Skyrim hates my PC

[anarkeygodslam]

My setup first:

Intel i7 OC'd with water cooling @3.4ghz
12GB DDR 3 Corsair Dominator
M4 128GB SSD Primary
Radeon HIS 6990 GPU
Bigfoot Killer NIC
Seagate Barracuda 2TB Backup HHD
System Temp is always under 60C
Alienware 23" 120Hz Monitor

As with most games now, when I first loaded up, the game chose my settings. It set it at 1920x1080 at full settings, full sliders, ect. 15-20fps, peaking at 25fps. I know I can always just turn down the settings, but I feel this PC should not have issues with this game at max. Where should I start troubleshooting, or am I wrong about how good I feel my PC is? Thanks.

 

[bwrlane]

My setup first:

Intel i7 OC'd with water cooling @3.4ghz
12GB DDR 3 Corsair Dominator
M4 128GB SSD Primary
Radeon HIS 6990 GPU
Bigfoot Killer NIC
Seagate Barracuda 2TB Backup HHD
System Temp is always under 60C
Alienware 23" 120Hz Monitor

As with most games now, when I first loaded up, the game chose my settings. It set it at 1920x1080 at full settings, full sliders, ect. 15-20fps, peaking at 25fps. I know I can always just turn down the settings, but I feel this PC should not have issues with this game at max. Where should I start troubleshooting, or am I wrong about how good I feel my PC is? Thanks.

First off your pc is fantastic and should have no problems running skyrim at max. That's all I am able to say because I have no clue why it is running poorly. Mine's i7 920 @4GHz and 2*GTX 560 ti and skyrim runs perfectly.

I'm much more familiar with nvidia gpus so am not able to offer much advice on amd drivers, but is crossfire enabled for this game and do you have the latest drivers?

Other than that, what I can say is that mysterious lagging in skyrim is often due to CPU bottlenecking. Your CPU is plenty powerful enough but it might be due to some power setting or throttling. Is your pc power plan set to high performance and is the CPU running at reasonable temps?

 

[AntiZig]

Hello,
as far as I've seen this has got something to do with the game and not your hardware.

Some of the tweaks I can recommend is look up to how disable mouse filtering and disable vsync. Get large address aware .exe so it can utilize more than 2gb of ram.

my guess would be that for our hardware to run the game on ultra is such a minuscule task that it goes into power saving features which might cause lag. (double check that your windows power settings are set to high performance)

Also, for further tweaking I can recommend the following links:
Nvidia tweak guide now this is not amd, but I'm sure you'd be able to relate the info
tekmage skyrim thread this guy put toghether a nice bunch of info about skyrim and stuff, so have a read

 

[anarkeygodslam]

I used the 4GB skyrim mod, and the windowed mode mod to remove the border. If I run in windowed at 1920x1080 i get 40-60fps. I also put the mouse accel to 0, added the FOV and VSync line. I am guessing this is about how good I will run it?

 

[bystander]

I used the 4GB skyrim mod, and the windowed mode mod to remove the border. If I run in windowed at 1920x1080 i get 40-60fps. I also put the mouse accel to 0, added the FOV and VSync line. I am guessing this is about how good I will run it?

You should look for the beta drivers 11.11c to start. 2nd, once you have the beta drivers, the game will now take advantage of crossfire. I assume the only reason you'd want to run in Windowed mode is that in windowed mode, crossfire isn't used, which was causing negative performance. With the beta drivers, that is no longer an issue, so don't run in windowed mode. A 6990 should never be used in windowed mode if you can help it.

 

[anarkeygodslam]

I downloaded the drivers, and it runs 40+ fps in full screen, outside at ultra settings. Is this what I should be at? If so, I think my issues are solved. Thanks for everyone's input.

 

[AntiZig]

well, for me 40-60 fps is pretty darn good if all your settings are maxed out

 

[anarkeygodslam]

Best answer selected by anarkeygodslam.