Playing on a 1080p plasma TV

System:
Dell XPS 1730M Laptop
Core 2 Extreme 2.8 GHz @ 3.0 GHz
Nvidia 8800M GTX w/SLI
4 GB DDR2 667
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
Windows 7 64 bit

Mods: Skyboost, SkyUI, a few minor texture mods

Settings: 2x AA via the beta driver, 8x AAF via driver, AO (performance), Med shadows

Dragon's Reach vanilla: 21 FPS
Dragon's Reach Skyboost: 27 FPS
Dragon's Reach Skyboost + GPU overclock: 23 FPS

I'm overclocking using nTune, putting another 100 MHz on the core clock, 100 MHz on the memory, and 250 MHz on the shader clock. And somehow this is decreasing my performance by about 15%. And heat isn't a factor since this is occurring right upon startup when things are still cool, and additionally heat is in check even after playing a while.

The same phenomenon happens in outdoor areas as well but it seems to be less (though I haven't tested in many other areas).

I understand that in CPU-limited areas I should not expect much gain from overclocking my GPUs, but I'm at a loss as to why this is killing my performance. Anyone have any ideas?

It's a rather old LAPTOP running a 1080p tv, regardless that's why your performance is [censored], my guess on the failed OC is just that, if it's slowing down before it heats up I'd be willing to bet you screwed up the clocks.

I've experianced that myself on my old gtx275 and current 570. I can't tell you why it happens though! I found that certain oc would lower my performance in games, however I eventually found a sweet spot that did what I expected, ie improved performance.

I think some(or all) oc need to find a "sweet spot" or perhaps a better word "harmony" between the different clocks in order to flow right. So keep trying! As I said, my two cards did this, but I eventually found an oc that worked. Also don't forget that oc two cards is twice the work. What's stable for one might not work for the other. I'd try oc one at a time and then find a happy middle ground for both, because that might be screwing things up for you also. This is all speculation and just what I experianced/conclusions I came to.

Some GPUs start out with stock clocks set that are too high for good stability and cooling. It depends on the hardware. This game seems more amenable to CPU Overclocking than to GPU Overclockin, IMO.

I have never seeb enough of an improvement in games to bother overclocking the video cards. I might get 5% to 10% more in benchmarks (typically less than 5%), but that does not translate into any discernible differences in the game.

Plus, since the issues with this game are more CPU related rather than GPU related, doing more to get your CPU happy will help you. One thing that can help is to do a strict clean boot, less CPU threads to chew on, more game performance.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796

I have found similar results to OP ...OC'ing my gpu for Skyrim makes almost no difference (for all the reasons already stated...cpu dependant game etc), although my card doesn't OC very well in general (some games a small boost gets big benefits...some games I need to downclock)


I'd sell my grandmother for 5-10% performance increase.

Yeah I didn't expect much of a boost, but a decrease?

I'm mainly trying this because I suspect I'm somewhat VRAM limited. Each card is only 512mb of DDR3... If I go to a wooded area and spin around my FPS will plunge down to single digits. Texture mods seem to work great in most places (I use the medium res ones when available), but in other places my system chokes. Specifically I'm testing in the forest south of Riften lake. There are dense woods, lots of bushes, and a mountain backdrop which isn't too far away. Spinning around in that location or fighting a bear means I get a terrible frame rate... I was hoping this type of scenario would be more GPU limited and helped slightly by GPU overclocking but I guess not...