Low FPS on Good PC Vanilla

[Oxiduck]

GTX 970
8gb DDR4
i5-6500 @ 3.2ghz
Windows 10 Pro 64x

I have no mods installed and I've just done a completely fresh re-install of the game. I've also updated all of my drivers. Playing on ultra (no aa 1080p) I get around 40-50 fps in the wilderness, 30-45 in cities (sometimes even 15 fps). I tried the lowest settings and I get a solid 60 but with some stuttering here and there and drops to 50 in combat and big cities.

EDIT: For those also looking for a fix, try going into skyrimprefs.ini under documents/mygames/skyrim and edit iShadowMapResolution= to 2048 (or lower if it still lags (1024, 512 etc)). That fixed it for me.

[Oxiduck]

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

[cfs111]

Start here; http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500687692

[Oxiduck]

I tried some of the tweaks but it hasn't really done much. Thanks though.

[Rice]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71214/?


http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57353/?

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Runeite:

GTX 970
8gb DDR4
i5-6500 @ 3.2ghz
Windows 10 Pro 64x

I have no mods installed and I've just done a completely fresh re-install of the game. I've also updated all of my drivers. Playing on ultra (no aa 1080p) I get around 40-50 fps in the wilderness, 30-45 in cities (sometimes even 15 fps). I tried the lowest settings and I get a solid 60 but with some stuttering here and there and drops to 50 in combat and big cities.

Hmm. That's a bit unusual, but far from unplayable. You must keep in mind that Skyrim is not really set up to take advantage of multithreading properly.
That said, it could also be an issue of the game defaulting to the integrated graphics (although I personally don't believe that is the case, given you are getting workable fps in general on ultra settings @ 1080p. Then again, I haven't used intel integrated graphics in a long time, meaning I'm not sure what the skylakes can do in that regard, so it is something to check) instead of your seperate graphics card.

What kind of things are happening in the area when it drops to 15fps? just lots of people, or lots of visual effects? Keeping track of what is going on when it drops can help point to a solution.

[Oxiduck]

Originally posted by Rice:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71214/?


http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57353/?

I'll try those out when I get the chance

Originally posted by DarthNachoz:

Hmm. That's a bit unusual, but far from unplayable. You must keep in mind that Skyrim is not really set up to take advantage of multithreading properly.
That said, it could also be an issue of the game defaulting to the integrated graphics (although I personally don't believe that is the case, given you are getting workable fps in general on ultra settings @ 1080p. Then again, I haven't used intel integrated graphics in a long time, meaning I'm not sure what the skylakes can do in that regard, so it is something to check) instead of your seperate graphics card.

What kind of things are happening in the area when it drops to 15fps? just lots of people, or lots of visual effects? Keeping track of what is going on when it drops can help point to a solution.

It dropped to 15 fps a couple of times in Markarth. I used the Nvidia control panel to see if skyrim was using my 970 and it was. I may be upgrading to a gtx 1070 in a couple of weeks (not because of skyrim, I'd been planning for a while) so I hope that helps

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Runeite:

Originally posted by Rice:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/71214/?


http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/57353/?

I'll try those out when I get the chance

Originally posted by DarthNachoz:

Hmm. That's a bit unusual, but far from unplayable. You must keep in mind that Skyrim is not really set up to take advantage of multithreading properly.
That said, it could also be an issue of the game defaulting to the integrated graphics (although I personally don't believe that is the case, given you are getting workable fps in general on ultra settings @ 1080p. Then again, I haven't used intel integrated graphics in a long time, meaning I'm not sure what the skylakes can do in that regard, so it is something to check) instead of your seperate graphics card.

What kind of things are happening in the area when it drops to 15fps? just lots of people, or lots of visual effects? Keeping track of what is going on when it drops can help point to a solution.

It dropped to 15 fps a couple of times in Markarth. I used the Nvidia control panel to see if skyrim was using my 970 and it was. I may be upgrading to a gtx 1070 in a couple of weeks (not because of skyrim, I'd been planning for a while) so I hope that helps

Ah. Markarth is well known for fking your frames, regardless of how beast (or not beast) your rig is.
There are some other areas like that, mostly ones with a lot of people and lights. Generally speaking, the only method I know of to fix it is to stay out of markarth unless you absolutely have to go there.
You could try lowering shadow resolution, but I doubt it will have any effect.

Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas, which are all on a earlier version of the engine skyrim is on all have areas that do the same thing.

[Oxiduck]

Huh... Setting shadows to lowest has fixed my issue. It's not a solid 60 but I'm not getting below 55 other than Markarth and other unoptimised areas. I wonder why that's the case?

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Runeite:

Huh... Setting shadows to lowest has fixed my issue. It's not a solid 60 but I'm not getting below 55 other than Markarth and other unoptimised areas. I wonder why that's the case?

Probably has to do with the lack of occlusion culling and the comparatively large number of Npcs/light sources in the cell.

[Oxiduck]

I found out that setting iShadowMapResolution= to 2048 in skyrimprefs.ini gives me identical results to the lowest setting in terms of performance but with better looking shadows. I've been trying to fix this problem for a week and it just turns out to be a single setting in the options menu...

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Runeite:

I found out that setting iShadowMapResolution= to 2048 in skyrimprefs.ini gives me identical results to the lowest setting in terms of performance but with better looking shadows. I've been trying to fix this problem for a week and it just turns out to be a single setting in the options menu...

PC gaming in a nutshell, lol. Try spending months trying to fix a game, only to find out that the problem was your audio sample rate.