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I recently was given Skyrim for my computer, and have been having some serious issues with the framerate.
My computer is just above the minimum system requirements (Skyrim set itself to medium quality by default). On both medium and low, my framerate is awful. In the state it's in, the game is unplayable.
Is there anything I can do to get it working?
Googleing "skyrim performance" turns up lots of interesting results. You may for instance try this: Skyrim PC Players: Boost Your Framerate! | TheGameEffect
First off, check to see if your graphics card driver is up to date. Mine wasn't and it seemed to help a bit. Second, launch it from steam and take a look at the options menu, see if there's anything that isn't down to the minimum. Lower view distances might hep a little, and turning off antialiasing and anisotropic filtering will help also.
-Make sure the resolution is the lowest you can tolerate within your monitor's aspect ratio. (for example, running 1920x1080 will be much more taxing than running 1280x720. The minimum recommendations probably aren't aimed at more than low resolutions in any case)
-Make sure AA (anti aliasing) is off and AF (anisotropic filtering) is on low levels
-Make sure all view distances are set to minimum from the advanced graphics menu
-If the above doesn't work (which is likely to already be the case, just making sure that you've done those, I don't know how well you know these things), you can try one of the multiple performance tweaks, such as the TESV acceleration layer, which are a bit hit / miss. You might benefit from it. TESV Acceleration Layer at Skyrim Nexus - Skyrim Mods and community
This is, assuming that your computer does not have a decent enough graphics card / CPU for it. I don't know what you're running, a little bit of clarification would be nice.
Thanks for the help, guys! I'll try the Better Skyrim Performance Mod first, and get back to you.