Greetings gentlemen,

As you're probably all aware of, performance in Skyrim has increased quite a bit since it's initial release. However there are still parts in the game that turn out to be serious frame rate killers.
So I wondered how well the new generation of AMD and Nvidia cards handle these worst case scenarios. Unfortunately, many review sites don't really look for these worst case scenarios. Hell, there are still many that don't even show minimum frame rates in their results (I know, what a bunch of tw*ts, right?).

So I took a stroll down to Markarth and searched for that one special scenery that, with great love and care, would stomp my frame rate to a pulp.

This is the worst one I could find.
This screen shot is taken on the ultra preset (yes, that means with 8x AA and shadow detail on ultra), vsync on, official high res textures pack installed, at 1920x1080 and no mods installed:

http://oi45.tinypic.com/2vunbyg.jpg

This next screen shot is taken on the low preset and even here it doesn't reach 60 FPS:

http://oi49.tinypic.com/r03ztv.jpg

Here are my humble specs for reference:

Core i7 930 @ stock (had to put the stock cooler back on since previous cooler started rattling )
HD Radeon 5970 2GB
6GB DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s

So I'm curious what frame rates do people with 600 and 7000 series cards get in this scenery? If you can provide us with a screen shot with a FPS counter and your specs, that would be nice .
This way we can get some better idea about CPU/GPU combinations in a worst case scenario like this.
People with other cards are welcome to post as well of course .

Well I actually get no reduction in that area on my rig:

Intel Core i7-3930k
Nvidia GeForce GTX 590
8 GB RAM
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit

All game settings on ultra with 8xAA, 16xAF @ 1920x1080 (FPS capped to 60 by VSync)

In fact to be honest, I'm not sure I've ever seen the FPS drop below 60 anywhere!

Here's a screenie showing FPS at the exact same spot as you:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/401/markarthfps.jpg/


Stannie

Interesting. On a single 7970 got 26-27fps. With two in crossfire...24! (12.5 beta drivers)

Overclocking both cards to 1100/1500 and cpu from 3.7 GHz to 4.3 did NOT increase frame rate at all!

With everything--morph, super sampling, Surface Format, etc. with or without TESV Pre-defined Application still getting 22fps on a 2560x1440 monitor. Beautiful, but it is still only DX9...

You see in my sig below what I am running, and neither me nor my wife gets frame rates low enough to become annoying in any place in Skyrim. As you can see, neither of us has weak computers, as a matter of fact mine is quite high-end, and her computer components were quite high end just a year ago. I am not going to post framerates as I don't have a prob with them, Afterburner's frame rate indicator doesn't seem to work on Skyrim, so I don't know how anyway; not that I want to take the time to do so. I should prob also note that I have turned AA to 2x on both systems. So my morsel of info is I believe you are incorrect about the link to the 7000 series cards, it may be CPU/chipset/PCIe bus related. That's my 2cents for what it is worth.

PS: I don't consider AA to be very useful. It was invented when "high" resolutions were 800x600, and now that resolutions are >4 times what they were then, AA doesn't make as much of a difference; might even be indiscernible to most ppl.

Welcome to Skyrim, a place where everything relies on the CPU.

Does NOT seem to make ANY difference whatsoever!

@StannieDum: Thanks for the screen shot


Wow, that is brutal. I tested again and I also get negative scaling (from 12.1 all the way up to 12.5 beta). I thought AMD had fixed this a while back but apparently not.

Unfortunately I still don't have a new CPU cooler so I'm stuck with the stock one. So I can't test my overclocks.

Yeah but, what FPS are you getting?
(Sorry if I missed where you say)

FPS are displayed in the screenshots I posted.