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Looking for those who own a GTX 460 and Skyrim.

10K views 12 replies 9 participants last post by  ATHF 
#1 ·
Hello,

I currently am running a Q6600 @ 3.0 along with a GTX 260. I used to be very much into PC modding and such, but have since gone on to other pursuits. I am currently playing Skyrim, and am loving it. While my performance is ok, I am looking to get a solid 60FPS outdoors in the game. I play @ 1680x1050.

My question here is, would the GTX 460 be that much of a step up? I have been looking at the 560Ti, but with the limited amount of time I have to play games these days, I don't want to spend more that 100-$120 on a used video card. I have thought about getting another GTX260 and doing an SLI. But, I have never done SLI and have heard that they can be more trouble than they are worth.

Thanks,
 
#2 ·
A 460 would probably be a decent upgrade, but probably nothing spectacularly huge. I'm currently playing with two 460s overclocked at a resolution of 1920x1080. Antialiasing is at 8 samples and anisotropic filtering is at 16 samples. Texture quality is at high, radial blur quality is at high, shadow detail is at ultra, decal quantity is at ultra. I have all of my view distances set at roughly 12, excluding grade fade and light fade and distant object detail at medium. I also have all water reflect enabled and some other minor mods.

I get an average of 60 frames with very sparse moments of odd game lag (I think bad game programming?) periodically.

You're playing at a lower resolution, so if you have most of your settings at medium / high, you should probably be able to average 50 frames or so with a 460? Just a rough estimation.

Edit:

SLI is pretty easy. Just slap on your 2nd card in an empty PCIe x16 slot, connect the two cards with an SLI badge, and make sure all your power cables are plugged in properly. Then, go to your Nvidia control panel by right clicking on your desktop, click "Set SLI and PhysX configuration" and click the "Maximize 3D Performance" button.

You're all set after that. My cards run Skyrim at 90-98% load constant with the last Nvidia drivers without having to do any tweaking.

Two GTX 260s would probably run somewhere between a 560 Ti and a 570? I'm just guessing, so you might have to look for some benchmarks to get a proper estimate.
 
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#3 ·
Skyrim's recommended settings gave me "high". Only things that were reduced were sky reflections and draw distance of grass and objects.
GTX 460 works fine for me, I get 60fps on mountains and in caves/houses, and about 30fps in very complex areas at 1680*1050, which pretty much means it's almost always playable.
However, I have a dual core, so I suspect the 30fps is actually because of my weak processor and not the GPU itself.

edit: in mid-complex areas, I tested to see if the GTX was being pushed:
with AA and AF off, I got the same framerate as with AA and AF at its maximum. Which definitely means it's more than capable for skyrim, and it also means I need a new processor
redface.gif
 
#5 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pomegranate View Post

Skyrim's recommended settings gave me "high". Only things that were reduced were sky reflections and draw distance of grass and objects.
GTX 460 works fine for me, I get 60fps on mountains and in caves/houses, and about 30fps in very complex areas at 1680*1050, which pretty much means it's almost always playable.
However, I have a dual core, so I suspect the 30fps is actually because of my weak processor and not the GPU itself.
edit: in mid-complex areas, I tested to see if the GTX was being pushed:
with AA and AF off, I got the same framerate as with AA and AF at its maximum. Which definitely means it's more than capable for skyrim, and it also means I need a new processor
redface.gif
Haha, I think the game just has some weird issues, because there are moments my GPUs will also hit 30 FPS and just sit there for awhile. If I leave my char there for like 40 seconds, it just automatically clears up. Not sure if it's a processor thing.
 
#7 ·
Thank you all for the replies and insight. Skyrim runs well on my system, I just want it to run better.
biggrin.gif


I play with everything set to ULTRA. 8xAF, 0 AA, 15 on all of the sliders. For the most part its playable. Indoors I get 80+ FPS. Outside its closer to 40. When I get near towns, camps, and populated areas things start to slow down.

The 260 does a great job running the other games that I play, such as Shogun 2 and Civ 5. I dont play all too often, and Skyrim is probably the only PC game ill be purchasing for quite some time. That is why I dont want to spend more than I have to.Between spending time with my children and running my business, my gaming is limited to a few hours a week. And seeing that many people are happy with the 460's, I thought that it was the logical choice.

I did check out Skyrim on a friends system and it played amazing. It looked just as good as it would on my system, it just ran MUCH smoother. He is using a GTX 570.

If anyone has a 460 or knows of someone looking to sell please let me know. I would prefer the 1GB model.

Thanks,
 
#8 ·
I have a GTX 460 1GB @ 875 Mhz and play at 1680x1050. Mine is set to "ultra" with just shadows set one notch lower to high. It runs pretty well. Haven't gotten too far along yet, but in Whiterun it varies from 30-60 FPS depending on whether I'm looking at a group of NPCs or not. Outside the city walls its running 60 FPS and also indoors and in mines. To be honest, the game is extremely CPU bound. I've been lurking the Bethesda Forums and that's been a reoccuring theme in many threads. People will have solid specs with high end cards and barely have better FPS than a midrange system. The GPU utilization is quite low except indoors CPU usage is limited to two cores and they're only running at 50%. Shadows are being rendered on the CPU, not the GPU.

Crappy console port FTL.
 
#9 ·
I think the 460 would be a worthy uppgrade. I own 2 260's, a 460 and a 560ti and just the fact of how cool and quiet the newer cards run almost makes it worth it anyways. I put some of my 260's in my rig last night for some fun and was planning on playing skyrim just to see.

I think a CPU upgrade would make a bigger difference though, even with my 580 @ 950 on the core, the game still crawled to 30fps in some scenes due to my ****ty cpu.
 
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#12 ·
I can play skyrim on ultra with the MSI GTX 460 768mb card on 1280x1024 res.
The CPU needs to be atleast a quad or you will have a bottleneck.
Good Luck!
 
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