TES V: Skyrim - Discussion

[Brian 1980]

Well Skyrim has been released! I got it last night and so far it seems to be a nice sequel to Oblivion which I played years ago. Graphics haven't changed too much and the atmosphere is exactly how I remember it. With dual 6990s OC'd to 820/1100 and mostly ultra settings I find my system struggling to go above 40 fps. I guess I'll need to keep tweaking the settings until I find the sweet spot--high view distance is a killer on framerate.

Use this thread to discuss anything about the game from videos, pics, tweaking tips etc.

[Stevenxowens792 806]

My Settings recommendation for the m14x are as follows...

Set global settings to ultra @ 1366x768

Set Blur to low

Set Shadows to high

Disable AA/AF

Game looks AMAZING

FPS > 50 at all times. In first long dungeon with waterfalls and spells over 100fps at times.

Good Luck,

StevenX

[Ninjahunter 105]

Here is a complete list of notable Skyrim tweaks at the moment:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim tweaks improve graphics, disable Vsync, change FOV and more | PC Gamer

All of them are useful to most users so its worth taking a look.

**There have been reports that forcing settings in you GPU control center can kill performance on high end machines.

**In my experience When setting the 'Frames rendered ahead' setting to high values there doesn't appear to be increased input lag in skyrim.

Notable performance impacts on the M14x:

-There is roughly a 10 FPS difference between each shadow quality.

-There is roughly a 5 FPS difference between each setting of 'distant object detail'.

-Turning all water reflections off will produce about 8 extra fps near water.

-None of the sliders other than 'objects', 'actors' and 'grass' have a FPS impact greater than 2.

-FXAA has roughly a 2-3 FPS hit, but can decrease image quality.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Ninjahunter
Revised for a better reading experience

[unreal25 786]

For M17x-R2, I used:

1920x1200 resolution, selected default settings, then turned off Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering. This gives me steady 25-40 FPS outside with lots of objects (in the first two towns).

Crossfire doesn't seem to be working.

The detailed settings are:

[svl7 5714]

Edited November 12, 2011 by svl7

[StamatisX 1066]

HAHAHAHA good one!

[Gearsguy 70]

So I finally got it running on almost all ultra at 1600x900 with 40-50fps

Go to Nvidia control panel and set it to these settings

Anostrophic Filter 8X

AA Gamma - Off

AA Mode - Application Controlled

AA Transparency - Off

CUDA - All (default)

Maximum Pre Rendered Frames - Force to 3, dont use application controlled

Single Display Performance Mode (Unless youre using dual monitors of course)

Power Management - Maximum Performance

Texture Filtering - Off

Negative LOD - Clamp

Texture Quality - Quality (normal, not high)

Trilinear Optimization - Off

Threaded Optimization - Force on

Vertical Sync - Force off

Then, Under Skyrim settings, set it to the Ultra button at your native res.

AF to 8 Samples

AA Off

Advance -> Everything on High/Ultra with Shadows on Medium

FXAA Off

All water reflections

Object Detail Fade On

Of course these are just my settings, but Im never dropping below 30fps

Also using an overclock of 765/1080/1530

[mmskate13 93]

i find reducing radial blur allows me to increase the shadow quality. and no matter what, there are some parts of the map that are badly coded or optimized. i had 65 fps (i lowered settings while i was testing) and i went past a small rock area and i dipped to 22, then rose back up. Oddly enough i go into graphic intensive areas and the fps is fine. its very odd.

[Brian 1980]

I downloaded and installed Radeon Pro, enabled some AF optimizations and forced AFR and now the FPS stays close to 60 at all times using Ultra settings + 2xAA. AMD needs to get on the ball with a proper driver release, I can't wait till my 580s arrive so I can get rid of these 6990s.

[Brian 1980]

So I wiped out the first village you escape to and stole all their gold. I guess I'm wanted now because when I went north to the adjacent town, some guard caught up with me and cut me down lol.

[mmskate13 93]

Just a heads up for people...

Vampires: Hard to become one, not much fun. You don't get any amazingly incredible skills..but you have a lot of constraints

Werewolf: Do the Companion quests, tons of fun, not any drawbacks other than everyone is afraid of you in wolf form. You own, there are really funny finishers, and you run really fast.

[Ninjahunter 105]

So what is everyone's character build and how is it working out? (feel free to post pics of your character)

I was going to go assassin, but then i discovered sprint (alt key) and ive been putting all my points into stamina XD Yay for ranger class? Bows seem pretty strong too. I have a dagger but im pretty sure my bow does more Dmg per second both sneaking and in combat. The only drawback: i have to watch out becausee sometimes bosses can grab an easy one hit kill off me if i don't keep track of their location very well.

BTW is it just me or does it seem like you go down a level each time you die?

[unreal25 786]

I put Skyrim on hiatus, while I am playing SWTOR.

Im planning to build a 2handed-spec warrior. It would be nice to have some more explanation what stat is used for what. I also built Stamina. I like how the bow mechanics is implemented and think I might go that route too.

Btw, is it possible to put out enemy health bars above them? Sometimes its hard to see a mob coming unless it comes literally in front of you.

[Ninjahunter 105]

Hmm, i dont know about the health bar thing but there might be an illusion spell for detect life, or night vision. their usually low level spell in the previous games

The leveling system seems a bit weird to me though, it seems like the only benefit from leveling up a skill is to unlock the perks for that skill. Much more mainstream though, i like that you dont have to do stupid things to level up like in oblivion.

And just a heads up, bows are pretty useless against higher level creatures (giants, dragons) unless you use poisons and stuff. Lol, the only way i can beat dragons is by luring them into a heard of mammoths Yay for running fast

[mmskate13 93]

at ninja, thats odd, i use bows only for killing dragons, you have to wait till they hover around when they will breath shit on you, take 2-3 shots, then hide behind a rock and restore health. once they are on the ground you destroy them with bows its awesome. i'll get a video up sooner or later, keep in mind though it helps if you find +xx% archery damage

[mw86 1362]

wow all of you have it already cant wait to get myself... but it will have to be in december.

[Stevenxowens792 806]

This game is very TANK LIKE in comparison to MMO's. I has to LOS behind a pillar on a huge boss fight and it made me think or Iron Tomb in Rift. LOL

[Ninjahunter 105]

Hey guys, so some people have been experiencing poor performance in towns and dungeons, And this is due to a poorly made shadow system. Anywho, I modded the SkyrimPrefs.ini file to be more friendly in these enviroments with medium/high quality. Heres all the changes:

fInteriorShadowDistance=1750.0000

fShadowDistance=3500.0000

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=1536

fShadowLODStartFade=250.0000

iShadowMapResolution=1536

I find the following 2 settings to remedy shadow shimmering, however some people have had severe shadowing problems with the following changes:

fShadowBiasScale=1.0000

iShadowMaskQuarter=0

What this does is reduce the range of the shadows and the resolution, in most systems this would reduce the quality drastically but Skyrims system makes the shadow 'pixels/jaggies' bigger with a higher. So i scaled down the distance and resolution about 25% from 'high' settings (not ultra). There shouldn't be much visual difference but i'm getting much better performance in elaborate dungeons and cities.

Of course back up the ini, you might notice some visual blemishes that my eyes didnt catch.

Edited November 21, 2011 by Ninjahunter
Troubleshooting

[Stevenxowens792 806]

Good post Ninja! TBH i just haven't had any issues at all with performance. With Ultra settings and shadows on high (blur low as I can't stand it) I get 50+ outside at all times and in dungeons, tombs, burials, etc.. I get 60-125 with most of the time at post 100. I was hoping someone would do a carefully constructed review of performance vs system vs cpu scaling vs gpu scaling but I have yet to see it. I can tell you for certain that going from 590/900 to 750/1000 nets me 10fps increase. That's huge in my book. I haven't spent the time with cpu but I have noticed my threads utilization increase from 5 to 8. So I wonder what changed. Im going to BET money that most lazy websites will use the intro sequence to bench and they absolutely should not as it doesn't indicate actual game performance at all. Just my .02

Best Wishes,

StevenX

[mw86 1362]

nice Steven and Ninja... btw hopefully i get this soon and i can throw you some results Steven into your cpu/Skyrim thread. As i have the XM and control over multi, tdp,tdc and voltage... I can emulate many CPUs and test at higher ranges too which i'd be glad to provide a lot of examples to further prove your point that cpu scaling is real in Skyrim....

[ericnrmrf 19]

just got nightngale armor and chillrend sword i play this game way too much for my own good

[mmskate13 93]

Thought i'd post a ton of my screenies...

[Gearsguy 70]

Jagged shadows fix. (Not my fix or picture)

Edited November 18, 2011 by Gearsguy

[unreal25 786]

Hey guys, so some people have been experiencing poor performance in towns and dungeons, And this is due to a poorly made shadow system. Anywho, I modded the SkyrimPrefs.ini file to be more friendly in these enviroments with medium/high quality. Heres all the changes:

fInteriorShadowDistance=1750.0000

fShadowDistance=3500.0000

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=1024

iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=1536

fShadowLODStartFade=250.0000

iShadowMapResolution=1536

fShadowBiasScale=1.0000

iShadowMaskQuarter=0

What this does is reduce the range of the shadows and the resolution, in most systems this would reduce the quality drastically but Skyrims system makes the shadow 'pixels/jaggies' bigger with a higher. So i scaled down the distance and resolution about 25% from 'high' settings (not ultra). There shouldn't be much visual difference but i'm getting much better performance in elaborate dungeons and cities.

Of course back up the ini, you might notice some visual blemishes that my eyes didnt catch.

Hm, if I put these changes the shadows completely disappear. :-/

EDIT: Gears tried your suggestion and no effect either.

Edited November 19, 2011 by unreal25

[Ninjahunter 105]

The two settings that could potentially disable shadows are:

fShadowBiasScale=1.0000

iShadowMaskQuarter=0

I found these to reduce shadow flickering, but they might have caused problems for you guys. They have no impact on performance though.

The default values 'high' are:

fShadowBiasScale=0.2500

iShadowMaskQuarter=4

Default ultra:

fShadowBiasScale=0.1500

iShadowMaskQuarter=4

Edited November 22, 2011 by Ninjahunter