So I've been playing Skyrim for a couple of weeks and this issue has been persistant, but hard to nail down. Doesn't seem to change at all with higher or lower settings in-game.

For the most part Skyrim runs alright (30-40 FPS, occasionally dropping to 20ish in some scenes), but on a regular basis it will take a huge FPS hit and run at 2-4 FPS for a few minutes then return to normal. The game may run for an hour or more without further issues or just five minutes. Some users have reported that alt-tabbing resolves similar issues, but I haven't noticed much of a difference between that and just waiting it out.

System Info:

System: Vista (32 bit)

CPU: AMD Athlon? 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.12 GHz

ASUS M3A78-EM Motherboard


GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4670

RAM: 4GB


I'm reasonably sure this is a hardware issue as the fan always speeds up just after performance returns to normal. I'm also confident that it is not related to in-game quality settings as the issues is the same running on high or as low as possible. Skyrim is currently running on Medium/High settings with a few mods (4GB LAA, ENBSeries, and a couple of re-textures). Catalyst has AA and AF set to run on application settings. Started with 11.11 and since updated to 11.11c, not that it should make much difference with a Radeon HD 4xxx series card. I've changed a few BIOS settings as well to no particular effect one way or another (just turning on cool'n quiet tech etc, no overclocking).

Sounds like others are having similar issues with newer ATI/AMD hardware as well, but I have yet to find any fixes.

gonna take a stab in the dark here....

When the FPS drops was it soon after being in the menu? CPU sees this as no activity and Cool-n-Q could Downclock you.

Anyway...cool n quiet is downclocking your CPU, if it happens in the game you will get 1-2 FPS . try without cool-n-quiet see if having a Locked CPU clock helps you any.

Newer boards have different names for the variable clock and can cause the same things. QTP is what its called on my board. (no sure on the name ) but disabled none the less.

Caution should be warned here monitor temps to make sure your Clock speed is right.

Did you do any INI tweaking?

To best figure out where the bottleneck is, fill out these values:

Average FPS in Drunken Huntsmen (shop at entrance of Whiterun):
Average FPS in Drunken Huntsmen while panning camera (looking around):
Average FPS in Whiterun:
Average FPS in Whiterun while panning camera:
Average FPS a bit outside of Whiterun in the wild:
Average FPS a bit outside of Whiterun in the wild while panning camera:

Also let's double-check your Snowstorm FPS. Take a carriage to Dawnstar (only 50 gold!) and see how badly the snowstorm effects your FPS.

Does it happen when you're standing still or only when you're moving? If the latter, it could just be that it's freezing while it loads new cells.

If you can watch GPU and CPU usage, it can help see what's happening. I notice most of the frame drops occuring when CPU usage is high, and then GPU usage drops off a bit since it can't get enough info passed to it.

As far as I can tell cool n quiet is disabled in the BIOS. It "feels" like this is still the issue though, but I can't tell if cnq or something else is still downclocking the CPU. The timing is rather random though. I've seen slowdowns while fighting a dragon, mousing over an item/NPC, in towns/outside/dungeons, where ever. Sometime bringing up the map triggers the FPS drop, sometimes it clears up while the map is open.

I've tried doing tasks that stress the CPU to wake it up, but nothing seems to have much effect. Yesterday I played for a couple of hours without issue, today it's jamming up every 10 minutes or so.

Yes, I have done plenty of INI tweaking. I can nudge my normal FPS up to 50 or so, or down to 20 given various settings. Currently I'm running at 30FPS (+/- 5) just about everywhere, but nothing seems to have any effect on the periodic slowdowns one way or the other.

Are you looking for something in particular with this info? The issue isn't that a particular combination of visual circumstances (distant detail, shadows, etc.) will cause a marked FPS drop. The game will be running at 30-40 FPS and spontaneously drop to 3. One time I'll be moving around when it occurs, another it might be halfway through turning the page of a book.

If you don't find any problems with the game, and you have an easily accessible case, try to see if there is dust on the fan. I know it's silly, but i had a fair share of problems where my cpu locks (stops working to lower it's temperature) and then starts back again. The stock fans on some of the intel processors are really crap, but it could be an issue with overheating. Could you check the CPU Temp as you play? A decent program for that Is SpeedFan. If you're on a desktop, anything past 70 is troublesome, and you should take a look at the fan. If you're on a notebook, higher temperatures can be tolerated, but i'm not sure how high.

Edit: When i say dust i mean a full blown blanket of dust, not just a little