Just yesterday I got a new video card installed. It's an AMD 6850 HD and I upgraded from an AMD 5670 HD. With my old card I was playing Skyrim on High, that's what the launcher said to set the game at and it worked (mostly, Skyrim is full of bugs and problems, most of which aren't being fixed). Yesterday after installing my new card the launcher said to set my game to Ultra, so I did and played last night with that setting. Today after the patch the launcher says my new card should play on High and indeed if I try to play on Ultra it doesn't work. Pre patch framerate was ~30 outside on Ultra (with some dips in specific locations) and pegged at 60 inside. Now its 10 fps on Ultra, period, doesn't matter where. Why? What changed so that I can't play the game like I was?

Also the mouse is bound to frame rate and runs at a different speed depending on which screen you are on. It ALWAYS lags on the map. Some menus lag, some don't. The game has had terrible control issues from day one, this now the 3rd patch hasn't fixed anything. There are other bugs with keybinds (favorites deleting themselves, cant hotkey off hand weapons) that are untouched. Shadows render as if they are in 1985, PacMan had better shadows. This game has been out a month now and 3 patches later these horrible (mouse control is the worst IMO, if my interface with the game is broken, the game is broken) bugs STILL persist and each patch makes new bugs. Just what is going on at Bethesda?

Messed around with this some more. The weird thing is I can't find a bottleneck. Specs:

AMD Phenom 2 x6 1035t @ 2.6 Ghz
6Gb Ram
AMD 6850 1 GB Sapphire
Win 7 64 bit

My utilities say nothing is being maxed. The processor barely hits 50% using primarily only one core. The GPU goes a bit higher at spots but often it's only at 65% or less. No temps rise, nothing is strained. I don't get why yesterday in Whiterun I was getting 20-40 fps in ultra and today I get 10 fps in the same place with the same settings. Especially when my computer isn't even being used, much less strained. The GPU was at 50 C while I was testing it for an hour today. CPU's never got above 38.

Well, patch 1.3 came, I guess it's a safe bet to say ithas somehing to do with it or anything else that changed. Saw a big deal of people saying their performance dropped a lot, cause unknown.
Personally haven't really noticed any change for the better or worse. Apart from mouse sensitivity. Again.

I noticed my FPS in outdoor wooded areas was substantially less after patch 1.3. I was hitting 20FPS when I'd normally see 40-60FPS. It was pretty noticeable.

Im not having this issue.

Also getting CTD now since 1.3. Had a few before but the 4gb launcher seemed to help with that. Tonight, 2 crashes even with the launcher.


This article is relevant as well.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/08/hey-bethesda-could-you-fix-skyrim/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29

After much fuss and fiddle, tweaking and many many many many many game restarts....here is what I found to be the best for my set up. I'm posting this in hopes that someone else may find some use and also /fingers crossed that Bethesda will read it and fix something. First, my complete specs are:

AMD Phenom 2 x6 1035t ~2.6 Ghz
6 Gb ram
Win 7 64 bit
Sapphire AMD HD 6850 1 Gb DDR5
This is a Dell, so it's not overclocked, factory specs, same on vid card.

I am NOT using ENBseries anything, that mod is causing a 10 fps loss for me.
I AM using texture mods including Bella's faces, Improved water, UI/Inventory mods, Lock picking mod, and the 4Gb Launcher.
I AM using the ATI/AMD fix found http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2182 along with the 4Gb launcher. I tried adding the addendum to the shortcut that another user suggested in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1304819-how-to-allow-nvidia-and-ati-software-detect-4gb-launcher-possible-large-performance-increase/ thread and my game crashed, a lot.

My settings are as follows:
I have vSync (ipresentinterval=1) turned ON in the skyrimprefs.ini file
All AntiAliasing (AA) turned OFF in the game options. All Anisotropic Filtering turned OFF in the game options. I have these two options forced on with my video card through CCC. I have AA set to 8x Morphological and Adaptive Multi-sample AA, AF is set to 16X. Using the game settings caused a severe fps drop (15-20 fps).
I have vsync on my card set to OFF since the game engine requires it.
I have triple buffering ON.
Catalyst AI is set to MAX.
I have FXAA turned OFF.
All textures are set to HIGH, all reflect is ON, all view distances are at 8 or higher (except grass at 5).
I have also tweaked shadows somewhat using http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide guide. My shadows are set to high in the menu, but look better than what that would suggest.

Using the above I am able to play at ~40 fps overall. More inside, less in Markath. Whiterun is ~40 fps (this is where I tested most of my loads and whatnot) with directional dips in fps. My computer is showing the game doing at least something on all 6 cores, that's actually surprising. The heaviest use is on core 0 at up to 70%. Other cores use less, none are taxed or even briefly ping full on. My GPU will spike to 100%, only briefly (less than a second) at the times I have directional fps drop. Memory, at least on my tests, never got over 1 Gb. Temps are all very low, CPU's @ 35C and GPU @ 50C. I DO have crashes that I did not have before 1.3. They vary in where and what I was doing from fighting dragons to fast traveling.

So basically my game looks like ultra settings, but I still can't actually set it to ultra. Before the newest patch, 1.3, I was playing on full ultra. This has taken A LOT of back and forth messing with things that I, as the consumer and not a computer expert shouldn't have to do. This is your job Bethesda, get to it. I'm hoping this info can help so that the next patch allows me to return to just hitting ultra and being done with it.

LAA patch....nearly 6 weeks after game launch, well thanks I guess. Game STILL doesn't work using in game AA or AF settings. Causes loss of 30 fps and texture issues ( I just discovered this while messing with mods in the last week). For the "patch" to make absolutely sure it wasn't a mod causing my issues I deleted all of them. Deleted everything in the Skyrim folder (except the really large files like texture and meshes with the skyrim logo on them), had Steam verify and download what I had removed of the default files. Ran the game unmodded, pure Skyrim vanilla and same crap. You make wonderful worlds Bethesda, crappy software. Time will tell if it's stable or not. If it isn't, I'll let you know.

If anyone else reads this, or cares, I'm still using the above settings forcing AA and AF externally with the same performance as before. 12.1 CCC drivers, 11.12 didn't work at all.