I built a very budget computer about a month ago so I could pass my older one off to the wife and more specifically so I could make sure I had a rig that would play Skyrim. Got all the components from the Egg, AMD triple core 445 Rana, 4 gigs ram (on a Win7 32 bit) and a Geforce 550ti 1 gig card. So as you can see very low end but still more than enough for most of the older games I play, by most standards still a very fast computer and I built the whole thing for around $400.00.
Getting to the point...I have the DVD version of Skyrim and my game plays flawlessly on high, absolutely no lag what so ever, no glitches, no ctd's, nada!
Yet I see oodles of posts about a plethora of issues that I've not seen, even on my low end budget rig, so whats the deal? why are so many people complaining about cpu, ram and gpu problems? I guess I feel really lucky that I have no troubles but I wonder what the common denominator is? why do folks with great rigs with 8 gigs of ram and so on have issues? Could it be a 32 vs 64 bit issue? some thing else?
I'm not ranting cause I'm in great shape here, nor bragging....just curious as to why this is.

<-- Lower budget computer...

Windows XP Professional 32-bit (SP3)
BIOSTAR N68S3+ Mobo
Realtek HD Audio (Onboard)
Onboard-video disabled (Nvidia super-low end chip)
4GB DDR3 RAM (Reports 3GB, 1GB address space stolen by 1GB video-card.)
AMD Athlon II X2 250 Dual-core Processor 3Ghz
EVGA Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT 1GB video-card
HP w2207 LCD (1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz))

Paid about $300 for the tower/4GB-ram/3Ghz-cpu/500GB-hd, $70 for a 750w powersupply, and $60 for the video-card. Monitor is my old one.

I can push it up to most max settings, with vsync off... but with vsync on (Due to stop bugs), I can play at 30fps on ultra-settings. (My MAX settings are like 10x ultra.)

However, I crash, since they "fixed" the DRM... a lot... So, now I post... a lot... since I can't play... on multiple forums...

I actually haven't even checked my fps, seems pointless as smooth as it plays...I've also had steam in offline mode for a few days so maybe my trouble is yet to come.

I actually think a lot of people are just really mad that there are a few spots in the game where FPS drops. There are areas in Markath where no matter what you aren't going to pull 60 FPS (I think maybe the triple-SLI guy got close).

I've got a decent gaming laptop, i7 740m, ATI mobility 5870, 8 GB of ram, but nothing fancy. The GPU is OC'd a bit and I can play on ultra with shadows set to high and get 60 FPS in caves/dungeons, I pull 30-45 FPS outside and in busy towns I'll drop into the 20's. The thing is, unless I have Fraps running, the only time I really notice the lower frames are in towns (and then it's mostly because the frames are dropping wildly from 60 to 25).

I guess my point is, I think a lot of people are upsetting themselves just because they expect to get "60 FPS everywhere" because they spent a lot of money on a high-end rig. The interesting thing is, if they'd just turn off Fraps for a moment, they'd probably start really enjoying the game. Who cares if your outdoor FPS is 45 instead of 60? As long as it isn't varying wildly you'll hardly notice.

I have a high end system..but as others have said since the new DRM, it isn't going to matter..you'll be crashing every 5 mins anyways..just like me.

For the record:
i5 2500k
HD6970

Have a solidly midrange system and no performance issues or crashes (played about 65 hours now without a single crash).

X4 955 overclocked to 3.6 Ghz
GTX 460 1GB overclocked to 875 Mhz
8 GB DDR3
Fresh install (a month old) of Windows 7 64 Bit

I've always been curious about the CTD problems people have with Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and now Skyrim and I've never been plagued with them regardless of the system I've played them with. Makes me wonder what the difference is in my PCs vs. theirs that keep me from having issues. I'm not gloating, I'm just trying to understand how I can be so consistently "lucky" with Bethesda games.

is passing a dead rig off to your better half the geek version of "my wife yes, my dog maybe my gun never"? Shame. No doubt you promised her a nice shiny iMac later too, lol.

Exactly what I was trying to say, you said it better I suppose we should feel lucky!

LOL, well actually it was a good rig but dual core with a GT240, works fine for her HOG's.

Have a good rig and had no issues up until the latest Steam patch (11/21/2011). Now I'm seeing my first set of CTDs in over 50 hours of play. Up until this point I too was wondering what everyone else was yapping about.

It's hardware incompatibility issues is why you see complaints, mostly from people with ultra powerful setups that have dual cards or cards that have multiple GPUs on one card.


Aside from a small handful of games your system is actually quite powerful. I suppose in the world of computers a term like "mid range" is hardly set in stone though.

Well there's a few different things people are discussing on the forums. As for glitches, I have no idea what triggers it... I've seen people with very similar systems to my own who have had issues that I don't. For me personally, Skyrim is the most stable Bethesda game I've ever played, and I don't have any unusual artifacts or what have you(my systems listed below). However, terms like "flawlessly" and "lag" don't mean the same thing to everyone. Now with the system you listed, I'm sure you've got a good Skyrim experience, but I doubt it runs flawlessly and without lag as I'd describe it. You said you haven't checked your FPS yet, but I'm willing to bet if you run Fraps with the game you'll see it drop below 60fps quite a bit, and I'd personally consider that lag. I've had friends tell me their computer runs a game as "smooth as butter", but when I've seen them play it, their framerate is obviously dropping down into the 40s and 50s, but they said it was smooth because they only consider lag to be severely low framerates, where the game is like a slideshow.

The problem is people with insanely beefy computers are seeing their FPS drop all the time, especially in cities. If you have a computer that can run Battlefield 3 on Ultra or Crysis 2 with the DX11 modifications, at a steady 60+ FPS, you shouldn't be slowing down in Skyrim. Unfortunately it's not really a bug per-say, it's the result of Bethesda using a modified engine that's been around for years and isn't properly optimized to take advantage of new hardware. It's what happens when you design a game for 6-7 year old consoles, and then port it to PC. They introduced some options to increase PC visuals, and then there's the INI file tweaking, but they never did any major optimizations for the PC to take advantage of the faster hardware, so we get a lot of lag. While monitoring my own FPS, CPU and GPU usage, I'll see my FPS go down to 30FPS, often in cities, and see my GPU only at 50% usage, 1 CPU core completely maxed, another at 75%, and the other 2 below 50%... this is not good optimization. It's exactly what you'd see for, say it again with me, a game made for the old hardware on consoles and not optimized for computers. A lot of companies do this, but people are a bit more frustrated with this game considering how popular it is, especially among PC users. Not to mention that fact that Bethesda talked about using a new engine, only to find out it's just a modified version of what they've been using, and in 2011 they couldn't manage to get it to properly use multi-core CPUs. It's better at using Quad-Core CPUs than Oblivion was, but not as good as a modern game should be.

If you want to check out your systems performance, I like to use Fraps for FPS monitoring, the Windows Task Manager for CPU usage, and GPU-Z for my GPU usage.

Systems:

Main (AMD Phenom 2 x4 955 BE @ 3.8GHz, 8GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 570)
Second (AMD Phenom 2 x4 965BE @ 3.5GHz, 4GB Ram, Radeon 6870)

Skyrim runs on my very low end laptop at high settings almost flawlessly (I get an fps hit in a few areas still)

Running on an ASUS notebook with
4GB RAM
GeForce GT 150M (lolwut??)
Intel Dual 2.4 Ghz
Windows Vista

I'm guessing a monster rig like mine would run what... about $150 or so today? I bought it for $800 four years ago.
I generally play it with the laptop connected to the TV and a wireless mouse and keyboard.

I will agree with others regarding the latest patch, though I imagine they much be exaggerating to the extreme. Pre-patch - zero crashes. Not one. Nada.
Post-patch - 3 crashes in about 7 hours of constant play. All seemingly random. Meh. Oh, and one instance of the entire world being hostile to me the instant I exited the beginner cave.

Thing is, this is a CPU bound game, like Fallout 3, Oblivion and Morrowind before it. Bethesda games have always been CPU bound.

Most high end rigs have quad cores or higher, but usually a normal clock speed (2-4GHz). Skyrim doesn't really scale well with core numbers, and instead performs much better with a higher clock speed. That's why people with lower end, dual core processors with a higher clock speed get better performance than some high end rigs.

Thing is, even if you had a computer built by NASA, you still wouldn't get solid 60 FPS in this game. The open nature of it, the complexity of NPCs, AI, scripts, it's just impossible for the game to be smooth 100% of the time.

I get 40fps average, and dip down to 25 in trouble spots. Sure, it annoys me. But there's absolutely nothing I can do, so I may aswell just get on with it. People who "need" 60FPS all the time, this isn't the game for them.

specs in sig

not 1 crash, fluent FPS at ultra with added tweaks ( Viewdistance+renderdistance upped)
but im plauged by many many bugs, but no CTD's or BSOD's ( probably becuz of my memory size and Vram size)

PS im still using the LAA with the old .exe (seems to work)

Same here. Latest patch was horrible for me. I can not play more then 30 - 45 min. before CTD. I didn't even mode my game, or used 4 GB patch. Now i am forced to use 4 GB patch to play without CDT.

AMD Phenom X4 965
GTX 470
4 GB of ram

I can't vouch for everyone but the issue with framerate isn't about getting less than 60fps in one or two places, I get random moments of less than 10fps in areas that run as smooth as silk at other times. I've got a Geforce GTX 460 and 12gb RAM just for the record. I've no idea why it does this but I didn't have any problems up until the DRM patch and then it all went down hill, I'm using the LAA fix which stops the crashing but since then I've got loads more framerate drops.