Skyrim lag in towns

[Berna]

Alright so, desperate to find a solution, I decided to create this thread, as I've seen a bunch of this issue, but never any of them solved.

My problem is, in Skyrim, whenever I go to some towns such as Solitude, Markarth or Whiterun, I get a huge FPS drop. Note that I get around 40-60 FPS within the rest of the game, but this drop down is absolutely frustrating, as it usually drops from 40-60 to 20.
This is not in the whole city though, only in some places which unfortunately I'm not able to specify, considering they have no particular similarity.

I've seen people with less powerful rigs playing this game properly, which even gets me more frustrated.
I play the game at the maximum settings with a 1366x768 resolution.

Here's my PC specs:

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE 3.4Ghz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Asus Radeon HD 6850
PSU: Corsair CX-500W

I've got all of my drivers updated, nothing is overclocked.

I apologize for the gramatical errors this thread may have, as I'm writing this in a rush to go to bed (almost 05 AM here.)



Thanks in advance,
Bernardo

 

[simon12]

Do you have any issues in other games? Also check your temperatures with HWMonitor. Do the FPS go back up as soon as you leave the problem areas? Does lowering the graphics settings help?

 

[AntiZig]

simple fix, go into launcher settings, turn antialiasing to OFF, go into your GPU control panel, create a custom profile for the game and set anti-aliasing. (don't forget to disable FXAA on advanced settings tab)

you can do the same for anisotropic filtering.

Your game will look better and run better, cheers!

 

[Berna]

Do you have any issues in other games? Also check your temperatures with HWMonitor. Do the FPS go back up as soon as you leave the problem areas? Does lowering the graphics settings help?

My temperatures were all okay last time I checked. I'm not sure of it, but I think my PC might have some performance issues, all my other games seem to be running smoothly, but not like they should with this rig, this is just a guess though.
Anyway, I tried lowering the graphic's once but I honestly don't remember how it was, I'll try it again as soon as I get back my PC.

Thank you for your reply.

 

[Berna]

simple fix, go into launcher settings, turn antialiasing to OFF, go into your GPU control panel, create a custom profile for the game and set anti-aliasing. (don't forget to disable FXAA on advanced settings tab)

you can do the same for anisotropic filtering.

Your game will look better and run better, cheers!

Thanks for the tip. I'm not with my computer currently, but I'll try that as soon as I have it back - also, should I set anti-aliasing to the max?

 

[Berna]

Do you have any issues in other games? Also check your temperatures with HWMonitor. Do the FPS go back up as soon as you leave the problem areas? Does lowering the graphics settings help?

Alright so I got my PC back today, I tried the game at the lowest settings and the same thing keeps happening, just not with such a big drop down with the maximum settings, but it still drops from 60 to 30, which is annoying and shouldn't be happening, considering my PC should be capable of running the game properly on the minimum settings.

 

[RyQril]

are you using any textures/other mods? you graphics card has 1gb of memory and the maximum setting of textures needs more than 1gb

 

[AntiZig]

get a monitoring program like hwinfo, go into town and check what the state of affairs is on your hardware. Maybe something isn't clocked right or there's a bottleneck elsewhere besides your GPU.

what version drivers are you using?

 

[Berna]

are you using any textures/other mods? you graphics card has 1gb of memory and the maximum setting of textures needs more than 1gb

Nope, not using any mods.

 

[Berna]

Hey guys. I think I might have found the reason for this problem.

Today I've learnt the definition of bottlenecking, and apparently I can see if I'm getting bottlenecking my checking the GPU usage, and that's what I did. Guess what? I couldn't even reach 50% - and the normal percentage should be 100, or at least near that, right?

 

[RyQril]

you dont have bottleneck the 965 @3.4 can handle the gpu very well, i got 955 @3.4 with GTX470 and its all good no bottleneck, the game is gpu more than cpu and having 50% of gpu usage is a power problem,

here more explained about the bottleneck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdo75gasaQ

what i think the problem is your PSU is dont have enough power for the gpu and the cpu while the minimum is 500W,

try different games and see the usage of the gpu if it get more than 50%

feedback

 

[Berna]

you dont have bottleneck the 965 @3.4 can handle the gpu very well, i got 955 @3.4 with GTX470 and its all good no bottleneck, the game is gpu more than cpu and having 50% of gpu usage is a power problem,

here more explained about the bottleneck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGdo75gasaQ

what i think the problem is your PSU is dont have enough power for the gpu and the cpu while the minimum is 500W,

try different games and see the usage of the gpu if it get more than 50%

feedback

Thanks for your reply, I tried out the games that I was having FPS issues which were GTA San Andreas and Assassin's Creed 2 and the GPU usage barely reached 40%.
I also tried Just Cause 2, which I don't have any FPS issues and I could get 85% of usage.

It's hard to believe that my problem is the PSU, considering I paid 50 euros for it, ***. I need to be 100% sure that that's what causing the problem without replacing it first, though.


Again, thank you for the reply. Pending more feedback.

 

[RyQril]

ok, since no problem with other games then i think you need to:

-chk the power connectors in the gpu.
-make a memory test for your rams.
-close / terminate apps.
-Skyrim with Medium texture quality.
-use MSI Afterburner or any other similar tools and post a screenshots of the current GPU memory usage gpu usage etc while playing skyrim and when fps lags occur..

 

[AntiZig]

what are your CPU utilization during the time GPU is at 40%?

and please don't be misinformed, Skyrim is heavily CPU bound.

 

[RyQril]

@AntiZig, bethesda has always their games a GPU intense, the fact is AMD quad cpus can run the game quiet well as long as the gpu is good, but this problem might be a Ram bottleneck

 

[Berna]

I've tried Skyrim in the lowest settings multiple times and the problem was still visible, just not as intense as with the max settings, but still a 30 FPS drop down. I didn't check the GPU usage, though.

Can you re-write the first step you mentioned there? I don't get it.

Also, I don't know how to make memory tests, and I actually have tried to do them before. Any help?


Thanks in advance.

 

[cadefoster]

I,ve noticed a few fps drops in towns as well. I,m using 2 560ti's in sli, i7 3.0gz and 12 gigs of ram.

 

[RyQril]

@berna, i didnt list a steps, i listed a things you need to chk/do,

memory test is includes to make sure you got dual channels you can know that from CPU-Z in memory tab, and then make a bootable usb use Rufus then download Memtest86 and paste it in the bootable usb and boot from it.

 

[vectorcalc]

Its the shadows. I have a GTX 670 and a 3570k @ 4.4 GHz and play with everything maxed. Usually I get 120+ fps outside, 200-500fps in dungeons and like 50-70 in towns and cities. Although sometimes in towns my fps will drop to the 30s and 40s. Once I did a test where I was high up in Riften and had the camera focused on the entire city and was doing a constant 32fps. I then lowered the shadows from ultra to high and my fps increased to 50. At medium it was even higher, around 60-70. So shadows make a big difference, make sure you are lowering when you try running everything on minimum.

 

[AntiZig]

@AntiZig, bethesda has always their games a GPU intense, the fact is AMD quad cpus can run the game quiet well as long as the gpu is good, but this problem might be a Ram bottleneck

not since skyrim they don't, if a 5770 can run on ulta 1080p at 30 fps, sorry that's not very intensive, also considering that top end cards just top out at around 70 fps regardless. And even with that said, the only reason that card doesn't get higer fps is due to their horrendous implementation of AA that is a resource hog like no other. On the other hand if you take a look at a CPU benchmark the game scales a lot more. The fact that you need a quad core AMD to run the game well just screams it's cpu dependent. oh wait a second, why are you bringing up quad cores when the game engine is limited to two threads? It appears to me that you're way misinformed here yourself, so again, I urge you not to misinform others.

 

[RyQril]

1st:
i brought up the "AMD"'s quad core cpu cause he got one and it suppose to not have any problems with the game, and beside that i have an AMD quad core and i dont have any problems, explain to me that.

and 2nd:
you said that the game uses only 2 cores but you said before that the game is heavily CPU bound, so bringing up a quad or a dual does not make any difference, but talking about intel or amd it will make a difference.



the game is ported and got lot of performance bugs and memory leaks and that totally fixed by patches, stop saying i misinform ppl and help the guy out instead.

 

[MatheusM]

Hey, guys using ATI GPUs, I was having heavy fps drops outside cities and that thread solved my problem: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/115232-13-battlefield-6950#11476024
If you don't wanna check the thread, the solution for you may be just disabling "morphological filtering" in Catalyst Control Center.