» Sat May 19, 2012 3:15 am Let's take a moment to talk in more detail about Skyrim. It's obviously incredibly http://store.steampowered.com/stats/, and I think deservedly so. I'm working on a comprehensive Skyrim Tweak Guide right now, but it won't be up on GeForce.com for at least another week or two. It takes time to properly test and document the advanced tweaks, but thankfully some of the decent tweaks are already widely available. There is also unfortunately a lot of confusion, which hopefully the guide will help clear up. The bottom line is that at present the game can definitely be made to look nicer, but some things like texture quality can't be improved much more regardless of tweaking. Some people have misinterpreted the answers extracted from this old http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1207390-skyrim-fan-interview/ with Bethesda to mean that a high-res texture pack will be released. That's not what they said: "The PC version also gets higher res textures, larger render modes, and a bunch of other effects you can scale up if your machine is a beast." They were talking about the features of the game prior to its release, so these are already incorporated into Skyrim on PC.
In terms of performance, there are a wide range of tradeoffs, tips and recommendations I have in the guide, but let's be clear: Skyrim is a CPU-limited game, which is why there are slowdowns in certain areas. Performance articles like http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html show it, but let me demonstrate it on my own i7 920/GTX 580 http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_2.html#System. The following screenshots are all of an identical low FPS scene on my system, at the Ultra preset with 8xAA/16xAF, and FPS shown at top right: http://www.tweakguides.com/images/1_19x12U.jpg, http://www.tweakguides.com/images/2_19x10U.jpg, http://www.tweakguides.com/images/3_12x7U.jpg. To save time I'll spell out the result: at all three resolutions, FPS fluctuates around 28-30. In fact if I go from 8x MSAA to no MSAA, the result is still the same. This is a classic example of a CPU bottleneck. And even with the relatively poor textures and shadows, I've also seen my Video RAM usage rise to in excess of 1GB after only a few minutes of gameplay at Ultra settings, not including any extra tweaks. The fact that it performs much more smoothly than previous Bethesda games tends to indicate that the setting tradeoffs built into the PC version of the Creation Engine are not so bad despite the game's console-based heritage. In any case the guide will be out soon and you will have the option to alter a much wider range of settings. In the meanwhile, concentrate on enjoying this excellent game, faults and all.
Update: For people still not clear on what this all means - Skyrim only runs on the equivalent of 2 CPU cores; it cannot use more than 2 threads, so performance is CPU-limited. Also a heads-up that places like http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/11/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweaks-improve-graphics-disable-vsync-change-fov-and-more/ have widely misreported the VSync tweak I posted earlier. To disable VSync you must add iPresentInterval=0 under [Display] in Skyrim.ini, not SkyrimPrefs.ini, otherwise it won't work. Alternatively you can enable http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_10.html, but that uses more VRAM, which is why disabling VSync is the easiest solution. Either way, it is a necessary step as VSync actually reduces overall FPS, not just caps it.
In terms of performance, there are a wide range of tradeoffs, tips and recommendations I have in the guide, but let's be clear: Skyrim is a CPU-limited game, which is why there are slowdowns in certain areas. Performance articles like http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html show it, but let me demonstrate it on my own i7 920/GTX 580 http://www.tweakguides.com/Hardcon09_2.html#System. The following screenshots are all of an identical low FPS scene on my system, at the Ultra preset with 8xAA/16xAF, and FPS shown at top right: http://www.tweakguides.com/images/1_19x12U.jpg, http://www.tweakguides.com/images/2_19x10U.jpg, http://www.tweakguides.com/images/3_12x7U.jpg. To save time I'll spell out the result: at all three resolutions, FPS fluctuates around 28-30. In fact if I go from 8x MSAA to no MSAA, the result is still the same. This is a classic example of a CPU bottleneck. And even with the relatively poor textures and shadows, I've also seen my Video RAM usage rise to in excess of 1GB after only a few minutes of gameplay at Ultra settings, not including any extra tweaks. The fact that it performs much more smoothly than previous Bethesda games tends to indicate that the setting tradeoffs built into the PC version of the Creation Engine are not so bad despite the game's console-based heritage. In any case the guide will be out soon and you will have the option to alter a much wider range of settings. In the meanwhile, concentrate on enjoying this excellent game, faults and all.
Update: For people still not clear on what this all means - Skyrim only runs on the equivalent of 2 CPU cores; it cannot use more than 2 threads, so performance is CPU-limited. Also a heads-up that places like http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/11/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweaks-improve-graphics-disable-vsync-change-fov-and-more/ have widely misreported the VSync tweak I posted earlier. To disable VSync you must add iPresentInterval=0 under [Display] in Skyrim.ini, not SkyrimPrefs.ini, otherwise it won't work. Alternatively you can enable http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_10.html, but that uses more VRAM, which is why disabling VSync is the easiest solution. Either way, it is a necessary step as VSync actually reduces overall FPS, not just caps it.
(not my work, just passing the word along)
