I'm not sure why so many keep saying this game has given them so many problems, but I have it for PC, and aside from some badly optimized game areas and a whopping total of two CTDs, this game has otherwise runs fairly well for me, but while I'm here, I want to deconstruct a few myths regarding the fixing of this game and explain what will really fix this game once and for all, whether by official or fan created effort.

But, first off, to address the people who were clamoring for a 64 bit EXE: Frankly, I thought this was nonsense to begin with, and the logic behind it was a display of ignorance on the subject of why CTDs happen in this game, or for that matter, any PC game.

A game will "crash to desktop" when it encounters an error that will corrupt game data if the game continues to run, so the game defends against this by abruptly shutting itself down, and since we are talking about an Elder Scrolls game, I am not surprised the same engine that powers Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim keeps giving people trouble.

The reason I say this is because the problems have NOTHING to do with how much memory is available. In truth, minimum and recommended requirements for all three games seem quite reasonable, and the only reason they all have had frequent crashes is because of bad coding stability, not because it was 32 or 64 bit.

(FYI, all 64 bit code allows is more memory to be allocated into memory, and if the game code is crashing badly in 32 bit, recompiling it to 64 bit whereupon it will receive larger memory allotments given how 64 bit code works will merely make it more unstable)

In Morrowind's case, Bethseda fixed many of the problems by the time of Bloodmoon, and most of the remaining major bugs have been eliminated by the Morrowind Code Patch, and since this is a 32 bit game I have run on XP/Vista/7 (32 and 64) with very few CTDs in any case, it was clearly a case of bad coding that needed tweaking, and since the game still runs quite well regardless of OS, I can safely say Morrowind is fine as is.

Oblivion had a different problem: the meshes and textures were very badly optimized. Unfortunately, while Oblivion's CTD ratio was fairly reasonable (no worse than Morrowind's at absolute worst), the meshes and textures were badly optimized in many areas, which could result in scattershot FPS performance and lots of texture glitches. It also didn't help that the game code regarding quests was badly optimized as well.

However, thanks be to the Unofficial Oblivion and Shivering Isles Patches, both games run very well with very few CTDs (most of the ones I've ever had in the last three years are related to OBSE mods not installed correctly), and the performance is excellent, and like Morrowind is fine as is.

Skyrim, on the other hand, has both bad code stability and badly optimized areas. I have checked memory usage while playing the game, and while it does automatically grab around 1 GB just to run, it rarely approaches most of the 2GB limit on a 32 bit OS for me, and I get virtually identical performance and the same memory usage on a 64 bit OS.

That said, I can safely say it seems Skyrim has the same problems Morrowind and Oblivion do with memory caching, and here's why:

The game loads files from compressed BSA archives, stores them in memory, then is supposed to disengage the unused bits over time and let fresh content load, which keeps memory usage reasonable and prevents crashing due to an overflow errors.

The crowd that wants LAA added is right in pointing out this would reduce the frequency of overflow errors, but that is only because more memory merely gives memory leaks and slow caching errors more elbow room before they cause problems.

That said, a game with a better optimized caching scheme would have little need of this patch, because that's what it is, a patch on a problem that could be better fixed by Bethseda optimizing the existing code instead of recompiling it to use even larger memory allotments. Besides, if the same code crashes with the memory caching it has on 32 bit, merely making it 64 bit means its just as inefficient, and even if it takes it longer to crash, it will still do so as long as the memory caching code is a trainwreck, and giving a game that caches memory badly on 32 bit a 64 bit memory allotment could cause many more overflow errors because it's gorging on too large a chunk of memory to load new data too before emptying the old chunk, which could provide even crappier performance assuming it doesn't CTD on the spot.

Anyway, my point is that 64 bit executable as a cure to all ills is pointless nonsense. Instead, part one is optimizing the game code to cache game data efficiently. Part two is optimizing the meshes and textures to make sure the many graphics corruption and performance problems many players experience have been eliminated, and by doing that it can even add to the game stability because it's loading non bloated, efficient data in a stable way, which would serve the same benefit as the LAA tweak Bethseda will be providing.

P.S. - I am not opposed to the LAA (Large Address Aware) tweak, whether officially or unofficially added, but I do feel it's a shoddy cure all to bad coding. If used in tandem with the proposed optimization tweaks, it's probably would be of great benefit to everyone, assuming the engine is made stable first.

Besides, Skyrim uses the Creation Engine, which is heavily modified Gamebryo Engine (Oblivion), which in turn is a heavily modified NetImmerse Engine (Morrowind), which means the core of all three games share the same code base, which means that the code itself is just unstable to begin with, and the bit size of the executable will not do anything to improve that.

Nice wall of text. I did read it and though I am not incredibly computer savvy this makes a lot of sense given previous games. Hope Beth looks into it.

Cheers

tl;dr Bethesda needs an honest-to-science new engine.

Cool story bro. Just kidding. I better stop talking like a teenager. I think you're right in many points there. The thing is though, that if Beth keeps earning GOTY's I doubt that exhaustive revision and code optimization for pc, for example, will ever happen.

Wall of text? Seems properly spaced-out to me.

As for the crashing, how much of an effect would fixing the memory leak have? I mean, how severe is it? Would ameliorating it make a major or minor difference? And would it only be good for the short-term, or would it help long-term?

https://twitter.com/#!/nickbreckon/status/14015054991069184
lol

Good advice, unfortunatelly I doubt Beth will follow it as properly optimizing the code would require a rewrite of the exectuble (as I understand it) and I don't think they would be willing to expend the resources on that now that it's released. The only thing we can hope for is a major rewrite for TES VI (although personally I'm hoping for an all new engine, but I don't see that happening until the next generation of consoles is out).

The game isn't horribly unoptimized, but it isn't really well optimized either, it definitely runs a lot better than their previous games however.

I've only had a handful of crashes and I'm over a hundred hours into the game, a hundred hours into Fallout 3 the number of crashes I had was nearing the triple digits, I'm also not having any of the insane stuttering problems I had with FO3 or Oblivion.

Good post and I agree with most of it
But there are advantages to an application that is written for a 64 bit OS ,like Windows 7 or 2008 , as the underlying DLL's ,DirectX , and other software components that allow applications to operate in the OS are more stable and generally more efficient than 32 bit . Running a game/application in Wow 64 works but it is not as effective as running in the native 64 bit environment
So I guess the pointy for me is using a 64 bit application on a 64 OS is the way to go

I am playing on a computer that should barely be able to run the game and it works like a charm. Just need a few tweaks here and there once the CK is out and I'm playing a game I shouldn't be able to.

This game runs better than New Vegas. I know that as I am a gamer whose daily life includes manual optimization of games to have them work. Poverty svcks, don't try it.
I've had one CTD so far, near Kynesgrove.


I'd say the PC version is damn well optimized. Like how Mass Effect 2 ran much smoother for everyone than Mass Effect 1, Skyrim runs better than older GameBryo titles.

I didn't read anything past the first paragraph. This is a general forum, not a journal. Post something like that in the issues forum.

I played oblivion for 500+ hours many which were heavily modded and maybe one or 2 CTDs, if that. Not counting the game not starting because of bad/incompatible mod installs

Give it about 7 more patches. lol, not saying for sure, but just maybe it'll be fixed ftmp by then.

Are you disputing that a sufficient combination of mods and tweaks can push the memory requirements to beyond the 2 GB offered by 32 bit support? To back that up you'd need to overcome the large number of players who report stable play with LAA enabled, vs unstable play without it.

If you mean the memory limitation of 32bit versus 64bit is a legitimate concern, then I agree with you.

Unfortunately, I cannot agree that WOW64 is less efficient than native 32 bit. I have tried lots of 32 bit exclusive games under both environments, and if there were performance differences, I discovered none. In fact, I found Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim CTD LESS under WOW64 than in native 32 bit, though that may just be my experience and would love to hear how others have fared in both situations with comparable hardware.

As for speed, all the above run about the game irregardless, and the only problems I have ever had with all three in a compatibility sense have been graphics driver wise, and all three merely needed the proper graphics driver updates to fix those.

FYI, under the 290.36 Nvidia drivers, I can run Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim quite well with no noticable differences in GPU performance regardless of OS architecture.

In summation, I am perfectly satisfied with Skyrim as a 32-bit executable for two reasons:

1. 64 bit has been tried before: Half Life 2 and Crysis for example. HL2 64 bit was so buggy and unstable as opposed to the HL2 32 Valve themselves disowned ir, and Crysis 64 bit actually ran crappier than 32 bit in many situations.

2. The code base and middleware (Speedtree, Havok, etc) are all based on 32 bit code, either exclusively or lack an efficient 64 bit equivalent, and until Bethseda draws up an engine adaptable to both architectures with better memory optimizations, I'm actually quite terrified of what will happen if they do make a 64 bit port of code that already needs severe optimizing even in 32 bit.

In fact, I'd rather the 32 bit code be polished to a reasonable level of quality before they even consider a 64 bit version, and I say that as someone who mostly uses a 64 bit OS for everyday use.

No, it is quite possible to stretch the game to it's breaking point with what you propose, so LAA is a great idea, especially for the 32 bit players.

What I oppose is that being regarded as the end all and be all of fixing the game, as even with that I'd like to see the bad mesh and textures optimized, the quest bugs fixed, and the coding errors LAA can't addressed fixed as best as possible, which would keep memory usage from having leaks and inefficiency, which would make the LAA tweak merely additional security against instability, not a requirement for stability at all.

Besides, I have at least two friends with 32 bit OSes who are heavy mod users who don;t have the LAA patch and have had very few problems regardless. In fact, I myself have used this on both 32 and 64 (currently play this on Windows 7 64 bit without LAA), and on both I've had little problems with heavy modding or CTDs.

Actually, for 64 bit systems having a 64 bit exe will make the game run faster and more efficiently. There is a sizable performance boost and stability both because of LAA but also because the OS doesn't have to do 32 bit emulation which makes processors run much more efficiently and since Skyrim is a CPU bound game....

You are correct that LAA will not fix the memory leak issues and other bad optimizations, merely deleys the time between CTD's for memory leaks. However if you have a lot of ram this can add several hours to CTD versus vanilla, but also increases the chance of other errors once the memory cache starts building up so depends.

LAA is not a miracle fix, but is a must if you want high resolution textures and larger view distances, for obvious reasons.

For now the 4 GB patch is well enough.

On optimization, Skyrim is actually much better optimized than previous Elder Scrolls games. Morrowind has an awful rendering system and does not adequately use GPU resources. Oblivion had awful meshes and only uses one core which for what it is meant to do is just plain bad, however for the time it was released I wouldn't blame them. Skyrim is one of the better games for GPU optimization except for shadows being rendered by the CPU which is most likely done because of console porting. The meshes and everything else is much better on average, but there are minor things which could be much better optimized. Skyrm also does use 4 cores unlike what most people say it just doesn't use them the most efficiently. The threads are not equally divided load wise as one thread has two times the load of the other threads, but most games actually have this problem (The disparity is usually less) and if you made multi-threaded programs yourself you would know why. This means that 4 cores will give you a performance boost compared to 2 cores, just not as much as you would normally receive.

I agree from a gaming perspective ,the reality is all current 64 bit game releases have been problematic . But allow me to explain further ,I work as a Software Consultant and I go to different customers that are in different stages of migrating to 64 bit in there Data Centers. My experience has shown that the 64 bit servers are much more stable , for example there is a huge difference between IIS on Windows 2008 and IIS on Windows 2003 . Now I agree the reality is there are serious systemic issues with development companies actually releasing stable 64 bit games ,but it is the way of future .

I know you are talking about Skyrim now ,I am just saying 64 bit offers an improved long term gaming experience and we shouldn't discount it .

Do Bethesda even support their products that far? I thought it was more their style to let the community come up with unofficial patches to fix the game instead.

Strange, I run this game on an i3-2120 3.3 Ghz, and it barely seems to tax this game all that hard, even when under WOW64 as opposed to a native 32 bit Windows enviroment.

A friend of mine is using a somewhat aging Athlon64 X2 and it runs quite well for him, and another guy I know is running this quite well on a somewhat low clocked quad core i5.

As for a 64 bit .exe running more efficiently, that is true, assuming all the other components that come with the game take advantage of 64 bit optimization. Otherwise, it's just porting the same game to a different processing scheme with the same bugs in the engine, and given the choice of waiting three times as long for a 64 bit version of Skyrim versus a LAA tweaked 32 bit version with the bugs fixed, I'd take the latter in a heartbeat.

On the optimizations, I agree mostly with the processor comments for Skyrim, as it is fairly well optimal in that regard, and your comments on Morrowind and Oblivion are fairly spot on. I also agree the shadows rendered by the CPU are frankly so bad I wish I could turn them completely off, so my biggest complaint at present is the non processor related bugs and bad meshes and textures in Skyrim.

The reason it CTD'd less for you on WOW64 is because on 32 bit OS's the memory address is shared between both the vram in the GPU and normal ram. So if you use a modern GPU with 1 GB or more this lessens the memory addressing for the actual game which can lead to lag and crashing. WOW64 can divide the addressing between the vram and ram so the game still gets its full memory allotment regardless of the amount of vram you have. Yes WOW64 is much better than 32 bit alone, 32 bit systems still have 32 bit inefficiency since all modern CPU's have 64 bit architecture regardless of OS.

64 bit can be bad if done poorly, and truly hasn't been done yet to its fullest extent, but this is because a large part of the market is 32 bit (though now that is not so true) and a couple other issues that are little more detailed; however, for CPU bound games, 64 bit can have a rather large impact on CPU efficiency.

Also trying to get Havok to work in 64 bit what a nightmare lol, have rewrite the whole damn thing.

I don't expect Skyrim to 64 bit nor do I think it needs to be, but there are a lot of advantages to it, just need to wait for games to catch up to it. Games still haven't fully caught on to multicore CPU's so the industry is lacking behind the hardware like they usually do, but that's because they want lower-end users to still be able to play effectively I think and because most of their user base is average (duh) so there is no point in all that work to only help 20% of their customer base.

Did you seriously just say that LAA will make the game crash more? I'm pretty sure that that contradicts about 99% of people who use it. Personally, I haven't experienced a single broken texture or CTD since I began using it (confirmed to be nothing to do with the patches; I tried 1.3 without LAA and crashed within every half hour).

Actually, I don't use it myself, but I believe LAA is a great idea, and people I know who do use it have nothing but glowing reviews.

I just don;t like the idea of it being the only fix for a game that needs other kinds of repair work in other areas.

Otherwise, more power to everyone who uses LAA.

I understand the OP's point about LAA...it is a band-aid solution...a badly needed band-aid, but it only helps cover sub-optimal programming. Think of a government that overspends. Now, instead of looking at spending, they raid their neighbor, and steal their stuff. Fixes their immediate cash problem, but someday they'll run out of neighbors. Root cause never addressed.

And just because your computer has a tonne of headroom, and you don't get CTDs, doesn't mean the game is coded well. As the years go on, and the mods and expansions get added, that headroom will be eaten up...and then we'll all wish that it had been done right from the outset.

You can disable shadows in skyrim. In the skyrimprefs.ini under [display] set fInteriorShadowDistance=0.0000 and fShadowDistance=0.0000. Gives me a 12 fps boost on average but for some reason messes up my HDR rendering mod so I leave shadows on . Also for a couple people I know who did this, it turned their game into a slideshow so for some reason it can be a bit finicky, I think they fixed it by setting the resolution maps in the shadows to 0 but I'm not sure. In any case for some people it works and others not so much and may introduce bugs.

Shadow rendering is such a bottleneck.

Like I said for the CPU the performance difference in skyrim between 2 cores and 4 cores is not much compared to other games, but does explain why your friends lower clocked quad core can compete with your higher clocked dual core otherwise the quadcore would lose the performance battle. Essentially, for Skyrim it doesn't really matter because the performance scale between 2 cores and 4 cores is linear so if you have $100 and spent it between a higher clocked dual core or a lower clocked quadcore you would still have the same performance roughly.