[Ashley Hill]

Running a decent setup here too (self-imposed budget) with:

Intel i7-2600k, 4GB (soon to be 8) DDR3/1600 RAM, GTX 580 of course, NZXT HALE90 850w PSU, Windows 7 x64.

The game runs at 60 FPS solid regardless of whether I'm outside or not, using 16x AA and MSAA forced via Nvidia control panel, strangely enough. The GPU temps rise up to about 75C occasionally, but mostly stay in the low 70's range, which is, to my understanding, fine for these cards.
CPU temps are very low (barely passing 50C at heavy usage), but my CPU is stock for the time being.
However, the game does crash (no error) quite a bit now.. It was perfectly stable on the night that I got it though, which is also strange.

The worst performance I've yet seen was a dip down to 36 for a couple seconds during the intro while riding up to Helgen, after which it returned to 60 and never dropped for hours afterwards.

I didn't mess around with the ini yet, nor did I choose a preset setting, I set everything to highest manually.

One thing is that I use 285.79 (beta), which seems to be the driver optimized for Skyrim.

[Veronica Flores]

Wth, did they purposefully gimp the PC just to boost 360 sales? This is not a driver issue, this is a dev-side issue and I think I'll be canceling my preorder now... and wait till they sort this ^#%* out.

Yes

[Bambi]

I'm running the game with Ultra settings at 2560x1600 resolution on a GTX 580 with no issues. The game doesn't provide a constant 60 FPS in every situation, but it is in the 30-60 range. I am using a single card, but it's clear that SLI support is not all the way there yet. I don't play with VSync disabled in any game because screen tearing looks terrible. In Skyrim, it causes other problems as well. If you have a monitor that has a refresh rate greater than 60Hz then you will want to leave VSync alone and set a maximum framerate in your INI or you will have performance issues.

Textures don't look great if you play with your face less than 2 feet from the display - it was designed for console players who typically sit 6-8 feet from their TVs. Most of the time it's not an issue unless you like to examine everything in macro detail. High resolution textures will likely be too much for mainstream cards to handle, as it should be.

[glot]

Can you bring up your FPS in game via console or do we have to use Fraps?

I have 2x GTX 580's running 3 monitors at 6027x1080.

Game ran fine on full settings (haven't noticed any frame related slowdown yet)

Issues I have found so far

• Shadows are a bit blocky
  
• Shadows Flicker
  
• NPC's do a dance every now and then (not sure if its gfx related or game related)
  
• UI/menu does not play nice in surround mode

I'm using the UI fix that Hayden provided over on the widescreen forums but its not ideal..

Jim

[lisa nuttall]

It seems as if certain light sources cause massive framerate drops - some people report it's candles, and I can attest I sometimes get huge drops down to 15 fps in certain dungeons. It also sounds like it could be very poor culling, without any sort of LOD models and textures indoors - Fallout 3 had similar problems with odd framerate drops and it was mostly due to the fact that the game was rendering the entire level despite it not being visible.

Interiors will have more shadows to render, so it's no surprise that interior frame rates could dip below exterior frame rates. The game doesn't have any Ultra resolution textures, so it's going to look bad if you are less than 5 feet away from the screen (no matter the size). The community will undoubtedly provide higher resolution textures, but this should have been Bethesda's job. As it is, they've effectively said "too bad" to purchasers of the PC version.

The PC version still does have some better textures than the console versions, which in truth are more a mix of medium and high. PC version also has better lighting, better resolution for certain effects, better anti-aliasing and texture filtering, better water and shadow quality, and greater draw distance. I wouldn't exactly say PC users got screwed over in that respect, but rather in terms of optimization and user interface.

[Neko Jenny]

Look below, this post needed major editing due to recent re-testing, so I deleted it and posted below again.

[Adrian Morales]

Settings --> Ultra + Ini tweaks for better visual quality, sliders to max, 4x MLAA (I would need 3gb video cards for 8x at 2560x1600). FXAA and Object fade detail ---> off.
Settings forced through driver ---> 2x SSAA (TrAA), Ambient Occlusion, Quality. These settings provide the best visual quality for me. FXAA doesn't cut it, not even close.

i7 750 - 4.0 Ghz (o/c)
GTX 580 SLI - 860 Mhz (o/c)
vertex 3 (ssd) - Dell u3011 2560x1600.

My rig destroys this game without the forced (through driver) settings. 2x SSAA puts some strain, but what really strains it is AO - quality, still it makes a very nice difference for me. So with all these settings and at 2560x1600, I have a constant 60 fps (locked) at 99% of times - verified by fraps. It rarely goes below that and when it does, it's only for 1 sec and can't even notice it ingame (but only with fraps). To get these constant 60 fps though, my GPU usage is between 85 and 99%, usually at 95ish, so pretty close. No overheating problems though (even after 12h of gaming) and the game looks gorgeous with AO-quality, so

My only video concern so far (25h into the game) is some flickering shadows (the every X secs flickering). Even with 4096 shadow map resolution, some shadows still flicker. The 4096 setting solves (not really, just makes it unnoticeable) the flickering on most of shadows, but not all. The shadows of some objects will still flicker every X secs (e.g. short vegetation shadows), still I barely notice it while playing... moving around and all (especially when even the angle with which you look at the shadows matter on how intensive flickering is). So in a few words, I am ok with performance/visual quality but obviously Bethesda could do better in optimizing it for PC. I guess that is what we get for gaming moving to consoles due to piracy. We need more hacked consoles and leaked console versions imo, that may turn the tide a bit.

Can you please teach me how to force 2x SSAA, would really like to see how it looks like in the game, did you just select 2x AA and then 2x Supersampling?. Ive already force AO via inspector and it looks nice.

[Mrs shelly Sugarplum]

Can you please teach me how to force 2x SSAA, would really like to see how it looks like in the game, did you just select 2x AA and then 2x Supersampling?. Ive already force AO via inspector and it looks nice.

If you want to see something great try AO. You need Nvidia inspector, load skyrim's profile with it and choose 0x00000003 (Fallout 3) as Ambient Occlusion compatibility. Then under [common] enable AO usage and choose Quality as setting. It's a BIG hit to performance, still get a SS and compare it with a non-AO SS.

Now about TrSSAA, I am not sure that it even works AFTER having made several more tests at White Run. I didn't have time to test Transparency AA in a more appropriate place, but I guess that results won't be much different. I've tested at 2560x1600, taking SS and then comparing to a different settings SS, at 200% zoom. Here's in short what I've discovered:
Driver based MSAA works on items (e.g. Dragon Plate armor) and even 2x (at least at 2560x1600) is enough to correct the jagged edges, but it doesn't work on environment (e.g. stairs). Game based MSAA works on the environment and you better use 4x as minimum (if one can afford it ofc), while it doesn't work on items (like inventory items and don;t know what else). I am 100% sure about this, I have tested extensively. Still, I don't know which or how many objects fall under each one of these 2 categories (inv item being the one and environment items being the other). For me, playing at 2560x1600 with 1.5gb video cards, the best option is 4x MSAA from game and 2x MSAA from driver. NO TrMSAA from driver (it doesn't give any benefit according to my tests and it can screw game based AA), but enabled TrMSAA (set value to 1) from game (although I didn't test if that actually improved anything, still my rig takes no hit from it).

To do this, you need nvidia inspector to remove the "treat override as application controlled" flag, or you are not forcing anything. If you have available VRAM, you can play with AA settings a bit and see what works best for you. At 2560x1600, the best for me is 4x MSAA from game and 2x MSAA from driver. Enabled TrMSAA from game, disabled at driver.
---------------------------------------------

Now, if we exclude the fact that I can't go to really high AA settings because I am VRAM limited at 2560x1600 (which wouldn't have much visual difference tbh, since even without AA I have to look at the SS at 200% zoom to realize the jagged edges), the only setting that actually provides a performance hit to my rig is the all mighty Ambient Occlusion, but the outcome is definitely worth it. Without AO, I could probably be locked at 60fps even with one 580 (with a bit higher o/c). With Ambient Occlusion even as high as "Quality", I am locked at 60fps. But it's close due to cards running at 87% to 99%, usually at 97%. With "High Quality", which is the max AO setting, I get 41fps. Fortunately, at the spot I tested, "Quality" actually looked better to me, among all settings. So imo, even a single GTX580 setup (coupled with a capable CPU and with a conservative o/c like mine) should be fine without AO, even up to 2560x1600, but for AO (which is the single setting that does the greatest difference, at least according to my taste) you need a 580 SLI setup. About FXAA... I don't like. It does a great job with jagged edges, but only because it provides a blurred image. At least for 2560x1600, that trade off is definitely not worth it.

i7 750 - 4.0 Ghz (o/c)
GTX 580 SLI - 860 Mhz (o/c) 1.5gb
vertex 3 (ssd) - Dell u3011 2560x1600.

P.S. TrMSAA = Transparency Multi Sample AA, don't mix this up with MSAA (the non transparency one). Except from the settings I describe above, I also have 16x anisotropy forced from driver and also enabled in game + INI optimizations for best visual quality (e.g. 4096 shadow map, no object fade, tree/land shadows, etc).

[katie TWAVA]

@ziitch - interesting that yours is running fine and you have an "old school" Quad Core - most others here have core i5/i7.

I think the issue here is CPU and or CPU + GTX 580 - not GTX 580 all by itself.