I have never been the biggest Elder Scrolls fan but Skyrim has changed that. Hats off to all the developers, producers, art directors and everyone else in-between for really creating one of the most imersive games I have played in my history of gaming (which is roughly sitting at 25 years, since I started playing my first video game in 1986, which was the original Kings Quest on a crappy monochrome monitor). Just to give you a head ups most games I play I can only play in bursts of 2hrs or less before I become bored and have to play something else. Skyrim has dominated my gaming since I purchased in on the Steam Christmas sale. I have played nothing else since and I can easily clock in 8hrs a day on a weekend without batting an eyelid...that to me is seriously amazing.

But... please the game engine is in need of some serious retooling and cutstomization. I understand that the engine (GameByro/Creation) is fantastic for creating these massive worlds within wich to play but even on my i7 2630QM with a 2GB ATI graphics card and 8GB of mem I am getting noticable lag when out exploring the country side (especially since I prefer to play my games in third person, well my fantasy ones at least). Adusting the options from Ultra to High or to Medium seems to have little to no effect.

Considering I am able to run the FROSTBYTE 2 engine with Battlefield 3 all maxed out to the limit and not a single hitch graphically disappoints me a little as the sluggishness of the engine destroys the imersion every once in a while (something you all have obviously so painstakingly gone to the ends of the earth to achieve).

I have heard that the game doesn't really make use of all the cores properly. Is there any chance in future patches that these issues may get addressed?

I beg to differ. I'm using a Radeon HD 2600XT, which is about as old as the Appalachian Mountains, and the game runs smooth on medium settings with grass and object distances at full. This engine runs incredibly faster than the one used for Oblivion and looks immensely better.

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387

I have heard of this great mod helping alot of PC users;

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321657-tesv-acceleration-layer-offers-cpu-optimization-massive-possible-performance-increases-now-in-skse-plugin-format/page__fromsearch__1

you can give it a shot but otherwise, you'll just have to wait for them to optimize it with patches.

I dun like ati...

GTX 570 here, gets a steady 40 fps with every single graphic enhance mod I can find.

My performance is pretty decent. Certain scenes do slow down, but usually that's because there are some effects going on.
I'm on a i5 (something or other model), nVidia GT520M and 4GB of RAM. Only a laptop, but goes pretty good for the game.

If only Bethesda licensed the Cryengine 3, now that would have been epic.

What are you doing in the BG? That can make a HUGE difference.

By the way, forgot what my settings were, but:

- Playing at 720p.
- AA is turned off and I'm using the FXAA only.
- Anisotropic from memory is set to 2.
- Most quality is high, except shadows, that's either medium or low.
- View distances are high.
- All reflection is on.

I generally get pretty awesome graphics when playing - I play on a TV and the TV isn't 1080P so can't crank up the graphics that high - saying that - the laptop would not be able to handle that anyways. I found shadows have a pretty huge impact

^ Xbox settings then.

:-)
Yep!

Would be awesome to have a beast of a machine and see Skyrim in full glory, but I can make do.

You don't need a beast of a machine. You can pick a EVGA GTX 460 up for just over ￡100 and that good enough to play any game at just max settings.

with regards to what I am running in the background, only anti-virus program which is Kaspersky and Malewarebytes. I have made sure that I shut down all process not required.

I have the machine connected to my Samsung Smart HDTV (46 inch) and the game does look incredibly sweet with the resolution running at 1920 X 1080i and running on high settings with AA dialed down to 4 (Changing it to 2 does not make much difference) and AF sitting at 8 (although when I default it, it sets AF to 16). I have not noticed any differences tinkerting with these settings.

The point is I see very little differences when changing from ULTRA to HIGH or MEDIUM. The one odd thing for me though is Markarth city runs incredibly well (I know a lot of complaints around the FPS drop in this city) although I dont see it. but exploring the outside I do see the lag and it kinda destroys it for me

Laptop specs as mentioned above in my original post

What ATI graphics card is it?

I have a 3 year old PC, Phenom II x3 720 OC'ed to 3.2GHz, 4GB of RAM and a Radeon HD 4850. I run the game on ultra settings at constant 30+fps.

its a radeon 6770

could this possibly be a hard drive issue? Perhaps that is where my bottle-neck is sitting

What I did do was something I read here on the site was alt-tab out the game after loading it up and then setting the priority of TESV.EXW to HIGH and lo and behold the framerate has totally stabalized. I have been playing for about and hour and a half now and no problems so this is a huge relief for me

We're definitely looking at ways to optimize performance on all three platforms. We'll let you know of any tweaks and changes as we release new updates for the game.

Thanks for posting.

thanks for keeping us in the loop

much appreciated GStaff

Since setting the priority of the game to high I have been playing around with settings some more

Previously, if I had the game set to Ultra with AA set to 8, AF set to 16, FXAA ticked, all the view distances set to max running at 1920 X 1080i, I would average 16-25 fps outside and about 20-25 fps in cities and dungeons

Now, the game is playing and running smoothly with no lag whatsoever with all the bells and whistles set in ultra.