REALLY low skyrim fps. GTX 670, overclocked 3570k

[ehanger]

In skyrim I have a large bounty on my head in Markarth so whenever I go there guards attack me. I had a quest where I was supposed to retrieve something deep inside the city in Understone keep so I decide to make a run for it starting from the front gate. By the time I got inside the keep there were literally 30-40 guards chasing me shooting arrows and spells at me and my FPS stuttered like CRAZY. As more npc's starting chasing me my fps got progressively lower, eventually reaching 5-10 frames per second. As soon as I went through a door leading to a different cell the guards stopped chasing me and my fps stabilized again.

I am running the game with everything on ultra, including AA and shadows. I have an i5 3570k overclocked to 4.4GHz and a GTX 670 video card. Is this a normal thing to happen? Normally in large cities like riften and solitude I get 30-50fps and in Whiterun I am at like 45-65 fps. When I am outside (not in a city) my fps is like 90-120. In dungeons it goes well into the several 100s.

 

[casualcolors]

How high is your AA set? With a 570 and 4x MSAA at 1920x1080 and the rest of the game's settings maxed, my min fps in Whiterun for instance is never lower than 60. If you're running with like 16xQSAA or something of that nature, I could imagine that getting fairly taxing. If you're running with a standard amount of anti-aliasing (re: no higher than 4x MSAA) then it sounds like a driver issue regarding your otherwise relatively low fps in all cities. That could have some bearing on the issue with your fps dropping as more enemies spawn, but there are other factors at play when you have a large number of enemies other than just purely graphical rendering power.

 

[vectorcalc]

What level are your shadows? I run mine on ultra and I heard that alone can make a huge difference? Every notch that I lower my shadows by I get like a 15 fps boost in cities. Another thing is that the ultra settings presets don't actually make everything ultra. Example: the shadows setting is still left at medium, among other things. You probably already know that though.

For a test I hit the ultra preset instead of manually checking everything to ultra, and my frame rate increased by about 50% on average. I don't know why bethesda decided to make ultra presets not have everything on ultra.

By the way for anti aliasing I'm running 8 samples (game settings didn't say anything about MSAA or QSAA).

 

[ehanger]

What level are your shadows? I run mine on ultra and I heard that alone can make a huge difference? Every notch that I lower my shadows by I get like a 15 fps boost in cities. Another thing is that the ultra settings presets don't actually make everything ultra. Example: the shadows setting is still left at medium, among other things. You probably already know that though.

For a test I hit the ultra preset instead of manually checking everything to ultra, and my frame rate increased by about 50% on average. I don't know why bethesda decided to make ultra presets not have everything on ultra.

By the way for anti aliasing I'm running 8 samples (game settings didn't say anything about MSAA or QSAA).

My shadows are on ultra, I'll try and lower them and see what happens. I'm at maxed AA as well.

 

[casualcolors]

What level are your shadows? I run mine on ultra and I heard that alone can make a huge difference? Every notch that I lower my shadows by I get like a 15 fps boost in cities. Another thing is that the ultra settings presets don't actually make everything ultra. Example: the shadows setting is still left at medium, among other things. You probably already know that though.

For a test I hit the ultra preset instead of manually checking everything to ultra, and my frame rate increased by about 50% on average. I don't know why bethesda decided to make ultra presets not have everything on ultra.

By the way for anti aliasing I'm running 8 samples (game settings didn't say anything about MSAA or QSAA).

Not that you said you're having performance issues, but the visible image integrity between 4x and 8x anti-aliasing is virtually identical, unlike 0x vs. 4x. Most sites will recommend that you not exceed 4x anti-aliasing regardless of what game you're playing since you're not gaining much beyond that point in terms of image fidelity.