New Laptop - choppy FPS
 

I just bought this laptop: Asus - 17.3" Laptop (came with NVIDIA GTX 660M card). I don't see any updates to the NVIDIA GTX 660M but man the FPS is very inconsistent playing Skyrim/Rift. I'll go from 40-60 FPS to single digits. Any thoughts what may be dragging this system?

Do you have the latest Skyrim updates? It adds in performance enhancements.

I do. Rift was also fully patched and did the same.

Does this happen at regular intervals, or as you move around the game? If you stand in one spot and it's 40-60 then drops to single digits for a bit before returning, then it's likely not the game or card, it's some background app running on the laptop stealing the CPU.

If it's while moving around and certain areas trigger it, then you need to turn down some settings in the games to not overload the card.

Another possibility is heat, if the card or CPU are getting too warm they'll clock down until they cool off.

Also, and this is maybe obvious, do you have an antivirus running? If so, turn it off while playing the game.

Just looked up some issues people have been having. Looks like the latest patch added a bunch of new shadows which look pretty but kill performance. try turning shadows down or off and see if that helps.

It is when I move around - but when I stop it seems to "catch up". I turned down the setting from ultra to high in Skyrim still was choppy. With this system I expected to play Skyrim/Rift on high or highest settings.

Make sure you have the power settings to high performance.

As far as graphics settings I may be wrong but I think that card should be able to handle the highest settings on Skyrim and Rift, so I'm not sure the problem is there.

No anti-virus running at all. I just picked up the system last night so really haven't installed one yet.

I restarted the laptop and started Skryim again. Seemed better but was still dropping in the 20's at times. I'll try lowering the shdows next time I start it up.

Okay changed to High Performance. I was set on balanced... I'll log into Skyrim soon to see if there is a change.

Thanks

Also check if you're running on the integrated graphics or the nvidia card

How do I do that?? ;)

This sounds like streaming or loading textures. Turn down texture detail? Memory or slow transfer from hard drive might be a culprit.

Could be - the rating is only 5.9 for the Hard Disk (data transfer rate). Every other rating is 7.3 or higher. I was on Asus's forum and they did suggest swapping the HD to a SSD HD.

Another person suggested I might have a faulty GPU... arggg. This is why I hate PC gaming vs console. Console - you stick the game in and play. PC -well, I get these problems.

I had a laptop with a Nvidia card and it never really gave me the performance I expected from it. Often had choppy and/or low framerates while playing LOTRO, WOW, Elder Scrolls, etc...Prior to that I had a Nvidia card die on my desktop and it was only about a year old.

Yeah, haven't been impressed with Nvidia....

I'm guessing it's a faulty GPU. I just get very inconsistent result when I'm on Rift, Skyrim, and BF3. I even tried BF3 with low settings and it was still inconsistent. Oh well, I'll take it back to Best Buy and try again...

There should be an option to run with the nvidia card or the integrated graphics when you right click the application.

Also go into the nvidia control and change your default to the nvidia card.

Dola, i have an acer 4750 with gt540m, and skyrim runs beautifully.