The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance & IQ Preview @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance & IQ Preview - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released early this morning, and we have an exclusive look at performance in this game. We'll talk about performance, show some screenshots, and see what video card delivers the best experience on game launch day. For all you that are not already on your 10th quest that is.
 
pandora's box said:
very nice preview, thanks kyle.

Also in nvidia's favor is that ambient occlusion works very well in this game.

Off:

http://i.imgur.com/0sJ9y.jpg

On:

http://i.imgur.com/Zk7gS.jpg

I wonder if transparency AA would help this game at all, since it is DirectX 9 based...
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Wow, nice difference there :D. Thinking of grabbing Skyrim myself, so good to see the [H] article as well. Looks like higher-res textures would be great for this, though... looks pretty blurry in the H shots which are at max. I'll be getting it as soon as I find a sale today, but definitely re-playing it once mods come out to up the graphics ante ;). Still, I'm glad to see my GTX 570 SLI oc'd (in comparison to stock gtx 580's on the article) should provide solid performance @ 2560x1600.
 
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Have to agree with ATI dropping the ball on drivers lately. You would think with so many big game released in the last 3-4 months, they would of been all over getting drivers out.

Seriously thinking about offing this 6990 for a pair of 580 in SLI....Just cannot take this (work for 3-4 hours before you play a game to make it even run better because of drivers syndrom) from AMD anymore.

Great article....Would love to play skyrim...but I lag bad :(
 
Brent_Justice said:
Oh that option, cool beans, we might take a look at that, this game certainly can benefit from some good ole AO.
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I agree. I also saw 2 ini tweaks that make tree's and rocks produce shadows since the Ultra setting doesnt do that.
 
Have to use NV Inspector to get it to work:

Compatibility Bit: 0x00000003 (Fallout 3)
 
DASHlT said:
Have to agree with ATI dropping the ball on drivers lately. You would think with so many big game released in the last 3-4 months, they would of been all over getting drivers out.

Seriously thinking about offing this 6990 for a pair of 580 in SLI....Just cannot take this (work for 3-4 hours before you play a game to make it even run better because of drivers syndrom) from AMD anymore.

Great article....Would love to play skyrim...but I lag bad :(
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I have been bitten by the pathetic ATI driver support in the last few months (Rage, Deus-Ex, BF3 and now Skyrim). Seriously, WTF ATI! This is getting old fast. My next card will be an NVIDIA.
 
magictoaster said:
I have been bitten by the pathetic ATI driver support in the last few months (Rage, Deus-Ex, BF3 and now Skyrim). Seriously, WTF ATI! This is getting old fast. My next card will be an NVIDIA.
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To comment on the last page of the article and amd/ati drivers... that sort of thing's exactly what hit me back during the 5870 launch... lots of various things like those in most titles I tried, especially what were (at the time) new releases. Having heard of issues with Brink, Skyrim, BF3, and Rage, etc. as well as mmo's like Rift and a certain other major MMO title about to launch, I'm sticking with whatever Kepler is assuming it's any good, for my next setup. Street Fighter 4 and NFS Shift at the time gave me a good number of various random issues, especially. EDIT to add: I do hope Kepler provides a better amount of VRAM though, because I'm sure any mods for this game (and some like BF3 MSAA would need) will want a lot of it :p.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
To comment on the last page of the article and amd/ati drivers... that sort of thing's exactly what hit me back during the 5870 launch... lots of various things like those in most titles I tried, especially what were (at the time) new releases. Having heard of issues with Brink, Skyrim, BF3, and Rage, etc. as well as mmo's like Rift and a certain other major MMO title about to launch, I'm sticking with whatever Kepler is assuming it's any good, for my next setup. Street Fighter 4 and NFS Shift at the time gave me a good number of various random issues, especially. EDIT to add: I do hope Kepler provides a better amount of VRAM though, because I'm sure any mods for this game (and some like BF3 MSAA would need) will want a lot of it :p.
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I know NVIDIA drivers are not perfect either, but ATI have been dropping the ball lately. CatalystCreator posted this on Twitter (16 hours ago): “Catalyst 11.11 will resolve Rage issues; we're also working on a new performance driver (one of the updates should be CF for Rage)”. The game was release on October 7, FFS! :mad:
 
magictoaster said:
I know NVIDIA drivers are not perfect either, but ATI have been dropping the ball lately. CatalystCreator posted this on Twitter (16 hours ago): “Catalyst 11.11 will resolve Rage issues; we're also working on a new performance driver (one of the updates should be CF for Rage)”. The game was release on October 7, FFS! :mad:
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No, neither side's perfect of course :). I just have had better experiences personally with things on the green side for years now, and I've tried many cards and crossfire/sli with both from the last few gens except the 6xxx series from AMD/ATI (Radeon 4850 CF, 4870, 5870, GTX 260, GTX 280, GTX 470/470 SLI/460/460 SLI/570 SLI/570). They have had less issues and less severe ones for me in the games I play.
 
It's crazy how light this game is on GPU usage. I spent the evening gaming in the living room on my old pc that has 2x 8800GT cards in SLI on a 1920x1080 screen. It kept up just fine with "High" settings after turning MSAA off and using FXAA and still looks great. Not a game that you should update your GPU to play, but definitely a game that you should play if you like open world rpgs. I had an absolute blast playing last night and can't wait to get back into it this weekend! I didn't spend much time getting it running on the desktop, but can confirm that eyefinity works if you manually input your resolution in your .ini file in Documents\My Games\Skyrim\
 
Blackplastic said:
Wonder how much system ram this game uses.
I have been debating on buying 8 gig instead of my 4.
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RAM is so cheap nowadays. The difference between 4 and 8 gigs is $10-$15, so you may as well even if the game doesn't use it.
 
Can confirm the jittery feeling on a 6950. Was something I noticed on oblivion with certain releases of the Nvidia drivers back then. Especially noticeable in this type of game as you do lots of movement in straight lines over long periods. So you get slowly shifting scenery, and any interruption in that smooth movement becomes quite visible and hard to ignore.

Framerate stays high though, so it becomes one of those "micro-stutter" issues (for lack of a better word). Spittin out frametimes via FRAPS and then some analysis (ie. converting frametime into a per-frame FPS rate (1000/frametime) you can see spikes and jumps at the individual frame level, leading to an inconsistent "sub second" framerate.

Hopefully something that will be addressed in a Driver update, although what little diggin Iv'e done seems to indicate that this is a particular weakness to Bethesda's engine(s). So I'm not entirely confident in AMD's ability to fine tune it out. (Having abnormal frames that take longer to render then the other ones near it)

Thankfully BF3 will keep me distracted enough to let a bit of the dust settle on Skyrim. Although after 200hrs in Oblivion, I am definitely starting to feel the pull...
 
What's up with AMD these days? Do they not have decent relations with game developers or is their driver team that incompetent? I can't believe in the year 2011 going on 2012 when Windows XP is EOL we still get games running DX9 only. And would it kill developers to release the PC games with the higher resolution texures? It doesn't look bad but there's definitely a whole lot of room for improvement.

Thanks for the article, Kyle.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
Blame consoles.
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Do we blame an inanimate object, or do we blame the people behind the development of these games. For me, I have to bring it right back on the developers/publishers for the choices they make creating their game.
 
Good article. I'm going back to green after all the snafu's from AMD with new games. Come on Kepler!
 
My 5870 has served me well for a while now, but I've had my fill of AMD driver issues. I was hoping to wait until the next gen Nvidia launch but I may go ahead and buy something of the Nvidia flavor. Unless Kyle or Brent can clue me in that something is coming out very soon.
 
I just have one question: Why was the AMD 6970 compared to the GTX 580 ? At least where I live I can buy a 6970 for $360 plus tax and a GTX 570 for $350 plus tax. The GTX 580 starts out at $485 plus tax. Just doesn't seem like a fair matchup.
 
There is a bunch of tweaks available for the PC
INI Tweaks - Enhanced Visuals
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1256942-ini-tweaks-enhanced-visuals/


But the mayor MAYOR let down for me is that the game menus are all f*cked up at surround/eyefinity resolutions

The game is unplayable at 5760X1200 or any res for 3 screens. The menus are not displayed correctly, the font size or the HUD scales with the res, so it goes off screen

We will have to wait for a patch or a community mod more like it to make it work for 3ple screen gamers.

LAME. but is becoming a common factor that the HUD is always f*ck on most of the games on eyefinity and surround.

Same shit with BF3 and so on...
 
Mister Natural said:
My 5870 has served me well for a while now, but I've had my fill of AMD driver issues. I was hoping to wait until the next gen Nvidia launch but I may go ahead and buy something of the Nvidia flavor. Unless Kyle or Brent can clue me in that something is coming out very soon.
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I would hold off till mid-January for sure.

NV is going to drop something for the holidays, but limited in scope and not that exciting. Nothing next-gen.
 
I noticed a little mouse lag/jitteryness while playing as well. Pushed up the in-game sensitivity to counter-act it somewhat.

As for AMD driver issues: Yep. Gotta agree with the general sentiment. They were on their way up for a little while and now we're back to them utterly dropping the ball. AMD needs to do some cleaning of the driver team or just fire the whole lot of them and get a new team in.
 
I got sick of the AMD driver issues myself... it takes them a month to get a new game working right. Nvidia pays for early access.. sorry AMD but I just can't wait a month everytime a new game drops.
 
Good Article, good to know to keep my purchasing decision on hold for awhile. I have a aging 4850 but if Nvidia is going to do a update on their hardware I can wait a little longer.
 
Great article.

While I don't play this kind of game, I am in total agreement with your AMD assessment.

I have been nothing but dissatisified with AMD driver support starting from the release of Dead Island.
These guys are NEVER on time. Support is pitiful.

I have over 1000 dollars worth of their GPUs and it is all for naught. There is rarely a working Crossfire profile on release day, sometimes it takes 3 months.

I'm leavinf AMD for good once the new nvidia stuff arrives.
For sale: one HD 6990, watercooled and one modified HD 6950.

AMD is just too little too late.
 
Skyrim is looking really nice, after INI tweaks, on my pair of 6950's (flashed to 6970's). Thanks for the write up Brent. Edit: playing at 1920x1080
 
I'm discusted with AMD's support with this and a couple other recent top-tier titles (Witcher 2 comes to mind) where nV support has been steller. It's not like Skyrim is some low-shelf game from a random developer: it is THE game this year and I would expect the engine and code has been ready for a good long while for AMD to get in line. I too, am going back to the green team.
 
Well,
On a lower end system. E6600 @ 3.6 / 8800 gts 312mb / 8gb Gskill ddr3
Runs very smooth on the low setting, and looks pretty amazing at that @ 1920/1080 .
I was ready to shell out $400 now just to play it but I think this will keep me afloat till the new series nvidia/amd come out with.
 
I too have a dual GPU rig and am very dissapointed by AMD's driver team. AMD is the best bang for the buck so I will probably always use them, but it does cause me to pause and ask myself why AMD can't get a better driver team. An investment that's in reality so small in comparison to a lot of things would go a LOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG way to swinging people back AMD's way.

Still loyal AMD, but I agree: you guys REALLY need to take a hard look at your approach to new releases and Crossfire. Thanks.
 
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