The truth behind skyrim performance : V - Skyrim

» Fri May 18, 2012 10:18 am

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?

Upwards:) Also that'll be 4096, typo I'm sure. If you set shadows to Ultra it is at 4096 already, I found that having it at 4096 and changing shadow filter to 1 in Skyrimprefs.ini looks better.

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:49 am

I play on high settings on my Nvidia GTS240 and have no issues wth frame rates beyond the occasional massive drop I can fix by alt-tabbing out of the game twice. Thats in 1920x1080 res on my 32in monitor.

» Fri May 18, 2012 8:49 am

I play on high settings on my Nvidia GTS240 and have no issues wth frame rates beyond the occasional massive drop I can fix by alt-tabbing out of the game twice. Thats in 1920x1080 res on my 32in monitor.

This topic is on CPU bottleneck so it would make sense to mention your CPU. I would venture to guess you are one of those guys who has no clue what framerate they are at and thinks 20 fps feels good.

The gts240 is a horribly week card.

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:19 pm

I seem to be in the minority.

I'm using GTX 580's with 3gbs each, at 6050x1200, on default "High" settings. The little time I spent in the game so far (it's whacked for us triple monitor users), MSI Afterburner was reporting the following:

GPU usage @ 99%, on both cards.
1661mbs VRam being used.
60 fps

Again, my problem isn't so much with fps, it's with the utter lack of Triple Monitor support. Not to mention the audio issues and their "Fix". How can I set my audio to 44000hz when my sound card doesn't drop down that low? But there's problems all around for every PC gamer with Skyrim
New TES games used to be at the forefront of pushing gaming graphics. Imagine how good Skyrim could have looked with DX11. Instead, we are saddled with old software to appease the console crowd. If it wasn't for PC Gaming, this series wouldn't have gotten past TES I: Arena. Way to turn your backs on those that carried the series, Bethesda.

Uldred

» Fri May 18, 2012 10:43 am

Skyrim is HEAVILY CPU limited! As is every game nowadays that tries to push consoles to the limits.

It is because of a common practice that game developers have been doing to get better graphics on consoles that have weak GPU's. That is specifically, have shadows rendered by the CPU.

BF3 does it, and now skyrim does it.

Are you possibly wondering why you drop to such low FPS all the time with you uber graphics card? Its because you CPU is rendering the shadows, and even though you have a great CPU.....CPU's are just not great for this. But it is what we get with cheap console ports. Your CPU is struggling to give work to your GPU.

Prove it to yourself. Go download GPU-Z and monitor you GPU load while playing. When your graphics drops really low, stay there for a while, then minimize and look at GPU-Z. Most likely your GPU is running at LESS THAN 50% LOAD! Mine is almost always running at about 30% load. Your CPU is struggling so much to do EVERYTHING that your GPU is not being fed information fast enough to run at full speed.

Want to prove that it is shadows that are causing it? Put shadows to Ultra play for a little while, whilst monitoring GPU load. Then check the graph. I bet your GPU load is really low. THEN set shadows to the LOWEST setting. Now your GPU load will go up? Why would GPU load go up when shadow settings are turned down? It is because turning down shadows releases stress solely on the CPU, which allows it to feed the GPU faster, which allows the GPU to do more work.

Bottom line, developers make games for consoles......and toss us PC gamers broken scraps from time to time.......enjoy!

To truly elaborate on how horrible a problem this is.......test your GPU load with GPUZ and post it here.

You are EXACTLY on the mark. The CPU is rendering the shadows that is has little time to feed the info to the GPU you have - no matter how powerful the GPU you own.

The best thing one can do is get a top of the line CPU.

I wonder if there could be any way to 'patch' the code so the shadows are rendered partly or mostly on the GPU, or at least balance it out more. I think this is beyond what modders can do, but I could be wrong! :tes:

- The Captain

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:18 pm

I have a hard time believing that bethesda wasnt 100% aware of this issue, and that they made a cold hard calculation to support it for xbox first despite the effects on PC performance. I have no idea how much work it would take to make the gpu more utilized, but I suspect that if was easy enough to patch in a week or two, they woud have done it before launch. Assuming it will take them longer, then I just don't see what would motivate them to invest the time since they already have our money.

The only way I see this getting serious improvement is if there is some kind of high res texture DLC that also includes GPU optimization for PCs with discrete graphics cards. Which of course means paying more money...

» Fri May 18, 2012 4:33 am

I'm getting a new computer for christmas (i5 2500k, 6970 2GB, SSD, and other stuff), and I am really bummed that it seems like I won't be able to do max settings for this. I wonder why I didn't just buy it for the xbox? I know the graphics would look ugly, but at least I know it would be optimized for the system and would work...

» Fri May 18, 2012 6:29 am

To tell you the truth I think they were rushed getting the game out on time. Considering that they didn't release the creation kit with the game like they originally intended. I'm hoping against hope that these issues are addressed by upcoming patches. At least the CPU overload isn't nearly as bad as it was in oblivion. You look at it two or three NPC's Bam frame rates straight into oblivion!

» Fri May 18, 2012 2:22 am

To tell you the truth I think they were rushed getting the game out on time. Considering that they didn't release the creation kit with the game like they originally intended. I'm hoping against hope that these issues are addressed by upcoming patches. At least the CPU overload isn't nearly as bad as it was in oblivion. You look at it two or three NPC's Bam frame rates straight into oblivion!

That's what happens when you set a hard date for going live, MONTHS in advance

» Fri May 18, 2012 9:53 am

So how long do we think patches for this stuff will take? weeks? months? *groan* years?

» Fri May 18, 2012 8:47 am

So how long do we think patches for this stuff will take? weeks? months? *groan* years?

I am thinking most likely never. We need to make sure they hear our discontent....

» Fri May 18, 2012 11:38 am

I really hope they fix this.

I am happy to play with just high shadows and everything else maxed for now but it would be nice if they fixed this or even made a comment on it.

If the cpu was used properly and wasnt bottlenecking my card my framerates would be 60+ all the time.

» Fri May 18, 2012 10:29 am

I just went and took a bunch of GPU and CPU performance screens in various places, including Whiterun with lots of NPCs, Whiterun with no NPCs, Outdoors (incidentally fighting a dragon which decided to buzz the spot I fast traveled to), and inside Breezehome, from the back and facing the left wall.

If people want me to post them (and I can find this thread again), I will, but for the moment...

GPU usage is pegged at 100% all times except in Whiterun with lots of NPCs in frame, where it drops to about 50%. Overall CPU usage is pretty consistent at about 50%. Core 1 sees most of the usage effort, with the other 3 cores contributing to a lesser extent. CPU usage drops to 35-40% inside Breezehome, as there's a lot less for the CPU to do indoors with only 1 NPC in the building.

At the time these experiments were performed, the ini was at Ultra defaults, save for AA off and FXAA on.

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:03 pm

I gave this a try, because I didn't believe it.
I started out inside Riften and ran around for a while. Next I went out to the forest and fought some necromancers.
I logged the whole thing and the GPU was running at an average of 94%. Maybe there is a problem, but it's not as big for me.

Here's a snippet of the log from the point I started the game. It's too big to paste and not interesting enough anyway.
http://i41.tinypic.com/5vyd0k.png
I believe the 70% ones are from loading screens. I started out inside a building.
So far I've played for 30+ hours on Ultra with AA and FXAA.
The game runs fantastic. Very high fps most places. Whiterun stutters if I move my mouse too fast, though.

My PC is a few years old, and even then it was dated.
- Windows 7 64-bit
- AMD Athlon II X4 2.6GHz Quad-Core CPU (A relatively bad choice for gaming as it has a very small cache)
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU
- 4GB DD2 RAM

My ATI drivers are 8.892.0.0 according to Windows. They're two months old, but have been reliable.
I keep all background programs OFF and I've disabled all of Windows 7's useless features. This may have helped my CPU performance quite a bit. I recommend it.

» Fri May 18, 2012 8:54 am

...I've disabled all of Windows 7's useless features. This may have helped my CPU performance quite a bit. I recommend it.

Might I ask, which features?

» Fri May 18, 2012 11:58 am

I gave this a try, because I didn't believe it.
I started out inside Riften and ran around for a while. Next I went out to the forest and fought some necromancers.
I logged the whole thing and the GPU was running at an average of 94%. Maybe there is a problem, but it's not as big for me.

Here's a snippet of the log from the point I started the game. It's too big to paste and not interesting enough anyway.
http://i41.tinypic.com/5vyd0k.png
I believe the 70% ones are from loading screens. I started out inside a building.
So far I've played for 30+ hours on Ultra with AA and FXAA.
The game runs fantastic. Very high fps most places. Whiterun stutters if I move my mouse too fast, though.

My PC is a few years old, and even then it was dated.
- Windows 7 64-bit
- AMD Athlon II X4 2.6GHz Quad-Core CPU (A relatively bad choice for gaming as it has a very small cache)
- ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU
- 4GB DD2 RAM

My ATI drivers are 8.892.0.0 according to Windows. They're two months old, but have been reliable.
I keep all background programs OFF and I've disabled all of Windows 7's useless features. This may have helped my CPU performance quite a bit. I recommend it.

That doesnt tell us much though.... Your GPU is slow so the CPU is probably never going to bottleneck it.

The problem is with people having their 480's/580's held back by a Sandybridge at 4ghz+. This shouldnt happen and as the OP has pointed out, it is probably because Bethesda has the CPU doing too much meaning the GPU is not taxed at all.

I also refuse to belive you are getting "smooth" performance all on ultra with that rig (unless your playing at a very low res). Well maybe "smooth" to you anyway....

» Fri May 18, 2012 8:31 am

http://www.blackviper.com/2010/12/17/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/
Make sure you know what is actually useless to you. Some are obvious, like Tablet PC if you don't have a tablet.

I also refuse to belive you are getting "smooth" performance all on ultra with that rig (unless your playing at a very low res). Well maybe "smooth" to you anyway....

1680x1050. 50 - 60 fps outside in the wilderness, 40 fps in cities with that weird stuttering issue.
I did slightly overclock the card to 900 MHz clock and 1250 MHz memory a few months ago. I never noticed a difference and forgot all about it.

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:14 am

http://www.blackviper.com/2010/12/17/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/
Make sure you know what is actually useless to you. Some are obvious, like Tablet PC if you don't have a tablet.

1680x1050. 50 - 60 fps outside in the wilderness, 40 fps in cities with that weird stuttering issue.
I did slightly overclock the card to 900 MHz clock and 1250 MHz memory a few months ago. I never noticed a difference and forgot all about it.

Not a chance , especially with that CPU!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-7.html

That is with a sandybridge at 4GHZ!

The last thing we need is people lying about their performance. That doesnt help anyone solve anything.

» Thu May 17, 2012 10:46 pm

I use 2x AA and 8x AF. I also didn't mess with draw distance sliders. I can do that and do another test. Sorry if I come off as a liar.

But the point is, my GPU is not being limited by my CPU as this topic suggests.

» Fri May 18, 2012 1:28 am

I have the supreme fix for all of your performance issues:

1) Quit whining
2) Set shadows to high instead of ultra
3) Accept the fact that this game is not top notch from a technical point of view, however, it's absolutely brilliant and gorgeous from a gamedesign point of view. I mean, look at these trees, landscapes and all that. Mind blowing!
4)Quit whining about your Quad GTX580s not being used 100%. Crank up the SSAA in this game if you have spare GPU power.
5) As an AMD Crossfire User, I am more concerned with Crossfire support being broken ATM. [censored] you, AMD, you've done it again. A AAA Title comes out and your drivers are [censored] up again - thank you very much. I can still play the game on my Radeon 6870 @ Full HD @ 4xSSAA @ High, but in certain areas performance drops to the low 20ies. Either disable SSAA, or wait for the Crossfire Profile. running 1 GPU ATM.

Anyway, the game looks and performs good enough on my system:

Phenom II X6 @ 3.6 GHz
2 x Radeon 6870 (only 1 GPU active atm thanks to AMD, herp derp durrr)
6 GB DDR2 800 CL5

Future drivers from the hardware vendors and patches from Bethesda will make the game run better.

I still believe that Bethesda should respect the PC community more. After all, it'us *US* who made you successful. I will *never* buy a console, I will always be a PC gamer and I am willing to pay for it. There are millions of people like me out there, so don't whine about PC gamers being a niche market.

» Thu May 17, 2012 11:09 pm

I also refuse to belive you are getting "smooth" performance all on ultra with that rig (unless your playing at a very low res). Well maybe "smooth" to you anyway....

I use 2x AA and 8x AF. I also didn't mess with draw distance sliders. I can do that and do another test. Sorry if I come off as a liar.

But the point is, my GPU is not being limited by my CPU as this topic suggests.

Here's what I had:
http://i42.tinypic.com/ie2mj4.png
Here's full 4x and 16x with max draw distance.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2la7c3k.png

We were both right friend. Sorry about that. I don't crank up the AA and AF because my monitor is quite a distance from my face.

» Fri May 18, 2012 2:24 pm

Bump.

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:43 am

I just thought I'd point this out to people. Everyone complaining about CPU limiting, there is such a thing as different programming paradigms. Maybe, just perhaps, allow for a second if you will to understand that not all software is developed the same, they did it on purpose because they used a paradigm that was more memory heavy. Which would allow it to be run on MORE computers without having to have expensive new hardware. The problem here seems to be a unique case of GPU's not being used. The graphics cards are just sitting there.

IE: There is no problem with CPU limiting. There is a problem here because they aren't caching enough for their memory heavy development cycle and the GPUs aren't being used to their fullest so that it could alleviate some of that by storing textures itself.

» Fri May 18, 2012 12:04 pm

I am playing the game on a 5 year old workstation with a single core processor.

Just... don't ask me about my framerate.

» Fri May 18, 2012 11:33 am

I have the supreme fix for all of your performance issues:

1) Quit whining

Sorry kiddo, this is the Technical Support forum...why are you here if you have no problems, go enjoy the game and leave us to sort out our issues.