Skyrim running **** even with i5-2500k + 7970 Crossfire

atibingler · 24 Jun 2013 at 07:48

Hey, all my other games run just fine (just tried Metro 2034 and it runs great), but with Skyrim I rarely get over 30 FPS. I do have a lot of texture mods and especially when I enable ENB I get mad-low FPS. Is it a game-limitation? Or is the problem on my end?

I've heard Skyrim can't handle more than 3,2 GB of RAM but shouldn't it just crash in that case? Mine just runs unbearably slow FPS. Any ideas what might be the problem? My CPU isn't overclocked by the way.

CaptainRAVE · 24 Jun 2013 at 07:51

Probably too many mods or some kind of clash between them.

atibingler · 24 Jun 2013 at 08:09

CaptainRAVE said:
Probably too many mods or some kind of clash between them.

Yeah, maybe, I'll see what happens when if I uninstall most mods

skylineboy · 24 Jun 2013 at 08:16

atibingler said:
Hey, all my other games run just fine (just tried Metro 2034 and it runs great), but with Skyrim I rarely get over 30 FPS. I do have a lot of texture mods and especially when I enable ENB I get mad-low FPS. Is it a game-limitation? Or is the problem on my end?

I've heard Skyrim can't handle more than 3,2 GB of RAM but shouldn't it just crash in that case? Mine just runs unbearably slow FPS. Any ideas what might be the problem? My CPU isn't overclocked by the way.

I'm running same set up as you. I am getting good performance on max settings @1920x1080.

I would uninstall mods and slowly readd them. Check them all for compatibility with one another.

Rezident · 24 Jun 2013 at 08:41

Skyrim does seem a bit stuttery at times anyway though doesn't it?

Mercutio · 24 Jun 2013 at 08:44

Not that I'd noticed...

atibingler · 24 Jun 2013 at 08:46

skylineboy said:
I'm running same set up as you. I am getting good performance on max settings @1920x1080.

I would uninstall mods and slowly readd them. Check them all for compatibility with one another.

Yeah. By the way, is your CPU overclocked? Because if that's not it, then I think I can conclude the problem lies with the game/mods. I got 8GB of RAM which is surely enough, got SSD, got 2 7970's. Only thing I can think of would be the CPU cause I've heard Skyrim can be tough on CPU's. But do you think an standard clocked i5-2500k is enough to run Skyrim + mods, for sure?

Dave · 24 Jun 2013 at 10:02

I always found Skyrim to be pretty smooth (on an inferior system to yours) - the one mod that made it run poorly and crash I found was the Birds of Skyrim mod. Do you have it activated?

olivier renault · 24 Jun 2013 at 10:08

When I had my 6950 crossfire, skyrim didn't like it, and worked better with just one. But that was ages ago. Probably fixed in a more recent driver / game update.

barmyllama · 24 Jun 2013 at 10:24

Any programs you have running that have any kind of overlay, such as MSI Afterburner or Xfire can cause stuttering.

Illgresi · 24 Jun 2013 at 12:31

I've got well over 50 mods (hd textures etc) running on a 2500k (stock..I know, I know..) and a single 7850 and I get no slowdown at all at 1920x1080. Not sure if that information helps at all.

Darg · 24 Jun 2013 at 13:04

Try running MSi Afterburner and set it to show GPU memory usage. If it's going over what you have then this will cause a massive slump in framerate.

This could be due to too many high-res textures being loaded.

atibingler · 25 Jun 2013 at 19:48

Hey guys it's me again.

It seems like any ENB mod is toxic to my system. It goes from smooth 60 (cap) to 20-40. Looks like I'll just have to live without an ENB then unless you guys have any idea why ENB is so taxing on my system. I'm running The Wild's. I've tried tinkering with the set-up but it doesn't help much. I'm thinking it's my CPU bottlenecking (a stock speed i5-2500k) but reducing shadows does nothing so I'm not so sure now.

One weird thing I noticed though, I noticed the ENB comes with inbuilt SMAA apparently, so I disabled my Anti-aliasing. However, when I removed the SMAA feature, and while also having Anti-Aliasing disabled, I see no reduction in AA-quality! So basically my game still appears to have AA even though I've got everything disabled on that end.

When I deactivate and activate 6GB of texture-mods there is no performance impact whatsoever. I have no idea what's in those ENB's that bring a good system like mine to its knees. Quite frustrating! Also, I'm running just a single 7970 at the moment.

RedDanDoc · 25 Jun 2013 at 20:09

This might sound daft but have you tried using an Xbox controller ?

Only reason I say is because I first played this with a controller and it ran smoothly then left the game came back and played it without a controller and it ran really slow but when i plugged controller back in it ran ok.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Pighardia · 25 Jun 2013 at 20:12

atibingler said:
Hey guys it's me again.

It seems like any ENB mod is toxic to my system. It goes from smooth 60 (cap) to 20-40. Looks like I'll just have to live without an ENB then unless you guys have any idea why ENB is so taxing on my system. I'm running The Wild's. I've tried tinkering with the set-up but it doesn't help much. I'm thinking it's my CPU bottlenecking (a stock speed i5-2500k) but reducing shadows does nothing so I'm not so sure now.

One weird thing I noticed though, I noticed the ENB comes with inbuilt SMAA apparently, so I disabled my Anti-aliasing. However, when I removed the SMAA feature, and while also having Anti-Aliasing disabled, I see no reduction in AA-quality! So basically my game still appears to have AA even though I've got everything disabled on that end.

When I deactivate and activate 6GB of texture-mods there is no performance impact whatsoever. I have no idea what's in those ENB's that bring a good system like mine to its knees. Quite frustrating! Also, I'm running just a single 7970 at the moment.

Try using Project ENB, and use the performance options that come with it. Also, are you sure ENB is causing these problems...you can press shift+F12 to turn it on/off to see what difference it makes.

atibingler · 26 Jun 2013 at 16:28

RedDanDoc said:
This might sound daft but have you tried using an Xbox controller ?

Only reason I say is because I first played this with a controller and it ran smoothly then left the game came back and played it without a controller and it ran really slow but when i plugged controller back in it ran ok.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Haha. Sounds daft indeed. I'll take that into consideration as a last option

@Pighardia: I'll try enabling & disabling ENB

EDIT: Disabling ENB puts me to 60 FPS (steady). So yeah I think it's the ENB. I don't know though. When I had a little fight with a hunter the FPS dropped to around 50 though (without ENB).

Amraam · 26 Jun 2013 at 16:43

I have about 120 mods, a heavy ENB, ultra settings and I get 50-60 FPS with ENB turned on. Somethings not right somewhere. Do you have Vsync turned on?

All ENB profiles estimate about 50-60% FPS loss with them turned on. SSAO is the main culprit. Try turning that off in the enbseries.ini file.

skylineboy · 27 Jun 2013 at 20:52

atibingler said:
Yeah. By the way, is your CPU overclocked? Because if that's not it, then I think I can conclude the problem lies with the game/mods. I got 8GB of RAM which is surely enough, got SSD, got 2 7970's. Only thing I can think of would be the CPU cause I've heard Skyrim can be tough on CPU's. But do you think an standard clocked i5-2500k is enough to run Skyrim + mods, for sure?

Sorry forgot about this thread.

It is indeed clocked to 4.2. But if you think it is ENB then perhaps you have found your issue.

I am running around 50 mods myself (all via steam workshop)

oldestgregg · 28 Jun 2013 at 21:01

It always pays to lock your fps to 58-59 instead of 60 on any games using the gamebro engine as well. All Bethesda games are the same. Stops the stutter.