As the title says, I would really like to love this game, but as per usual with Bethesda, I'm spending more time trying to fix the game than playing it. Today's issue is sort of a (hopefully) false dichotomy. With vsync turned on, I experience really really bad mouse lag. Like I'll move the mouse, and literally a full second later it will move on screen (mouse acceleration is disabled). This is while maintaining around 60fps according to fraps. As you can imagine, this makes the game completely unplayable.

Now, if I turn vsync off, the mouse goes back to normal, but I get really bad screen tearing. It's so bad that I can barely even see what I'm doing. It seems like almost every other frame is tearing. Since my computer is about mid-range, it also hovers around 60fps without vsync.

I also tried the fps limiter mod, as well as the fps limiter in the newest nvidia drivers.

Is there anything I can do to actually play the game, or is it just a case of Bethesda doing their usual? This is the company that didn't even bother to compile the PC binaries with the proper compiler flags for release, hence the recent acceleration mod. I mean, do they hire high school students or something? I can't even believe that a professional develop would make such a rookie mistake.

My specs:

Windows 7
Intel i5 2500k @ 4.2ghz
8GB DDR3 1333mhz RAM
Asus P8P67 pro
Nvidia GTX 460
Seagate 500GB 7200rpm hard drive
60hz generic monitor @ 1440x900 (native res)
Logitech G5 optical wired mouse

Try using Windowed mode.

Hi,
I have the g-3 mouse...test some things for me..(i have tested and can verify).

All that is necessary to do is, load to the Black screen(has logo of dragon) and load game options.
this is the screen we will use to check things.

Turn on max settings for AA/AF. At this point you will probable have mouse lag and Screen pauses.


Turn all AA/AF settings OFF. At this point you should have smooth smoke & no pauses.


Now I should already know what GPU you have but alas i don't (post some specs when asking for help in a hardware forum>>)

Now test in-game to see if the Lag is gone>?

IF gone use your GPU's control panel to set AA/AF

The lag happens when the GPU takes longer to process a frame than it takes the game to run the its usual loop and push the commands for rendering a new one. After there's a long enough queue of commands (lasting many frames) built up, every input takes the whole duration of the queue to show results. Even Morrowind lags like this on current cards if you're running high AA and walk into the ridiculously inefficient Propylon chamber particle effects

Doesn't have to be this way; many games do have a "reduce input lag" option that can throttle their Direct3D behavior so they'll just wait for the GPU to catch up before pushing more commands into the queue. This can make things slightly less smooth as there's less queued commands for the GPU to keep executing if the game loop stalls for some reason (loading new content, scripts, etc).

Skyrim doesn't have such an option, though. You might be able to get a similar effect by setting the "Maximum pre-rendered frames" setting in the Nvidia control panel to a low value (1-2). If the input still lags try reducing the antialiasing a bit, multisampling's murder on the video memory bus when used with HDR.

I did post my specs... They're right at the end of my post. Though I did forget to mention VRAM size: it's 1gb, and the brand of the card is PNY.

I'm not at my computer right now, but I can tell you that I run with AA and AF off in the launcher, and with them set to no AA and 8x AF in nvidia control panel.

Antialiasing has always been completely off. I had maximum pre-rendered frames at 0, but perhaps I should set it to 1 or 2?

Have you tried using Triple Buffering with vSync?

Yes. I don't see any difference. I enabled triple buffering in nvidia control panel, but who knows if it forces it in-game or not.

Usually GPU control panels only force triple buffering for OpenGL games, which are few and far between.

Use a program such as D3DOverrider to force it for Skyrim. You should hear a visual cue when launching the game.

I never understood the vsync stuff. I tend to get the MOST HORRIBLE mouselag men and mer can imagine when dealing with stuff like my inventory, but in game, especially 3rd person, I don't notice anything...

Apart from that, should forcing vsync by video driver and iPresentInterval=0 male any difference to setting the video card driver stuff to auto and turning it on by ini file?