Hello all,

I'm running a very solid rig right now;

i7 3770k @ stock speeds
gtx 560 @ stock speeds
16GB Kingston DDR3 RAM
750 Watt PSU...
Windows 7 Home Premium

All my drivers are up to date. Only program on in the background is dxtory (though not recording at the time of concern).

Game reccomended Ultra High settings. Set them there, loaded up, and I'm getting roughly 30 FPS. This is a recent problem. I have had this game for months. I'm outside one of the inns in the Winterhold Hold. I recall running this game on Ultra High settings at 60 FPS...

Could it be the mods I have installed, or are the recent drivers not very good for Skyrim?

I'm using around 15 mods including High Res textures, faces, flora overhauls, and sky changes.

Thanks for any feedback.

Turn shadows down to High and if you don't like the look use the nvidia tweak guide to make them look better.

Also not bashing your card but am I correct in assuming it has 1 GB of VRAM? You might want to monitor how much is being used while playing......just using the Texture pack @ 1920 x 1080 using 4x AA I am using 1.8 GB of my 2.

Thanks for the response!
I have the 2gb version.

Really odd, even with AA at 4 samples (as with AF), Texture Quality on high, Radial Blur Quality on Medium, Shadow Detail on low, and decal quality on high, I was still getting only 30 FPS.

It makes me raise the possibility, that maybe somehow I'm stuck at 30 FPS for some reason.

Well shadows are bound to the CPU so if the bottleneck is with that then dropping those should help. If not maybe try an older driver version.

Hrm maybe triple buffering is toggled on by chance.

If there is a bottleneck it would probably be my GPU. How can I know if the game itself is patched fully? I honestly don't think I've ever installed an update for it...

1.8 is the most recent version to check hit Esc > System should be somewhere on that tab.

I would agree chances are it is the GPU in contrast to that new ivy bridge....try disabling AO?

If it's pinning at 30 pretty steady sounds like double v sync like Far Cry allows you to layer it twice or something is clamping fps...MSI AB, Fraps, DXtory etc.

I also checked my NVIDIA control panel and x3 buffering is off.

However, setting the AA in the NVIDIA control panel from Quality to performance knocked my frames up to 45.

Edit: I'm running on 1.8.051.0.7

Ok well now we know it isn't a FPS clamp....I run Quality in Catalyst over High Quality never noticed much of a difference and it buys me more frames. I haven't checked what kind of FPS I get in Skyrim in ages as long as I don't get any tearing, chop or stutter I am happy.

You should be able to crank AF to 16 no perf hit and use nvidia AF and disable the game AF. You can buy some more FPS with 2x AA over 4x and make sure the AA type is set to multisample in your nvidia control panel. I don't really see much difference in Skyrim between 2x and 4x TBH. Shadows are CPU bound so you can probably get away with High(Ultra just isn't worth it) and everything else Ultra. AA and AO are the biggest killers along with shadows.

Thanks for all the help, I'll continue searching online

No problem the nvidia tweak guide is great for getting an idea of what to reduce that will make a difference...even helped a ton for me using an ATI card.