Apologies if this has already been covered but my issue seems different to the others I've read here.

Start a game, very good framerates. I can be in an area getting solid 60 fps then after about a minute the frame rates will start rising and falling rapidly. From 60 to high 20's then back in a couple of seconds, over and over.
There is no catalist to this, it will happen even if I just stand still with nothing going on. If I'm in a spot where I'm getting say, 45 fps then it will fall to low teens and then rise again, constantly.
Alt tabbing out does fix it but it just returns after a minute or so again.

I have tried seetting the priority of TESV.exe to high which appears to fix it but it hasn't really, it's just the tabbing out that has sorted things for a minute or so until it starts again.
Tried playing in very low resolutions and minimal settings but it still does it.

I have an Alienware laptop with SLI 280M's. I'm using the latest 290.53 drivers. I don't have many games but the ones I do have are not doing this.

I've defragged, re-installed drivers, disabled everything I can to check for inteference from something else and I run very few processes or background stuff.

Any help appreciated.

Go into the Nvidia 3d profiles (under the nvidia control panel->manage 3d settings), find the one for Skyrim and then find the 'power mode' and change adaptive to 'full performance'. Profit. (I bet any ways, there was something about how my own desktop 280s interacted with that driver which made skyrim vs the driver occasionally drop the clock rates but for me it'd never return them to full)

Thanks for the advice mate, unfortunately it didn't have any effect, still doing the same thing.

You're using a laptop; by any chance is your Windows 'Power Management' set to 'Power Saver' mode? If so, try turning it to 'Performance' or 'Balanced'

(Under 'Control Panel - Hardware and Sound - Power Options' in Windows 7)

@BumpInTheNight - Your Computer is ridiculous

Yeah all power options are on high.

On my computer the game runs quite well outside... usually goes to hell when there is a lot of mist around and framerates drop about 10 FPS if inside.

Framerates got worse in 1.3.10 I am hoping the next patch fixes it. Sadly I cannot reinstall the game without the patch as I bought it online at Steam, and cannot reinstall Vanilla mode.

I am not running it on max settings running the game on 1440 x 900 with FXAA no regular AA or animorphic otherwise the settings are on low except for textures. Before 1.3.10 I could run on significantly higher settings with better FPS.

I7 1.6 Gigaherts Q 720
6 Gigabytes DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 64-Bit
Nvidia Geforce GT 230M

@bradF430

You might try everything in this post. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1328260-frame-rate-drops-every-5-10s-outdoor/
Do you have anything called "Gamer OSD" ? (Asus) If so uninstall it. That did the thing for me.

Martin

Anyone know if CCC has a power setting similar to this? I don't see it anywhere.
My win7 power settings are set to High Performance Mode



Yep Riva Tuners OSD that MSI Afterburner was causing me issues so I shut it off seemed to solve the issue.

Thanks Martin but already tried all those and don't have gamer OSD.
It's a shame because the other guys problem sounds identical to mine and he fixed it by dropping Gamer OSD.

For now the game is unplayable but it's not all bad, I've just ordered a new machine with every imaginable upgrade so that should solve my problem!

It's amazing to me the trouble people go to get this crappy PC port to run well. Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of it myself, and do love the game now that it's running as it should. I had huge framerate issues at launch which no .ini tweaks would seem to solve. I had a Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz in a Gateway OEM motherboard with PCI Express x16 1.0 for my Geforce GTX 470, and 4GB of slow DDR2 @ 667MHz. The framerate problems I was having was due to my CPU speed which I couldn't overclock due to the motherboard. I spent close to $350 on a new motherboard, Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler (which is amazing) & PC Power & Cooling Silencer 910w PSU. I bought all this to overclock my Q6600 B3 (now 3.6GHz, 1.5vcore - amazing for Q6600 B3 I know), have DDR3 @ 1600MHz & PCIE x16 2.0. After all that trouble and money I got the game running much better but still had framerate issues due to my CPU. It wasn't until Skyboost that I could run Skyrim maxed and beyond without ever dropping below 30fps @ 1080p. Long story short, I'm an idiot and spent $350 to play Skyrim. I am happy with the new hardware, and my old gaming PC now has new legs, but man what does that say about the game. I'm not alone obviously, because you are spending money on a new system just for this game. I know a lot of people who have spent $1000s getting a new PC or CPU for Skyrim. I wonder if Bethesda is making comission on all the hardware people buy?

Quick question, have you tried Skyboost yet? before you spend all this money on a new PC, you should try it and see if it helps at all. It optimizes CPU usage and has given me about a 40% increase in performance/fps which is huge. Made the game from choppy to smooth. I still wonder why Bethesda chose to ship the PC version of Skyrim as is. It obviously didn't get any attention in hardware optimization. The engine is over 8 years old, and is not meant for new hardware or multi-threaded CPUs. Thank god for modders though, at least we can count on them to fix the game. Anyway, good luck on your quest to fix Skyrim. If you complete it, you will be rewarded with 500 gold, Orcish Sword & a bill for $1000.

Yep, tried Skyboost. It works brilliantly and did improve my framerates but didn't stop the rising and falling problem so it's still unplayable.
The new rig is coming in at about 4,500 pounds, don't know what that would convert to in USD, about 6 and a half grand maybe?
It's for Skyrim and X3 Rebirth when it's released. I don't actually play games very often but when I do I want them to work!

Don't be surprised if Skyrim has almost the same issues on a high end computer. There are enough postings and examples of people with ultra high computer specs and still are having problems with Skyrim but all other games are working perfect. But also people with mid range computer specs where Skyrim runs just beautifull.

If your framerate stays above an acceptable threshold most of the time, you might want to consider capping your FPS to maintain consistency. I find that keeping mine capped at 30 (using http://dxtory.com/v2-download-en.html) gives the stability I like.

Well sorry to bump but after much messing about the new rig is here. Everything on Ultra in Skyrim with max res and I havn't found anywhere in the game that the FR drops below 60.
Loverly!

The previous nachine (which is still pretty good) has been passed on to the girlfriend who hates Skyrim so no probs there.

Thanks for all the advice anyway.

Check your driver settings and make sure you don't have anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering set manually, because those can override your Skyrim settings.
(i.e. either turn those things to Low or Off or set them to 'Application Settings')