Lord Garon

Actually, the GPU-Z log seems okay to me. What are you concerned about?

Still here and would be happy to keep helping. Okay, I think we've eliminated the "easy" stuff. Interesting Frostfall symptom. Its certainly possible for scripting to lag the game, but I've never seen it drop FPS all the way down to 2. :ohmy: I asked about an ENB just in case we had a vram issue, doesn't look like it. At this point, we can look at script issues. First, do you have SKSE 1.7.0/1 installed? Do you have an skse.ini file in Skyrim\Data\SKSE? Can you post the content of the skse.ini? Secondly, can you post a segment of your Papyrus log with the most recent save running. To enable the log, add or change the following Skyrim.ini entries, then fire up Skyrim normally: -------- [PAPYRUS] bEnableLogging=1 bEnableTrace=1 bLoadDebugInformation=1 -------- This will create logs in your [username]\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Logs\Script folder. We want to look at Papyrus.0.log. These can be pretty big, just want to look at 100 lines or so. Just open it in Notepad, copy a 100 lines or so and paste into Spoiler tags here. How about a NEW game, just to test again. You can start an (essentially) new game at the Main Skyrim load screen. Don't Continue or Load a save. Instead, open the console (~ key) and type in: coc riverwood Hit enter. A character will be made and placed outside of Riverwood. Just want to know if you can see a decreasing FPS after a few minutes with a new game. What I'm looking for now are indications of orphaned scripts running in your savegame. Those are caused by uninstalling scripted mods. Some of these type scripts can repeatedly fire themselves up, as well. SKSE can help reduce that problem and Savegame Script cleaners can remove orphaned scripts. The Papyrus logs can tell us a little about how the script engines sees things. I must also say that a primary goal I have when helping here is to try and keep from losing a poster's save game and a lot of play time. Some save game issues are not salvageable and the tools we use to fix them might cause problems of their own. Just a head's up.

Well, we're trying to figure out why its happening. :thumbsup: The memory I'm talking about, vram, is the amount of memory on your gtx 770. I believe the standard 770 has 2GB of vram, which can easily be filled with only one HD texture pack and a few hi res mods like SMIM or SFO. A really good test at this point would be lowering your Texture Quality to LOW. That will cause Skyrim to render textures using a lower res mip map of all texture files and reduce your vram load by, essentially, half. That "should" eliminate a "full vram" issue and lead us in the right direction. Can you give LOW quality a shot and see if it improves your symptoms? BTW, I'll be here for another 30 minutes or so, if you want to keep on with this. EDIT: Do you run an ENB?

Alrighty. Its not gonna die at 60C. What video card and how much vram do you have? If your video card runs out of vram, from HD textures, high uGrids, etc, it will swap out to system ram and usually virtual (paged) memory. This will slow down your card, can cause TEXTURES NOT TO LOAD, and usually causes stutters in gameplay. You can test that by going to an indoor location, which should bring your texture load down and FPS back up. Go back outside and see if you get the decreasing FPS again. Changing Texture Quality to LOW and turning off AA on the Launcher screen will also reduce texture vram loads, for testing.

WHOOPS, ninja'd... Okay, the GPU will run hotter the harder it's pushed, so its not surprising a lower FPS will lower temps. The question is whether the card will/can throttle itself (reduce internal clocks) when too hot. The reduced clocks will lower processing speed and FPS. Can you monitor the clocks as you play, ie, GPU-Z or something like that? Or get some actual temps? EDIT: I'm not familiar with GPU monitoring software, but there are free utility programs out there that can give temps (I believe). I would google around for a utility for your card that might display temps. EDIT2: This may NOT be your problem if the heat issue is not causing reduced performance. GPU's get hot. You could just be still and stare at the ground a while to see if frame rate inches back up.

Not sure what game issue could cause that. I might suspect a temperature issue. Does the FPS return to normal if the computer is off or idle for a while? An overheating device might throttle clocks/whatever to reduce system temps. The obvious guesses would be the CPU or GPU. You could check the temps and clock speeds as your FPS goes down to see if there is a temperature correlation. I don't have any temp monitors, except for BIOS, but CPU-Z and GPU-Z (Google them) will show you fan speeds, voltages, and clock speeds. Other than that, have you run a malware scan recently?

Just add the other two lines. Default is 1.2 for both. Try both at 1.6 and see if the symptoms change. If not, try 2.0. If nothing changes at all, it may not be a scripting issue. If not, remember to put the values back at default.

Yeah, looks to be an interesting time for games coming up. Both CPU makers are reluctant to keep desktop CPU development going in a decreasing PC market. But, more and more gamers are going to the PC. If the game studios can make multi-threading really useful in their games, which the current console hardware "seems" to be predicting, AMD is poised to really take control of high performance gaming. They have the console hardware, from which the next generation of game "ports" will come, they have Mantle, they have discrete AND imbedded graphics, just the whole package needed for gaming. Whether or not the game studios can use the resources and actually produce efficient, multi-threaded games is the question. Don't think we'll know that for a while, though. It's strange, in a way. Most businesses are market driven and cater to the apparent wants and desires of the market. But, the gaming market is different; the quality of the product is what counts. Every game studio is completely in control of it's own success. A great game is a great game and gamers will buy it for that reason alone. That fact is eventually lost on every game studio I've ever seen. They come into existence with a hit, CREATE their own market, then the "marketing" and business people kill it off. You can't analyze and quantize "fun" in an attempt to maximize ROI, but the studios incessantly try, and fail, to do so. Making an idea tangible is a creative act and the poor game programmers (and modders) are artists. Certainly, a basic business model is needed in any business, but that model has to recognize an artistic basis if it exists. I'm not a game programmer, but I do know a couple. A couple ex-game programmers. Both quit gaming for less demanding, higher paying programming and IT jobs. You can't force an artist to make good art; they just "do it" if allowed to. That's why our modders here make stuff Bethesda wouldn't, or couldn't, make in the studio. Okay... I'm ranting. Not sure how that happened. I guess its related, somehow, to what I meant to say, but is way off topic now. Sorry. AMD has a chance to really move PC gaming platforms forward. I just hope the studios see the potential in it.

Papyrus is the "script engine" which runs Skyrim scripts. A lot of scripts running, caused by many scripted mods or certain game events, can cause high script latencies or even prevent normal frame-by-frame script completions. Can cause different symptoms. Yes, the [Papyrus] block is in Skyrim.ini. Not a guaranteed fix, just something (easy) to check. I was actually more concerned that previous edits may have been the cause of your issue; MANY "recommended" 3rd party ini tweaks are counter-productive. Default settings rarely have such an adverse impact on a modded game, but it couldn't hurt to play around a little if your script loads are heavy.

Have you tweaked any [PAPYRUS] block settings in your Skyrim.ini file? If yes, set it back to default and see if the symptoms change. If no, you might give Papyrus a little extra loop/load time and see if things "catch up". -------- [Papyrus] fUpdateBudgetMS=1.2 ; default is 1.2, crank it up .1 or .2 at a time and see if it helps fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.2 ; ditto. Wouldn't go too high on these (<4) unless things continually get better fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=500.0 ; gives scripts time to set up after a cell load, try 800.0 or 1000.0 --------

Turn off/uninstall Raptr and see what happens.

The only real difference you'll see in a newer AMD CPU will be from whatever difference in clock speed you get. Skyrim was designed for the XBOX 360. That's important, because it was designed to run on two main threads (two cores in a 360 were the primary application cores, the third was primarily a system task core). Of course, Windows will spawn as many threads as needed (my dual-core system spawns 27 threads when Skyrim starts), but about 95% of Skyrim/Steam CPU time is used by two main threads and 5% by the other 25 threads combined. Pretty much what you'd expect from a console port. That means, basically, that more cores won't really help. A 9590 will be a very expensive way to get ~10% performance boost in Skyrim. Unless you're doing other CPU intensive things while you play Skyrim, I would pick a new AMD CPU based upon the requirements of some OTHER program you use a lot. In any case, I doubt an FX-9590 will have the best Price/Performance ratio for a 4130 upgrade.

Well, think about where you are posting; a SKYRIM forum. Why isn't this just a GAME MODS forum or FUN MODS forum? Particular characteristics lead particular people to all sorts of "favorite" things; friends, art, movies, colors, food, activities. Its all subjective. People who like lore will express their negative opinions of lore-unfriendly mods, whether its in Skyrim, FNV, or any other game. People who don't care about the lore aspect will express counter opinions. Different people have different tastes; its not a conspiracy to automatically denigrate mods based on lore. The mods you deem to be "fun" will not be so to others, regardless of any free-form artistic license used in the creation of those mods. If you could determine the source of your confusion here, I daresay you should be in politics, or advertising.

Haven't seen that exact artifact, but make sure you have AA, etc, turned OFF in Skyrim and your video driver settings. In general, ENB's like to do EVERYTHING related to graphics processing and redundant entries can cause strange issues/artifacts. Make sure to go over the ENB settings guide for required Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini settings.

I would think the DPC Watchdog error is more serious for your computer than Skyrim crashing. A lot of info on that error concerns SSD's and HDD's, or hardware and hardware drivers in general. Google will return a lot of info on that error. You might try looking at Event Viewer and seeing if any particular errors are proceeding your crashes or have just recently started logging; might give a suspect device. If its a new computer, make sure you comply with warranty requirements before trying any "fixes".

The old Brawl Bugs mod had an issue with insects. Might try upgrading that, if you have it.

In the Actors window, just type Serana in the Filter. She is DLC1Serana.

For me, I only mod games I like. There are some things which make any game unique and fun for the player. At some point, "innovative" mods no longer seem to support whatever basic interest I have in that game. In this case, I like mods which merge into my "idea" of Skyrim and the TES series. There are an almost infinite number of things to mod in any game without moving away from what makes that game unique.

Most MOBs, mages included, have hidden perks which "help" them against a creative, thinking human opponent. Your character has to deal with all types of bad guys and creatures, which makes single-class characters more difficult than say, a spellsword, who has several options available. Think of a mage as an arcane "warrior". Warriors use armor to reduce incoming melee effects. In the same manner, a mage needs to reduce incoming magic effects; magic resist and wards. Many mage characters also seem to focus on magicka as the primary attribute. But, just like a warrior or thief, health is paramount, even more so with an unarmored mage. 400 magicka will help very little if your mage has only 120 health. The opposite, in fact, creates a much more powerful mage, or warrior, or thief. Warriors use crafting and perks to improve their melee capabilities all while taking health as the primary attribute. My mages do the same thing. Mages are, IMHO, the most powerful characters in Skyrim, even on a vanilla game (you don't need any magic mods). Turn your frustration around and think about how to defeat those things which are most aggravating in MOB mages. Most of the time, it will be magic resist; the mages "armor". I don't want to get into any Spoilers, but magicka regen is a very powerful way to make up for more health and less magicka. Health lets you stand your ground longer, magicka regen lets you spam spells with less total magicka while doing so.

EDIT: Sorry, got sidetracked and was ninja'd OP: Changing ipresentinterval to 0 and 1 did not make any changes even when using default driver settings (vsync controlled by app). That was a strange discovery for me since I remember a few years ago when I had bad pc, turning it off definitely turned vsync off. I might be wrong. Well, you need to get your ini settings worked out first. iPresentInterval certainly controls "VSYNC" in Skyrim. If its not working (Driver settings=App controlled), you have a basic problem. Make sure you are setting iPresentInterval=1 under the [DISPLAY] heading in Skyrim.ini. Make sure you don't have another iPresentInterval setting elsewhere in the file (some D/L ini sets have TWO entries). The lowest setting entry in an ini file wins (they're read top to bottom). Make sure you are changing driver settings for any Skyrim (tesv.exe) profile if you have game presets in your driver. Once you get ini VSYNC working correctly, test without an iFPSClamp entry (comment the line out ;iFPSClamp=xx ) and check for stutter. uGrids to load simply increases the area to be drawn. Draw distances still determine LOD range and detail levels. A slight change in LOD distance can impact a large number of distant objects. EDIT: Glad you found an issue affecting the stutter. Do you, perhaps, have a loose file LOD or Distant Detail mod installed (you can't "disable" those)? You might try a lower res version and play with increased LOD settings again. This guide may help.

<flame suit> </quoting reason="TL;DR"> Back to the stutter issue... What I have gathered of relevance: VSYNC is usually OFF, ie, iPresentInterval=0 (your frame rate goes above 60 at times) (iFPSClamp eq 60, ie, VSYNC= essentially ON) AND (uGridsToLoad eq 5) = No Stutter (iFPSClamp neq 60, ie, VSYNC= essentially OFF) AND (uGridsToLoad eq 5) = Stutter Your stutters may simply be sudden frame rendering issues ("1/100th of a second") as you look around (new assets load to be displayed) and your FPS changes from your monitor refresh rate with no frame buffer output control (VSYNC/iFPSClamp) in effect. Just for testing, enable VSYNC (iPresentInterval=1), disable iFPSClamp (It may try to drop the FPS to half its setting if the system can't maintain the full FPS setting), and re-check for stutter on the bridge. (An enbseries can manage both VSYNC and/or FPS limiting without affecting game engine settings.) You can narrow the cause(s) further by using LOW texture qualities (a smaller mip map) and/or turning off AA, or reducing screen resolution, to check GPU throughput. Also, try a subjective test without Afterburner running.

OP - "First of all! HDD, SSD, RamDisk. Running Skyrim from 7200rpm hdd and from ramdisk does not affect Skyrim performance and does not improve situation with those stutters. At all. That means this problem is not related to loading issues/cell transfer issues and people who say to upgrade from hdd to ssd are completely wrong. They are experiencing placebo effect. Summarize HDDs,SSDs,RamDisks do not affect stuttering." Absolutely contrary to my experience. Just having the textures folder (identified as primary location of high latency files via Windows Resource Monitor) loaded into ramdisk eliminated about 70% of the new cell load stutter on my machine. I/O stutter is caused by loading ASSETS (data files like meshes, textures, sounds), not plugins (esm, esp). Asset changes happen when your character is moving, or something is happening in-game. EDIT: Esm's and esp's load once, during load screens.

The benefit of mods to you is also their bane to Skyrim; too many and there WILL be problems. Obviously, I'm not familiar with every mod out there and can't really comment on particular load orders. I will say this: Higher uGrids contributes to instability. Period. It may not CAUSE an issue, but it will never help. In fact, MOST ini "tweaks" contribute to instability in one way or another. After two and a half years of trying every tweak you can imagine, I now use default ini files with only a couple "fixes" (projectile distance, ENB requirements, grass). The majority of mod load problems are due to "conflicts"; one mod doing the same thing as another. THE most general and obvious way to minimize conflicts is to reduce or eliminate mods which do the same thing. For instance; UFO, AFT, FollowerWander (has a warning.) You have 3 Skill Speed esp's. Multiple Perk mods. Advanced Killmoves has a warning that does not seem to have been heeded. And a bunch of script intensive mods. Expanded Weather SAYS it's not compatible with CoT. To get a reliable game going, I would: 1. Install enbseries .254. Run it in ENBoost mode (memory fixes only: no graphics, no FPS hits). Along with SKSE mempatch, it is mandatory for heavy mod loads. 2. Revert to a vanilla install. Don't touch your ini files. Pick your 20 favorite mods, read the entire mod description page for compatibility/requirement issues. Get them working. Build from there. 3. If you want "extras" for a particular kind of mod (CoT, Enhanced Weather), pick ONE and find out what the mod author recommends for that mod. 4. Learn to detect and resolve conflicts with TES5edit. IMHO, a necessary skill for intense modding. Not what you want to hear, but your current setup and load order will NEVER be stable and it has nothing to do with your hardware. We cannot force Skyrim to do what we want; we can barely get it to do what we need.

There is a definite order to everything in Skyrim. :thumbsup: First, get and install LOOT to make sure your mods are in the correct order. Run LOOT and click "Sort Plugins" after you install any mod. Note that SKSE is NOT a "mod" and you cannot install it as a mod with NMM. Go to the SKSE site, download the "installer" version and run it. Using SKSE also means you have to start Skyrim differently. Make sure Steam is running first, then fire up Skyrim via SKSE in your mod manager, or go to your Skyrim game folder, find skse_loader.exe, right-click on it, select "Run as Administrator". (It will fire up Skyrim without the Launcher screen.) Also note that SKSE can fix a very important bug in Skyrim, IF you enable it. Scroll down on this page to find instructions, or watch Gopher's SKSE vid. UFO (Ultimate Follower Overhaul) is another mod and I don't see it in your Data directory, so you don't need the "Hoth Follower UFO patch". Uninstall your Hoth Follower mod, re-install without the UFO patch, start a new game (best idea) or see if that just helped. If I were just starting to mod Skyrim, I would go to Youtube and do a search for: Gopher Skyrim Gopher makes a lot of great vids on modding. He starts at the basics and goes on from there. You need to get a "feel" for modding and Gopher's vids are great for instilling the info you need.

Okay, your full screen scenario describes an Infinite Loading Screen (ILS), not a "freeze", per se. (There is a difference. :blush: ) There's a few other things we might look at for an ILS (but I've never seen windowed/full screen differences for an ILS). Before you exit somewhere, open the console (~ key), type in: pcb , hit Enter, close the console, and then exit. See if that changes the ILS at all. How much VRAM is on your video card? Full vram can aggravate ILS problems. You could try lower texture qualities and/or turn off AA to see if it affects your ILS. Do you have an ENB running? If so, have you changed any enblocal.ini settings? Do you have the default entries in skse.ini file for enabling Sheson's mempatch? Have you cleaned your mods with TES5edit? Have you changed the uGridsToLoad ini setting to more than 5? The mod Stable uGrids to Load checks for a few things which may cause an ILS and might help even with default ini files. Optional - If a loading game asset is causing the ILS, Safety Load might tell us. Safety Load was created before Sheson's patch (contained in your SKSE 1.7.0) actually fixed the memory bug. In short, Safety Load will cause a CTD instead of an ILS if certain loading problems are detected. Just for info gathering, you might install Safety Load and see if the game CTD's instead ILS's. That could tell us if some object being loaded is the problem.