Alt-Tab triples my FPS in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Krunali]

This is the weirdest issue i find in a game! My Skyrim is in Ultra settings and with my relatively old ATI HD4870X2 card works "on the edge" 20-24 fps at 1920x1200. Now here the weird thing: I ALT-TAB on windows (maybe to open a website or so) then re-ALT-TAB to the game. Now i go even at 60 fps or more. Can i keep Skyrim go fast without minimize it to windows every time?

[GaganGang]

If you've left Crossfire enabled for any of the x2 or dual GPU video cards or for any dual video cards in sli/crossfire. alt tabbing or using the quick key fix will result in crossfire temporarily being enabled and running (until either a menu is brought up such as hitting esc to get to the system menu or using the tab key to access the item/skill/etc.

[MACALL]

You can also go to windows task manager, find Skyrim, right click it, go to "Set Priority" and make sure "Realtime" or "Highest" is chosen. This will bump it to the top and possibly utilize more CPU/RAM. Don't forget, the game is developed for consoles, which have a CPU/RAM/GPU standard limitation.

[Irene-I]

I get no crashes except for perhaps one or two since launch day. I'm even running at 4096 shadow resolution and despite my VRAM being between 1300MB and 1512MB constantly, its stable, except for the same FPS dips in cities and looking at outdoor settlements. I notice my cores all seem active, but core 0 likes to get the highest load (in the FPS dips). I cannot Alt+Tab, doing so will not allow me to resume the game without ALT-F4'ing out and restarting. Will this +fullproc command give me some improvement on the other 3 threads? Has this given any improvement to the problem areas (cities and villages). Great find, would love to put it into action but I'm at work!

[DougWison]

I have had a similar issue. Even though I force high priority with Radeon Tools, most of the time I have to Control alt delete once real quick and exit out then go back into the game to go from 20fps to 45-50fps.

[Ashley Parker]

With my ATI HD4870X2 i have no options to enable/disable the crossfire and set the process on Real time had no effect. Only minimize the game (alt tab or ctr alt del) then return in game boost the FPS. Calling menus didn’t affect the frame rate, if boosted the game contuse to run fast, but if i reload the game or load in some location the game run slows again (then again i have to alt tab to windows).