Hello All, i'm having a frustrating issue. i recently purchused an Asus 7970 TOP (1000mhz version) and I'm now unable to play skyrim. The game is constantly at 60fps, yet indoor environments stutter so badly it becomes unplayable. Please note the list of tried steps below... i'm at a loss now.

Asus 7970 (top) - indoor envrionments stutter to the point of the game being unplayble.

Things I have tried.

- framerate limiter from skyrim nexus, helped stuttering situation a bit, created massive horizontal \ vertical sync issue and flickering fog in the title screen
- disabled Vsync in skyrim and forced it from the card, didn't reoslve
- put card to stock 7970 clock rates and disabled ATI overdrive, didn't resolve.
- reinstalled drivers (using 12.4 drivers).
- forced driver to do anti-aliasing, didn't resolve.

Outdoor environments look great with my default card settings and skyrim set to ultra (runs at 60fps).


o.O is my card is to fast for skyrim?

Yes. On my old config (dual core amd 2,6ghz, 2 Gbyte ram) skyrim run ~ 40-50fps, but no stuttering in- and outdoor. After upgrade X3 460 (tricore 3,4Ghz, 4Gb ram) = always stuttering. With framerate limiter, outdoor ok, but indoor don't, stuttering is present.

VGA is same ati 4850.

My solution: play my skyrim on PS3.

Look into the simple borderless window mod, or SBW for short. Solves stutter for most users.

Unfortunatly I don't see running any game in a window (1080p or otherwise) a solution. This issue is not present in other titles, like crysis, or oblivion, or diablo 3. Just skyrim, and a similar issue in Rage.

See it or not, its a proven fix man. Don't ask me why, TES are funny games.

Its just I find it frustrating when their other titles (recent ones) run without issue. I'd be happy if i could pinpoint it to a Bethesda issue or a catalyst driver issue. I'll give your fix a try however. I put off playing skyrim becuase my 4870x2 was just not quite enough power, now i'm having issues with the more powerful device haha.

For indoor areas the light and anti aliasing play a big part in whether you get a fps drop or not. ATI cards may affect how much of a fps hit you take due to the wierd way they incorporate AA. I use an Nvidia card and if any tranparent AA is used then I will get a large fps hit. ATI cards may use a mix of both AA types and impact performance. Transparent AA is disabled by Beth by default due to the lighting shader they have adopted for Skyrim.

Any transparent AA that is used with the game it will aliase things like reflected light and water and more that is a huge burden on the gpu. If you can disable the AA and use an alternative to the ATI AA that is used like SMAA.

Tldr: Some AA on certain cards will apply AA to things it should not be doing adding massive amounts of burden to the gpu in question.

I used to get it on my AMD 6870, SBW fixed the stutter. Since upgrading to my GTX 570 I have absolutely zero stutter.

So it may well be a driver issue, because when I upgraded my card I uninstalled all amd software then use driver sweeper to clear out left over junk.

Framerate is fine with that .exe file. :\ Thanks for the info. It still feels like fail when i have to check that windowed mode box. I really would like to see this fixed though... or someone ATI or bethesda to acknowledge the issues on their end.. obviously over the next year more and more ppl are going to go to more powerful cards.

Have you tried downsampling your sound?

Same here... went from an HD6970 to GTX670 and my stutter has gone totally. It drove me nuts and I was always told (on this forum) its due to the engines 64hz rendering system, but maybe its an AMD driver problem, or engine/driver/card issue.

Has to be a combination of things including the 64hz bug mate. People with all kinds of hardware have the stutter.

I'm just glad I don't get it now