Ive read that Skyrim can do ultra setting on HD 5870. Ive been playing on high setting. Ive just started messing with the ultra setting. In the dungeon where my last save is, the game seems to run fine. When i loaded save where i was in Whiterun, the game kind of worked then just slowed down right to a crawl.

So can anyone help me out to get the best possible setting for Skyrim on the HD 5870. Game settings and AMD CCC settings.

Please remember im a noob with theses things and i dont have the time to test every single setting.

it should.
My son is running my old one on high+, but with no LAA mod or tweaks.

You'll always get FPS drops in cities. Every single person does, it's CPU limited, not GPU.

Recently I had two 5870s in CF and really enjoyed them.

Anyway, I suggest starting with AA and setting it to the lowest setting, then working your way back up until you find a balance between quality and performance.

Also, try turning down your Shadow quality to see if that helps.

Your FPS in cities is more related to your CPU, not the graphics card. Knock the shadows down an option or two, pull back actor and item draw distance and these may help.

I was wondering what to tweak in the view distance and detail options. thanks for the fast replys guys. ill be trying these tweaks tonight.

This. You need a good CPU more than a good GPU to run this game well.

i have an i7 950

That will be limiting.

Stating the obvious. But you never know.

Make sure you have the latest AMD/ATI drivers. AMD has released drivers with optimizations for Skyrim in the last weeks. Before that (when the game was released, 11-11-11) AMD/ATI cards performed noticably worse than nVidia cards. With the new drivers they got a huge boost in performance for Skyrim.

Others here might be able to tell you which drivers you need exactly.
But I would suggest starting with the most recent officially released ones.

I downloaded the new 11.12 drivers last night. But ill only get to test out the drivers and the tweats mentioned here, tonight. The 11.11 drivers just messed up my Rage game which was upsetting.

Thank you, all. I did everything that you guys said and the game ran fine. Then i started moving everything back to full one by one and it turns out shadows were the problem. So now i have all the options at full and just shadows on high.

edit: It could be the new drivers because Rage is running perfect as well.

AMD recommends the 12.1previews for skyrim, as the 11.12 do not have the skyrim optimization that were in the 11.11b/c

Thanks, good to know. As i said im using 11.12 now and Skyrim is running fine on ultra setting with shadows on high. Plus Rage is working again. So im very happy.