I'd gone off it for a while, then bought the legendary pack in the sale and having another crack at it but I'm wondering why it takes arguably less advantage of my hardware (i.e. Surround and SLI) than e.g. GTAIV, a game which came out like 4 years before Skyrim and was itself criticised for being a console port. I haven't really modified the game much (SOS doesn't count, right...?) - I've put some of the UI enhancements on but the rest is stock high-res textures, and sometimes it just crawls - and the slowest thing I'm running for gaming is 780ti x 2. Anyone have tips for Surround, better SLI behaviour, speed optimisation at max detail, etc?
Its HEAVILY CPU bound due to having almost zero multicore support. Therefore, best thing to do is OC the poop outta your CPU.
Really? The slowest thing I run it on now is a (mildly*) OC'd 4770K. What'd actually drive it along appreciably faster? If it lacks multicore support in toto then I don't really see any of my meatier machines being any better...? *And by that I mean still stable in all circumstances. And let's face it, with Bethesda games stability being what it is, I don't think you'd be wanting the CPU to be an additional source of instability
While the game doesn't properly utilise quad core CPUs it's really not that demanding. You should be able to play the game without any issues. 1. What resolution do you game at? 2. What mods do you have installed? Does SOS mean Seasons of Skyrim? This mod has been nothing but a headache for me. 2.1. Do you have any ENB mods installed? 3. Is your ini file tweaked? Most supposed improvements are years old and by now proven to cause instability. 4. Do you use a surround sound setup by chance? Often it's not the ammount of mods you have installed in total. Rather there is one or two mods that are not optimized properly. Those can totally wreck your save. Try to run your game using the default Ultra settings with something like 4x AA. Use only the unofficial patches, SkyUI and the script extender: Unofficial Skyrim Patch Unofficial Dawnguard Patch Unofficial Dragonborn Patch Unofficial Hearthfire Patch SkyUI Skyrim Script Extender Report back if the game works with only these mods installed, there are two or three more you will want to install to reduce the crashing a lot. If you have been looking at all those fancy ENB screenshots I got bad news for you though: While they look nice they will not run at 1080p or more and 60fps. More like 720p 30 fps. I could play the game on Ultra without AA at 1440p and 60 fps on an AMD 6870, but with an ENB mod enabled I get 15-30 fps with a GTX 770.
Something's seriously not right there... i'm playing skyrim atm with a crapload of cosmetic mods on a system noticably slower than yours [2500k, GTX570] without issue... all i can suggest is disable all the mods [all of them] and see if it does it with a vanilla game... +1 for the unofficial patches though, they also help reduce save game bloat due to things not de-spawning when they should [dead bodies and whatnot]
Well that's kind of my question: I'm not sure whether I'm expecting too much or if as I asked Skyrim has fundamental issues with SLI/etc systems. In searching the 'works great for me' answer a lot, it always appears to be from a single-card poster, or when I try and run the game at the resolution / detail they're happy with, I'm left saying 'what the hell is this 8-bit show?' Is anyone else running it on a >=WQHD Surround / 2-4 way SLI (left as Surround / SLI, I can't be bothered to be turning them off / making hardware changes all the time) rig and have a comment on the questions posed by the original post? Have unofficial patches for all DLC's and core. Running at WQHD min (and as I mentioned I'd like to run it Surround) / Ultra, not running any environmental patches, one Breezehome mod, SkyUI/Maps, Immersive Armour/Weapons (would be nice to find similar-quality clothing variety additions which aren't determined to make the female characters die of hypothermia haha). I've taken off other mods (and I was only running a couple of other stupid ones) since.
Did you try running it deactivating SLI and using only one card? The game doesn't support SLI properly and has some really weird bugs with 7.1 surround sound setups. As mentioned before I have been running the game at WQHD / 1440p using a single AMD 6870 without problems. So it will probably run at 3x1440p from a single 780ti. But if you only deem someone qualified to answer your question who is running a similar setup good luck. Maybe try a different community dedicated to such setups? http://www.wsgf.org/
Sounds like mods. Skyrim by default does not have access to more than 2gb ram in original launch version. You can patch the exe and gain noticeable performance.
Well, it doesn't run in surround to start with - only ever gives me the highest single monitor res - so that's problem #1. As I wrote in the original post I had gotten the message that SLI isn't properly supported, but I wanted to know *if* there was a way to get Skyrim to scale better.
More than 3 million people bought this game even though it was full of bugs, terribly optimised and the most dumbed down in the entire series. It is a clear sign to all developers.
http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2729 You need to be quite invested in modding to get the game to run at its best. I run Skyrim at 1080p, on ultra with many dozens of textures packs and it runs at a fluid 60-75fps in almost every area. It's a memory problem, skyrim runs well on any hardware but the engine is poorly (and I mean craply) optimised to handle memory. Look into the unofficial patches, memory patches, ENBoost, SKSE (don't play skyrim without it as far as I'm concerned) as well as the patch I linked. I've been modding skyrim Since it was released so I know my s**t, modders are always trying to optimise the game further, but we're about as good as we're going to get.
^ Wow, that looks like a lot of work. I'll see if anything in it could help, thanks. Time for more backups...
I've sunk 270+ hours into skyrim, all on medium-high settings with no mods or anything because at the time my PC couldn't handle it - not even the high res texture pack Lol. I must be easily pleased because I really enjoyed skyrim.
Not at all. There is not that much of a difference between medium and high, whatever people might say. And for the most part the original texturtes look alot better than the replacements imo because they are consistent. Most ENB settings are only great for screenshots in certain places but I found the gameplay to suffer frome overtuned contrast and saturation for the most part.
