So I recently built a gaming pc using the gtx 680, i5 2500k, and 8gb of ram. Everything has been working flawlessly, except skyrim. I noticed that sometimes skyrim will go to about 30fps? It seems like it should NEVER do that with my hardware. I play at a 1600x900 resolution, and have the updated my video card drivers.

Skyrim is more optimized than it was at launch. But it is still not the most optimized game out there and is very CPU bound. Your video card isnt limiting your performance. I drop to 35-40FPS on my system sometimes. Are you running any mods?

Pure Water, and fxaa post process injector, and I think dance of death.

Where does it go to 30 fps? There are specific locations that will tax the fastest of CPU's & bring it crashing down into the low thirties unless you have an overclocked Sandybridge, Any specific areas?

My system happily romps around 90% of Skyrim at a limited 58fps, Riverwood/Riften/Markarth are the exceptions to this & i'm used to getting large framerate drops if i look a specific way.
1600x900 with a 680? *swoons*

Outside ustengrav looking around. It drops to about 35 fps.

Er, you should be playing at 1920 x 1080 at 100fps with those specs.
Something has obviously gone very wrong.
Did you download the thingy that allows SKYRIM to utilize 4gb ram?

I get better performance with my HD 5770.

Wow. Skyrim has that feature on its own now, so you don't really need that anymore.

How would I go about getting my framerate shown in my Skyrim game?

Use an application like Fraps. (free version is fine)

So no solutions anyone can think of? Currently reinstalling skyrim now.

First off, what settings are you using? Can you give some other locations where it drops to 30 fps? Maybe some screenshots with the framerate displayed so we can compare properly.

I made a thread about framedrops and gave some screenshots:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1374252-frame-rate-killers-in-skyrim-on-nvidia-600-and-amd-7000-series-cards/

You can also try overclocking the CPU and see if it helps.

Somewhat fixed? I had on anisotropic filtering forced on the nvidia control panel, and when I turned it off, in that area I got about 10 more fps, so now I get about 45. This is still a bit strange, but I can live with it. Maybe it will get fixed soon through drivers or something.

Do you have Ambient Occlusion enabled in Nvidia? If so, disable it. Ever since patch 1.5 it is not visible active any more yet it consumes a LOT of fps.

Did you install all the drivers for your motherboard ? People always mention videocard-drivers. But if you miss a particular mobo-driver, your PCIE-bus might not run at full speed. I think GPU-Z shows the bus-speed (nVidia Inspector certainly does).

People say "Skyrim should run at 100 fps at all times".
No.
Fps depends on lots of stuff. CPU, videocard, resolution, addons, texture-packs, graphics settings, where you are in the game, what direction you are looking, what time of day (lighting), etc. Each of these factors can have a huge impact on framerates.

When I bought Skyrim in November, I had a E8500 cpu (3.1GHz) and a gtx260 videocard.
I now have a i5-3570K and a gtx680.
I still don't have 60 fps everywhere.

Note, I kept enabling more eyecandy, until I found framerates too low.
That means I play with:
1920x1200 resolution. 8xMSAA (via launcher), 4xSSAA transparency (via nvidia control panel), very high SSAO (via nvidia inspector), 16xAF. Official high-res texture pack. A bunch of addons (Vurt's, water, lush grass, SMIM, better snow, faces, etc).

These are framerates I got with 1) E8500+gtx680 and 2) i5-3570K+gtx680.
At the stairs in Whiterun, looking down at tree and city: 27 fps (E8500) - 49 fps (i5-3570k)
Markath, at the entrance gate: 24 fps - 44 fps
Markath, above smith, looking down at lower area, at night: 20 fps - 38 fps
Markath, same spot, but with morning light: 29 fps - 42 fps
Soltitude, at the entrance gate: 25 fps - 38 fps
Soltitude, middle, looking at the castle at the end of the street, at night: 37 fps - 40 fps
Riften, square, at night: 33 fps - 43 fps
High Rothgar, outside, front, looking at the steps, daylight: 27 fps - 27 fps
High Rothgar, garden, back, daylight: 45 fps - 45 fps
Riverwood: 35 fps - 41 fps.

As you can see, getting a faster CPU did improve my framerates. But in some spots, it didn't make a difference at all ! The weirdest thing was High Rothgar. There isn't that much too see, but still framerates were only 27 fps ! And the CPU didn't matter at all ! Something weird going on there. Maybe the snow blowing over the steps ? Maybe lots of stuff you don't see that is still rendered ?

Anyway, I don't think there is anything wrong with my machine. These are the framerates the game gives me. I see no issue that sometimes framerates are > 60, and sometimes lower. No stuttering, even when framerates < 30. I know "very high SSAO" has a 30% fps penalty, but I think it's worth it. I know 8xMSAA looks just as good as 4xMSAA, but I don't care about fps penalty. I like eyecandy. (PS. If you want SSAO, use nVidia inspector to set the "ssao profile" to "fallout3". Details in other threads on this forum).

I hope these numbers can help you understand if your machine is running fine or not.

I'm sure this isn't the case, but make sure the gtx 680 is selected in the GPU drop down tab in the configuration settings.
There's just no reason why this card isn't eating this game alive.
You could try turning off AA and AF. That will free up 20+ fps
And they don't add much to the visuals imo

Here's my SKYRIM 50-60fps:
i5 2320
8gb ram
HD 5770

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd_Ef4sUA20

Pahtheist: Did you notice all those add-ons he uses? He didn't even list them all, you can't assume you know. Most of them reduce performance, and many of them have a cumulative effect on performance. IMO this seems par for his system. To each his own.

Installed Fraps. Stood outside Ustengrav and looked around, framerates never dropped below 58. Same for Markarth, even walked throughout, 60FPS steady. Settings: Ultra, Reflect sky off (don't like the effect), 2xAA overridden by CCC. Xfire disabled.

I'm seeing AO in my game just fine. Latest patch. Nvidia 560ti.

Thanks for your post. I have skyrim completely maxed out, except without fxaa, and no mods, and I still only get 35fps? Don't you think something is wrong there? And how can I update my motherboard drivers?

Yes, if you have 30 fps often, then that seems a bit low.
If you have mostly 50-60 fps, and sometimes dropping to 30-40 fps, then I am not sure. I think with a vanilla (non-modded) game, you should get close to 60 most of the time. But I'm not sure. (I never run vanilla, I always have lots of visual extras).

Your motherboard came with a DVD/CD that has drivers. If you didn't build the PC yourself, then you can download drivers from the vendor's website. Figure out what motherboard you have (brand and type). You can use a free software tool to do that. E.g. a free tool called CPU-Z shows you what motherboard you have (3rd tab). Then go to your vendors website (Asus, ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte, or whatever brand you have). And search for the drivers. Shouldn't be too hard.

I have done this already.

what aa settings are you running?

if you're basing your performance issues on the area around ustengrav with all the grass and fog and whatnot; that's just one of the worst areas of the game, at least since the last patch anyways. used to be fine in that area but now it will kill performance there particularly if you are running with supersampling on. for comparisons sake; i have 2600k @ 4.3 and gtx 680 and my fps will drop into the 40's there with 4x supersampling.

8x anti aliasing, and yeah I had my suspicions of that area.