Skyrim Performance Annoyance…

Hello,
I’m trying to play Skyrim on my new GPU GTX 580, I played it on my single 9800GT 1GB reasonable well, not much lag in towns on medium all good. Now I’m trying to play it on the 580 and it’s GPU usgage is awful. Around 33% no matter what… I’ve tried disabling vsynch via Nvidia control panel and the many ini tweaks but none of it works. I have the latest beta patch but that didn’t help neither, anyone got any solutions? I have tried googling but no luck. It’s rather gutting having pay so much for a card when you can’t even play a game your cheap GPU could play no problems…
Thanks!
Answer #1
What’s your CPU? If your CPU usage is maxing out that means your CPU is bottlenecking your card.
Answer #2
Sorry should have included that, AMD Phenom X4 II 965 BE 3.4ghz
Answer #3
Yea..That’s weird..I have good specs and the game freezes every 4 minutes..Yet my son have lower specs than mine and the game runs smooth..
I think some heavy updates are needed…
Answer #4
http://www.techspot.com/review/467-skyrim-performance/page7.html
It’s easy to see why your GPU isn’t being used to it’s fullest. It can’t because your CPU can’t provide it enough frames to process. Your CPU will give you roughly 60% of the FPS a Sandy Bridge quad core would give you even less so when overclocked
Answer #5
Well I turned shadows to low still the same performance
Answer #6
Turning down shadows wont have any effect. You can set it to the maximum settings and you’ll still get the same performance.
Answer #7
Is there anything I can tweak so it doesn’t bottleneck it so much? Other than getting a dual core cpu lol.
Answer #8
Overclock your CPU. Should be pretty easy provided good cooling. It’s got an unlocked multiplier.
Answer #9
I see, what would you reccomend I OC it to?
Answer #10
At least 3.8 GHz. Aim for 4 GHz. It wont make it a whole lot better but there’ll be some improvement.
Answer #11
Sounds good, I only have stock cooling and don’t wish to spend any more money on additional cooling. So am I still in the safe zone going up to 4ghz with no water/non stock cooling. Dissapointing really, I hope theres a fix soon. Great gaming system can’t run Skyrim right because of this non sense…
Answer #12
Oh there’s a lot of games that CPU can’t run properly. Skyrim is just one of them. Oh and it takes a lot of volts to reach 4 GHz on that CPU and it doesn’t like high temps. You need to forget about overclocking on the stock cooler.
Answer #13
Eugh, great :/ Basically being help back by a good GPU… rather ironic
Answer #14
do u have a good power supply it will probably need @ least over 600watts to power ur card
Answer #15
are you sure about the cpu? im playing on a first generation phenom, 9950BE and it all seems smooth to me on high.
surely my cpu would not work as well as his 2nd gen
Answer #16
I don’t think it’s your PC, because I have AMD Athlon 64 x2 3.0ghz with a GT 430 and I am playing the game at High settings with minimal to no lag whatsoever @ 1280 x 1024. It was recommended by the game, but I bet if I put it at medium settings it no lag at all :<, and you have better CPU and GPU, just my 2 cents.
Answer #17
yea i dont think its ur cpu but rather shitty codes from nvidia. make sure you remove all the old drivers for your card and install the latest drivers for your new card.
Answer #18
I don’t recall the OP ever mentioning the game lagging or getting ridiculously low FPS just that his GPU usage is low and I showed him why. He can never utilize the full performance of the GPU in Skyrim with that CPU. It’s even held back by a stock SB i7 as you can see the graph never evens out.
Answer #19
I got a 750w Corsair, true I guess… but when running my 9800GT it ran fine on medium which would suggest the GPU usage was high (never tested). But with a 9800GT if the GPU usage was low the FPS would be awful. So it worked fine with my CPU before but now with my GTX 580 its awful. Oh and I do get low FPS and low GPU usage. Sorry I thought that was a given.
I also get issues on BF3, guess I’m cursed lol. Changing drivers doesn’t help nor does settings. Sometimes it’s fine in BF3, mostly it isn’t.
EDIT: Some pics to show, good FPS/GPU usage indoors, but outdoors they both go down.
Indoors http://i44.~ Disallowed image host. Please Report. ~/1hcz2d.jpg
Outdoors http://i44.~ Disallowed image host. Please Report. ~/347e51v.jpg
Answer #20
I do beleive you have a point though paroxysM, perhaps I should upgrade my CPU. As it’s holding me back in a few games, BF3, Saints Row 3. Any reccomendations for good AMD CPUs? The bulldozer is out but I have heard bad things about it…