The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[Zebo]

Please let there be a killer Black Friday deal on a good GPU so I can finally use my HD 5770 elsewhere. It's the last remnant of my old PC.

I wish all games gave me this good of a value for $60. At 60 hours played, I'm at $1 per hour of fun and the price is going down.

And seriously, getting sick of these crappy NPCs talking smack to me. Bring it on guards, bring it on.

Yeah good games are basically free amortized over hours. I've been playing SC2 1.5 years and about 2000 hours. Including my water cooled computer it's like $2 an hour. Skyrim won't be that cheap but close.

Oh and Ravensealyou don't notice microsutter all-the-time? I did with xfire 6850s so I dumped it for hydrocopper GTX 580. And xfire 6850/6870s destroys the 580 but the stutter, no thanks.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Yeah good games are basically free amortized over hours. I've been playing SC2 1.5 years and about 2000 hours. Including my water cooled computer it's like $2 an hour. Skyrim won't be that cheap but close.

Oh and Ravensealyou don't notice microsutter all-the-time? I did with xfire 6850s so I dumped it for hydrocopper GTX 580. And xfire 6850/6870s destroys the 580 but the stutter, no thanks.

The RadeonPro fix seems to have improved the game a lot, it was noticeable before, but not anymore.

 

[RebelCapitalist]

It might be your lucky day?

http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/62776/1-sale-a-day-ati-radeon-hd-5850-1gb-ddr5-graphics-card-oem

Thanks for the link. That's about $30 cheaper than the 6850, but the 5850 has better results by a tad it seems (looking at the bench page).

Seems like this is as good as it gets unless I'm willing to jump up to the $240 range (or less if a BF deal hits).

 

[OCNewbie]

It was lesser ward. +40 armor, -40 magic damage

If I'm not mistaken, Lesser Ward seems to only work while you're casting it. Is that your take, as well?

Edit: Oh, and I changed my mind about running on Master difficulty from the beginning; things take much too long to kill and it just hasn't been as fun. I restarted AGAIN (like 4th or 5th time now), made an Orc (racial "Berserker" works with archery, but doesn't appear to lower damage from spells), and am keeping it at the standard "Adept", or "Normal".

 

[IGemini]

^^Yes, ward spells are activated barrier shields. Only works if it is being cast and only if it hits the ward.

 

[dennilfloss]

That's why my mage uses the Lord stone instead of a ward.

 

[dennilfloss]

Game update coming soon.

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/137634356184363009

 

[Zebo]

Hope they fix UI.

Anyone know a decent UI mod for PC? I am about to quit unless I find a mod cause it's so frustrating. Some menus you can point and click on most you can't and so obviously designed for console. We have a mouse for a reason: it's a superior tool than a keyboard or buttons for navigating menus. When in stores, conversation, inventory etc I shouldn't have to touch the keyboard. Another issue is only 4-5 items on a menu screen when dozens could fit easily. Sorry for these niggles but I need a UI change before continuing. I'm ~20 hours in and still not used to it. Great game but UI is bugging me.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Hope they fix UI.

Anyone know a decent UI mod for PC? I am about to quit unless I find a mod cause it's so frustrating. Some menus you can point and click on most you can't and so obviously designed for console. We have a mouse for a reason: it's a superior tool than a keyboard or buttons for navigating menus. When in stores, conversation, inventory etc I shouldn't have to touch the keyboard. Another issue is only 4-5 items on a menu screen when dozens could fit easily. Sorry for these niggles but I need a UI change before continuing. I'm ~20 hours in and still not used to it. Great game but UI is bugging me.

I know people that are working on it, but it's almost impossible without the tools.

 

[coldmeat]

Hope they fix UI.

Anyone know a decent UI mod for PC? I am about to quit unless I find a mod cause it's so frustrating. Some menus you can point and click on most you can't and so obviously designed for console. We have a mouse for a reason: it's a superior tool than a keyboard or buttons for navigating menus. When in stores, conversation, inventory etc I shouldn't have to touch the keyboard. Another issue is only 4-5 items on a menu screen when dozens could fit easily. Sorry for these niggles but I need a UI change before continuing. I'm ~20 hours in and still not used to it. Great game but UI is bugging me.

Pretty much all of the menu clicking issues I had were solved with the patch. I only have a couple problems with it now. Sometimes when I click on a category on the far left it closes the menu, and after I read a book through my inventory the mouse doesn't work unless I click on the left column. Other than that I find the mouse works fine.

 

[Locut0s]

Okay quick question. I need to get an idea of how well I'm levelling. I'm playing a light armour wearing one handed (with shield) melee player with a little bit of sneak thrown in. Right now I'm just at level 8 and I just had a rather difficult encounter at Halted Steam Camp outside Whiterun. There were 3 bandits there a wizard, and two melee bandits. Took me about 4 tries to get them got killed the first 3 times or so. Does this sound like I'm underpowered at my current level or does this sound like a difficult encounter at level 8 to begin with?

 

[Locut0s]

Game update coming soon.

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/137634356184363009

Another couple of weeks I see.

 

[Locut0s]

Is there any advantage to sleeping? I learned to stay away from sleeping in Oblivion as that's how you levelled up. I finished Oblivion at level 2 lol.

 

[Zenoth]

Is there any advantage to sleeping? I learned to stay away from sleeping in Oblivion as that's how you levelled up. I finished Oblivion at level 2 lol.

If you sleep you receive the "Well Rested" buff (I think that's the name), which grants a small (but not negligible) bonus on the amount of experience you gain, for limited amount of time (a few in-game hours, and if your time scale was reduced by yourself via the console, then that bonus will last as long as the time scale makes that limited time pass). It's very useful, when you think about it. I don't have the reflex to always sleep, but I do sometimes and it does help.

 

[lavaheadache]

Your point being? Every other game I play rreally uns amazingly. xFire HD6870s perform at the level of a single GTX 580 for way less money, I blame the CAPs programmers for simply not having the software ready pre-release.

Not really sure how you missed my point. Anyhow, I'm glad there is a work around to get some decent scaling.

 

[Mem]

Any of you guys had CTD or freezes?.....had a few but no pattern,can play for hours and its fine,other times just random.



I read the second patch is almost done, CTD is quite common if you check their official forums.

 

[Kyle]

I'm about 45 hrs in and have had 2 CTD...oh- not sure who posted the thing about selecing 5 speakers in windows and shutting off all but the front 2, THANK YOU- that made a huge difference- was so quiet before even when speakers were turned way higher than they should have been- now everything is loud and clear.

 

[Punter]

I haven't had a ctd in the three days since installing the mod that lets the game use more memory, Large Address Aware.
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=202

 

[Merad]

Hope they fix UI.

Anyone know a decent UI mod for PC? I am about to quit unless I find a mod cause it's so frustrating. Some menus you can point and click on most you can't and so obviously designed for console. We have a mouse for a reason: it's a superior tool than a keyboard or buttons for navigating menus. When in stores, conversation, inventory etc I shouldn't have to touch the keyboard. Another issue is only 4-5 items on a menu screen when dozens could fit easily. Sorry for these niggles but I need a UI change before continuing. I'm ~20 hours in and still not used to it. Great game but UI is bugging me.

Any significant UI overhauls are probably at least a month or two away, assuming that Beth doesn't significantly delay the CK.

Okay quick question. I need to get an idea of how well I'm levelling. I'm playing a light armour wearing one handed (with shield) melee player with a little bit of sneak thrown in. Right now I'm just at level 8 and I just had a rather difficult encounter at Halted Steam Camp outside Whiterun. There were 3 bandits there a wizard, and two melee bandits. Took me about 4 tries to get them got killed the first 3 times or so. Does this sound like I'm underpowered at my current level or does this sound like a difficult encounter at level 8 to begin with?

Any encounter with a mage can be rough on a melee character. And bear in mind that enemies don't all scale exactly with you, so those guys may have been higher level.

 

[Zenoth]

Any of you guys had CTD or freezes?.....had a few but no pattern,can play for hours and its fine,other times just random.

I read the second patch is almost done, CTD is quite common if you check their official forums.

It's Gamebryo, so it's bound to CTD however stable your PC might be.

What I find curious though, is that the technical support section for the PC version specifically (on the official Bethesda forums) has a dedicated PC-crashes related thread, in which the developers ask what happened before the crash occurred, etc. Whereas the technical support forum sections for both the XBOX 360 and the PS3 don't have that thread, as if those versions never had such issues (and they do, Skyrim freezes on the console versions, if that's anything equivalent of a CTD for the consoles).

I'm sure that Bethesda will release a few fixes here and there but nothing will ever fix the CTDs forever. The best we can get is a mod similar to that for Oblivion which prevented it (Oblivion) from crashing to the desktop when a specific error occurred (which would force the game to CTD if it happened). If a similar mod is made for Skyrim (it was never made for Fallout 3 for some reasons) then it will surely help a lot. But nothing will ever fix the CTDs forever.

And of course there's the few very lucky players out there whom never get any CTDs claiming that because they themselves never get any that automatically it means that the game is perfect, pristine, a coding example amongst coders of this world, and that anyone getting CTDs must have an unstable system (mark my words).

 

[OCNewbie]

oh- not sure who posted the thing about selecing 5 speakers in windows and shutting off all but the front 2, THANK YOU- that made a huge difference- was so quiet before even when speakers were turned way higher than they should have been- now everything is loud and clear.

Is the tip you're referring to only for 5.1 speaker set ups? I only have a 2.1 setup, and the game seems awfully quiet.

 

[Locut0s]

Any of you guys had CTD or freezes?.....had a few but no pattern,can play for hours and its fine,other times just random.



I read the second patch is almost done, CTD is quite common if you check their official forums.

Yes CTD are fairly common, but not so much the game in unplayable or anything. I get one every 2 or 3 hours or so it seems. Save, save, save, save. No freezes yet.

 

[Locut0s]

AMD CrossFireX Temporary Fix​

1.
Download RadeonPro from here and complete installation

VirusTotal Scan here

2.
Open the RadeonPro and follow these steps!

PICS SNIPPED

If you did it correctly, your end result should look something like this:

If it doesn't, run the wizard again.

The tweak isn't perfect, but it resulted in a noticeable difference in my system. And if done correctly, you can expect a decent performance boost until AMD releases the official CAPs.

Okay I did this and it made the game unplayable, like 4 or 5 FPS lol. However using Radeon PRo to just turn off Xfire completely and leaving everything else as is seems to help so thanks.

 

[lehtv]

Here's a shot of my character:

Race: Nord
Name: Svogor Ruska
Skills: One-handed weapons, Light Armor, Alchemy, Restoration, Destruction, Sneak (+Illusion +Block)

Face and skills modeled somewhat after The Witcher. But Witchers don't kill dragons.... and wear elven armor...

Just sharing Love this game.

 

[Merad]

It's Gamebryo, so it's bound to CTD however stable your PC might be.

It's not Gamebryo. It's Bethesda's own Creation engine.

So far in 43 hours of playing the only crashes I've had were when I was testing ini settings.

I'm sure that Bethesda will release a few fixes here and there but nothing will ever fix the CTDs forever. The best we can get is a mod similar to that for Oblivion which prevented it (Oblivion) from crashing to the desktop when a specific error occurred (which would force the game to CTD if it happened). If a similar mod is made for Skyrim (it was never made for Fallout 3 for some reasons) then it will surely help a lot. But nothing will ever fix the CTDs forever.

They were a bad idea in Oblivion and they'll be a bad idea in Skyrim.

Is the tip you're referring to only for 5.1 speaker set ups? I only have a 2.1 setup, and the game seems awfully quiet.

I posted it, probably 5-6 pages back... it's for 2 speaker setups. You change your windows settings to be 5.1 and disable the speakers that you don't have.