Skyrim FPS problems?

[Lewcas]

Hello guys,

I've been having some FPS problems in skyrim.

I recently purchased the game off steam about 4 days ago and so far i'm loving it!

The only way I can play it smoothly is with every option on low, and even then I get some frame skips...

The thing that I don't understand is that I'm currently playing it on a laptop but it's my Alienware M17x R3 with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 6.00GB installed memory, 64 bit.

I even play the game on the lowest resolution and I have the latest skyrim patch also.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should/could do?

I'm very carefull with what I download and I do have a few other games installed also.

Thanks,

Lucas

 

[Dagmar]

What kind of video card did you get with it? It's more of an academic question since they are only supposed to be configured with high end laptop GPUs but its an important spec to disclose.

What is your actual FPS. Is it just Skyrim or do other games have performance issues?

 

[Lewcas]

My video card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M, and normally all of my games run at 60 fps smoothly.

At the moment I don't know how to find out what fps i'm running at but I would personally say around 20-40, but going from low fps to higher back to lower etc..

Thanks a lot for the reply though! Hopefully i'll be able to get something sorted.

Thanks,

Lucas

 

[Dagmar]

I have the same video card and run Skyrim with HD textures, high resolution and utra settings with no problems.

What version driver are you using with your GTX 560M?

You can download a freeware version of FRAPs here. If you run it while playing Skyrim it will display your FPS in the upper right corner of your screen.

 

[Lewcas]

I am currently downloading the driver version 15.26.5.64.2656 (8.15.10.2656)

Intel® Processor Graphics 3000 was the product that was detected also,

My frames on ultra high quality is 9-11 also which is very confusing.

I really appreciate you trying to help me,

Thanks again,

Lucas

 

[Dagmar]

When you go into your Options window for Skyrim what does it show in the Graphics Adapter field?

 

[Lewcas]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M is displayed, 16:9 widescreen, 1600 X 900, 8 samples, 8 samples.

I'm very confused myself at what the problem could be :s

Thanks again

 

[Dagmar]

Where are you getting your drivers? At the NVIDIA website or the Alienware website?

 

[BFP53]

Just a shot but he might try to turning his antialiasing and anisotropic filter off, i turned mine off on my desktop and it helped and i also read it somewhere also that it may help to turn those off.

Theres a new driver out 301.24 which is suppose to help increase performance for skyrim.

 

[Lewcas]

When I download my drivers I go to the Nvidia website and I automatically detect graphics drivers.

I can go onto the alienware website to download drivers? and BFP53 I'll give that a try too but even on the lowest settings I still don't run smooth.

[I tried turning both of those options to off and it did help performance, but my game still isn't smooth, but it was a good tip ]
Thanks again!

 

[Monolith]

Just a shot but he might try to turning his antialiasing and anisotropic filter off, i turned mine off on my desktop and it helped and i also read it somewhere also that it may help to turn those off.

Theres a new driver out 301.24 which is suppose to help increase performance for skyrim.

This helped me a lot. I turned off the in-game antialiasing and anisotrophic filtering from the game launcher, and cranked them both way up in my catalyst control center. End result: better visuals, much smoother gameplay and higher FPS. Of course I still had the infuriating frame-skipping/microstuttering problem, but I'm glad I fixed that.

Lewcas, are you really getting such abysmal FPS readings? In the 9-11 range? Does it ever go higher?

 

[Lewcas]

with my settings as the highest after turning antialiasing and anisotrophic off I had a boost of about 10 fps, but My laptop should be able to take the settings much easier than what it seems to be able to.

If I go into my nvidia settings are their any other options I can change?

Thanks for the reply monolith and everyone trying to help me!

 

[Monolith]

Sadly I am no expert on modifying nvidia settings because I'm running an ATI card myself. Perhaps others could chime in here?

Here is a useful guide for modifying the Skyrim ini files for performance/visual boosts:

Skyrim Tweak Guide – Graphics and Performance | SegmentNext

 

[Lewcas]

Thanks Monolith! I'll have a look at this and I'll make sure to get back to you with how everything goes!

 

[Monolith]

No problem Lewcas! Best of luck! Here is a memory tweak from the above mentioned site which might be especially helpful:

• Go to C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim.
• Open skyrim.ini, and check for [Papyrus] section. You can add this section to your config and then add the following values under it, if it isn’t present.
• Add iMinMemoryPageSize=100000 and iMaxMemoryPageSize=5000000
• Add iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=1800000000

 

[Lewcas]

I can notice a slight increase in my performance but it still isn't smooth, I think i'm at roughly 20fps so it is quite confusing :S

I'm having a look into my Nvidia settings and I'm not able to find skyrim on my list either which isn't helping me

Thanks again!

 

[Lewcas]

EDIT: My fps with settings down to low are 25-35 consistantly, I'm still testing the settings for skyrim tweeks though.

Hopefully with all the help I'll get it sorted soon!

 

[Lewcas]

I've tried to tweak some settings and have found some settings i should use in skyrimprefs.ini, the only problem is that when I save and open skyrim, the settings automatically detects whats best for my hardware which turns everything back to ultra high.

any ideas here?

 

[Dagmar]

There's something definitely amiss here. Granted my laptop has a better CPU, but that and Kingston system memory should not be causing such an astronomical performance difference between your rig and mine.

When NVIDIA detects your GPU it should have detected the GTX 560M not an integrated chipset like the Intel Graphics 3000 which is low end. The wrong driver can cause your GPU to underperform and if you're using an Intel Graphics 3000 driver that could be the problem (the performance you're describing sounds like how an Intel Graphics 3000 would handle the game, i.e. not well)

I suggest doing a manual driver upload from NVIDIA instead of an autodetect. Select the following parameters for the search fields on the NVIDIA Driver Download Site:

Product Type: GeForce
Product Series: GeForce 500M Series (Notebook)
Product: GeForce GTX 560M
Operating System: [whatever your OS is - probably Windows 7 64 Bit]
Language: English

The latest official driver should come up which is the Verde R295 Driver Version 296.10 (version 301.24 is a beta stage driver). I recommend you create a Restore Point before downloading in case the new driver creates issues so you can easily do a rollback. Hopefully that will resolve the problem but I'm a little concerned that it might not because of what you said about performance for other games. (What other games have you been playing?

 

[Lewcas]

I'm now running at strait 60FPS on high quality!!

THANKS a lot to everyone who helped and Dagmar you're really helped me massively here too!

Now I'm able to continue my adventure in style

Keep up the good work guys!!

Lucas