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Need assistance with GPU bottleneck and slow load times


TJHammersmith

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Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking for some guidance regarding two issues I'm having with Skyrim.

1. My GPU is bottlenecking my game, but really only in areas with lots of grass around

2. There's one cell that takes a comparatively long time to load and is prone to crashing

 

As a bit of background, my rig is running Windows 7, I've got a i7-930 @ 2.8Ghz , a 2GB GTX-670 and 12MB of RAM.

 

I also preface this by acknowledging that I'm running 100+ mods and I understand that this will impair my game experience to some degree.

 

In respect of the first problem, one of the mods I'm running is Tropical Skyrim. This mod makes the grass quite lush and given that the problem I'm having with my GPU, I'm home someone can advise which settings (either via the launcher, or via an .ini tweak) I should adjust so that my GPU stops flogging itself when it has to render a lot of grass.

 

My second problem arises in a player house mod I downloaded that I've stuffed with NPCs. I've seen this behaviour with other buildings/rooms that I've loaded with NPC's, but I'm curious as to what exactly causes the game to struggle to load and sometimes crash.

 

I've been using Skyrim Performance Monitor to see if I can isolate what's causing the problem. Although the load time is high when entering the house in question, the CPU load spikes at 35%, but is constant around 17%, while the GPU load spikes at 60% but holds around 35%, figure which don't seem awful.

 

Finally, as an aside, my FPS seems capped at 60. Is this normal? And can such a cap be removed?

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Firstly, the game is capped at 60FPS, most modern games are to prevent FPS related issues such as micro-stuttering, you can , however, disable this, but you physiologically don't recognize above 60 usually.

Grass and NPCs are generally CPU dependant. Skyrim as a whole is fairly CPU rather than GPU dependant. GPU is used for rendering scenes which are roughly drawn up by the CPU. The CPU calculates things like physics and Havok simulations. It can and usually does calculate things like NPC AI, NPC routines etc.

GPU bottlenecking can't be moved around except for a new GPU and even then, there is a finite limit to how much of a system can be used. One has to realize that Skyrim can't use more than what it can use, what is most likely is not that you're hitting a GPU bottleneck, but that the game itself has hit its limits. 100+ mods is almost never going to be 100 per cent stable, no matter what you're doing, especially large overhauls.

Although the monitor shows only a small percent of your system is being used, that is most likely because the game can't physically use any more. As a general rule, it is generally inefficient at

A) Using more than 2 cores at +2.0GhZ

B) Using a powerful GPU is any capacity

C) and totally unable to use more than 3.1 gb

 

THe only answer here is to trim down your mod order, take the ones out you don't absolutely need, but only like, and then you should start to see some improvement in the game performance.

To reiterate myself; Grass and NPC rendering/processing is largely CPU dependant, and Skyrim is CPU heavy and largely limited by how much it can use anyway. Lose some of your mods is the best advice I can give.

~SD

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@screendrop - firstly, thanks for the information

 

I wasn't aware of the cap - although 60 FPS is nothing to sneeze about. I found a good video here about FPS and what we can recognise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n00qUDL0Cxg

 

I've read your advice and I think I understand what you're saying, but I think in this case there's got to be more to it than having too many mods.

 

By way of a test, I loaded the same save at Winstad Manor (where I'm having the problems) and starting from the front door, did a lap of the manor clockwise. Results are as follows with min/avg/max FPS:

 

100+ mods with Tropical Skyrim loaded - 17/35/60

30+ mods with Tropical Skyrim loaded - 23/35/60

 

100+ mods without Tropical Skyrim loaded - 21/44/60

30+ mods without Tropical Skyrim loaded - 8/45/60

 

It appears that Tropical Skyrim is belting my average FPS and GPU usage, but I'm not sure if that's just due to the increased rending due to the extra grass or just the mod in general. I will have to investigate in future.

 

Reducing the number of mods in place doesn't seem to make much change to my FPS though, particularly the average FPS recorded in each test.

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@screendrop - firstly, thanks for the information

 

I wasn't aware of the cap - although 60 FPS is nothing to sneeze about. I found a good video here about FPS and what we can recognise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n00qUDL0Cxg

 

I've read your advice and I think I understand what you're saying, but I think in this case there's got to be more to it than having too many mods.

 

By way of a test, I loaded the same save at Winstad Manor (where I'm having the problems) and starting from the front door, did a lap of the manor clockwise. Results are as follows with min/avg/max FPS:

 

100+ mods with Tropical Skyrim loaded - 17/35/60

30+ mods with Tropical Skyrim loaded - 23/35/60

 

100+ mods without Tropical Skyrim loaded - 21/44/60

30+ mods without Tropical Skyrim loaded - 8/45/60

 

It appears that Tropical Skyrim is belting my average FPS and GPU usage, but I'm not sure if that's just due to the increased rending due to the extra grass or just the mod in general. I will have to investigate in future.

 

Reducing the number of mods in place doesn't seem to make much change to my FPS though, particularly the average FPS recorded in each test.

 

 

Having a building loaded by NPC's can be an issue, and also the amount of crap that you are carrying effect this also. Some mod are better than others.

 

Try adjusting some of the settings and see what it will get you the best changes come from knocking shadow detail down, and cutting filtering levels from the default set by the game.

 

Getting you CPU up @ 3.5 + Ghz will help also. You should be able to tweak it easily the CPU is basically unlocked in the uncore (memory controller) and you can tweak Bclk but if you don't have an aftermarket heatsink you should invest in one before endeavoring.

 

You should look at your page file and if it is on your windows install ddrive, you should get it on another drive, and allocate physical RAM as your initail, and 2x physical RAM as MAX and manually control. Windows does not do a good job.

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