Well,as the 1.4 official patch is out and updated to Skyrim, I wanted to check on the performance issue mainly. I haven't checked any quests or game play bugs, yet, so I will when I get a chance.

Specifically, I wanted to check the FPS issues, especially in well known bottle-neck areas, as the frame rate issues were especially annoying at those locations, like the top of the stairs outside of Dragonsreach, looking down on the tree in Whiterun. Even with mods, I never got better than 30FPS and that was even rare. Used the beta 1.4 patch a few days back and had no change.

Now with the official patch, I wanted to test it and it was a "Wow!" moment experience. At the aforementioned specific location, I am getting 50FPS consistently and I am hitting 60+FPS everywhere else. I want to add that I am using the highest res mods (Skyrim HD) running with full AF and 8x AA with all other settings maxed.

This is my rig for reference, so if those who have more powerful rigs, you should see some serious improvements in performance.

i7-950
2X ATI 5870 in Crossfire
160gig Intel X25-M SSD maindrive
1TB WD Black 2nd drive
12GBs G-Skill DDR3 RAM @ 1333mhz
Samsung T240 24" running @ 1920x1080

Nothing is OC'd at all.

Now, let's get that CK released quickly please

Nice to hear!

I hope we'll get similar results on the PS3.

I have been on 1.4 since the first beta and thought it was great even then; great performance boost and my very broken saved game fixed!

Well yes, they gave us the performance we should have had.

I thought the performance issues were only happening on the PS3.

It was only when I read the PC beta forums that I found out you guys were getting [censored] performance too. Maybe less than us, but still.

I'm crossing my fingers that whatever has been fixed on the PC version also applies to the PS3.

My game is running 60FPS, with Low shadows and AA settings. (-:

6GB of mods so far. It's like ice cream, vanilla is good, but ...

Cheers everyone.

Unlikely, the primary improvement over 1.3 is compiler optimizations, which won't affect the PS3 version (it should already have its own).

As soon as I noticed the game updated this morning I removed Skyboost from my Skyrim folder. The performance is unchanged, meaning I no longer have to mod the game to get it to run smoothly.

The save files noticably shrunk, so at very minimum you have that going for you. I'm thinking you'll come out pretty good from it, there's also a substantially smaller memory foot print with 1.4 vs 1.3 so ideally they can pack more into the consoles' rather limited quantities of the stuff better.

specs:

E2200 2.2ghz OC'd to 2.4ghz
3GB 800mhz RAM
8800 GT (factory overclocked)

skyrim settings:

low everything, plus shadows and grass turned off in the .ini

fps at top of Dragonreach steps looking towards the tree:

1.3.10 vanilla = ~24fps
1.3.10 + skyboost r4 = ~32fps
1.4 official patch = 37fps

me = happy bunny

xTx

silky

I have to concur with the results of others... the boost is crazy awesome!

specs are in sig (i think)

Pre 1.4 (without TESVAL/SKYBoost) - running at 1680x945, textures high,shadows @ tweaked 2048, decals medium, distant view high

fps at Dragonreach choke point = 20

with TESVAL = 25 fps

with 1.4 (no TESVAL) = 37 fps

General performance has skyrocketed.. This is the Magic patch that fixes Skyrim to playability on most high end to middling machines..

I can now safely run at native 1080p and get 30 FPS mostly... impossible to attain before the patch!

I didn't play the game in quite a while but, when I saw 1.4 downloading I tried it right away. I'm pretty happy with the results far. I never really got bad game braking bugs but performance was [censored]. Now it looks way better. The game seems to old 60 fps pretty much all the time. Except in Markham, which really seems like a problem area, still. I also run Skyrim with Skyrim HD, on ultra specs. Which was impossible before 1.4. So I'd say mission accomplish! Still hoping for some more, but overall it finally looks like a computer game.

On version 1.3.10 I was getting 26 fps from the Dragonsreach view of Whiterun with a few launcher settings backed off a tad.
On version 1.4.21 I am getting 60 fps constant using the same view.
I've been able to max all the launcher's graphics settings to Ultra, plus the nVidia Skyrim Profile is now using Ambient Occlusion set to Quality. No mods, no ini tweaks except for FOV=85.
I guess my GTX480s' SLI is now being made good use of. See the rig's specs in my sig. Nothing OCed.

Certainly, Skyrim is running as smooth as silk and no hesitations or micro-stutters. No crashes of any sort. Yippee!

Wow OP, you must have some bad drivers installed or something because I'm using a dual core 2.4 processor with a GTS 450 and I was getting the same frame rates you are now beforehand. I'm also using HD graphic enhancing mods.

Have any of you Whiterun FPS champions headed into a few dungeons since the new patch? Just curious - I get hefty external boosts but some very noticeable stuttering in certain interiors. Head over to Orotheim (far west of Whiterun) and walk through the cave, looking left and right every so often). Would be interested in your experiences, especially those with decent quad-core and SLI setups (I have a non-OC core i3 and a single GTX 460 1Gb).

Tested in the infamous Markarth. Before patch: 25 fps. After: 35. That's almost a 50% increase. Nice! And Solitude is silky smooth.

So now that everyone has got their fps fix, I think it's time Bethesda focused their attention on the hundreds of quest bugs. Next patch should be a huge quest fix patch. Hopefully.

It will be really interesting to see how Bethesda is going to address the performance issues on PS3. They can't exactly add more memory than the 256MB dedicated that the PS3 has. It will take some major engine revisions to help with the issue. That and they will need to decrease the amount of memory used during gameplay and especially when loading a save. I hope they don't cut back on graphics for you guys. That seems like the easy way to help with the issue, but obviously that would svck considering the PS3 version is already really ugly compared to the other versions. I hope they do fix the performance issues for you guys. I would be so ticked off if I had bought the PS3 version.

Has anyone looked into if shadow performance has been increased at all with 1.4? What I mean is before the patch, changing the primary/secondary shadow resolution from 1024 to 2048 would drop frame rate by up to 10-15fps in spots for me. Even worse, the littlest changes in iShadowDistance would affect my framerate by factors of 10 or so. Skyboost helped overall performance, but changing shadow settings still had a huge impact on performance. Has anyone looked into if 1.4 added any shadow optimizations? That would be pretty awesome.

While there are some PC users getting similar performance issuse caused by bloated save files, the performance issues on PC are quite different than what you're experiencing on PS3. We're not talking about stuttering and pauses for PS3, we're talking about low framerates caused by unomptimized code and overly heavy CPU usage

I'd be interested in this as well. I think not, based on the interior stuttering I'm still seeing. (And my shadows are Medium, no further .ini tweaks.)

Maybe I should have elaborated. I only got those weaker frame rates in the bottle neck areas, and there were only three that were bad, the one in WR being the worst. The others I still got about 35+. To be clear, before any patch and using the HD mod pack I would still hit 60+ FPS with my system. Keep in mind also, I am using the ultra HD mod (it is a 1.4gigs in files) , that uses 4K and 2K pixel textures, not the lower ones. I run Oblivion at 200 FPS with all HD texture mods and Fallout 3 with the HD pack @ nearly 3gig of improved textures and hit a consistent 100 FPS. Both game setting are all maxed as well.

I've had a bit of a play around with the ini's and settings. I'm now able to get pretty much the same framerate as I was on 1.3.10 + skyboost r4, but now I have textures @ high, plus some other stuff improved (specularity, light, object + actor fade increased by a couple of notches in the options) and grass on!

Skyrim still defaults me to low settings, but it's well worth having a play around if you were struggling with low settings on earlier patches.

xTx