The Running Skyrim On My PoS project

[hellrazor]

I'm going to do everything I can to get Skyrim to run decently on my current computer (specs to the left) at my monitor's native resolution (1280x1024). That's my goal. I used to be able to play it on my Athlon64x2 4400+, may it's non-soul forever rest in peace - that thing was a loyal beast.


Skyrim's performance has been getting much better with patches, and I believe I can do it (with a lot of tweaking, at least). So first up, fixing this:



to this:

[Bo$$]

turn off antialaising, that will slow the SHIT out of the game...
Other than that i would try and manually tweak it. Try this if you get confused: http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guid...sf2686171=1/#1

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by Bo$$

turn off antialaising, that will slow the SHIT out of the game...
Other than that i would try and manually tweak it. Try this if you get confused: http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guid...sf2686171=1/#1

Try low texture quality too.

[Black Panther]

If you need any .ini tweaks shoot me a pm and I'll answer you here.

[Bo$$]

Originally Posted by Sasqui

Try low texture quality too.

for that res, im sure that's not going to bog it down too much...
Try it anyway ^good suggestion^

[Frag Maniac]

Wow, I thought I was pushing it playing on a GTS 250 1GB with an i7 950. I feel for the strain you are putting on that old thing.

As mentioned, shut off the AA. I don't even use it on MY rig, and Skyrim doesn't need much AA anyway. AF is the less FPS hungry of the two, but I'd leave even THAT off.

You may want to set textures to Med too, esp if the FPS start slowing to a crawl indoors where there's lots of torches and fog.

What may be the slowest parts are the big civil war battles where there's lots of AI and smoke and fire going on though. There your CPU is going to be feeling it too.

[Bo$$]

Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

What may be the slowest parts are the big civil war battles where there's lots of AI and smoke and fire going on though. There your CPU is going to be feeling it too.

Spoiler alert please!

[Nick259]

Skyrim seemed to run quite smoothly on my friends backup pc that he gave to his sister for playing skyrim at 1280x800. It has a 2.8ghz pentium d, an 8800gs 384mb, 2gb ram and XP. A single core is another story though...

Can't you get a cheap second hand 3800x2 or something?

[Solaris17]

volumetric effects. the terrain is delt with by the card. smoke/shadows hit CPU like a brick. lower them med /low reflection on water and med to high texture effects and it should run.

[pantherx12]

Originally Posted by Bo$$

Spoiler alert please!

You find out there is a civil war as soon as you start playing, don't sweat it

[hellrazor]

I took off AA, did a few ini tweaks (LOD of objects and shadows, took shadows off of grass and trees, lowered the amount of trees/particles, and raised the memory limits), took off vsync, and shoved AF to 16x - texture quality is still high.

Outside runs anywhere from 20 to 45, running around Whiterun (I forgot to check at the top of the stairs, I'll be back in a minute) usually runs around 10 to 25, and inside is around 25-75 (yeah, really). Combat (nothing spectacular) bogs it down about 5 to 7 fps.

This is starting to sound significantly easier than when I first started...

Originally Posted by Nick259

Can't you get a cheap second hand 3800x2 or something?

I have no money, as in I have a sandwich bag on top of my dresser full of pennies. That's about it.

Originally Posted by Bo$$

Spoiler alert please!

I've played it before when I had my x2 4400+, but I uninstalled when it broke. Unless it's for you or something...


Anyways I just took off depth of field (I didn't notice it there before), and lowered particles to 400. I'll be back soon.

[pantherx12]

If you could copy and paste the contents of your skyrim.ini I or someone else will probably be able to whip you up an optimised one : ]

I'm about to go to bed but if no one has done it by the time I get back from the bank tomorrow I'll do it.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by pantherx12

You find out there is a civil war as soon as you start playing, don't sweat it

No kidding, and what I said about it was extremely vague.

[hellrazor]

Originally Posted by Skyrimprefs.ini

[Display]
iTexMipMapSkip=0
bFXAAEnabled=0
fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000
fSpecularLODStartFade=200.0000
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fLODFadeOutMultObjects=2.5000
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Originally Posted by Skyrim.ini

[Display]
sD3DDevice="NVIDIA GeForce GT 240"
iPresentInterval=0
[Grass]
b30GrassVS=1
[Water]
bReflectLODObjects=0
bReflectLODLand=0
bReflectSky=0
bReflectLODTrees=0
[General]
sLanguage=ENGLISH

I went through the first dragon fight and it got 20-30 fps the whole time, and 16-ish fps at the top of Whiterun's stairs (looking down towards the city), so I'm beginning to think that my CPU is secretly much faster than it let's on.

[hellrazor]

So I was playing it last night, and it seems to me that it's powerful enough to play the game, just not powerful enough to load anything while doing it.

I got a few screenshots you'd all enjoy (sorry, there in reverse chronological order):
This is Redoran Retreat, the first thing you'll notice is that it isn't there
This was the path to High Hrothgar, you'll find that there aren't nearly as many steps as there should be
Moar of the same
This is a waterfall, and where I'm standing should be a river.
Moar of the same
This was somewhere around Riften
A waterfall around Riften, not as bad as the previous
This is that town before the path to High Hrothgar
This was somewhere around that town (I can't remember what the name was, sorry)
Rocks and forest around Riften

And they all do eventually load, it just takes forever.

[yogurt_21]

Originally Posted by hellrazor

So I was playing it last night, and it seems to me that it's powerful enough to play the game, just not powerful enough to load anything while doing it.

I got a few screenshots you'd all enjoy (sorry, there in reverse chronological order):
This is Redoran Retreat, the first thing you'll notice is that it isn't there
This was the path to High Hrothgar, you'll find that there aren't nearly as many steps as there should be
Moar of the same
This is a waterfall, and where I'm standing should be a river.
Moar of the same
This was somewhere around Riften
A waterfall around Riften, not as bad as the previous
This is that town before the path to High Hrothgar
This was somewhere around that town (I can't remember what the name was, sorry)
Rocks and forest around Riften

And they all do eventually load, it just takes forever.

congrats you've successfully made skyrim look like morrowind.

[Mindweaver]

With your current setup I would suggest going to Windows 7 x86. You'll see a big improvement with only 4gb of ram, and a single core.

[yogurt_21]

surely there's someone around with a 939 athlon x2 laying around that they'd be willing to part with if you paid shipping. This is painful.

[erocker]

I'm still using mine. If I have a motherboard crap out on me, whoever wants it can have it.

Originally Posted by Mindweaver

With your current setup I would suggest going to Windows 7 x86. You'll see a big improvement with only 4gb of ram, and a single core.

True! I'm using a s754 single core CPU and 2gb of RAM and it is a much better O/S than XP was.

[hellrazor]

It's not always like that, just when I'm on a horse and I go too fast - besides, my horse died so I walk/fast travel everywhere nowadays, so it never looks that bad anymore. Aside from that, the game is perfectly playable - just avoid riding horses.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by hellrazor

...I'm beginning to think that my CPU is secretly much faster than it let's on.

"Faster" is relative to what one accepts as far as image quality and frame rates. In a game like this, the performance can start showing choppiness at anything under 45 FPS. I try to minimize my dips to no less than 40 FPS. A comfortable frame rate window in this game is at least 45-65 FPS. Where it starts affecting gameplay most is when you're trying to get in accurate arrow shots. Times like that, the choppiness is hard to deal with.

Have you tried different patches to find which ones give the best performance? I can't remember which ones they are, but the 1st or 2nd ones that claimed an FPS boost might be the best way to go.

As far as single cores go, I stuck it out with my Pentium 4 way too long. It was getting to be quite a strain on my eyes. Switching to a decent quad was one of the best gaming purchases I've ever made.

[Mindweaver]

Originally Posted by erocker

True! I'm using a s754 single core CPU and 2gb of RAM and it is a much better O/S than XP was.

Yea, I have 2 laptops with C2D T7200, one with xp and the other with win7 x86 and the win7 x86 is much faster. I also, tried win7x64 and with the low hardware in those machines the win7 x86 was much snapper than the x64 build.

EDIT: Anything under or equal to 4gb I would only run x86.