"Object Fade" Setting & Random Stuttering (on powerful PC)

[scorpgul]

 

 

 

I also used the console command "tb" to toggle borders and the stutters happen EXACTLY as I cross the yellow lines. Hmm what could this mean? I am trying to narrow this down now. I have to fix this!

 

 

Crossing a yellow line means new cells will become active as those are the cell boundaries. There will be asset loading,script processing and AI activation. There are a number of event listeners that are notified each time a new cell is entered.

 

 

So do you know why I am getting stutters with "Distant Object Detail" at Ultra values, even with unmodded vanilla Skyrim especially since I have such a HUGE resource pool: i7 Processor running at 4.5GHZ (Hyperthreading disabled), 6GB VRAM, 16GB System RAM, the game installed on SSD surely should experience virtually no stutter. What is it about "Distant Object Detail" that is introducing this stutter. Once it is set to High, 80% of the stutters disappear straightaway.

Edited August 13, 2015 by scorpgul

[jones177]

For most of this year I used a GTX 980 sc at 1440 at 45fps average with ENB. The experience was totally smooth, no lag no mini freezes. I used the default settings for RealVision & set up my Skyrim inis according to the RealVision page.

I replaced the GTX 980 with a GTX 980 ti sc to get the frame rate closer to 60fps. After installing the card I loaded up skyrim I was greeted with stutter, mini freezes & freezes before killmoves, Even though I succeeded in getting 60fps outdoors my game was unplayable.

It took 3 weeks of testing to get the GTX 980 ti sc running as smooth as the GTX 980. After second week I gave up and decided to run Skyrim vanilla at 4k. That is how I solved the stutter.

The 980 ti didn't like the ENB settings in the skyrim inis. The game would pause for half a second every 5 seconds. Frame rate stayed at a constant 60fps. I replaced the ENB tweaked inis with ones I used before I stared using enb & the pauses were gone. Skyrim was still stuttering though. The type of stuttering I was experiencing is when frame rate stays constant but skyrim runs like a old movie. I decided to remove the ENB setup I had in the NVidia drives. I switched on ambient occlusion & the stutters were gone. Skyrim was now running perfectly in vanilla at 4k.

Since I had no mini freezes in vanilla I assumed that there was something in the ENB inis that would fix it. I had spent 2 weeks fiddling with these settings with 0 luck so I did some more research & found the answer on this Nexus page http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/? .

 

The line that fixed my mini freezes was.

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false <-- Set to true if you have 4GB+ video card.
Overrides ReduceSystemMemoryUsage with better options for extreme users (requires ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true)

The 980 ti is a 6gb card with EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=true & ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true the freezes were gone.

 

The Skyrim & ENB ini settings that I used successfully with a GTX 970 & 980 were totally incompatible with the 980 ti.

 

The moral to this bedtime story is don't give up. These problems can be fixed.

 

Later

P.S. The 980 ti don't like the Distant object detail at anything but ultra. Go figure.

[scorpgul]

For most of this year I used a GTX 980 sc at 1440 at 45fps average with ENB. The experience was totally smooth, no lag no mini freezes. I used the default settings for RealVision & set up my Skyrim inis according to the RealVision page.

I replaced the GTX 980 with a GTX 980 ti sc to get the frame rate closer to 60fps. After installing the card I loaded up skyrim I was greeted with stutter, mini freezes & freezes before killmoves, Even though I succeeded in getting 60fps outdoors my game was unplayable.

It took 3 weeks of testing to get the GTX 980 ti sc running as smooth as the GTX 980. After second week I gave up and decided to run Skyrim vanilla at 4k. That is how I solved the stutter.

The 980 ti didn't like the ENB settings in the skyrim inis. The game would pause for half a second every 5 seconds. Frame rate stayed at a constant 60fps. I replaced the ENB tweaked inis with ones I used before I stared using enb & the pauses were gone. Skyrim was still stuttering though. The type of stuttering I was experiencing is when frame rate stays constant but skyrim runs like a old movie. I decided to remove the ENB setup I had in the NVidia drives. I switched on ambient occlusion & the stutters were gone. Skyrim was now running perfectly in vanilla at 4k.

Since I had no mini freezes in vanilla I assumed that there was something in the ENB inis that would fix it. I had spent 2 weeks fiddling with these settings with 0 luck so I did some more research & found the answer on this Nexus page http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/? .

 

The line that fixed my mini freezes was.

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false <-- Set to true if you have 4GB+ video card.

Overrides ReduceSystemMemoryUsage with better options for extreme users (requires ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true)

 

The 980 ti is a 6gb card with EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=true & ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true the freezes were gone.

 

The Skyrim & ENB ini settings that I used successfully with a GTX 970 & 980 were totally incompatible with the 980 ti.

 

The moral to this bedtime story is don't give up. These problems can be fixed.

 

Later

P.S. The 980 ti don't like the Distant object detail at anything but ultra. Go figure.

 

I tried this already and nothing changed at all. Nothing I have tried so far comes even close to reducing stutter like setting "Distant object details" at High value does.

 

For the last 2 weeks, I have tried so many different fixes and done so many fresh runs that I don't know what else to do anymore.

 

The only time I was able to run Skyrim with all settings Ultra at butter smooth FPS was in 2011/2012 when it first came out. As soon as patch 1.4 came out, the stuttering started. Back then I was using a GTX 680, had 8GB RAM and was on Windows 7.

 

It is definitely an update that broke the game. I bet if I get a vanilla 1.00 Skyrim game, the stutters would vanish.

Edited August 17, 2015 by scorpgul

[scorpgul]

So yesterday I disabled pagefile, reenabled it and moved it to another drive and stutters still happen. Did not make any difference at all...

I've downclocked RAM to 1333mhz, used XMP profile, downclocked GPU, changed sata port, nothing works...

 

I have downgraded every single Texture mod to the 1k version which is a HUGE embarrassment for a GTX 980 Ti 6GB (People with 2GB Graphics cards are running 2k textures on everything...) and still the stutter persists when that damn treeloaddistance setting is set above High. This pretty much confirms that it has nothing to do with mods.

 

I have also read that the patch 1.4 that Bethesda released in 2012 caused this issue. It changed the way cell transitions take place and I have found many old threads dating from that specific time of people who had flawless stutterfree gameplay prior to that patch reporting the exact same stutters since then.

 

Like I mentioned, I remember once playing SKYRIM at butter smooth 60 fps at Ultra setting without any stutters whatsoever shortly after it released, and that was on Windows 7 and a GTX 680. I did a whole playthrough with a nord warrior reaching level 50. That was before any DLC ever came out as well.

 

Then when I got back to it after a while in 2013 to play the DLC, I was shocked to find the newly introduced stutters. That must have been after the patch.

 

What changed? Can I downgrade? If it restores it to how smooth it was when I played in 2011/2012, I am all up for it!

 

I used a clean vanilla profile with vanilla settings ULTRA and no mods at all and stutters still happen when fTreeLoadDistance is more than 40000 which is the High value. The same stutter happened on my GTX 780 Ti.

 

The carriage ride at the start is fine until Helgen becomes visible. It starts getting REALLY choppy and I see the fps drop from 60 down to 49. Then as soon as it enters Helgen, it's stable again. I get the same problem outside Riverwood. As I approach Riverwood from any side, the fps drops to 49 then starts climbing up slowly. When I am inside Riverwood, it's fine. And that is with 1k textures on a GTX 980 Ti...

 

I was starting to think that maybe it's a motherboard problem, but then I do not have this issue with any other game. My motherboard has the latest Bios and I am using the correct Intel Chipset Sata 6GB/s port for the SSD with an Asus SATA 6g/s cable. What is it about this goddamn game that is so special that even overkill hardware cannot run it? I noticed that Skyrim heavily relies on disc read as I can hear my SSD working hard and when the stutter happens, the SSD's noise stops as well for half a second. How is it possible than a modern SSD struggles with Reads in this game LOL. The exact same thing happened when I had the game on a 7200RPM Western Digital Caviar black and switching over to the SSD has made no difference at all except reduced loadtimes. This game has some serious issues.

 

I have spent the last week trying to solve this. I've done so many intro runs and tried all manners of "sure fixes" in an attempt to solve this.

Edited August 17, 2015 by scorpgul

[blitzen]

 

 

I have spent the last week trying to solve this. I've done so many intro runs and tried all manners of "sure fixes" in an attempt to solve this.

 

There was a suggestion posted years ago to eliminate stuttering associated with loading tree meshes. It was to use the following values in skyrimprefs.ini:

 

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000

The author of the post claimed that this forced the meshes to load up front instead of incrementally over time, which is theoretically causes the stuttering.

[scorpgul]

 

 

 

I have spent the last week trying to solve this. I've done so many intro runs and tried all manners of "sure fixes" in an attempt to solve this.

 

There was a suggestion posted years ago to eliminate stuttering associated with loading tree meshes. It was to use the following values in skyrimprefs.ini:

 

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000

The author of the post claimed that this forced the meshes to load up front instead of incrementally over time, which is theoretically causes the stuttering.

 

Those insane values turned my stuttering into mini freezes. Tried that already many times by the way. I first tried it when I read that it fixed z-fighting on mountains. It did eliminate z-fighting but the micro-stuttering jumped on steroids and turned into actual 5 second freezes.

 

Worst fix I have tried so far.

Edited August 18, 2015 by scorpgul

[smallpandas]

 

 

 

 

I have spent the last week trying to solve this. I've done so many intro runs and tried all manners of "sure fixes" in an attempt to solve this.

 

There was a suggestion posted years ago to eliminate stuttering associated with loading tree meshes. It was to use the following values in skyrimprefs.ini:

 

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000

fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000

The author of the post claimed that this forced the meshes to load up front instead of incrementally over time, which is theoretically causes the stuttering.

 

Those insane values turned my stuttering into mini freezes. Tried that already many times by the way. I first tried it when I read that it fixed z-fighting on mountains. It did eliminate z-fighting but the micro-stuttering jumped on steroids and turned into actual 5 second freezes.

 

Worst fix I have tried so far.

 

 

i've been getting this stutter for as long as I've had this game, which is a while. I've also tried every thing in the book to fix it, but at this point I think the blame falls on the engine or an update that borked the game somehow. I don't think it will ever be truly fixed.

[DjaySaint]

 

 

 

 

I also used the console command "tb" to toggle borders and the stutters happen EXACTLY as I cross the yellow lines. Hmm what could this mean? I am trying to narrow this down now. I have to fix this!

 

 

Crossing a yellow line means new cells will become active as those are the cell boundaries. There will be asset loading,script processing and AI activation. There are a number of event listeners that are notified each time a new cell is entered.

 

 

So do you know why I am getting stutters with "Distant Object Detail" at Ultra values, even with unmodded vanilla Skyrim especially since I have such a HUGE resource pool: i7 Processor running at 4.5GHZ (Hyperthreading disabled), 6GB VRAM, 16GB System RAM, the game installed on SSD surely should experience virtually no stutter. What is it about "Distant Object Detail" that is introducing this stutter. Once it is set to High, 80% of the stutters disappear straightaway.

 

 

What size textures are you running? Are they compressed? I tried clamping my ram usage in enb to 4gb (my vram, of course leaving 512 mb reserved for skyrim), and using the unsafe memory hacks and stuttering improved a bit, but then started crashing when going outdoors (because I assume running out of available ram for enb and thus hitting tesv.exe ram cap and causing ctd).

 

I was running Skyrim on an i7 3770k @4.5ghz with a GTX 980 sc and was getting insane mini freezes and macro/micro stuttering with K ENB performance. Running forward I would be ok, but as soon as I turn my camera the freezes/macro stuttering would start. I got an average of around 35-50 fps outdoors. I ended up dropping down to 2k dxt1 compressed texture for landscape and was having the same issues, though my vram usage dropped a bit. I could never get skyrim to run smooth no matter what, and with that kind of hardware behind it I feel like I should have been able to.

 

I'm still trying to find a good .ini setup and good enb values to try out for a smooth Skyrim. I just got a GTX 980 Ti Classified, upgraded to 32gb of RAM, and overclocked my cpu even further to 5.0 ghz. Not sure if that will be enough (which honestly at that point it's just hilariously overkill in the hardware department). That said, I don't suppose you would mind sharing info about your setup would you (.ini and enb settings)? If you were able to fix your stuttering issues, maybe something similar will work for me as well.

 

Honestly even if I were running the game at 35-40 fps I would be ok with that, it's not a big deal. What I'm not ok with is the massive stuttering and mini freezes I get. Lower and stable fps would be better than hitting 60+ fps but experiencing these massive stutters. Areas like Dawnguard I have no issues with though, and generally indoors (though occasionally). It's mostly the outside mainland Skyrim.

Edited September 18, 2015 by DjaySaint

[thaiusmle]

 

 

 

 

I also used the console command "tb" to toggle borders and the stutters happen EXACTLY as I cross the yellow lines. Hmm what could this mean? I am trying to narrow this down now. I have to fix this!

 

 

Crossing a yellow line means new cells will become active as those are the cell boundaries. There will be asset loading,script processing and AI activation. There are a number of event listeners that are notified each time a new cell is entered.

 

 

So do you know why I am getting stutters with "Distant Object Detail" at Ultra values, even with unmodded vanilla Skyrim especially since I have such a HUGE resource pool: i7 Processor running at 4.5GHZ (Hyperthreading disabled), 6GB VRAM, 16GB System RAM, the game installed on SSD surely should experience virtually no stutter. What is it about "Distant Object Detail" that is introducing this stutter. Once it is set to High, 80% of the stutters disappear straightaway.

 

Can you share your enblocal.ini? What is your system RAM? Thanks man

[diasflac0g]

Wow! The iFPSClamp=60 fix actually works wonders. I was suffering from the exact same issue as the TC and this little line of text fixed it completely. Now my game runs smooth as silk! No more cell loading stutter or whatever it is!

 

My rig is pretty powerful so I was very disappointed when I noticed that I had stutters. My specs are a 4790K Oced to 4.6, 16 gigs of hyperX savage 2400hmz memory, a GTX 980ti and a Asus Maximus VII hero. Skyrim is installed on my 512gb crucial mx100 ssd.

 

I'm so happy right now. I can't believe that simple line of text made my game butter smooth at 60fps.

 

Thank you TC for the tip!

 

But i'm curious, how come you don't use it yourself? Why are you still looking for a fix? You said that there's a downfall to this fix, but can't your GTX 970 maintain 60fps? I would assume it can with no problems :D