and watches me play Batman or Skyrim, he can sit on my lap or I can roll the chair further from the monitor so anyone in the room can freely watch.

While you're not the first person to suggest it, once you get used to the interface, I think it's much easier to use with a keyboard/mouse than a pad. This may be subjective to an extent, but I'm pretty sure you you can do most things with the interface objectively faster with the kb/m setup. Not only can you hotkey to specific menus/interface elements, as well as set favorites to hotkeys, but when using the mouse wheel in tandem with the E and A buttons, you can navigate lists much easier than with a pad.

With all of that said, I do appreciate the compactness of a pad, which allows me to sit/lay in any position on my couch while playing the game on my TV. I've probably put in about 10 hours on the gamepad and about 55 hours using the kb/m.
 
The people saying that the game difficulty is broken, is that on master?

I think the only way to keep the game challenging throughout is to completely ignore both Smithing and Enchanting.
 
Yes. I played master the entire time and going conjuration the game is a cake walk. Without ever exploiting anything (unless just using enchanting is an exploit). In the end you get 2 dremora lords and using enchants they are free to summon, so while plenty of things in the world can kill a dremora lord, especially at higher levels after 50, nothing can kill 2 of them faster then I can summon them. I had to stop using them to preserve some kind of challenge.

I had more fun instead just raising two dead npc's to tank for me while I threw out fireballs. And that way you can still occasionally catch a stray arrow that will kill you.

I think the only way to keep the game challenging throughout is to completely ignore both Smithing and Enchanting.
Well that sucks.

Hopefully Beth sort this out.

It sucks how Oblivion had overly stupid scaling and Skyrim has pretty much no scaling from what I've read. A mix between the two would be nice.
 

It's worth noting that the reason the 1.2 patch is hitting on the same day as the 360 version is because they're using the extra time provided by a lack of certification to test it right up until release on Wednesday.

So there could be other minor fixes that don't make it into the patch notes; Bethesda have never been in the habit of providing super extensive patch notes either.
 
It's worth noting that the reason the 1.2 patch is hitting on the same day as the 360 version is because they're using the extra time provided by a lack of certification to test it right up until release on Wednesday.

So there could be other minor fixes that don't make it into the patch notes; Bethesda have never been in the habit of providing super extensive patch notes either.

Let's let the community figure that out too :/
 
Well that sucks.

Hopefully Beth sort this out.

It sucks how Oblivion had overly stupid scaling and Skyrim has pretty much no scaling from what I've read. A mix between the two would be nice.

I think Bethesda just wants to leave it up to the player. I've come to think of Smithing and Enchanting as cheat codes. If you don't use them, the game remains fairly challenging on Expert and Master and it also keeps exploration meaningful as there is always a chance you'll find something good.

I know I won't be dabbling in either Smithing or Enchanting on any subsequent playthroughs. Too easy to make your character into a god by doing so.
 
Well that sucks.

Hopefully Beth sort this out.

It sucks how Oblivion had overly stupid scaling and Skyrim has pretty much no scaling from what I've read. A mix between the two would be nice.

What I found odd was that I was breezing through, destroying everything I came across until the last couple big fights of the mage's guild. The last boss in the questline forced me to put the game on the easiest possible difficulty and even then I had to beat it in the cheesiest way. Then, I put it back on Expert and was killing everything I came across again without any issue.
 
I think Bethesda just wants to leave it up to the player. I've come to think of Smithing and Enchanting as cheat codes. If you don't use them, the game remains fairly challenging on Expert and Master and it also keeps exploration meaningful as there is always a chance you'll find something good.

I know I won't be dabbling in either Smithing or Enchanting on any subsequent playthroughs. Too easy to make your character into a god by doing so.

What I found odd was that I was breezing through, destroying everything I came across until the last couple big fights of the mage's guild. The last boss in the questline forced me to put the game on the easiest possible difficulty and even then I had to beat it in the cheesiest way. Then, I put it back on Expert and was killing everything I came across again without any issue.
Hopefully when the CK comes out, this will be sorted and the game balanced. Don't know. The easiest way is to weaken smithing and enchanting I'm guessing.

Skyrim has scaling. That's why things are so messed up.
Surely that would fix it?
 
I think the only way to keep the game challenging throughout is to completely ignore both Smithing and Enchanting.

And alchemy, with only lvl 40/50 i can make potion that has 69% resists for frost and shock [i'm dunmer so i have 50% from fire too], then add +100 hp for 300 seconds, +50% to damage, 40 damage from poison + paralyze + 15hp/s etc :)
 
USp3N.png



MOTHERFUCK

Wow, fuck you Bethesda. And fuck your shitty patch too.

Edit: Nvidia has just released 290.36 beta drivers with OFFICIAL support for Skyrim ambient occlusion.

http://www.geforce.com/Drivers/Beta

Time to test these out.
 
Ok, what can i do to fix these shitty shadows? Doesn't matter if its high or ultra, its still like this.

LvrJ2.jpg
 
Yes. I played master the entire time and going conjuration the game is a cake walk. Without ever exploiting anything (unless just using enchanting is an exploit). In the end you get 2 dremora lords and using enchants they are free to summon, so while plenty of things in the world can kill a dremora lord, especially at higher levels after 50, nothing can kill 2 of them faster then I can summon them. I had to stop using them to preserve some kind of challenge.

I had more fun instead just raising two dead npc's to tank for me while I threw out fireballs. And that way you can still occasionally catch a stray arrow that will kill you.

Yeah, pretty much the same here. Since I've gotten Dead Thrall I rarely summon a Dremora Lord, and even then pretty much never two of them.

It's too easy to just summon a couple Dremoras to destroy things. It's more fun using Dead Thrall for kicks, even with a weak NPC. I Dead Thrall'd Grelod just for the hell of it. With that level cap remover, stuff like that should be more fun. Dunno how stable it is, though. Most of the comments seem to take issue with durations glitching up, but the only thing I care about is the Dead Thrall tweak. And the duration thing is basically irrelevant with Atronach Thralls anyway.

In combat I enjoy using a mix of Restoration with the wards and Destruction, keeping a ward up while blasting away with some another spell in my other hand. Always looks visually awesome and wards can be very effective at blocking certain spells and dragon breath attacks.

And it keeps things from being too cakewalk-y on Master. I've got something fairly high like 85% mana reduction on Destruction via enchanted gear (I don't really want to get it to 100%), but regen isn't that huge, and I'm probably not going to do any more low-cost stuff with another spell tree. Gotta keep things somewhat interesting. :P

Been going Werewolf form more often recently as well. That can be a fun way to change things up, especially if you're a mage.
 
Surely that would fix it?

It's really sort of a hybrid system; some enemies only scale so low, and when they're mixed in with regular scaling enemies you can have instances where 90% of an hour-long dungeon is a cakewalk and then you hit an almost unbeatable boss depending on what level you happen to be. This seems to be fairly rare though.

Ideally nothing would be scaled, so you know that draugrs = run unless you're high level. As it is you have draugrs that take one hit to kill all the way up to some of the toughest enemies in the game all inhabiting the same dungeon.
 
It's really sort of a hybrid system; some enemies only scale so low, and when they're mixed in with regular scaling enemies you can have instances where 90% of an hour-long dungeon is a cakewalk and then you hit an almost unbeatable boss depending on what level you happen to be. This seems to be fairly rare though.

Ideally nothing would be scaled, so you know that draugrs = run unless you're high level. As it is you have draugrs that take one hit to kill all the way up to some of the toughest enemies in the game all inhabiting the same dungeon.
That makes sense.

I'm sure modders will have that done. Oblivion had mods of the same nature I think.
 
My game kept quitting for no reason. After reading about I found out that the HD texture pack can cause problems so I removed it and the game has been running super smooth since
 
Is there any reason to go for MSAA over FXAA as I thought FXAA was pretty good for a minimal performance hit?
FXAA is a post-processing filter and has no subpixel information. What this means in practice is that it will produce a more unstable image in motion and cannot deal with sub-pixel aliasing.

By the way, small update regarding CTDs: I had 0 in 55 hours before the first update playing with LAA, then 2 in 45 minutes playing the updated exe without LAA, and after patching again 0 in a further 10 hours. So if anyone hasn't tried the LAA patch yet and is suffering CTDs I'd like to suggest it again.
 
That makes sense.

I'm sure modders will have that done. Oblivion had mods of the same nature I think.

It's probably going to be a lot harder with this game given how dependent many of the quests are on the radiant system. We'll have to wait until the CK is out to see how it actually works, how it decides what dungeons to use, if it's entirely random or there are lists to draw from for different quests, etc..

Even the guild storylines depend on them to some degree; like for the Companions you have to do a few radiant quests to progress the overall quest line at a couple points, so you can't have Aela sending you to an unscaled dungeon designated for level 40 characters in the middle of the quest line. So the radiant quests will have to be untangled from the guilds somehow or just modified so they always point to the same location, if that's even possible.

All I know is the longer it takes to get the CK out the longer it's going to take to have a well balanced game.
 
Just did some testing and it seems the AO using Oblivion flag doesn't have the flickering like the FO3 and the new Skyrim flag.
The only time I have experienced flickering is when I had my AA set to Adaptive Multisample.
 
All I know is the longer it takes to get the CK out the longer it's going to take to have a well balanced game.

Has this always been a problem with Elder Scrolls games? This is my first serious one (I put maybe 10 hours into Oblivion) and the weird balance is probably my biggest disappointment so far. I love the whole character building system and how it does away with traditional XP, but it seems like the inevitable side effect is either wild and arbitrary difficulty swings for certain character classes, or artificial enemy scaling that kills some of the immersion.

How did modders handle things in Oblivion?
 
Has this always been a problem with Elder Scrolls games? This is my first serious one (I put maybe 10 hours into Oblivion) and the weird balance is probably my biggest disappointment so far. I love the whole character building system and how it does away with traditional XP, but it seems like the inevitable side effect is either wild and arbitrary difficulty swings for certain character classes, or artificial enemy scaling that kills some of the immersion.

How did modders handle things in Oblivion?

They made regions with different level settings, and made the game behave more like morrowind. Modders will definatly fix the level problem.

On a side note, Ive decided after a few cosmetic mods, that Im done modding and just going to enjoy the game now till the end of the story. Hopefully by then tons of new, beautiful mods will be out, or better yet things like level fixes will be out which will make playing the game completely different :) Will defiantly warrant another play through then :D
 
I installed the LAA patch on the DRM-free exe linked to in the OP, and the game ran fine for the first hour or so, but after that it started minimizing itself every 15-30 min. Anyone else have this?

Edit: And now I am CTD'ing right when I hit the main menu. Restoring my old exe but then I'll keep having to re-validate the game through Steam every few hours like I've been having to...God Bethesda needs to hurry up with that patch.
 
I installed the LAA patch on the DRM-free exe linked to in the OP, and the game ran fine for the first hour or so, but after that it started minimizing itself every 15-30 min. Anyone else have this?

That happened to me a few times when a different process interrupted the game. I think there is a mod that allows you to play the game in a borderless window mode that might prevent that from happening.
 
Well my main reason for installing the LAA patch was I thought it might help with the issue I've been having since launch.


Basically, every few hours of gameplay, the game will CTD. And then I will be unable to launch it again until I have Steam validate the install, after which I get the message saying "4 game files failed to validate and will be redownloaded". The game then redownloads, plays fine for another few hours, and then repeats this.

I have re-validated and redownloaded the game from Steam seven times so far.

And I just now started my 8th since restoring to the non-LAA backup didn't fix this problem.

I am so fed up and I think I'm just going to play Arkham City til Bethesda gets that patch out.
 
Well my main reason for installing the LAA patch was I thought it might help with the issue I've been having since launch.


Basically, every few hours of gameplay, the game will CTD. And then I will be unable to launch it again until I have Steam validate the install, after which I get the message saying "4 game files failed to validate and will be redownloaded". The game then redownloads, plays fine for another few hours, and then repeats this.

I have re-validated and redownloaded the game from Steam seven times so far.

And I just now started my 8th since restoring to the non-LAA backup didn't fix this problem.

I am so fed up and I think I'm just going to play Arkham City til Bethesda gets that patch out.

Might be worth checking the validation log in your main Steam directory to see what files the game needs to keep redownloading.

Edit: Specifically, in the base Steam folder where steam.exe is located there should be a file called GameValidation.log
 
Does using the Storm Call shout make the game really unstable for everyone else? Nine times out of ten the game will crash when I use it.
 
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