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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition PC performance thread

Same here, game seems a lot more stable running with no mods at all for me. (I'm running with just 4 GB though so what happens to me isn't probably worth much)

I think I'll probably check out mods again after a month or so. I don't feel like running into stability issues.

As for VRAM, at Ultra settings the game seems to use almost 2.8 GB of VRAM at peak on my 970 while only appearing stutter slightly while it's trying to load new areas outdoors, again probably my system RAM.

What are the most vram demanding settings?
 
Game runs around 50 fps on average at 3440x1440p
970 gigabyte g1
i5-4670k at 4.5 ghz
8gb ram

I hadn't actually played skyrim because I kept putting it off so I thought with the remaster Id finally play it since I'm kinda lazy when it comes to mods but boy outside of the lighting the game really does look kinda underwhelming. I had the original skyrim set up with some mods that I compiled years ago. Yes I'm one of those people who mods shit and then doesn't play them. Even with year old mods the original looked better but what I really liked was that it performed noticeably better as well. So i decided to say fuck it and mod the crap out of the original and even though enb brings me to an average of 30 fps I think I'll just play the original modded at 30 fps rather then wait for the special edition to get better support. Hell even with the game modded but no ENB installed I still have better performance over the remastered version. Besides with mods my performance will likely drop down even lower in performance anyways. I would of liked to have compared the 2 in screen shots but of course the remastered edition doesn't properly support ultrawide and i can't take screen shots in game or even tab out. So instead I'll just leave this end result of what i went with instead over the remaster.

pj7IiUP.jpg



R8lRoPf.jpg

I was about to ask how you got the game to play well with 21:9... but then I finished reading...
 
I was about to ask how you got the game to play well with 21:9... but then I finished reading...

haha yea just for shits and giggles I really wanted some screen shots of the new version so i reduced the resolution to 2560x1440 and i can't get it to work properly. It won't launch in full screen with black bars at that resolution. It completely greys out the option and won't allow me to choose full screen. If I launch it in window borderless the game positions itself to the left and leaves the right side of my desktop showing with no black bars. Tried window mode no without the borderless option and it crashed. Fucking Bethesda I swear. And I still can't get screen shots because I can't get any of the steam overlay functions to work when the games running.
 

Angelina

Banned
Changing SkyrimPrefs.ini grass settings to:

[Grass]
fGrassStartFadeDistance=10000.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=10000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=400.0000

Increases grass draw distance a good deal over the default 7000.0000 with no impact on performance on a GTX 960 4GB. Anyone know if that is the max? Can't seem to extend it further than 10000.0000

Anyone else go any other .ini tweaks for visual improvements with little to no performance increases?

change fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=400.0000

to fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000
 
I'm happy that people are finally coming around to the idea that well-implemented TAA is a good thing.

Too bad it doesn't work for VR :(

Out of curiosity, what about VR precludes using TAA? Me thinks it might have something to do with inter-frame dependency judging from what it is...

What are the most vram demanding settings?

I'm not sure. I might go ahead and check how much VRAM it uses on my completely unmodded Skyrim and see how things change, first with resolution tests, then by preset to see if there's a pattern to it.

Edit: at 1080p, flipping between presets appear to have not much effect on VRAM usage.

Low takes about 1567 MB
Medium takes about 1748 MB
High takes about 1769 MB
Ultra takes about 2063 MB

Educated guess says that Medium turning on all effects accounts for the VRAM increase from Low to Medium, and 64-bit render targets explain High to Ultra. As expected, distance settings appear to not matter.

I used a vanilla save in the middle of Riverwood, in the noon, but not during any sort of flight. This appears to be a pretty good indicator of general performance.

Going to check out 720p. Makes for an interesting comparison.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Where is the uncompressed sound mod? Has it been deleted?
Yes. Bethesda doesn't allow mods to contain unedited files. Or something along those lines. Don't worry though, they said they'd have an official fix ready for this week.
 

Cyros

Member
Having issues with controller support using an Xbox One controller with the wireless adapter. Skyrim obviously recognizes the controller and throws up controller prompt but won't read any controller inputs. I have slight navigation with the keyboard, but it won't recognize the mouse. Anyone have any ideas?
 
i5 6500
16 gigs ram
500 gig ssd
GTC 1060 6 gig

Constant 60 fps on ultra everything @ 1080

Looks great, especially at night wondering forest, feels good to play this again, never finished when first released but played a bunch.
 

Angelina

Banned
What does this do?

its whats recomended by step etc and being mentioned on the reddit thread about the ini's too.

in other news it seems we have a new ugrids in this version

the new setting is uLargeRefLODGridSize=11 (the default value located in skyrimprefs)

over at step they are talking bout it and heres whats been found
default value uLargeRefLODGridSize=11

uLargeRefLODGridSize=21
 

kevin1025

Banned
I only played the opening, mostly on High.

3570k
8GB RAM
HD7870

It ran perfectly fine. No idea on framerate, but it didn't stutter or drop at all, from what I could see!

Quoting myself, since I got a new video card today!

i5-3570K
8GB RAM
GTX 1060 6GB

Everything on, everything ultra. Definitely running at 60 fps, super smooth now.
 
Not very tech savvy and I have far from the best computer in the world:

Processor AMD Athlon(tm) X4 760K Quad Core Processor
Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
RAM 8.0 GB

The following, however, allows to play most of the games 2-3 years or older high-ultra without much problem and I'm okay with that as there are a lot of decent games to play. I only got into PC gaming some one or two years ago. OG Skyrim was on Ultra without a hitch, installed some graphic mods that dipped my FPS to around 30-45 but that was a willing sacrifice on my part.

Special Edition though is making me scratch my head. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that my settings set to low but what I am surprised about is that no matter what I set (aside from Ultra), whether it be High or Low, Godrays On or Off, AA High or low, my FPS is ALWAYS 23-30. Nothing affects it much and I'm trying to figure out what to do to get to at least a stable 30 but still keep at least a workable aesthetic.
 
Not very tech savvy and I have far from the best computer in the world:

Processor AMD Athlon(tm) X4 760K Quad Core Processor
Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
RAM 8.0 GB

The following, however, allows to play most of the games 2-3 years or older high-ultra without much problem and I'm okay with that as there are a lot of decent games to play. I only got into PC gaming some one or two years ago. OG Skyrim was on Ultra without a hitch, installed some graphic mods that dipped my FPS to around 30-45 but that was a willing sacrifice on my part.

Special Edition though is making me scratch my head. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that my settings set to low but what I am surprised about is that no matter what I set (aside from Ultra), whether it be High or Low, Godrays On or Off, AA High or low, my FPS is ALWAYS 23-30. Nothing affects it much and I'm trying to figure out what to do to get to at least a stable 30 but still keep at least a workable aesthetic.

Can you grab MSI Afterburner and turn on the OSD options to show CPU and GPU usage, as well as clock speeds? Need to know if it's a CPU limit, GPU limit, or things just not running at full speed for some reason.

The CPU isn't the fastest part, but it shouldn't really perform worse than a 4-core, early FX at all. Something seems to be amiss if changing graphics presets do nothing to the performance.

How much VRAM do you have on your video card? You should have at least 2 GB, and no matter what, 1.5 GB is the absolute minimum.

And... Get new drivers. Very important for AMD + AMD on CPU limited games. This is one of them.
 

Truant

Member
Interesting stuff regarding uGrids.

Is this safer to adjust than the old uGridstoload setting? I know this setting could fuck up a bunch of stuff, like quests triggering prematurely etc.
 

Sanic

Member
RX 480 paired with a 6600k, ultra preset.

I get fairly severe framerate dips when looking in certain directions out in the wilderness. Disabled the in-game vsync but my FPS still appears to be cut in half. Not sure if it's an issue with capping my framerate to 60 from within Radeon settings.
 
RX 480 paired with a 6600k, ultra preset.

I get fairly severe framerate dips when looking in certain directions out in the wilderness. Disabled the in-game vsync but my FPS still appears to be cut in half. Not sure if it's an issue with capping my framerate to 60 from within Radeon settings.

Did you try this from the OP?

Disable double-buffer v-sync/remove 60fps cap: Open Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SkyrimPrefs.ini and set iVsyncpresentinterval to 0. Just be sure to cap the framerate to 60fps as the physics engine doesn't properly support higher framerates.
 
Out of curiosity, what does 64-bit tender targets exactly mean in the context of this game? It doesn't seem to be something that causes performance to tank on GeForce video cards that I've heard is intentionally limited in FP64. Does it do something else or doesn't rely (much) on FP64?
 

pj

Banned
Out of curiosity, what does 64-bit tender targets exactly mean in the context of this game? It doesn't seem to be something that causes performance to tank on GeForce video cards that I've heard is intentionally limited in FP64. Does it do something else or doesn't rely (much) on FP64?

It's a 64 bit exe, it has nothing to do with the game rendering.

Mainly it means it can address more than 4gb of memory which allows for more complicated/extensive modding
 
It's a 64 bit exe, it has nothing to do with the game rendering.

Mainly it means it can address more than 4gb of memory which allows for more complicated/extensive modding

That's an options in the graphics setting, not referring to the exe which is always 64-bit

Curious about what the technical aspects of it on the GPU side
 

Trace

Banned
What is going on with those 1080 benchmarks for the SE. I was looking forward to playing at 4k60 but I guess that isn't happening :(

Just lower godrays and shadow quality. Stuff looks the same basically if you lower them and they take a huge performance hit.
 

Vuze

Member
What is going on with those 1080 benchmarks for the SE. I was looking forward to playing at 4k60 but I guess that isn't happening :(
Just turn down some settings like shadow distance and quality or god rays, no big deal. I'm happily playing at 4k60 on my TV and it looks great.
 
Woohoo. Disabling v sync in the .ini files got rid of my dips to 30.

Game runs pretty damn smooth again.

That reminds me... does the game behave differently on GeForce vs Radeon cards when frames start to miss 16.7 ms while vertical sync is turned on? Seems like on my laptop the game just tries to do it as fast as it can even with vertical sync turned on.
 

CronoShot

Member
Initially was really disappointed in the performance on my laptop. Defaulted to low settings, mediocre framerate, flickering on character models.

Then I googled it, and it turns out it defaulted to my integrated graphics card (for some reason). Switched it over in the NVIDIA control panel, and voila! Defaulted to high settings, much better framerate, no flickering. Running like a champ.
 

Vuze

Member

Prototype

Member
Can't get my Logitech dual action to work on the remaster for PC, tried x360ce and nothing. Anyone else having controller issues?
Maybe I just have to break down and get a new controller.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Lol that benchmark confirmed my belief. My CPU bottleneck turned into a GPU bottleneck. My poor 280X. Meanwhile my 6300 just keeps trucking along.
 

Akronis

Member
So with Fallout 4 I was able to get away with locking the framerate to 90 without issues. Is Skyrim still terrible in that regard if you go over 60 or is it just minor issues?
 
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