I've been playing unmodded Skyrim and I'm encountering frustrating FPS spikes, particularly when I'm outside. While I usually maintain around 60FPS, these spikes disrupt the experience. I thought my PC was pretty capable since benchmark tests give good results. Recently, I logged my performance and noticed that during these FPS drops, my GPU utilization sharply declines, often around 30% to 40% but then dropping to just 5%. Meanwhile, my CPU utilization stays relatively steady at about 12%, dipping to 8% during the spikes. Both my GPU and CPU temperatures are fine, sitting between 40°C to 50°C, so it's not a cooling issue. I'm not very tech-savvy, so I'm not sure what this means or how to fix it. Any advice on what could be causing these problems or how to improve my gaming performance would be greatly appreciated! Here are my specs: Radeon RX 7800 XT Gaming OC 16GB, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, and 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM.
2 Answers
Have you checked if the game is on an SSD or HDD? That can make a big difference in loading times and overall performance.
It sounds like your FPS drops might be tied to loading new areas or possibly high draw calls when looking in certain directions. Skyrim can have performance hiccups for a range of reasons, even without mods. Folks over in a dedicated Skyrim community might be able to help diagnose it even better if you want to check there!
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll explore that option!
Just a reminder, the fact that you're playing unmodded Skyrim might limit the community's advice since modded versions can handle performance differently!
Yeah, it’s on an SSD; I'm using a Samsung 990 Pro 1TB, so that shouldn’t be an issue.