Ways to improve Skyrim performance?

[stirling_wallace]

I've been having good luck with Skyrim on my PC, bug-wise. However I'm curious if anyone here can give up opinions on whether I'm getting the best frame-rates for the system I have, which is:
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Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.83GHz
8GB high performance RAM
64-bit Windows 7
Nvidia GTX 280 w/1GB RAM
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I'm running Skyrim @ 1920x1200, 8xAA, 8xAF, FOV @ 90, and almost all the quality settings on or at max.
Using FRAPS I get a lot of range, from 20-80, but maybe averaging around 30-40, but often taking a dive
when in close combat, esp when my battle-mage is dual-casting fancy offensive spells and such. Again, it
is not severe enough to make game-play difficult. I'm just curious if these figures respectable, or should I
be looking for ways to get that frame-rate higher and possibly more consistent.

Thanks!

 

[skaz]

You could turn down some of slider bar settings until you find a comfortable point. Maybe lessening the stress on drawing distant objects and terrain would give the system more room to handle the close combat graphics better.

 

[cbrunnem]

cpu cpu cpu cpu cpu.

you dont have enough of it.

 

[venjhammet]

Just run the game at default setting to minimize stress load on your cpu and gpu. That way you'll get 60fps all the time. Skyrim still looks good on medium and high setting. I for one just have it running on high @1080p with my 2500k stock w GTX570

 

[Gothams Finest]

Download one of these mods, you will have to use one or the other, which ever works best for you, you can not run both at the same time.

They are plugins to increase FPS (frames per second) in CPU heavy areas of the game which will increase performance by replacing most of the bottleneck code parts in the exectuable.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6058

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387

They are perfectly safe, but make sure to read the instructions before installing.


Your computer will struggle to play skyrim on ultra, try turning down the settings a little. You do not need 8xAA, that is way way too excessive and will be crippling your computers performance.

2xAA is more than enough at 1920x1200.