What can i do to get better performance in Skyrim w/ a Dual core?

[marathonturtle]

Hey everyone

Made a thread a few days ago and asked about getting a new cpu since my dual core cannot run Skyrim/Saints Row 3 to well.

I looked into overclocking but found complicated BIOs screen i could not interpret without some guidance.

So in the mean time, is there anything outside of overclocking that can bring a smoother performance?

Because Skyrim and Saints Row 3 stutter a lot, probably about 20+ frames per second even on high with AA and AF turned off.

So is there anything to be helped? Can i ever understand a BIOS screen?


Specs:

-ATI radeon 4870
-Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
-650 Watt PSU
-AMD Phenom II
-4GB DDR2 Ram

Thanks

 

[jaguarskx]

Hey everyone

I looked into overclocking but found complicated BIOs screen i could not interrupt without some guidance.

The word you are looking for is "interpret".

Things to improve performance:

1. Overclock your HD 4870.
2. Reduce graphic settings.
3. Reduce resolution.

 

[marathonturtle]

Yes, it is.

1. To clarify, my 4870 can be overclocked from the CCC menu?
2.
3. (

 

[jaguarskx]

Yep, it's called ATI Overdrive.

Try Afterburner though, it should give you better tweaking options. Not 100% sure if the Radeon HD 4xxx series is supported, but worth a try. I never used it as I haven't had the need to OC my Radeon HD 5850.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.0.0-Final-download-2562.html

 

[hunter315]

The 4890 is the recommended GPU and tom's showed a 5770 being able to handle skyrim on high at 1920x1080 quite well so im not sure if OCing your 4870 will help you out a ton.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-5.html

The CPU scaling however shows some of the slower PII being unable to give good FPS, it doesn't scale with cores much over two cores it would appear so the dual core isn't likely to be your issue but its clock speed may be.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

 

[87ninefiveone]

Download MSI Afterburner. Check and see if your GPU usage is at 100% during play. If your consistantly hitting 100% or very close to it then your GPU is the bottleneck, if the GPU is less than 100% utilized then the CPU is probably the issue.

You can also try setting V-Sync to ON. This will limit FPS to 60 or some even fraction there of which can often improve performace.