Somethings not right. Skyrim & HD5870

I've been having low FPS issues with my 5870 some time now and i've tried numereous things to get rid of it but no chance yet. My final issue was with the newest Elder Scroll's game Skyrim. Everyone on the internet are bragging about how their Skyrim runs 60 FPS stable on their 5870 with Ultra settings. I don't get it. My system puts it on High Settings by default, and only FPS i can get is around 30-45 on the outside (with daylight). Shouldn't i be getting 60 FPS stable with this system? I tried reducing some of the performance eating functions such as AA and AF, shadows etc, but still it makes a little difference. Is there something wrong with my system that i cannot get the full potential of my GPU? I've encountered this low fps issue with other games too. I can't help myself but to think somethings not right here.

BTW I can play Battlefield 3 on High settings with 50-60 FPS on large maps like Caspian Border, and MW3 also.

Here's my system:

ASUS G41T-M-LX Motherboard (with latest chipset driver, BIOS etc.)

Intel Q9550 Core 2 Quad 2.83 Ghz CPU with a Zalman cooler unit on it. So the temps are just fine. (I keep an eye on them all the time no throttling).

2x4 GB DDR3 1333Mhz GSKILLS RIPJAWS RAMS (Running on 1066Mhz)

ASUS EAH5870 Radeon 1 GB DDR5 Graphics Card. (11.11 Catalyst Drivers)

Coolermaster 700W Power Supply.

Creative Audigy Soundcard.

Case is a Thermaltake tower. Enough air flow. Enough Fans.

Win 7 64 Bit OS (Latest updates).

I generally play games at 1440 x 900 resolution, since i use a LCD TV as monitor which has 15:9 screen ratio.


So, whats bottlenecking me? Is this normal? Any help appreciated.

It's your CPU; Skyrim is a console port, meaning - CPU intensive.

I would overclock, and if that doesn't work. Then start looking at other causes...

thank you though.

I think it just a gpu intense game to tell you the truth. I am running 2 5850 in cf and my cpu is at 4.0 ghz and I play on high setting with the extras turned off and get 60 fps. If I run the game on ultra I get 25 to 30 frames and it stutters real bad.

All 32-bit applications are limited to 2gb of system RAM by default.

Could flag it for Large Address Aware with a program like the ones below, although apperantly Bethesda keeps breaking third party support for this in a crusade for more DRM.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/ [...] p?t=112556
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013

Catalyst 11.11a performance driver
Back
Last Updated
11/21/2011
Article Number
GPU-38

Elder Scrolls Skyrim

o Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations

o Resolve corruption seen when enabling Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 Series

o Disables CrossFireX (to resolve negative scaling and image quality issues seen when CrossFireX is enabled)

§ AMD is continuing to work on a CrossFireX solution for Skyrim – as soon as it’s ready we’ll make it publicly available

Seems promising Thank you, i never would have noticed this one.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticl [...] mance.aspx

It's definitely a CPU bottleneck. The game only uses 2 cores - hence the 50% usage. The faster your cores the more you'll get out of it. Also I'd be willing to bet your GPUs aren't being maxed out, so you probably can set it to Ultra no problem and get the same FPS.

I'm running CF 5850s - but CF has negative scaling right now until AMD release a driver hotfix. In the meantime with a single 5850 I run it on better-than-ultra by using config tweaks and some texture mods. I get usually around 60fps indoors but only about 45 outdoors.

I'm running an i5 750 at 4ghz.

I'm also using the >2gb Large Address Aware mods which seem to help smooth it out.