So I have an i7, 8 gb of ram and a geforce 560 ti. Skyrim pretty much defaulted everything to the highest settings, which is awesome since the game looks awesome. However, it seems like my frame rate is taking a bit of a hit sometimes. I would much rather just lower a setting or two and have my 60 fps. What settings should I tinker with that wouldn't cause a significant loss in visual quality but would improve my overall frame rate?

Your post actually made me very happy. My new PC that's coming is almost identical to yours. On my old one, Oblivion would sometimes dip down to 10-11 in the cities and never over 30 except in caves with nothing going on and then just maybe 35-37. Your framerates sound like heaven to me. Now if Alienware and FedEx would just stop revising their delivery date futher away, I'd be really good

I'm getting rock solid framerates on the detected/defaulted "high" settings with my laptop. Intel Core2 Duo 2.53GHz, 6GB Ram, and an nVidia 260GTX (mobile version). I'm quite frankly floored. I don't have any other games that look this good while performing this well. They've out-done themselves on engine optimization. 8 hours in, and it's meeting or exceeding all my hyped up expectations.

Which program do you use to measure frame rates?

To be honest I am really being kind of nitpicky because the framerate has been pretty good. I hit a couple of fps drops last night and just wanted to smooth it out a bit.

Otherwise, the game looks and plays like a dream. This is a far far better game than Oblivion.

Dude! I have the same rig as you! (except for 1 more gb of ram -- not a big deal really). I run mine maxed and so far no major issues, though...

Pretty much same here with a GTX 470, doesn't even make my video card work hard. Little disappointed actually.

Yeah, and Im getting 60fps on ultra with my HD 5770 :/

1. Go to:

C:\Users\[name]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim (Windows 7 path)

2. Open the Skyrim config file. NOT the SkyrimPrefs.

3. Add "iPresentInterval=0" without the quotes, to the bottom of the [Display] section. (Just make a new line and paste it in.)

4. Boot up Skyrim and watch the game become oh-so-smooth!

5. ????????

6. Profit!


This setting turns off V-Sync, which can cause a lot of FPS and mouse lag. If you can life with a TINY bit of screen tearing that isn't noticeable unless you look for it, then this is worth it.