OFFICIAL Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim (Discussion)

[AphexDreamer]

Saw a thread on escapist the other day. Someone was asking how to make Skyrim more enjoyable, and the same person made the startling point of there being very few bosses and very limited loot.

So for instance, caves are bandits, dungeons are druagr and deep dungeons are falmer. Where are the minibosses? Ones that aren't dragur kings? and where is the loot? There is next to no random loot that is worth picking up.

Discuss

If you've played any Elder Scrolls game in the past you'd know that the point of its expansiveness isn't to find a random mini boss in every cave or dugeon. The loot is random and its actually based on your LUCK. So if your luck is high you will get better loot then if your luck is low. Its how they make luck useful.

 

[1Kurgan1]

Been playing Skyrim a fair bit since I had dawnguard DLC for a while now.
I see it still has it's bugs.

http://img.techpowerup.org/120917/2012-09-07_00003.jpg

I'm not sure if you think those corpses are bugs. But it's just how they fell, clipping, not really a bug. And arrow isn't either, skyrim doesn't account for headshots as far as I know, so an arrow in the tongue is no different than an arrow in the toe.

Either way, I see your head up the pooper pose, and raise you with the Golden Shower pose. I killed this guy, then looted his gear and realized his position was hilarious, and a look on the face that matches.

 

[Solaris17]

Where is crazyeyes?

Iv been doing some testing because we all came to the conclusion awhile ago that alot of skyrims performance was CPU based. Initial tests showed that a higher clock rate yeilded better results which makes sense. Today though I was monitoring temps and I noticed CPU usage graphs on a gadget of mine. What I noticed suggested that skyrim doesnt really use that much. looking at my gpu usage i noticed i hit about 80% +/- on a single GPU. so the question remains were do the gains come from I wonder? Here are some of my tests.

these settings we taken on my system to the left. one at 4.3ghz the other at 4.0ghz all settings in the CP are high or ultra with everything enabled, .inis are vanilla.

Location of save file.

from here I walked to the east empire company I used the exact same route both times.

At 4.0 Ghz these were my results polled every min.

judging from that quick test run the avg cpu usage is

10.5%

At 4.3

cpu usage avg 9.25%

Now for the next test I fast travel to the docks instead of walking. I then enter solitude which I have not yet discovered. I spend 10seconds inside the doors and let the town load to its fullest. I then quite to desktop

at 4.0ghz

cpu avg 10%

avg 10.6%

So my question is does clock rate really matter at this speed? judging by RAW usage calculations and avg usage calculations the cpu isnt getting stressed enough to really make a diffirence. at least at anything over 4ghz even a 300mhz increase yeilded negligable gain.

but this doesnt explain why cpu usage effects frame rate so much for everyone. because usage whise their is almost no diffirence. does anyone notice an kind of gain in frames clocking past 4ghz?

for those interested new version of cpu monitor below.

 

[Phusius]

Impressive Solaris.

 

[Irony]

My CPU doesnt like to go past 4.0 ghz. But I think that for me its a tiny bit irrelevant, my 670 keeps it at 60 almost all the time. (It makes me happy inside. lol) Its mostly the shadows that are CPU bound in skyrim, correct?

 

[DannibusX]

Well, after a long time not playing this game for whatever reason, I fired it up last week and I am unable to put it down again. I started from scratch, playing completely differently from my usual playstyle. All stealth and arrows.

I talked to some Whiterun guards until I heard the arrow to the knee comment, now they won't STFU about it.

 

[Irony]

Lol. Do this:

It's very fulfilling. Also somewhat difficult to not get caught doing it; sniping from the rooftops with an Ebony bow/Deadric arrow combo is quite fun. 3x damage when sneaking for a total of over 600. Only took me about a day though. Thats all the guards that patrol whiterun. (Of course, for it to be ethical I waited until they said somrthing rude to me.) I've grown tired of random guard slaying, now I just steal their clothes. Or maybe I'm just lazy? lol

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

Where is crazyeyes?

Iv been doing some testing because we all came to the conclusion awhile ago that alot of skyrims performance was CPU based. Initial tests showed that a higher clock rate yeilded better results which makes sense. Today though I was monitoring temps and I noticed CPU usage graphs on a gadget of mine. What I noticed suggested that skyrim doesnt really use that much. looking at my gpu usage i noticed i hit about 80% +/- on a single GPU. so the question remains were do the gains come from I wonder? Here are some of my tests.

these settings we taken on my system to the left. one at 4.3ghz the other at 4.0ghz all settings in the CP are high or ultra with everything enabled, .inis are vanilla.

Location of save file.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/577841685459724016/10D4ACB3532178FECCF80706C7DF7F3EECBBCBEC/

from here I walked to the east empire company I used the exact same route both times.

At 4.0 Ghz these were my results polled every min.

http://img.techpowerup.org/120918/skyrimtosol4.0.png

judging from that quick test run the avg cpu usage is

10.5%

At 4.3

http://img.techpowerup.org/120918/skyrimtosol4.3.png

cpu usage avg 9.25%

Now for the next test I fast travel to the docks instead of walking. I then enter solitude which I have not yet discovered. I spend 10seconds inside the doors and let the town load to its fullest. I then quite to desktop

at 4.0ghz

http://img.techpowerup.org/120918/teltosol4.0.png

cpu avg 10%

http://img.techpowerup.org/120918/teltosol4.3.png

avg 10.6%

So my question is does clock rate really matter at this speed? judging by RAW usage calculations and avg usage calculations the cpu isnt getting stressed enough to really make a diffirence. at least at anything over 4ghz even a 300mhz increase yeilded negligable gain.

but this doesnt explain why cpu usage effects frame rate so much for everyone. because usage whise their is almost no diffirence. does anyone notice an kind of gain in frames clocking past 4ghz?

for those interested new version of cpu monitor below.

A while back after i kinda left the thread Bethesda realized what i was saying, aka they had 0 optimizations turned on in the exe so when they did some recompiling for one of the patches (i forget which one) they turned those optimizations back on and viola performance restored. essentially Bethesda shipped Skyrim for PC with 0 optimizations on the base game once they noticed the problem they finally fixed it and that was that, before hand you had to brute force things, also INI being vanilla is one of your problems

SHADOWS are CPU based
UGRID setting = cells loaded more cells means more AI the game has to calculate and keep track off, these two settings both being limited to 1 core is why performance suffers,

set your shadow settings to 8196 like i do or 4096 and youll see performance drop but GPU usage remain the same

UGRID setting impacts gpu performance a bit but is still heavy on the CPU it has to load alot more data default is 5, most run 7 i use 9 and ive pushed as high as 13 this impacts memory, cpu and disk a bit as it has to load alot of data and keep track of quite a bit in terms of whats going on from NPCs to creatures in terms of AI, physics for that entire region for all said things + random events in said area etc all takes a toll on CPU.

at ugrid 9 and Shadows of 8196 primary and 4096 secondary performance drops alot its playable NOW but wasnt back before said patch.

pre patches it would avg 23-30fps on a 2500k at 4.4ghz gpus sat around 30-40% usage if that. I havent tested any further in a long time however so my mind is fairly rusty as im just waiting for all the expansions to release then Ill get back into the game. But from what i remember one patch with optimizations increased my framerate by nearly double.

 

[Solaris17]

A while back after i kinda left the thread Bethesda realized what i was saying, aka they had 0 optimizations turned on in the exe so when they did some recompiling for one of the patches (i forget which one) they turned those optimizations back on and viola performance restored. essentially Bethesda shipped Skyrim for PC with 0 optimizations on the base game once they noticed the problem they finally fixed it and that was that, before hand you had to brute force things, also INI being vanilla is one of your problems

SHADOWS are CPU based
UGRID setting = cells loaded more cells means more AI the game has to calculate and keep track off, these two settings both being limited to 1 core is why performance suffers,

set your shadow settings to 8196 like i do or 4096 and youll see performance drop but GPU usage remain the same

UGRID setting impacts gpu performance a bit but is still heavy on the CPU it has to load alot more data default is 5, most run 7 i use 9 and ive pushed as high as 13 this impacts memory, cpu and disk a bit as it has to load alot of data and keep track of quite a bit in terms of whats going on from NPCs to creatures in terms of AI, physics for that entire region for all said things + random events in said area etc all takes a toll on CPU.

at ugrid 9 and Shadows of 8196 primary and 4096 secondary performance drops alot its playable NOW but wasnt back before said patch.

pre patches it would avg 23-30fps on a 2500k at 4.4ghz gpus sat around 30-40% usage if that. I havent tested any further in a long time however so my mind is fairly rusty as im just waiting for all the expansions to release then Ill get back into the game. But from what i remember one patch with optimizations increased my framerate by nearly double.

you and me sir will need to do some extravagant testing. I wouldnt necissarily say it was a problem i ran stock inis for a reason i didnt want the testing to be contaminated. you understand.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

well stock it wasnt a big deal the dips ppl had were in towns primarily and that was a CPU bottleneck Bethesda fixed that major issue

now the only bottlenecks are when pushing extreme graphics settings, and thats do to the code being 10 years old at this point and still single threaded.

 

[Solaris17]

well stock it wasnt a big deal the dips ppl had were in towns primarily and that was a CPU bottleneck Bethesda fixed that major issue

now the only bottlenecks are when pushing extreme graphics settings, and thats do to the code being 10 years old at this point and still single threaded.

hey! if you dont do testing with me for the hell of it (regardless of engine age) imma pop you in the mouth!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

yea yea ill include my ini files in a zip and send it your way so you can see what im using for ini settings. to get an idea of what im looking at ill run the game with mods off just ini tweaks and report back.

any chance your tool will log to a notepad file every 10 seconds or so what the CPU usage value is.? if it does that would be great i cant remember if it does or not and im to lazy right now its late i gotta be up early but ill take a look and test various settings.

 

[Solaris17]

yea yea ill include my ini files in a zip and send it your way so you can see what im using for ini settings. to get an idea of what im looking at ill run the game with mods off just ini tweaks and report back.

any chance your tool will log to a notepad file every 10 seconds or so what the CPU usage value is.? if it does that would be great i cant remember if it does or not and im to lazy right now its late i gotta be up early but ill take a look and test various settings.

it logs every min continuously. if i short stroke it much more it will become innaccurate.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

eitherway ill look into it tomorrow

 

[Black Panther]

Gravity bugs!

I'm glad I bought a card with 4GB Vram. ugridstoload 9 looks nicely detailed and good fps! (The above 2 photos don't look good because I converted them to .jpg)

Solaris and Crazyeyesreaper, I'd love to test out .ini's with you!

 

[AphexDreamer]

If I'm using 1.53 GB out 2GB for UGRIDS 7 would it be safe for me to go 2 UGRIDS 9?

Also ran a quick test outside my card used 31% of my CPU at 4.5Ghz and 1356MB of my RAM with these shadow settings.

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3
fInteriorShadowDistance=3000.0000
fShadowDistance=8000.0000
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=2048
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=2048
iShadowSplitCount=2

Would I a be safe upping those as well? Might just try anyways.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

save you ini test higher settings if they dont work drag drop its all you can do Bethesda's games performance wise with ini changes vary more than the split personalities of schizophrenic

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Saw a thread on escapist the other day. Someone was asking how to make Skyrim more enjoyable, and the same person made the startling point of there being very few bosses and very limited loot.

So for instance, caves are bandits, dungeons are druagr and deep dungeons are falmer. Where are the minibosses? Ones that aren't dragur kings? and where is the loot? There is next to no random loot that is worth picking up.

Discuss

I have to ask, what are you smoking?
I want some...


If I wanted to play Zelda, I'd play Zelda. Same aesthetic choices (in the older games). Each area has a dungeon with a boss, and usually a mini-boss. The other trappings change, but the very broadest basics are the same.

I want an Elder Scrolls game when I buy Skyrim. The worlds are open. Creatures level. A luck level 1 character can kill a Druagr Overlord, and a level 80 character can be killed by a pack of Skeever if they spent all of their upgrades on Magika. There are no artificial walls, that you can only get through once you get item x (overlooking the locked dungeons relating to story events).


You have a problem with this, write a mod. There are already at least a handful that change this gameplay choice. You want to ask why the designer chose what they did, then ask them. The fans railed against the ME ending. The fans railed against Capcom's on disc DLC. If you really think that Skyrim should have been something else speak up. Otherwise, this is the biggest dead-ended trap conversation that I could think of.

 

[Irony]

Gravity bugs!


http://img.techpowerup.org/120920/1.jpg


http://img.techpowerup.org/120920/2.jpg


I'm glad I bought a card with 4GB Vram. ugridstoload 9 looks nicely detailed and good fps! (The above 2 photos don't look good because I converted them to .jpg)
http://i.imgur.com/AN9Ax.jpg


Solaris and Crazyeyesreaper, I'd love to test out .ini's with you!

I'm kindof sad, I don't know for sure exactly where that is. I thought I knew just about every outside place in skyrim; is that like northeast of Markarth a ways?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

if im gonna do any INI testing i need a basic save file past the intro with 0 mods enabled, with vanilla ini i dont have time to be searching for this shit.

 

[Widjaja]

Hearthfire is out for PC if anyone want to make their own home in game and....adopt children.

 

[Irony]

No silly, we want to kill the snobbish invulnerable children.

 

[Athlonite]

No silly, we want to kill the snobbish invulnerable children.

There's A mod for that on the nexus

 

[Irony]

And of course I have it, lol. I think the civil war also deals with the jarls children

 

[techtard]

No silly, we want to kill the snobbish invulnerable children.

The first mod I downloaded for Skyrim was the one that let you kill children.

I hate having invulnerable NPCs, especially when they are cheeky little bastards. Also downloaded the killable children mod for Fallout.