Is it possible to run Skyrim on Ultra with the HD texture pack and 59~60 fps in every single location? No exceptions.


Conditions
Ultra Preset with the HD Pack. That's all. If you tweak beyond the default Ultra preset then that's up to you. If you tweak under it (e.g. lower Shadows) then the test is invalid.

If you can get 59~60 for let's say a minute continuously and then drop below for a second, that's acceptable. The test is about regular play and not a perfect world.

Additional:
1. SkyBoost development is still going. If it gets you to 60 then by all means use it.
2. There are mods out that fix the bugs in the HD Pack. Feel free to use these.


Static Tests
The well known city bottlenecks:
- Whiterun: Dragonsreach stairs looking down on the tree, trying to get as much in view as possible.
- Riften: with your back to the castle looking at the market during the day (NPCs).
- Markarth: near the waterfall looking down on the blacksmith and further down.

My results are between 50~59.
To pass the Ultra test, you can not drop below below 59.


Dynamic Test
This is actually my new favorite performance test when trying out something new. It takes places in The Rift. Get a horse and run between Riften and Ivarstead, taking lots of detours and running into wolves, bears and spiders. Get a good look of your surroundings while sprinting on horseback.

My results are between 45~59 with an average of ~50.
To pass the Ultra test, you can never drop below below 59.

(When I exit this area my fps is 55~59 so that's why I think it is a good testing area.)


You passed both tests!
Fantastic! Please post your hardware specs


Thanks for reading.

I tried this at 5760x1080 with HD pack, acceleration layer mod, and several other mods. Including Open Cities.

My result running around Whiterun was lowest 55FPS, Highest 60FPS, average 58FPS.

AMD 7970 Overclocked to 1100Mhz Core/1500Mhz Memory
Intel Core i7 2600k overclocked to 5Ghz
16GB DDR3 RAM 1600Mhz
Game and saves are on a 10,000RPM Velociraptor drive

Thanks for the result Starforce9. Is your CPU maxed out when you are at the bottlenecks, or does it have room to breathe?

It has plenty of room. When in Skyrim it usually sits around 50%-55% used.

That's what I'm seeing too. I wish there was a way to tell it to use more hehe.

Hope to see some more results and, if possible, the Riften forest test (between Riften and Ivarstead).
I am stoked to see who can run that without any dips, because I think it is the heaviest and most condensed area in the game.

No one's computer can "pass".

Yeah but a test to get 60fps on a unoptimised game is a bit pointless don't you think? It's hardly Crysis.

Crysis 1 was insanely unoptimized... if i recall correct, they used the same engine but optimized for Crysis 2.

My PC was built in 2010 and it does pretty well. The only problem area is that forest. So, I figured that since then there are new CPUs on the market, that are much more powerful and faster than mine. It must surely be possible if a beastly machine (like Starfox9 Starforce9) can get in the 50s with a triple monitor setup?

I just want to try and find the sweet spot

No it wasn't and it was the Dual-core era. Crysis was heavy for good reason and still is.

Whiterun, looking down at the tree: mostly 60.1 FPS, dropped to 58.1 twice for just a second during the minute I stood there.
Riften, back to the castle, looking at the market during the day (started at approx. 10am game time): Solid 60.1 FPS for the entire minute.
Markarth, looking down at the blacksmith (during the day): Flip-flopped between 59.2 and 60.1 FPS for the entire minute.

I'm using the Skyrim HD DLC + Skyrim 2K textures. I have no framerate boosting utilities or mods installed. Now for the system specs:

i7-2500K @ 4.3 GHz
Radeon 7970 @ 1060/1575, resolution 1920x1080

Seems the test is passable, you just need top of the line equipment.

Test is easy standing still...try...

Just hopped on Shadowmere and Galloped/Ran (use ALT). from Whiterun to near Ivarstead (nice run) and had a constant ...57,58,59 . varies like that the entire time.

Using the DLC HD being overwritten by HD 2 k Full.
HQ_LOD meshes
and a bunch of other HD stuff.

Most of the run I saw 59 FPS with 2.5 GB VRAM loaded on both EVGA GTX 580's. I7 2600 OC @ 4.6

I can stand anywhere and see a constant 59 (Caped here by Inspector) the trick is run or Ride as fast as you can and not stutter on a ton of loads. By the way i also have 4096 Shadow map and Ugrids @ 7. LOl at looking at Ram used the other night...full 3 GB on both cards and Process explorer had my Commit charge @ 11.8 GB.<<
Was pushing everything to its limits to find them...actually overfilled both cards by about 350 MB VRAM. Yes you can cause stutter on a 3 GB card...lol

EDIT: to add since this is a PC hardware/software Issues forum........I did crash twice now ( took about 5 mins ) at full gallop not sure yet what is the cause , think Skyrim is not happy loading that much that fast. I can play normally for extended periods and never crash. Usual time straight in game is around 6-10 hours on the weekends. Stable during normal play , but this is new, crashing at full tilt. Have to test more...lol.

Tried it out in Whiterun. Didn't drop below 60 fps anywhere there. Ran around the whole city a few times, with no hitches. Tried the static thing at the top of the stairs and it didn't budge either, although I didn't expect it to change when i'm just standing still. Will try the other places later when I have some time.

EDIT: Using the HD textures, but no other visual mods.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

@lokee: looking good, might I ask your RAM and if you are on SSD?

@camaro-69_327: you really put your machine to the test, hehe. I also think that the actual dips come from the loads. If you can do a load without dropping too hard then you are golden.

@immortal65: sounds promising, could you please post your specs?

8GB of 1600, OS is on an SSD but Skyrim is not.

@specular
Yeah, sorry, forgot to post them.

ASUS Sabertooth P67
i7 2600k @ 4.5ghz
8 gigs Corsair XMS 3 @ 1600mhz
eVGA GTX 580 @ 850mhz/2050mhz
Creative X-Fi Titanium HD
Win 7 64-bit

Yea I can run ultra and high textures at 60 fps almost everywhere. I get 60 almost everywhere with Ugrids set to 9 and ini settings jacked up to 75%. Some areas are just awful though.

There are areas in the game that just kill on any settings.
A good example being Trevas Watch. That whole square of land where the fort lays, is a major FPS killer.
Also some areas outside riften or other areas that have a fall season setting, can murder the fps for some reason.

Not going to say that my rig holds a solid 60 fps during Skyrim but my average is about 45 under heavy strain or 50 with normal play. I am guessing the drops(and temp increases) are due to high settings and kill moves as well as the radial blur in combination with the shadows. Basically it seems that my CPU and non SSD cause more fps drops than aspects that my GPU can control.

Thoth, a 2500K should be able to do 4 GHz no problem. Have you tried overclocking it to see if it really is the CPU? I suspect it's your video card, not the CPU.

Ya OC is easy mode but running at 3.7 atm is fine and I notice no fps dive just saying if I check my reports after playing for several hours the lowest average was 45 and that is with MSAA 8x HD texture everything Ultra with tons of kill moves and U grids to 7. I am planning on using this CPU for a while so waiting a bit to OC it.

Well my experience with Skyrim was this:

Using 2x6870s and grids at 7: Whiterun averaged 35FPS with default textures.
Using 7970, grids at 11: Whiterun averages 59FPS with Beth HD + Skyrim 2K

seems to me the HD texture pack performance isnt the issue, thats more to do with RAM (cache), storage system, GPU mem/controller, TMU. Can it load it in time, can it map it to the scene being rendered without lagging the TMU's

Main issue here is can your CPU process the shadow part of the engine without it holding back the syncing of the rest of the engines mechanics (renderer lag) when it try's to feed whatever sends the instructions to the graphics cards.
The confines of the engine when processing long distance shadows info is an annoyance, i only use 50-60% of my 4.9ghz i7-2600k computational power when running skyrim, so its not the CPU limiting it. My guess would be that as its a multiform development (concessions for low powered console GPU's with multicore CPU's) with a 64hz back end (console friendly) feeding a renderer thats supposed to perform at 24fps (console), 30fps (console), and lucky for PC users 60fps, my guess is it doesnt have the cycle rate at 64hz to process these engine parts (especially shadows) for 60FPS PC systems. Also stutter in the rendered scene is down to a bad synergy between the the 64hz back end and how it multiplex's the various engine parts together for 60fps PC. Ive already asked them to up the engine frequency to a speed thats more sympathetic for 60fps systems, doubt i'll get a response on it though


the path to Calcelmo's tower above the waterfall will show your CPU up with ultra shadows and 15 object rendering distance, run fraps and lower every other setting to ultra low, it'll show the engine up
floatingpointrenderer to 0 will net your CPU 5 frames a second of renderer potential.

what we need is a chilled fluid or phase change overclocker running at 5.5Ghz +, with enough GPU performance to render shadows ultra to tell us if he can run calcelmo's towers waterfall at 60FPS (just shadows ultra/distance sliders 15)

i know 5ghz isnt enough with the limitaions in the code to do it (i had a 2700k at 5.1ghz) im hopeing 5.5+Ghz will, 5.5ghz ivy bridge with 8% efficiency increase may do it

they should still optimize it for PC, 5.5Ghz is OTT

hmmm

I pass with flying colors at 1080p

Add in about 6gb of Texture data and meshes and sounds and other such things, plus triple the screen resolution and suddenly i'm sitting at around 45fps give or take.

Yeah this isn't any major feat on higher end GPUs (GTX 470/5870 or better) after 1.4 update since Skyrim has been mostly CPU limited from Day 1. HD Texture pack will make it harder for cards with less VRAM to maintain 60FPS, especially with high MSAA/TSAA settings, but still do-able, especially if you turn down AA settings a bit.