HD6870 slow in skyrim @ 1280x720

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MetalDwarf

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 20, 2002
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I just bought a new HD6870 to play skyrim, From benchmarks I have seen a lesser 6850 should be able to run skyrim at
Ultra 1280x768 8xAA 16xAF FXAA between 50-60FPS

I'm running fewer pixels at 1280x720
but i am getting 25fps, max and often dropping to 15fps

I''m running the newest AMD drivers (11-10)
I've tried the DLL hack
turning down AA and AF do little to improve performance.

my cpu is a little older, a Q6600 @ 3.2ghz but it seems to max out at 60% usage
i have 4BG ram and when in game under 2 is being used.
i have an intel SSD

I just upgraded from a 8800GT and for my $200 i see very little visual or frame rate improvement.
 
I see an average around 45-50 frames at 1680x1050 with medium settings with a C2D [email protected] so I'm not sure your results are unreasonable, maybe a little less AA will get things playable for you. (When I get home from work I'll see how much difference "high" settings does for my framerate)
 
I'm pushing half the pixels you are (921,600 vs1,764,000)and getting half the frame rate. :mad:
 
Is this an AMD driver issue? Darth is running nvidia just fine. I am a little worried when reading this kind of thread since I also have a 6870 and was considering picking up Skyrim.
 
You are overkilling with that gpu on 720p in the first place. To add to that its a game that likes to use a lot of cpu as well. try overclocking your cpu some more
 
This game is really cpu limited, especially at your resolution, the toms review linked above uses a 2500k at 4ghz so that will not really be comparable to you (or me!). See later on in the same eval: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html

You seem to be getting remarkably low fps even so, how much of the game have you played?: The start (first half hour) was the most demanding part for me, with performance in the countryside and caves being much higher. Otherwise sweep and clean drivers and double check cpu and gpu clocks.

Failing that, the best way to get more frames is to drop shadow quality, since this seems to be bizarrely cpu demanding, got me 20% extra at 1680x1050, also disable vsync, since I heard this was affecting some people, although it did F all for me.
 
Are you sure that you aren't forcing antialiasing ingame on top of through CCC?

Just asking because that is a very common culprit for high performance hits.
 
Can you try running in higher resolution to see if that changes anything?

I seem to remember certain lower resolutions showing very weird performance in some reviews I have looked at in the past.
 
I tried playing BF3 this morning
1280x720
Ultra settings, full AA/AF
min FPS: 60
maxing out around 120 at times.

something is up with Skyrim or drivers.
 
I'll take some FRAPS readings when I get home but I've been playing for the past few days on my Q6600 - HD6870 @ 1680x1050 w/ HIGH settings across the board (and a few .ini tweaks) and haven't felt any serious issues. That said I'm still working up to "amazing" image quality but I realize my CPU and GPU will be a little bit of a bottleneck.

Also, I have 4GB of RAM and just saw the .exe edit to allow it use more memory so I'll be testing that tonight too.

Lastly, a quick google shows someone doing it right w/ a 6870:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aybz67ozSn4&feature=player_embedded
 
I definitely think a lot of issues are on AMD's drivers. I run at 1920x1080 with 2xAA 16AF on crossfire'd 6950's and a X6 at 3.5GHz with 8GB of 1333mhz DDR3 and I see dips into the 20's frequently. I'm running the 11.10 drivers with latest cap and the DLL fix. The only thing that really helped was setting a custom profile in Radeon Pro and using the AFR tweaks on there. There's some glitches in the menu however but it does "seem" to improve the performance in the game but I have nothing conclusive.
 
im playing at 1080p max settings in game, and graphic tweaks.

with 6870, 1000 core, 1205 mem. I have a another 6870 as well but crossfire is not working as of yet.

still averaging 30+fps at 1080p maxed though.
 
chithanh said:
Something is definitely wrong there, already a 6850 should be playable at 1080p ultra settings.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-6.html

Possibly there is a driver issue. You might try the 11.12EB drivers that have been floating around (uninstall any CAP first).
Click to expand...

there is nothing wrong, its the resolution + cpu + the fact that the game only uses 2 cores. so hes cpu limiting the heck out of the gpu. he needs to run 1080p minimum.


btw OP'er, try turning everything on instead of off it should put more strain on the gpu so its not as limited. as you remove things the cpu bottleneck just gets worse.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
there is nothing wrong, its the resolution + cpu + the fact that the game only uses 2 cores. so hes cpu limiting the heck out of the gpu. he needs to run 1080p minimum.


btw OP'er, try turning everything on instead of off it should put more strain on the gpu so its not as limited. as you remove things the cpu bottleneck just gets worse.
Click to expand...

Raising the resolution and enabling more details doesn't magically make the CPU bottleneck disappear.

If you're CPU limited to 30fps at 640*480 then you'll be CPU limited to 30 fps at 1920*1080 too if your graphics card can keep up.
 
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