Why are you suprised????

This is a blantant console port, again why the suprise?

I can count on my fingers the NATIVE games that supports quad.

My biggest issue here is that betsheda gave us false recomendations.

If this truly was a pc game then it would inded use your quad.

We shouldn't need a monster CPU just to run a game that's using 2005 shaders, there's no excuse for it.

My CPU is more then enoug for this old engine, but as of now I*m gettin HUGE fps drops inside structures.

Its true. Go change the values on the shadows to 4096 or higher and you'll get great looking shadows at the expense of a gigantic, unbearable cpu load

Bethesda dropped the ball on the PC version. I have to play on lower settings than I should have to, due to this forced dependence on CPU to render assets. Ridiculous.

I love the game, but this is a very stupid design decision, and reeks of "Console itis". PC versions are literally suffering in performance due to the game's code being optimized primarily for the console version.

I guess at best we can hope a mod comes along and allows GPU to take this un-necessary CPU load

That is because skyrim only uses 2 threads, it can't use more because it isn't coded in a way that allows it to use more than 2. Seeing how you are using 25% max, I assume you have a quad core with multithreading (so 8 threads)? 2 out of 8 would be 25%, which means it's using as much cpu as it possibly can. 25% in this case is 100% of what Skyrim can use.
This explains your fps drop when increasing shadow settings. It's the combination of Skyrim using a max of 2 threads, with Skyrim rendering shadows on the CPU that limits your framerate.

Don't both the consoles have more than 2 cores anyway? How can you blame the game being written for two cores on being a console port?

Xbox360 is a triple core and the PS3 is a 3.2ghz PPE with 6 SPEs. None of the architecture is the same.

Now, this I don't quite understand. The minimum specs require a dual core, but it recommends a quad. Why recommend a quad if its not going to use the extra threads? I have a feeling something it just shut off in the coding for quads.

I can have 20 000 cores, that's doesnt mean the game is written for 20 000 different archs.

Look at this game... how can you NOT see it's a blatant console port???

Can't change fov
Can't have proper sound support

Bigges of them all: most of the engine is USING the CPU, hello?

There's a reason why went to USE GPU 8 YEARS AGO, just to lessen the CPU strain.

Too bad the console are now almost a decade behind.

Thank god for CUDA.

You can change the FOV.
Proper sound support? What?

And the engine since Morrowind has been heavily, heavily CPU reliant. Are you going to tell me that Morrowind was a "shoddy console port" too?

All my performance problems were fixed by changing the power options on the control panel, for some reason skyrim didn't wanted toi use full CPU speed so I had huge FPS drops, when i told my CPU to go "balanced" and speed up faster now the game runs very smooth so yea it was a CPU problem.

Amen to the OP.

FOV is easily changed through the console. Sound support is only lacking in the sense that its limited to 16bit for some reason. I'm sure a patch will come out for that.

I find it hard to accept that this game isn't optimized for more than two cores, especially on the consoles since that's what the initial design was for. Both consoles have more than two cores, and I bet its using all the console's processing power to look as good as it does.

With that said, it wouldn't be hard for Bethesda to release a patch to fix the CPU issues. The engine is in no way designed for ONLY two threads.

See the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1255788-gtx580-users-thread/page__view__findpost__p__19191014 for my specs - If I can run it at such a high performance with that hardware, I don't think it's the CPU nor the GPU. My guess is one of four things:

1. Automatic settings in the BIOS underclocks the FSB speed for RAM
2. Skyrim suffers from poor SSD support
3. Lag is actually coming from the soundcard output
4. INI settings are not optimal
5. You haven't set the application to run as Administrator

#1 requires you to go and look into your BIOS and see what the FSB clock speeds are set to. Don't be suprised if it is underclocked because the clock speeds are linked, just replace it with a ratio that has a smaller gap and test it out. As a warning, you might experience lockups as a result.
#2 is hardware-related, so you might try running Skyrim from a HDD instead of a SDD and see if that's the case. If there isn't any difference, and there is nothing substantial on the SDD, you might try removing it and see if there is a difference.
#3 This varies, you could try going to Control Panel -> Sound and see if the default sound's properties has a settable output level. I've heard that Skyrim runs fine at 44KHz and 96KHz. If there isn't such an option then it's likely not your soundcard.
#4 - Try the settings I have posted there.
#5 - This one I actually had to do because of a game-stopping crash at the end of the tutorial, but this seems to be related to accesses by shaders. Just right-click on the application, go to Properties, go into Compatability, and click "Run as Administrator". Hit OK and run Skyrim again.

If all five of those don't work or are not an option, then it may be something else that we haven't considered yet...

They could.....

but it would be difficult and probably require some modifications to source code........and that takes effort. Once developers have your money, they don't do anything that requires effort. Why fix Skyrim when we could work on expansion packs that they will pay for. LOL

I have a feeling is already in the source code and just isn't implemented correctly. Its in their own system requirements for goodness sake. In the end, I'm not sure it would help anyone except low speed quads. Its not maxing out two threads on my i7 running at 4ghz.

Oh, and to those of you that seem to think your core 2 quad is still a decent processor, you really need to look into upgrading soon.

Please tell me and everyone else how we PERMANETLY change FOV that doesn't break achivements.

Consoles, fov breaks when you view map or after x time, also achivmeents breaks
ini breaks achivments

Morrowind was a true pc game, at that time most of the operations were used on CPU.

Last time I checked it's 2011 and not 2005.

My FOV stays in my save game, I only needed to enter the command once and it sticks. I also find it a bit funny how you apparently despise consoles, yet worry about achievements? And the INI doesn't break achievements, that's simply not possible.

And the Skyrim engine is much improved, but isn't new. It's essentially an upgraded version of the Fallout 3 engine, which in turn was an upgraded Oblivion engine, which in turn was an upgraded Morrowind engine. All of these games have been heavily CPU dependant due to their nature.

And Morrowind was 2002, not 2005. Just saying.

I guess I was wront then regarding INI. Thanks for the clarification.

I don't worry about achivements, let's just say i'm not the only one playing this game on my system.

Yes I agree the engine is much improved vs oblivion. But the fact is that this game could have been handled a lot better on the PC side.

Yes I know about morrowdin, the 2005 was regarding the shaders.

Consoles are still using 2005 shaders.

No I don't despise consoles. It's a wonderful thing to have but NOT after 6-7 years. They should have released a new console 3-4 years ago. I'm angry were getting sloppy ports that are based on 2005 technology.

Quite exagerate scenario, to be the truth.

The fact that it is a console port doesn't necessary mean it should be a bad game. There are dozens of good console ports, still they work properly on PC.

Has anyone tried to disable two of their four cores in bios? I would but I am at work. Also something to try might be to force the GPU to run full speed through nvidia control panel; I am sure ati users have that option as well. I will try these once I am home if no one else has yet.

I run in high-medium settings with a crap pc, perfect interiors, when outside i have the random frozen bug.
While monitoring the gpu and the cpu usage, bot in normal times are 50% or less usage.

Then cpu start increase usage, in 3- 4 s it get to 100(the freeze bug happen), then go to 50%-60% again i walk 30s- 2minutes start increase again bug happen.

1. This game is frikkin awesome! I have been lost in it for hours since its release.. And i dont mean lost as in where the hell am I. I mean oblivious to the outside world!

2. I found that my rig lets me play on max settings so long as AA is down to 2. If i go lower it runs better but then jagged adges appear! Ze Horrer! D:

CPU i7 920 2.67 GHz - OC'd to 3 Ghz

GPU Radeon HD 5970 2GB

6 GB of ram. 2 of which windows 7 like to munch on! (more or less anywho)

at full settings AA to 2 i get 30-40 fps outside and 40+ inside places.
Sometime i get lag and jerkyness but it passes and its completly forgivable due to the epicness of skyrim.

I found turning off xbox controler thing and mouse acceleration to give me 5 fps more which was kind

I have always found that any game can be improved performance wise.
I dont know any games that havent been improved after release.. except those which were quickly abandoned..

I also found that most games seem to run suddenly better with GPU driver updates. I got rage and it was unbarable with 10 fps on max settings with AA at 2. Then a driver came out at i was getting 50 fps more or less and then I put AA up to 8 and I could manage 30 fps. But there wasnt much visual difference bwteen 2 and 8. Not enough for me to go "OMG I HATE THIS!* Stomp stomp stomp!

Hope we get a patch or a GPU driver update for it so I can experiment with LOD distances and shadow resolutions abit more!

btw when you are trying to increase the resoluation of shadows do you go from 2048 to 5096 or do you go downward? I cant remember if its one of those odd things wheres its backwards to what you thing in terms of map resolutions and sizes?

oh yeh and Skyrim rules! Have fin in your travels!

If it happens specifically when you're there at night, its probably due to bad cell boundaries. Each shop, with its AI pathing and objects, shouldn't have to be processed since you're not physically inside that cell, but they could have messed up when programming that particular area at that particular time (AI's have different schedules, cells have different lighting schedules).

Using Rivertuner and Playclaw to be thorough, I took some stats at http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/screenshot2ytz.png/ (this is where I get a massive 31 fps drop on ultra, 25 fps drop on low) and these are my per core usage stats. 34% 71% 11% 27% Pretty random if you ask me :/ Gpu usage on this exact spot is at 41% everywhere else its at 15-30% and CPU usage percentages also drops to half off what I wrote... and yet I still get random 15-25 fps drops when looking in a particular direction. So not only does the game render shadows on your CPU but it can't even use it properly for anything else? I'm loving the game to death and It is absolutely beautiful but I really expected an actually stable "new engine" from Bethesda this time.

To give an example of my rig I run BF3 on Ultra with V-Sync on and 2x MSAA and I drop 2-8 fps in SP and MP only when there's a lot of particle effects around, other than that I get a crispy smooth 60fps.

Edit: Lately with all this console focus I feel like I can hear devs saying, "Stop whining you derps, you're lucky we even released a PC version." Then I feel like I have to take what I get because eventually that might be true.

Most probably that's a port from Xbox 360 (easier to port)
Yes Xbox 360 is a Xenon triple core, and you can see in the test below (especially in Minimum column, maximum being capped by vsync), we have a logarithmic curb in which 3 cores are sufficient and an upper limit to have decent fps... after that, there is still a gain, but less than with the 3 first cores.

http://i42.tinypic.com/v8h72d.jpg

http://benchmark3d.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-benchmark

With Windows Task Manager open I can see four out of the eight "CPU Usage History" windows running at about 25%.