Hello fellow TES enthusiasts,

The past weeked I reinstalled Skyrim through Steam after a 3 month period of pretty much no gaming. And now I am once again facing the same bad performance issues that I know from earlier versions. Before I deleted Skyrim 3 months ago I had fixed most issues thanks to a couple third party tools. I remember I used Skyboost (better fps) and SimpleBorderlessWindow (to combat the mouse lag), together with some CCC settings, which granted me a solid 60fps even in Markarth. But this time around I am at a loss. Apparently Skyboost isn't updated to work with the latest version of Skyrim, and SimpleBorderlessWindow for some reason doesn't fix the mouse lag anymore. Especially while aiming with bow&arrows the mouse lag is atrocious. Pretty much no vertical aiming at all.

I was kinda hoping someone around these here forums recognizes these exact same problems and can tell me how to fix them, so I can enjoy playing Skyrim again. Has Skyboost been replaced with something better? Is there a different fix available to combat the mouse lag? Please help me out, get me up to date and up to speed!

Shortlist of my system specs:

OS: Win7 x64
RAM: 12 GB
CPU: 965BE @ stock 3,4Ghz (52 degrees C during load)
VGA: Reference Asus 5870 stock speeds (46 degrees C idle, 60 degrees C during load)
CCC: Driver version 12.3
Resolution: 1920x1080
Skyrim settings: Default "High" settings, distant object detail on "Ultra"
I am not using the HD texture pack, and don't have it installed.


Any help will be much appreciated!!

Skyrim now includes the optimisations Skyboost achieved mate.

Your system is pretty good aside from the CPU speed so you shouldn't be too troubled.

Try just having default High settings, and just drop shadows to medium, see of that helps atall.

Shadows on grass has been introduced which can effect performance.

Yeah, my wife runs Skyrim on two 5850s in Xfire at high settings. Other than what Bigbaddaddy said, I would just add you prob need to drop to Medium gfx settings, and possibly cannot move those distance sliders so far. It really sounds like a hdwe performance prob, we do not have such probs.

Thank you both for your answers. Especially the info on Skyboost has been helpfull as that has probably saved me a lot of frustration cluelessly browsing forums. Big thanks for that.
Now on to the bad performance, I found the culprit. I'm kinda red-faced to admit it but it turns out I have overlooked a setting in my CCC, "Morphological filtering" was checked. That is one mighty resource hungry setting causing my fps to plummit from 60+ to 10-20'ish. Now that I turned it off I can once again bask in all the high quality glory Skyrim has to offer. I can even keep the hq shadows and the mouse lag has vanished.

So again, thank you both for your input.

(ps. if there's a hall of shame somewhere on these forums please move this thread over there)

Oh, man, you ain't kiddin, I tried it once. I thought my computer was going to BSOD before I could exit and turn it off again - or just hang. Was a traumatic experience - computer-speaking.

No, no shame, we all make mistakes like this sometime. Keep your head high.
Ppl that don't admit they make mistakes like these are either liars, or not smart enough to know they make the mistake!