The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Benchmark

It may not be the most pre-ordered game, it may not be the game with the most sales but it is definitely the most anticipated game of the year and will probably be GOTY 2011. Bethesda did it again, they put a lot of work in Skyrim, they promised a lot and so far the game is delivering.

Back when the game was first announced Bethesda pointed out that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will look awesome. They created a new game engine called Creation Engine, among all it’s features, this engine is capable of drawing huge distances thus creating beautiful vistas. Another important feature is the foliage system which help trees, grass and vegetation look and feel more real.

Before taking a look at performance differences between operating systems please note that I used the maximum settings when I ran the game. Maximum settings does not mean Ultra but all the available settings were checked and maxed out. You’ll see later that running the game on Ultra will improve performance dramatically without loosing too much image quality. Also tests were done in a intense part of the game so you might see much higher frame rates (almost 20%) most of the time. And I am using the day one patch Bethesda released, though I’m pretty sure it only addresses some quests issues.

Windows XP users upgrade, Windows 8 users downgrade. The huge difference in performance between the three operating systems is astonishing. There’s a 37% difference between Windows XP, 8 and Windows 7. I tried different drivers with Windows XP trying to figure out what is the problem but couldn’t get a definite answer. Most probable cause is the game itself.

All CPU tests were done in Windows 7 x64. OC = 4.5 Ghz. vSync is Disabled.

	Skyrim CPU Usage
1 Core	100%
1 Core OC	100%
2 Cores	~95%
2 Cores OC	~83%
3 Cores	~60%
3 Cores OC	~48%
4 Cores	~50%
4 Cores OC	~42%

Skyrim is not CPU dependent, with only 2 cores and a bit of OC you can supply all the required processor power to the game, this is good news for dual core users and bad news for quad/hexa core users. Remember that I ran all test on the maximum settings and not Ultra. Overclocking the processor does seem a reliable solution for older CPUs but with the current generation (Sandy Bridge) it may not give more than 1 or 2 extra frames so don’t bother. The same story goes for the graphics card, I overclocked the 6950 (840 & 1325 Mhz ) only to gain one frame per second.

As I told you earlier, here is a comparison between 5 different quality settings. Tests done in Windows 7 x64.

Click to Enlarge

Going for maxed out settings might be a bad idea as you will lose 33% performance while gaining almost no image quality.

Although I’ve seen a lot of optimization complaints on the official Skyrim forums, I can’t really agree with them. A decent overclocked dual core processor and a mainstream graphics card is all you need to run Skyrim at High/Ultra settings. Also, make sure you’re using the latest video, audio and chipset drivers so you will avoid most compatibility issues. Oh and if you’re still using Windows XP make sure you update.

EDIT

After playing a lot of Skyrim I noticed that sometimes, especially in Dwemer Caverns, there are huge performance drops and stutter, the game becomes unplayable and FPS goes to below 5. While this happens the CPU at 100% usage and the GPU load goes to 30%. The reason behind this huge problem is that the shadows are “rendered” by the processor, a childish move from Bethesda. After lowering shadows detail to something lower than Ultra, the issue was gone completely, CPU usage was normal at about 40-50% while the GPU load went up to 99%. I advise those who have frame rate issues to lower shadows to anything lower than Ultra.

I do admit that I only encountered this problem two times and lasted under 30 seconds. But when doing a Thieves Guild mission in Irkngthand this issue blew out of proportion and got me really annoyed, throughout the mission I only got between 3 and 20 FPS.

EDIT 2

I included Skyrim in the AMD Catalyst 11.10 vs 11.11 comparison. Things don’t look bright for future AMD drivers.

EDIT 3

AMD just released a performance driver for a couple of games including Skyrim. They say this driver Improves performance 2-7% on single GPU configurations, I will look into it in the morning. You can get the driver from here: AMD Catalyst 11.11a Performance Driver.

EDIT 4

If you’re using a 64-bit operating system with more than 3 GB of RAM installed and encounter frequent (every 5-15-30-60 minutes) crashes to desktop there is a solution. When Skyrim hits 2 GB of RAM usage it may crash. It seems Skyrim isn’t aware that your PC has RAM left for use. The fix I read about on the Internet implied the usage of a application that patched the .exe so that Skyrim became LAA (Large Address Aware) and could use whatever RAM was left free. Unfortunately Bethesda or Steam suddenly decided to put a check on the .exe that rendered this fix useless. The tool I mentioned is this: Large Address Awareness 2.0.4 which can be used with any game/application that hasn’t the Large Address Aware executable flag set so the entire 4GB Virtual Memory Address Space.

Fortunately there is another tool designed especially for Skyrim and some users confirmed that it is still working with the latest 1.2 update. The tool is called Skyrim4GB and you can get it from here or the official website.

EDIT 5

AMD Catalyst Drivers Performance Comparison

Best choices at the moment would be 11.10 WHQL, 11.12 WHQL or AMD 8.94 19 Dec, these drivers exhibit the best performance with Skyrim. To download any of them browser our drivers section.