Dragons need to take an arrow to the knee, too.
NB: Tested on an ION2 netbook.
I’m not even joking, it is possible to play Skyrim on a netbook… if you really want to. Recently, my ASUS laptop died a terrible death when the hard drive suddenly started making clicking noises. In a sense, I used to play Skyrim on a real computer, until it took an arrow to the knee.
Playing Skyrim on a netbook is possible, although you really have to be patient and be prepared to not have the quality you’re used to when you play it on a higher end computer. The compromises are basically the same – low-res textures, low draw distance and low resolution. Even with these compromises, you’ll still have to prepare yourself for a low frame rate. At its best, I managed to achieve 20fps, averaging 15fps in most situations. It can get as slow as 5fps in the worst of times.
It’s definitely workable if you manually tweaked your settings as follows,
No arrows here!
- Low graphics settings
- Windowed mode, 16:9 widescreen and 800x450px resolution
If you’re on an Nvidia-based netbook, such as the ION/ION2 graphics chip, then you might want to try this mod which might help – Skyrim Better Performance – supposedly, this mod helps people who use older Nvidia graphics cards such as the 8000-series. My personal experience has shown that I gained about 2fps. It’s very easy too – you just have to copy it into your Skyrim’s root folder, whether or not you have such a file there.
With these, you will realize that you will get Skyrim up to a playable, although struggling, speed. Obviously, if you have a C-50 or C-60 netbook, things will be much easier for you. Alas, not everyone has the foresight to see that AMD netbooks are probably a better choice than a ION 2 netbook (a.k.a. yours truly).
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- No arrows here!
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- Dragons need to take an arrow to the knee, too.
EDIT: If you want to know the ultimate hack to get max FPS out of the game, click here.
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Just get a netbook with NVIDIA graphics and then use the NVIDIA controlle r to rip thegrpahics and play without textures. Works on my dirty old tower pc…and that thing is old.
Thanks a lot for that suggestion LARZ! I tried it after some searching around and it seems you really need to get down and dirty, and after a huge loss in graphics quality, the game is actually quite playable. I must say, though, that I was still forced to play at lowest res, lowest draw distance and lowest quality.
I would love it if you could elaborate on what it means to “rip thegrpahics and play without textures” and how to do it.
I understnd the concept, but I’m stuck at the execution.
Thanks in advance.
See: http://netbookist.com/blog/2012/01/30/skyrim-on-a-netbook-part-ii-removing-textures-moving-save-games/