Re: Building a computer
 

At high it with 2xaa it was running a bit slow but when i put it too medium everything ran smoothly but it looks a lot better on high.

Re: Building a computer
 

You're talking Med vs High textures I assume, and vanilla vs modded? It sounds to me like you're only running stock speed on that CPU too, which I believe is just 2.66GHz?

I would try running it with no AA or water reflection and putting a good OC on the CPU. It's not advisable to do it with the stock cooler though.

The mostly natural vs modern architectural environment of Skyrim and the uneven surface of the water don't really benefit much from AA and water reflections anyway. Make sure you're running the patch version that has the optimizer in it too.

Note that some of the more popular CPU coolers will fit a wide range of CPUs from LGA 775 on up to 1155.

Re: Building a computer
 

Skyrim i can run maxed out with 4xAA for some reason and get 30-40 FPS. but in Battlefeild 3 i cannot.

Re: Building a computer
 

On the brightside, you can get one of the new i5's for about $240, and get a PCI 3.0 board. Just saying.

Re: Building a computer
 

I'm beginning to see what the problem is now. You started out actually specifically complaining about SKYRIM performance.Now you make it sound as if it's fine. That tells me you're probably not being very realistic about settings or expectations.

You acknowledge you're aware of a bottleneck with such a CPU, but my guess is you've not done anything to try and ease the severity of it via a hefty OC and reasonable settings, and for that matter you've yet to even state whether you're running the game modded or not.

You now say you're able to "run it maxed", using 4xAA (and God knows what else), but if your initial complaint indicates it's too laggy during battles, you need to rethink that claim.

Skyrim is a game where if you have mediocre and/or bottlenecked config, you want to be averaging at least 60 FPS or so when you're outside with no heavy shading (eg torches, fog, etc) and battles going on.

I've noticed that Skyrim can get a bit choppy indoors where there's torches and fog even when dipping to the 35-40 FPS range, and that's with an i7 950. Granted I have just a GTS 250 1GB, but it's OCed fairly high, and as mentioned, I keep the res to 1600x900 and don't use any AA or water reflections. With my current settings I generally don't dip below 45 FPS, and that's good enough to avoid noticeable lag.

IMHO too many people obsess over max settings. It's fine if you have an up to date killer beast of a rig, but for a lot of people it's impractical. A lot of games don't even need max settings to get decent image quality either.

Re: Building a computer
 

You might want to invest in a solid state hard drive. Their price has went down now and they offer a very good increase in loading speed and general computer day to day activity.

Re: Building a computer
 

Is that really money well spent when his main problem is lag while the game is playing, which has nothing to do with level loading speed. A faster drive won't do anything to fix lag during gameplay. He'd be better off spending that money on changing CPU/MB platforms, or even a CPU cooler to put a decent OC on it.

Re: Building a computer
 

I don't think that was directed to his in-game performance, but more so his overall performance. And he's right, solid state drives are getting really affordable nowadays, for the huge boost in performance (outside of gaming).

Re: Building a computer
 

Still, the fact remains, the thread started out being primarily about gaming performance, even stating concerns about new games coming out. Given that, it just seems natural the suggestions ought to prioritize gaming performance, rather than assuming he can easily afford an SSD as well.

Re: Building a computer
 

While it won't directly effect the game's gameplay framerate, an SSD will effect loading times and this can be really beneficial if a game loads frequently (like a deathmatch type multiplayer game). Anyway my post was more about general computer speed rather than gaming, so im sorry if I went out of thread :P