Skyrim Microstutter Fix

[Shmerrick]

As we are all fans of Skyrim, I thought I would share an experiment conducted by Benchmark3d in which he resolves the issue of Microstutter in Skyrim. I would suggest reading the entire article as it was very informative for anyone who wants a smoother and better looking gameplay.

 

http://benchmark3d.com/microstutter-case-study-skyrim-wtf-edition

[HeyYou]

Interesting read. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get an exe that actually took advantage of multi-core processors? I would take a wild guess and say there are VERY FEW people playing skyrim on PC with a single core......

[Rooker75]

Thankfully, I've never had the microstutter problem. I don't know if I'd want to try running Skyrim on a single core.

 

I like how they actually broke multi-CPU support in Fallout 3 in one of the patches, then never went back to fix it. I wish they'd abandon Gamebryo and create a new engine, even if it means Fallout 4 takes an extra year to create. They've been polishing the chrome on this lemon since... what? Morrowind?

[SymVoid]

I have been fighting this problem for a WHILE! I didn't know what was causing it. I would run through a cave and sometimes it would run super smooth, other times (NOT FPS LAG) it was stutter. It was SO annoying. I couldn't stand it. I ran FRAPS and it wasn't my FPS dropping, it was just... "tearing" I guess. Anyways, I tried everything this side of sunday and nothing worked. Borderless Windowed, INI tweaks, V-Sync, Mouse Acceleration. You name it, I tried it. I figured it had to be something due to my Processor. I have a fairly average build, but I can run skyrim just fine on High with it without any major problems. So I messed around for a bit and Enabled both of my CPU cores (I have a duo). Well atelast I THOUGHT I enabled them. Apparently they were already both working, but nothing was telling me (even Task Manager). So anywho, I did msconfig, went to boot, changed the "Number Of Processors" to 2. It was greyed out remind you. So yea, restarted and bam both CPU's showed up in my Task Manager. Thought to my self, well damn... lets see. Ran the game with all of my goodies to see if it lagged. Sure enough, Micro-Stutter. I'm learning to mod right now so it's pretty easy for me to get straight into my Cell. It was SO BAD! It's worse in the actual game. So here am I getting SUPER pissed and angry when I try something else. f*** 2 cores, why not just run it on one? That way it's not trying to process the information in two different lines... just one big sweep. So I went back into MSConfig and clicked "Number of Processors" to turn it off and go back to one. Restart. Ran game. STILL THERE! What the hell I'm thinking. So by trial and error I go BACK into MSConfig and into Advanced Boot Options, and click "Number Of Processors" so that it's enabled, and only select one. Restart. Hoping that this does it, I ran the game. Guess what? Stutter is GONE! Absolutly GONE! I have no problems now. I guess for some reason a line of code or some other random crap since they updated has made it so it micro-stutters with more then one core being utilized. I don't know the specifics, but this worked for me. Hopefully it will work for anyone else who reads this as well..

 

Short Version:
Go into MSConfig

Click "Boot"

Click "Advanced Options"

Enable "Number Of Processors"

and select "1"

Restart

 

Good luck fella's.

 

Rig:

Windows 7

AMD A6-4400M Dual Core 2.7 Ghz

Radeon HD 7520G 13.1 drivers

4GB Ram

Edited April 22, 2013 by SymVoid

[mattblns]

SymVoid I tried your "fix" and my fps went down from near constant 60 fps in windhelm to less than 30 (8-30)! I got so much fps lag that stutters were the least of my problems. I'm staying on 6 cores. I had texture packs, but my graphics card is nearly 4 gb gtx 660 so that shouldn't have stressed my fps. How is your fps not crap on 1 core? I have Windows 7 6 core 2.9 ghz 8 gb ram.

[Aminados]

The ABSOLUTELY NO stuttering guide by Aminados

1. Get an Nvidia Card (600 series or over)
2. Don't SLI
3. Put Skyrim on a RAMDisk
4. Ini tweaks (optional)

[ISHOTGUNJENI]

I get the Micro-stutter problem as-well but in just outdoors area's, I get the stutter when I turn the camera and I will jump from 60fps to 58-57fps (I run on Ultra at 1920x1080), sometimes it does go from 60fps to 50fps just all of a sudden but this rarely happens too much and I think my rig is decent :confused: .

 

Windows 7 Professional 64bit

Intel i7 2600 @3.4GHZ

8GB Ram

Nvidia GTX 670 4GB (320.49 Drivers)

Edited July 29, 2013 by ISHOTGUNJENI

[RitualBlack]

 

The ABSOLUTELY NO stuttering guide by Aminados

1. Get an Nvidia Card (600 series or over)
2. Don't SLI
3. Put Skyrim on a RAMDisk
4. Ini tweaks (optional)

 

I don't see how stuttering is exclusive to AMD cards, or why a high end older Nvidia card wouldn't still perform nicely. Also I have had my Skyrim over 30GB in file size which makes it not really feasable to put it on a ram disc, not to mention I doubt Skyrim will be using enough memory bandwidth to actually even take advantage of a ram disk over a ssd (few of us have 40GB+ ram in our system to handle a heavily modded game).

 

I am fairly certain the game being designed to run on an xbox 360 and the engine being very out of date are the main culprits, not the hardware running it. Even at 60 fps the game does not exactly feel smooth :laugh:

[Aminados]

 

 

The ABSOLUTELY NO stuttering guide by Aminados

1. Get an Nvidia Card (600 series or over)
2. Don't SLI
3. Put Skyrim on a RAMDisk
4. Ini tweaks (optional)

 

I don't see how stuttering is exclusive to AMD cards, or why a high end older Nvidia card wouldn't still perform nicely. Also I have had my Skyrim over 30GB in file size which makes it not really feasable to put it on a ram disc, not to mention I doubt Skyrim will be using enough memory bandwidth to actually even take advantage of a ram disk over a ssd (few of us have 40GB+ ram in our system to handle a heavily modded game).

 

I am fairly certain the game being designed to run on an xbox 360 and the engine being very out of date are the main culprits, not the hardware running it. Even at 60 fps the game does not exactly feel smooth :laugh:

 

 

My current Skyrim has 27gb and it hits 3.1gb ram usage constantly causing it to crash (not anymore thanks to Boris) and yes It makes a diference from SSD. Micro-Stuttering is not exclusive to AMD cards but its more noticeable on them, even more on Multi-GPU. Older high end Nvidia cards perform well but it was really on the 600 series that Nvidia tackled the problem, while AMD is only starting now with drivers to prevent it, Nvidia has drivers and hardware to prevent it.

 

Here is the up coming AMD driver that will try to fix the micro-stuttering.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Radeon-CrossFire-Drivers-Driver,23214.html

 

But if you don't believe in some guy that you don't know on the internet that's ok. Here are some links about micro-stuttering (frame latency) for all of you.

 

Where it all started. Read the whole article if you want.

http://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking/5

 

Here is some Micro-stuttering on Single GPU vs Multi-GPU.

http://techreport.com/news/21625/multi-gpu-micro-stuttering-captured-on-video

 

Here is when AMD notices the micro-stuttering started working on the drivers (the drivers on the first link)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-issues-driver-roadmap-fraps/6

 

Micro-stuttering AMD vs Nvidia in SKYRIM!

http://techreport.com/review/24051/geforce-versus-radeon-captured-on-high-speed-video

 

Another Micro-stuttering AMD vs Nvidia in SKYRIM! more recently. AMD has Improved here but still worse then Nvidia (feel free to press that "GTX 660 TI" button to really see the difference!)

http://techreport.com/review/24218/a-driver-update-to-reduce-radeon-frame-times/2

 

And the most recent of all the, Geforce 700 series. Here are some benchmarks comparing to AMD, pay special attention to the 95th Percentile graphs in the various games (the lower, the less micro-stuttering)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6994/nvidia-geforce-gtx-770-review/5

 

I had a beast ATI 4870 x2 in the past, bought it based on the insane fps it had that the time. Shortly after I realized what micro-stuttering really was, even with locked 60 fps some games lagged like hell, that was when I wised up and started to read about it and went Nvidia, games at 30 fps felt more fluid then the ATI(AMD) at 60 fps, seriously. I'm not an Nvidia fan boy, but I'm not going to consider anymore AMD cards until they fix, or at least be on par with Nvidia on Micro-Stuttering, and even then, mods like ENBseries work better on Nvidia (because the creator uses Nvidia). Next-gen consoles are going to have AMD CPU/GPU, maybe then games will work better on AMD since game are made for consoles and ported to PC.

 

Advice: Don't pay attention to just FPS, Frame Latency also counts if not more then FPS, me personally, I would go for less micro-stuttering over FPS any day, even if it's more expensive.

[RitualBlack]

Having a 27GB game on a ramdisk is a bit silly in my opinion. The differences between the ramdisk and ssd in gaming hardly is worth the hassle of what has to be done after shutting down your system.

 

I will not deny with my AMD crossfire system Skyrim does suffer badly from micro stuttering. In all my games library the only ones that actually give me problems are Bethesda titles and horribly ported games (*cough, no similarites there, cough* :laugh: ). Maybe I am not playing the ones the really bad micro stuttering are reported in (though with 95th percentile graphs the only game that really had a noticible difference was Shogun).

 

It is interesting that Nvidia multi gpu setups experience micro-stuttering less frequently though.