Dell 1558 : The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim (FPS and lag issue)

Hi, I have installed The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim on my laptop and getting fps drop after 5 min of game play every time. I have tried to update the video driver from device manager properties which are right now version 8.692.1.0, but is showing as the latest.

In the start the FPS is between 31-35 with medium settings, but after 5 min just 5-8 FPS.

any help...

 

Have you checked your activity during the slowdown?

Did you try doing a clean install with the Nvidia driver (will purge all registry values) and reinstalling? Or use CCleaner.

 

Hi,
Maybe heat throttling your system?
I get it in Skyrim when I have my windows power management set to 100%, set it to 80% and Skyrim runs consistently smoother and I get less heat from my laptop.
Yet in Deus EX HR, Rage, Fear 3 and Stalker CoP all work fine with 100% power management in windows.
Skyrim was the first game for me to cause my laptop to throttle
Mind you my laptop is N5110 i5 2.3 ~ 2.9Ghz and Nvidia 525 graphics.
I gather yours is ATI graphics going by your sig.

Shadows in Skyrim are calculated using the cpu.
So some scenes where there's lots of shadows will work your cpu fairly hard and cause stuttering/frame drops in certain parts (even when set to med/low).
I disabled shadows via editing the SkyrimPrefs.ini in my game save directory. Doing so gave me less atmosphere but a lot smoother game play.
These are what I changed to disable shadows

Code:

iShadowMapResolution=256
fShadowBiasScale=0
iShadowMaskQuarter=1
fShadowDistance=0
iShadowFilter=1
fShadowLODStartFade=0.0000
iShadowMode=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bDrawShadows=0

 

I did a fresh install of the video driver (driver sweeper in safe mode) and using CCleaner as well.

As per processes are concerned no extra process were running after i exit the game. but still the system also became dam slow.

 

Yes, I am having ATI mobility.
I have change one setting earlier in SkyrimPrefs.ini in my game save directory by searching through google as below:-

bGamepadEnable=0

It gave a little FPS boost but didn't solved the slowdown issue.


I tried the settings you mentioned. And it helped, the slowdown with was after 5min was now came after 20 min. But it doesn't disabled shadows.

​

The graphics settings that i am using are as below:-

​

But lag and finally slowdown still persist.

 

Hi,
For the shadows to be disabled use the settings I posted but...
After editing the SkyrimPrefs.ini do not open the "Launcher -> Settings".
Just launch the game and play.

When you open the launcher settings tab it will change the shadow settings in the ini to whatever last shadow setting is in the settings tab, "low" in your case.
In other words it overwrites what you manually just changed in the SkyrimPrefs.ini.
Low detail shadows in some interiors still seem to be shown even when they are set to 0.
But from your screen shot your shadows are on outdoors.
Would have been nice if the option of "Shadows: Disable" had been in the game setting menu...lol
Shadow calculation should have been done by the GPU imho.
I'd rather the CPU can work the AI/Scripting fluidly in the game.

Does sound like an OS/Driver/Hardware issue is going on as well...
By symptoms you describe sounded like throttling under load/heat.
Have you monitored CPU & GPU temps while gaming?

 

SkyrimPrefs.ini got changed, that's right Smashly. Thanks for the details. I will try to check the fps by direct play.

But to my surprise when I clicked on default in skyrim option, it detected and set option to medium settings and i can play game for 18-20 FPS.

Not sure what the options window exactly is doing. And The next time when i ran the option window it detected as high, and wow i can still play the game in high setting at 12-15 FPS.

Though in both the cases the FPS drop came after approximately same time.

I checked with Dell support center, PC check option and no hardware issue was detected. Also i have updated the video driver with version 8.742.0.0 ( as suggested latest by dell technical support team).

Will be checking symptoms of throttling soon...

 

That video driver from dell is over a year old (Release Date: 7/28/2010).
AMD/ATI video driver is currently v11.11 Release Date:11/15/2011 at AMD site.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx#2

 

I have already tried to install the v11.10 (11-10_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc.exe) on my machine. It gave a error while installing and exit. So i contacted dell technical support team and they suggested for version 8.742.0.0

 

Finally the driver ghost is gone. And new drivers are installed successfully. Also the temperature issue is solved. Full story here.