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

AMD better drop the f-ing hammer with some good drivers soon. its sad when my daughters Athlon II 640/GTX 460 combo is playing games like this and BF3 as good as my machine with a I7 870/HD6870 combo
 
I played a good 3 hours last night on ultra 1920x1080 with the ini tweaks for more shadows/vsync off/mouse smoothing off on my unlocked/slightly o/c 6950.

I had a blast. Gameplay was plenty smooth with no stuttering. I wasn't running fraps so have no idea of the fps. I just know it was perfectly playable and enjoyable. I didn't notice any texture tearing or popping.
 
robble said:
I played a good 3 hours last night on ultra 1920x1080 with the ini tweaks for more shadows/vsync off/mouse smoothing off on my unlocked/slightly o/c 6950.

I had a blast. Gameplay was plenty smooth with no stuttering. I wasn't running fraps so have no idea of the fps. I just know it was perfectly playable and enjoyable. I didn't notice any texture tearing or popping.
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I also had no issues. 2500k/69502GB at it for breakfast at 1920x1200. No messed up textures or jitters at all.
 
I've found SLI support very lousy. I'm running TRI-SLI GTX 580, using the latest beta drivers w/Skyrim profile. I've even tried tweaking the Skyrim profile in Nvidia Inspector.

Basically MSI Afterburner reports an average 40% GPU utilization for each GPU. A well optimized SLI game would be above 75% for each GPU (e.g. Battlefield 3, WoW, etc.). I average 60 FPS in Skyrim @ 2560x1600. On TRI-SLI. Not good if you ask me. (should be more like 80+).

Unfortunately, this isn't surprising given the game was primarily designed for consoles, and today's aged consoles are more CPU centric -- hence why Skyrim scales far better on CPU.

It would be awesome if Nvidia/Bethesda fixed multi-GPU performance, but I'm not optimistic.

My other problem with Skyrim is the textures. Let's hope Bethesda releases an HD texture pack.
 
loki7 said:
My other problem with Skyrim is the textures. Let's hope modders release an HD texture pack.
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Fixed. Bethesda has never released a texture pack for any of their games, so I doubt they will do it for Skyrim.
 
Very limited testing right before going to work this morning:

6870x2
i7 @ 3.5ghz
8gb ram

11.10 drivers

@1920x1200 Ultra settings, all sliders maxed, 16x AF 0x AA - 1fps

@1920x1200 High Settings, all sliders maxed, 16x AF 0x AA - 45fps

GPU usage: 40% (both gpu's, despite Xfire not working?)
CPU usage: 10%
VRAM usage (according to msi): ~1400mb (on ati cards VRAM1 usage = both cards together afaik )
 
Wow, thanks for such a quick "initial impressions" article! Very helpful for those of us who do not purchase a game on a midnight release but want to get games soon after.

Definitely appears to be a console game that had added to it some additional graphical options. Sticking with DX9 and not adding ambient occlusions or soft shadows really should bump performance up on the console hardware at the expense of high resolutions but those on even HDTVs probably won't notice too much.

PC gamers can figure out for themselves if this is worth it. My 2cents says I can play this once the price drops significantly. Not a big fan of console porting from the PC user perspective.
 
On another note.. I haven't had any issues with keyboard/mouse/menus either. I hear a lot of whining and complaining but after actually playing the game I have no complaints about consolitis. Sure graphics are a bit dated but graphics are not the the primary reason for a game to be fun.
 
something is wrong with your results Lilbabycat cause with CF enabled and broke with my 2 6870's i get well above 1fps with 4x AA and ultra settings usually around 20-35

with CF off that easily jumps to another 10-15fps
 
At 1920x1080 my 6950 never dips below 30 outdoors and is a constant 50-60 indoors. Also this game amazingly never suffers from stutter or dips. Before I turned on Fraps I thought I was getting 100+ FPS, I was extremely shocked to see I only had 30-40 yet my game felt smooth as butter. And I am a man who needs his 60+ to feel smooth in FPS games but I do not suffer this problem in Skyrim.
 
Wildace said:
something is wrong with your results Lilbabycat cause with CF enabled and broke with my 2 6870's i get well above 1fps with 4x AA and ultra settings usually around 20-35

with CF off that easily jumps to another 10-15fps
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like i said, just tested it before going to work. Woke up, showered, clicked install, got dressed, spent 15 minutes doing intro (at 1fps), got to save point, adjusted settings, noted the fps, had to go to work. I've read that the Oblivion profile for RadeonPro doubles fps, and I'm going to turn off the steam overlay as well when I get back from home...
 
loki7 said:
I've found SLI support very lousy. I'm running TRI-SLI GTX 580, using the latest beta drivers w/Skyrim profile. I've even tried tweaking the Skyrim profile in Nvidia Inspector.

Basically MSI Afterburner reports an average 40% GPU utilization for each GPU. A well optimized SLI game would be above 75% for each GPU (e.g. Battlefield 3, WoW, etc.). I average 60 FPS in Skyrim @ 2560x1600.
Click to expand...

V-Sync?
 
i7 2600k @4.6ghz
8gb RAM
2x 6970 @ 900/1400
11.10 drivers with CAP4
2560x1440 Ultra, 4x AA, 16AF

Using RadeonPRO to set AFR and AFR Friendly D3D Mode

Getting 40-70FPS outside, 100FPS+ inside

No texture glitches. I'm not entirely too happy with how long its taking them to release a CAP profile but considering my $300 6950 Toxic (switch enabled to 6970) is competing with a $450 580, I can put up with a bit of a wait and just use RadeonPRO to give myself CFX until 'official' support is out.
 
E6320 @ 3.1 / hd 4770 512mb/ 2 gigs of ram
1920/1080 high settings .... default config was 8 aa and ran at 20 fps....
I removed the aa and switched it for the Fxaa option and wow! .... almost no aliasing and barely any blurring. The v-sync s on... >.> gonna have to fix that. All in all pretty nice visual and water effects :D
The 4770 barely cost me anything :p and i m surely getting my money out of it ... next buy HD 7770? :p back to skyrim!
 
I haven't noticed any graphical corruption on my machine with the 11.10 drivers and my 6970..

Thanks for the write-up, guys.
 
I am mostly at max settings in game. single 6870 overclocked.

crossfire doesn't work, but game is more than playable at 1080p.
 
I'm not sure SLI is truly working for me. I have it enabled, and I can see GPU utilization on both cards, but it peaks around 40-45% utilization per GPU and my frame rates will dip down to the 30s-40s with a ton of special effects on screen.

Running 1920x1200 Ultra, special tree/land shadow flags on, 8X AA / 16X AF. System is in sig. I should be getting much better performance. Any chance you could check your GPU utilization on your test box? Your frame rates are much better than mine.
 
Yakk said:
Yeah, this seems typical of quick, unoptimized console ports. It's easier & quicker to load up the CPU.
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You do realize that the developers edited and created the entire game *on a PC* right?

As a number of developers have pointed out, driver overhead (and other things) make it really difficult to get close-to-bare-metal performance on PCs.

While you might justifiably say that they could have spent more time optimizing the PC version, to accuse them of making a "console port" shows a misunderstanding of the development process.

Realistically, business decisions are going to drive schedules and releases. You're not going to hold up the release of a product to spend more time optimizing for the lowest sales platform. It doesn't make any sense.

I place the blame squarely on Microsoft; their choices for driver architecture and in other areas are part of what it has made it so difficult and costly to optimize software for the PC. I feel as though they have spent far more time optimizing graphics and memory management on the Xbox than they have on Windows -- and it shows.
 
maboblivion said:
E6320 @ 3.1 / hd 4770 512mb/ 2 gigs of ram
1920/1080 high settings .... default config was 8 aa and ran at 20 fps....
I removed the aa and switched it for the Fxaa option and wow! .... almost no aliasing and barely any blurring. The v-sync s on... >.> gonna have to fix that. All in all pretty nice visual and water effects :D
The 4770 barely cost me anything :p and i m surely getting my money out of it ... next buy HD 7770? :p back to skyrim!
Click to expand...
And....? What was the fps after these tweaks? I want to know because I'm on Core 2 Duo as well.
I'm not interested in how well it obviously runs on i7 quad-cores, I want to know how well it runs on older machines....
 
Where can I download the beta drivers? The link in the article takes me to an article about the release of the drivers, not the actual drivers themselves.

When I search for the drivers on the website, the latest driver version it shows is this


Thumbnail

Edit: Nevermind... I found the drivers. It's on the Nvidia website, not the GeForce website.

Here is a link for anything who needs them.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-285.79-beta-driver.html x86
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-285.79-beta-driver.html x64
 
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Well glad I was pretty much going to hold off on this game for a little bit anyway. Still disappointed in AMD; this will definitely be a factor in my decision making for my next GPU purchase(s).
 
loki7 said:
Disabled. Wouldn't affect the lousy GPU utilization regardless under SLI.
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I have VSYNC enabled on the GTX 460 SLI setup and GPU utilization never goves above 60%, it hovers around 40-50%, but I get a constant 60 FPS.

VSYNC does affect "the lousy GPU utilization regardless under SLI."
 
eviltypeguy said:
You do realize that the developers edited and created the entire game *on a PC* right?

As a number of developers have pointed out, driver overhead (and other things) make it really difficult to get close-to-bare-metal performance on PCs.

While you might justifiably say that they could have spent more time optimizing the PC version, to accuse them of making a "console port" shows a misunderstanding of the development process.

Realistically, business decisions are going to drive schedules and releases. You're not going to hold up the release of a product to spend more time optimizing for the lowest sales platform. It doesn't make any sense.

I place the blame squarely on Microsoft; their choices for driver architecture and in other areas are part of what it has made it so difficult and costly to optimize software for the PC. I feel as though they have spent far more time optimizing graphics and memory management on the Xbox than they have on Windows -- and it shows.
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Jeffredo said:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/08/e...-skyrim-interview-consoles-are-our-lead-skew/

While I'm sure there has been a good deal of development on the PC platform, the guts are a console port.
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Thanks for the link, I couldn't remember off hand where I had seen the console port information.

Blaming Microsoft... yes & no... by it's nature the PC has so many combinations of hardware (and their drivers) it's quite intimidating to program for (like android to a point, works for one phone, not another...etc...), where as consoles & apple (yes I'm comparing apple to a console in this case) is a closed architecture where you can more easily optimize for very specific hardware.

... Like programming in the 80's for the Atari & Commodore, you could speak directly to hardware with better than expected results.... for the PC today... not the case...

Development costs balloon quickly if not subsidized by the respective hardware developers.
 
I've never owned an ATI card myself, but I have worked on and installed many in years past.
Nothing but problems!!! Either removing drivers or installing an NV card in a once ATI rig........ Drivers are always the culprit!

Never once have I had a problem or had to use any type of driver cleaner on an NV rig! NEVER!! :confused:

AMD is going downhill fast! If any of you have stock, you better dump it fast :eek:
 
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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I have 8 gigs.

I just loaded up the game and went from 2277mb used to 3076.

My save point isnt very far into the game, I suspect it will climb higher. I read Skyrim has two exacutables, unless one of them is compiled and written as 64 bit code the hard cap is 2 gigs of ram, or so I have read.

I do defiantly recommend having more then 4 gigs of ram now a days. Ram is fairly affordable and windows and other processes on your machine will be using up quite a bit of ram as well.
 
Just wait for Guild Wars 2. An actual 100% PC game!

I'm actually more excited about GW2 than D3 at the moment.
 
well, I am brimming with curiosity now to see how well my 470s will do with it at 5760x1080 @ ultra..
 
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I had instant crashes as soon as I clicked new game on Win7 x64.
It turns out I had to lower my sound quality in the control panel sound applet to CD Quality 16 bit, 44100 Hz.
I got to play with it a little before work and it seemed Ok after that.
 
I still have a huge back catalog of games that I need to complete first before even thinking of Skyrim. Hopefully AMD will have the CAP out by then. Still sucks for current Xfire users who want to play the game now though.
 
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.
Click to expand...

Amen to that! I too have had to deal with crappy ATi drivers with my latest games. I'm still running a beta ati Open GL .dll in my RAGE game folder, just so I can play without my textures going all to hell.

FUCK ATi!!! :mad: My next dual card set up is going nVidia SLI for sure.
 
How is the Eyefinity/Surround support in this game? I would love to utilize my three monitors for the beautiful vistas in this game, but many new games are sketchy on the triple monitor support.
 
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