hi, in some areas in the game no matter what settings i turn on. i seem to get a very big dip in frames and i check my GPU usage as it happens and it will say 30% for example. now i know it's nothing my end, everyone else i speak to have the same problem. a good spot is the drunken huntsman in whiterun if you stand from the smiths and look at the drunken huntsman your GPU usage will sink and therefore your frames will drop.

is there any fix for thsi yet or is it just poor coding as usual from bethesda?

INTEL I7 930 @ 2.80GHZ
ASUS P6X85D PREMIUM MOTHERBOARD
6GB RAM 1600 MHZ 7-8-7-20
EVGA GTX 570

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It's not really the GPU being used badly, but rather the CPU-side stuff being so slow the GPU goes idle while waiting for new commands. The game engine's somewhat unoptimal for current PCs and was apparently compiled without many common compiler optimizations, possibly in a last-ditch effort to stop it from crashing or just plain ignorance.

Try the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1325462-skyboost-topic-2/ or the TESV Accleration Layer if you didn't yet. Either of them will replace some of the worst optimized "hot spots" in the engine with improved code.

cheers mate, i'll give that a shot. it just annoys me how it's nearly 2012 and the game ain't optimised for quad cores.

Personally I never saw any change whatsoever when using TESVAL, however I did get a 10-12 fps boost in places such as Markarth and Whiterun using Skyboost.

FYI: I am running an Asus p8z68-v motherboard, i7 2600k oc'd @4.4Ghz, GTX 470, as well as 8 Gb 1333 ddr3 RAM.

The modifications that make the real difference for FPS are the same in both mods. Anyone who got some extra FPS out of SkyBoost but not TESVAL probably did not install or execute the latter correctly

They're similar, but not the same. SkyBoost generally does have the advantage at the moment.

In that case, I would suggest the instructions are incorrect. Installed per the readme, no change in fps whatsoever...until I installed Skyboost.

Enable 4xSuper Sampling (real super sampling, not nVidia's Frankenstein Transparency Supersampling mde) on your GPU and you'll see its usage skyrocket, along with a significant improvement in image quality.

How do i do that mate?. i been using the transparency supersample on this card. i been wondering how to use full supersample. is that with nvidia inspector or whatever it's called?

It's an option under multisample but it's a lot more demading. Skyrim has bugs with AA Mulitsample so I'd avoid it. Supersample is the best and supported by NVIDIA.