Having trouble playing Skyrim on my ATI Radeon HD 5970

Do you have a legally bought copy? It sounds like the games engine is the problem.

Yh, I bought it in the Game store. I reinstalled it just to be sure, but same problems.

How about your windows? Fully updated?

Yup, windows 7 pro is fully updated

If I were you, I would uninstall all of my drivers through the ATI Catalyst Control Center module in Uninstall Programs then re-install and update again. A 5970 should be owning Skyrim. Check the FPS in-game and search the Steam forums for any other people mentioning issues like this.

After re-installing your drivers I would uninstall the game and install again through STEAM but verify the cache of your game right-clicking on Skyrim in Steam (if you are running it through there - which is recommended and the only way?) to make sure the download/install didn't mess up at all. If the problems STILL persist and you can't find any other solutions online, it could just be your card and the game getting along badly, but I can't think of any reason why that would be.

Okay, I did what you suggested. So far so good, Skyrim is suggesting High Quality as defualt and running at 60 fps.

Until 20mins into the game I save, it drops to 16 fps and have been playing like that for 30mins before I had enough. When I pause, the fps jump back to 60. WTF is going on?

I noticed Steam was downloading something for Skyrim, I assume a patch.

I'm getting to the point of wanting to buy another graphics card.

dont the 5970 should destroy skyrim completely wait for 7000 series before you make an upgrade from 5970.

I don't see any other reason why I'm having problems... Iv got to a point in the game that's making me want to stay on for hours, but I can't.

It's really frustrating people telling me my card would own skyrim, when its obviously not.

What kind of CPU do you have?

It sounds like overheating, and it might be the CPU could be a possibility. It obviously runs well for a while before it goes into problem mode.

Another possibility is currently Skyrim isn't playing nice with crossfire. Perhaps you can disable crossfire (5970's are in crossfire).

sorry about that. has anyone considered the power supply? maybe thats the problem what is the name and how long have you had it.

My PC spec is :

Intel i7 930 2.8GHz - Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50
Asus P6X58D-E X58 MoBo
Sapphire HD 5970 2GB with Artic Colling Accelero XTREME
WD 1TB 3.5" 7200rpm HDD
Corsair 6GB DDR3 1600MHz
Artic Power Pro 850W PSU

All inside a Antec P193 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case.
I've had this machine for over a year now.


How do I disable crossfire?

There are still a lot of issues with Skyrim that are going to get ironed out in the coming days (hopefully) or weeks (likely). I was having massive sustained drops in framerates after loading areas- after googling "skyrim crossfire problem" I came across a few fixes that have resolved nearly all problems. In particular the .dll download that you drop into your skyrim folder (in program files- with the .exe launcher in it) really resolved all of those issues.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1164844/skyrim-crossfire-iss...

It's a shame that the developer/publisher can't sort out these kind of fixes on their own without third parties having to do it. For the majority of gamers that don't actively monitor these kinds of sites, they just get screwed waiting for an official fix.

Downloaded the 11.11a ati update, its working like a dream.

Default is now on Ultra, I might start tweaking to get more out of it.

Thanks beltzy!!

Curious, isn't the 5970 a dual GPU card? And, would therefore be operating as a crossfire setup? Currently, crossfire is not supported for Skyrim AND you probably had the dual GPU acceleration enabled in your CCC but, updating to 11.11a disables this for Skyrim, you are running on one GPU but, you can play it just fine. You can probably check this by running afterburner while playing Skyrim and you should see zero usage on one of the GPUs. Thanks.

-stev

I hope the Skyrim creators enable crossfire soon, I would prefer to utilise both GPUs.

If the game is that graphic intesive, why not enable crossfire in the first place? I assume they ran tests to iron-out bugs etc, why not test the limits of the game.

The game isn't that graphics intense at all. Mostly CPU intense actually.

it's a new game engine and the amd drivers don't seem to understand how it works, amd is still working on the crossfire part of it... maybe a week or two till they get it sorted out.

No no no. With 5970 its 60fps inside, 45/60 outside, 25/35 fps in town (it s not "like a dream" Killerb4dger). 11.11a make no difference because of we can t disable one GPU like a real crossfire issue. It s playable but we must wait fir a real AMD driver for fix this problem.
Another gamers who have 5970 have the same problem. The only thing to do is rename TESV.exe by fallout3.exe

No problem with Rage, Witcher 2, LA Noire etc.
Why not enable crossfire in the first place ? Because AMD is not Nvidia

My config: clean pc (100 Go use on 2x 690 Go DD), I7 870 2,93 Ghz, Hd 5970 2Go, 8 go ddr3.

(sorry for my english im franch^^)

Do I smell...(sniff sniff)... A fanboy???

I'm sorry if I over exaggerated there, I meant to say its running far better than it was. These third party tweaks worked for a while, but after time the graphics was getting progressively.

11.11a is allowing me to play the game on Ultra settings at a decent fps, which I'm happy with until AMD/Bethesda bring out a fix for crossfire issue.

its AMD who disable the cross fire support for skyrim in their latest driver. skyrim dev only make changes to the games not the gpu drivers.



what do you mean by this? btw AMD disable the CF support for the game because they have negative scaling in their previous driver. they disable CF support for the latest driver because they still don't fix the problem

According to @catalystcreator (Twitter PR dev for amd's catalyst drivers), 11.11a is just a quick fix to disable CF support for skyrim to at least allow some playability (since skyrim isnt patched for CF and plays like *** with CF cards currently) - so now AMD cant release any CF drivers until Skyrim devs patch it to allow for the AMD drivers to work!

tl;dr - AMD hands are tied and cant release CAP3 for skyrim until Bethesda fixes the game code to allow it. So if you don't feel like renaming ur TESV.exe to fallout3.exe for dual GPU usage, at least 11.11a will make the game somewhat playable (but only using one of the two GPUs).

Peace

Source: http://twitter.com/#!/catalystcreator

EDIT: So apparently the 11.11a with CAP2 will allow for BOTH GPUs on ONE card to work, but prevents a second card's GPUs from working... Interesting.

I have a 5970 and I am having no problems since the 11.11 update CAP 2, I run 40+ FPS in towns and outside it only drops a bit in framerate because I got the view distance jack really really far outside.

Interesting sidenote: Is the Diamond 2gb HD 5970 worth it for $300 on sale at Newegg right now or should I still wait until Nvidia drops their 560 TI 448 CUDA Core in 4 days...decision, decision....

As stated, CF doesn't work and in my testing I lost 10 fps by enabling it. For whatever reason 11.11a did disable CF for me... once. I have to do it manually now lol. Whatever, it works.

Make sure it's running on a single card until the update.

Also you probably will want to download one of the many 2gb Large Address Aware patches/mods. That d9d3.dll or whatever should not be necessary, but if it helps and you don't notice it looks different then go for it.

Also the game is both GPU and CPU intensive, but the biggest problem is it only seems to work 2ish cores. You end up gaining more FPS with overclocking the CPU than by adding cores. Still, with the settings up high enough you will be GPU limited. I'd suggest checking out the "DNA Skyrim Config" which lets you create a custom config for uber high graphics.

5970 is much faster than a 560Ti, but of course if you get a good deal, a pair of 560 Tis is completely bad ass.