Its not the NPC behavior code is the problem. Its that shadows are rendered on CPU, which should not be the case.

AI is normal CPU. So yes when you enter a city with lots of people, the framerate drops because there is a lot of AI processing going on......but it is lagging because there is shadows and AI being processed by the CPU. If they programmed shadows for the GPU, the CPU you have more power to handle normal CPU task like AI.


Well that makes perfect sense! Your GPU is older and slower, yet your CPU is powerful. But it is still a fact that this game is CPU bottlenecked in almost all cases.

Can't wait till Petes Hines gets a hold of this...

"Waaaaa, PC game making is soooo hard (even though we don't actually make PC games any more)."

This CPU limiting makes a whole helluva lot of sense.

Out in the wilds, without the tree and rock self-shadowing INI tweak, I get a solid 60FPS, come rain, snowstorm or shine. Solid as rock. I might as well be running Oblivion...(but it's a totally new engine, right? Right? Pfffffft...) In town, with all the shadowed NPCs, it often drops down to <30FPS.

That Tom's Hardware graph is really quite amazing. For those of you who have missed it, it's here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html - the stock CPU graph is the one I'm talking about. Going from dual, to quad, to hex core CPUs, and there's less than half a frame's difference. Amazing.

I'm running a GTX 460 Ti with a Phenom 555, unlocked to four cores. And jacking up the shadow quality from Low to High makes only the barest quality difference; the shadows get a tiny bit blurrier on the edges, but not by much. But the FPS hit is a good five, ten frames for me. My other two cores are basically just sitting there, scratching themselves.

Either Bethesda needs to make a multithread patch, or shunt the shadow work over to the GPU. I'm not holding my breath, but.

Funny how making PC games gets harder the more you focus on consoles, eh?

I have noticed this problem with other game engines who seek to have global real time shadows on consoles.

I believe that changing it is not easily done, or they would obviously of done it. We need to make sure they know they PC gamers won't stand by and eat scraps!!!

If you pre-ordered, then Bethesda knows that you WILL take scraps!

After Fallout 3 and FONV, you should have been skeptical, knowing that Skyrim was developed for XBOX and ported to PC

I was skeptical. Just too stupid to heed that skepticism :/

Skyrim must have sold TONNES of copies on PC. Everyone on my steam friends list is playing it. We need to let bethesda know that to maintain our loyalty they need to step up their game and treat the PC segment properly.

What makes sense in this is 100% gpu usage with vsync off.

Who just came to post at this thread to LOL at all the [censored] wiping their mouths off haha. OMG its so funny. People have a right to complain especially console ports.

Damn, that svcks. A GeForce GTX 580 is getting that little usage? What a waste of a great graphics card. Sorry to hear that.


ap0c552, are you implying that in order to play TESV with high frames per second, we would need a a CPU with high raw power? Like a quad core with all processors overclocked to 5.0 or 6.0 Ghz?

I have a AMD Phenom II x 4 overclocked to 4.1ghz, and with everything at max ultra @ 1080p, I gain atleast 10fps when I drop shadows to medium. Drop other settings instead, like res or AA, and my framerate stays the same.

Makes me think it is the shadows on the CPU.

The problem is not that the shadows are rendered into the CPU. The problem is the game is uncapable of using more than two threads to use the free CPU cores to feed the GPU.
There is no problem, per se, in rendering shadows via the CPU but the game should be capable of using multi-core processors properly to give the necessary power to the graphic cards.

For example, I have the following setup:

1) Intel Core i7 2600 @ 4.2 Ghz (4 cores, 8 threads trough hyperthreading)
2) 2 x Zotac Geforce GTX 580 (SLI Mode)
3) 8GB Corsair Vegeance DDR3 1600 Mhz CL8
4) Asus P8P67 Deluxe

My graphic cards are never beyond the 40-45% load (peak load) and the framerate sometimes drop to 20-25 fps (verified using eVGA Precision)
Now, try to observe the CPU load while running the game: it uses only two threads of the 8 available. With this level of usage, it's clear the game will never go over certain level of performance.

In the end, this game is clearly sub par to other productions technology wise: we're in 2012 and, after all, we're in a multicore era. It's a shame that a game of this class can't use a quad core properly. Are these AAA titles? Even an indie game can use multicore chips, nowadays.

What I am saying is that it will be harder to achieve very high FPS with what most people consider a balanced gaming rig.

If you are running an overclocked core i7 you will be getting very high FPS. But if that core i7 is coupled with a similar video card like gtx 580, chances are that you will still be CPU limited and not be running to your full potential.

If you happened to be running an i7 with a older video card you will probably be running at full potential....this is not a typical reasonable system.


This is exactly what I am talking about!!! All the evidence points directly at CPU rendered shadows. I can turn AA up or down, or any other GPU specific effect and does NOTHING for the framerate.

Take 2 minutes dude.......http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1261759-best-option-to-fix-shadows/



Still, the best solution is simply have the shadows rendered on the GPU where they should be.

Given how CPU dependent this game is, can anyone try these 3 steps and report back?

Turn off "SpeedStep" in your bios, which should force your CPU back to full speed. Then re-run the laucher and click "default" to detect your cpu speed properly.

Try turning OFF AA - which appears to affect CPU usage as well as shadows - which should also be turned down or OFF as well (FXAA should be ok)

For advanced users only, to prove all this: underclock your CPU (if you can) and watch performance drop - then overclock and watch it improve.

No AA is 100% GPU specific

No, the best solution is to use the hardware you have, no matter where you choose to render some things.
The best solution is using a quad core CPU to its 100% capabilities, thus using multithreading. Rendering shadows onto the GPU is only secondary to this problem.
Of course, the ideal solution would be to use all the cores availble and rendering the shadows via the GPU, but the world is not perfect. At least the world where Bethesda live.

Yeah. I was wondering why my GTX 460 was doing so well with this game.

Now make this argument make sense when you add in the fact that the problem doesn't persist across all users and the fact that there is no common medium. People can have the same hardware and different results. People can have lesser hardware and run faster than people with what should be better hardware. Which means that there is no common denominator or cause for the problem. If it was all ATI cards, that could be fixed. If it was all Nvidia cards, that could be fixed. Except it's not, it's a range and even then, a split within that range. I have a Core I5 @ 2.53 GHz and I run better than some people with Quad Cores or I7's. I have an old Radeon HD Mobility 5450 and i run better than some people with GTX 580's on High.

So, now make your theory work around that.

Strange world. Your GTX 460 is doing so well because the game is doing so bad...

My OC'd GTX 460 gets 26 fps on medium settings. The strangest part is obviously why people with the same specs can have totally different results.

The one thing we'll never know is how much crap people are running in the background, behind the game. I know quite a few guys with uber-specced PCs who think they're invincible, and they think that surely on their beastly rigs they can play a game, have a browser open, stream a movie over the network, and be downloading torrents at the same time and there'll be no performance hit.

When I run Skyrim in windowed mode, with task manager by the side to show CPU usage, it is always at 21-25% regardless of shadow quality.
FPS outdoors is
60 low
55 medium
50 high
40 ultra

but regardless of the shadow quality or FPS the CPU usage stays constant

This seems to suggest to me that the shadow options do not stress the CPU in any way (but I honestly don't know enough about the way computers work to say for certain).

If this is true then that's good news for me, as that would mean I'd be able to install some texture mods without it drastically affecting performance.

My 460 Oc'd runs at 50%. The CPU uses four cores but only 50% overall. Frames on ultra average around 40 with dips as low as 10. On ultra with shadows in low and only fxaa the frames average 60 with dips as low as 7, vsync on. Btw 1600x900.

Edit: VRAM usage averages about 400mb.

We need more solid reports like this.

its amazing that shadows are such a resource hog considering that the game barely has any real lighting/ dynamic shadows

I agree totally with the OP.

I have a 2500k at 4.3GHZ and an overclocked 480 GTX ( to 580 speeds) and my GPU usage goes as low as 40% in places....funnily enough, the very same places that the frame rate drops to 35-40. Most of the time, in the outdoor sections, i get 70-90fps however when approaching a town or looking at a town from certain angles i have seen it drop to as low as 38.

I did extensive experiments with this and the ONLY setting that seemed to make any real difference was setting the shadows from ultra to high. I stood at the top of Whiterun looking down with everything maxed and i was getting about 38fps. I tried changing all the detail slider,resolution,AA e.t.c and none of that made any difference. I dropped shadows from ultra to high and BAM 52fps in exactly the same spot and higher gpu usage.

If i turn of vsync and run about the wilderness my gpu usage will be pegged at 100% most of the time. Then i will approach certain towns or areas and my gpu usage will tank to about 40%.

I refuse to believe a sandbridge at 4ghz+ should bottleneck a single GPU in a game like this.

Any official word from Bethesda on this?

I will just play with shadows on high and everything else maxed out for now as i havent seen it drop below 50fps with those settings.

Also, to note. I played the intro bit and noticed the framerate was poor and the gpu usage was poor so figured that it must be my CPU. I had it at stock at this point because nothing took advantage of it being overclocked ( until now!). Overclocking it by 1GHZ netted me a 25% performance increase.....

I dread to think what Whiterun would be like with my i2500k at stock!