The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

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Gheris

Senior member
Oct 24, 2005
305
0
0
Zeze,
I too am losing some interest in my sword and board warrior. Thinking about giving a Mage/Thief a shot. I also don't plan on smithing at least not at first, but I will use enchanting.
 

pandemonium

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2011
1,777
76
91
I've tried: 11.11a, b and c, several CAPs and RadeonPro (trying almost every preset gaming profile, including Oblivion) and nothing has helped. I've been getting 25% better frame rates running off a single card since I started playing the game. All the while, I see both my cards using at most 50%. :(

I'm thinking I'll have to reinstall everything all over again...hopefully not including my OS just to fix this. The game plays okay with 1 card, but having my framerates drop below 35 is somewhat aggravating when I have another sitting there doing nothing in my machine.

Ugh, had a huge reply that I was working on and it got baleted...

Long story short, success! I figured out what was causing my CFx scaling not to work and it was this FXAA injector mod. (It was also causing MSI/Rivatuner's OSD not to work at all, regardless of settings tried!) Here's the wierd part though: I was getting only slightly lower framerates with a single card with that FXAA injector running (with IMHO better visuals) [around 35FPS in town] than I am now with both cards running at 99% [around 40FPS in town].

Here's to more testing... o_O

Edit: Reinstalled that FXAA injector to test it out and now I'm getting the same framerates as without it, CFx scales properly, but OSD doesn't work (except Fraps; which always did). I'm completely confused, lol.

Edit #2: Figured it out! It was due to having SSAA on which utilizes more GPU and drops frame-rates. With MSAA on GPU utilization between both cards with CFx never exceeds 50%. This appears to have been the problem all along.
 
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HydroSqueegee

Golden Member
Oct 27, 2005
1,709
2
71
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.


My impressions so far:
Shadows are BAD. holy crap they look horrible.
fantastic world, combat takes some getting use to with a KBAM
mouse acceleration in the menu is still way too slow
its a fantastic console game, waiting for the UI mods to come out
 

s1njin

Senior member
Apr 11, 2011
304
0
0
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.


My impressions so far:
Shadows are BAD. holy crap they look horrible.
fantastic world, combat takes some getting use to with a KBAM
mouse acceleration in the menu is still way too slow
its a fantastic console game, waiting for the UI mods to come out

This is the PC Gaming Forum - I'd be surprised if people here were NOT OC'ing systems.

That being said, I'm not one of those types that will spend hours upon hours tweaking for that extra 100 mhz. If I have to drop my OC down to 4.4 or 4.2 to make it happy - I don't really care much.
 

Demo24

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
8,356
9
81
I'm not overclocked. I was for a bit, but only modestly, but when I put in some 4gb sticks the mobo wasn't too happy and I've just left it stock for now.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
25,701
15,178
136
Wow, just bought this POS. So dissapointed.
Sure i can see how my gfx card gets taxed by watching a tree doing a asberger spasmatic circle of non-tree-movements, i mean fuck, wtf?
Abstracting besides the SO not worthy 'lets to it realisticly cycles wasted' i find my self just after escaping the compound, looking out over the vast of the terrotory, asking myself, why am i not playing wow? .. I never played WOW for real cause i immediately identified it as something i could throw my life away over.... So I suppose i should be glad its only 50 coins wasted.
 

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.


My impressions so far:
Shadows are BAD. holy crap they look horrible.
fantastic world, combat takes some getting use to with a KBAM
mouse acceleration in the menu is still way too slow
its a fantastic console game, waiting for the UI mods to come out

In my earlier post I did say I was getting CTD with nothing overclocked(2500k) and it could pass IBT(max settings) and FuMark many times with no issues or a single crash,even my other games don't CTD ,anyway I've my 2500K now overclocked and with 1.3 patch the CTD is actually less then when it was clocked at normal speeds.

My conclusion is the 1.3 has helped reduce CTD in my case,also if you check their official forums there are many gamers that have non overclocked PCs and still getting CTD.


It's the game IMHO that needs more patching,I have not even meantion all the issues consoles owners have,fact is Skyrim is buggy for a lot of gamers,as a beta tester myself for many games I've to call it as I see it.


http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1270631-crashes-during-gameplay/page__st__1060 (Their CTD thread at Bethesda only 55 pages long ;) ) .
 

HydroSqueegee

Golden Member
Oct 27, 2005
1,709
2
71
In my earlier post I did say I was getting CTD with nothing overclocked(2500k) and it could pass IBT(max settings) and FuMark many times with no issues or a single crash,even my other games don't CTD ,anyway I've my 2500K now overclocked and with 1.3 patch the CTD is actually less then when it was clocked at normal speeds.

My conclusion is the 1.3 has helped reduce CTD in my case,also if you check their official forums there are many gamers that have non overclocked PCs and still getting CTD.


It's the game IMHO that needs more patching,I have not even meantion all the issues consoles owners have,fact is Skyrim is buggy for a lot of gamers,as a beta tester myself for many games I've to call it as I see it.


http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1270631-crashes-during-gameplay/page__st__1060 (Their CTD thread at Bethesda only 55 pages long ;) ) .

another good ol bethesda buggy mess. I expected no less at launch, but didnt expect it to be as bad as it is for people. I havent run into a CTD yet, but i dont have much playtime in... yet. It was more just a wondering out loud question since Morrowind had lots of problems with OCd systems that wernt as stable as people thought. Their systems would run everything else fine, but Morrowind just freaked because it was so sensative.
 

Concillian

Diamond Member
May 26, 2004
3,751
8
81
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.

i3 540 @ 4.1 GHz
5770 at 930 MHz

one CTD.

I do give quite a bit of margin on OCs though, since I had many experiences in the past (like AthlonXP timeframe and earlier) where Prime95 and such would show great, but games would definitely crash.

Since those days, I generally find a speed where I can prime / furmark / IBT overnight, then I turn down clocks a full 5% to give extra margin. 200 MHz isn't worth the potential frustration caused by a game utilizing the hardware in a different way than whatever stress test and crashing all the time.


As others have mentioned though, the CTD issues are not necessarily system stability issues. The game has bugs.
 
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disappoint

Lifer
Dec 7, 2009
10,132
382
126
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.


My impressions so far:
Shadows are BAD. holy crap they look horrible.
fantastic world, combat takes some getting use to with a KBAM
mouse acceleration in the menu is still way too slow
its a fantastic console game, waiting for the UI mods to come out

edit skyrimprefs.ini
change fshadowdistance to 2500
the shadows will no longer be blocky. no framerate hit for this.

if you have a higher end system also change
iShadowMapResolution to 4096
but that will cause a framerate performance hit if you have a slow system
though the shadows will look better

take a look at this youtube video on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VAHDJr9vWg


BTW I am overclocked but not getting any CTDs so it's not that.
 
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homercles337

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2004
6,340
3
71
Im curious as to whos running overclocked systems and having bad CTD problems. The engine they use has always been sensitive to unstable systems.


My impressions so far:
Shadows are BAD. holy crap they look horrible.
fantastic world, combat takes some getting use to with a KBAM
mouse acceleration in the menu is still way too slow
its a fantastic console game, waiting for the UI mods to come out

Im OCed, both CPU and GPU. I had two hard crashes before patch 1.2. Then when 1.2 was forced on my i started seeing CTDs all the time and dragons that would not battle. Arent patches supposed to fix bugs not introduce them?

EDIT: their new engine is shit as far as im concerned. I have seen Skyrim on PS3 and it looks like shit relative to PC, but the engine is too inconsistent to be useful. Just like Gambryo.
 
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NoSoup4You

Golden Member
Feb 12, 2007
1,253
6
81
During 75 hours of gameplay prior to patch 1.3 I had four crashes. In four hours of gameplay since patch 1.3 I have had two crashes already.

The crashes were so uncommon before that I had actually "unlearned" my old habit of quicksaving constantly. The CTD I just had lost me a solid 25 minutes of wandering the snowy countryside... joy.

A small sample size, but patch 1.3 is not my friend thus far.
 
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pandemonium

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2011
1,777
76
91
After several hours of testing yesterday I can sufficiently say that my CPU is the cause to my GPUs being held back. Without Super Sampling AA on, my GPUs aren't being taxed and my CPU (Q9400) is bottlenecking my performance.

Regarding overclocking stability, I've seen no more stable performance from running stock clocks as opposed to overclocked frequencies.
 

Zeze

Lifer
Mar 4, 2011
11,395
1,188
126
edit skyrimprefs.ini
change fshadowdistance to 2500
the shadows will no longer be blocky. no framerate hit for this.

if you have a higher end system also change
iShadowMapResolution to 4096
but that will cause a framerate performance hit if you have a slow system
though the shadows will look better

take a look at this youtube video on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VAHDJr9vWg


BTW I am overclocked but not getting any CTDs so it's not that.

You're changing the draw distance to just that.. 2500.

Yes, shadows will look good for close bushes, but your whole scenery and woods will have no shadow and will look like shit.

This is not a fix.
 

gothamhunter

Diamond Member
Apr 20, 2010
4,464
6
81
Wow, just bought this POS. So dissapointed.
Sure i can see how my gfx card gets taxed by watching a tree doing a asberger spasmatic circle of non-tree-movements, i mean fuck, wtf?
Abstracting besides the SO not worthy 'lets to it realisticly cycles wasted' i find my self just after escaping the compound, looking out over the vast of the terrotory, asking myself, why am i not playing wow? .. I never played WOW for real cause i immediately identified it as something i could throw my life away over.... So I suppose i should be glad its only 50 coins wasted.

I'm not even sure what you just said.
 

disappoint

Lifer
Dec 7, 2009
10,132
382
126
You're changing the draw distance to just that.. 2500.

Yes, shadows will look good for close bushes, but your whole scenery and woods will have no shadow and will look like shit.

This is not a fix.

Well if you have a fast system you can try
iShadowMapResolution=4096 or 8192

and change fShadowBiasScale to 1.5 to prevent the flicker that happens with a higher res shadow map.
 

oldpaths

Junior Member
Jun 16, 2008
10
0
0
This is sure one strangely behaving game. I like it myself and have had few problems. At first I had some ctd and occasional slowdown but after each patch its been getting better and now I can run it for hours with no problem. I was off yesterday and went all afternoon and evening without a hitch.

My game says ver 1.3.7. I feel bad for the ones having problems because this is a very enjoyable time killer if you like these type of games. I have Win7 64 Home Premium with 875k, GTX 560ti and X-Fi Titanium HD with everything on ultra and it looks good and runs smoothly. So, this game can, and does, work well. It's just a shame it isn't working well for everyone.
 

Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
During 75 hours of gameplay prior to patch 1.3 I had four crashes. In four hours of gameplay since patch 1.3 I have had two crashes already.

The crashes were so uncommon before that I had actually "unlearned" my old habit of quicksaving constantly. The CTD I just had lost me a solid 25 minutes of wandering the snowy countryside... joy.

A small sample size, but patch 1.3 is not my friend thus far.

Personally I am sticking with 1.1 (the original launch version), at least until Beth releases official LAA support or does some actual content patching.
 

coldmeat

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2007
9,231
139
106
My wife disappeared. She was at the wedding, she said "I do" then immediately turned around and walked out. I haven't seen her since. I've played plenty of game days since then and I can't find her anywhere.

Apparently they walk back to where you found them, so in this case Muiri would be walking back to Markarth from Riften. Maybe she is just really really slow. Or maybe she was killed on the way.
 

Merad

Platinum Member
May 31, 2010
2,586
19
81
You need to talk to them after the wedding. They'll ask where you want to live, then go there. If you don't talk to them I assume they go back to their normal routine.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
91
In my earlier post I did say I was getting CTD with nothing overclocked(2500k) and it could pass IBT(max settings) and FuMark many times with no issues or a single crash,even my other games don't CTD ,anyway I've my 2500K now overclocked and with 1.3 patch the CTD is actually less then when it was clocked at normal speeds.

My conclusion is the 1.3 has helped reduce CTD in my case,also if you check their official forums there are many gamers that have non overclocked PCs and still getting CTD.


It's the game IMHO that needs more patching,I have not even meantion all the issues consoles owners have,fact is Skyrim is buggy for a lot of gamers,as a beta tester myself for many games I've to call it as I see it.


http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1270631-crashes-during-gameplay/page__st__1060 (Their CTD thread at Bethesda only 55 pages long ;) ) .

If Skyrim is causing a CTD because of a OC, then the OC is VERY unstable.
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
91
Personally I am sticking with 1.1 (the original launch version), at least until Beth releases official LAA support or does some actual content patching.

Same here. I already can easily run the 4GB patch, along with a number of other graphic mods already installed.

I have had 2 CTD in about 50 hours of gameplay; thats d@mn good for a Bethesda game. I am used to it, so I save pretty regularly, just in case. Overall a pretty stable game.
 

Locut0s

Lifer
Nov 28, 2001
22,205
43
91
My wife disappeared. She was at the wedding, she said "I do" then immediately turned around and walked out. I haven't seen her since. I've played plenty of game days since then and I can't find her anywhere.

Apparently they walk back to where you found them, so in this case Muiri would be walking back to Markarth from Riften. Maybe she is just really really slow. Or maybe she was killed on the way.

Ran off with another man? :p