psavola

i use msi afterburner to limit FPS, i also use skse and it doesn't hinder that and neither does fraps.

it might not be end all fix all solution but for me random water sounds and "in water" errors vanished when i started using msi afterburner to cap frames to 59

long answer short.. use FPS limiter like radeon pro or msi afterburner. and limit FPS to screen refresh rate -1 (so 59 for most monitors) to avoid tearing. meh.. should have read a little farther.. you tried that already.. however for me, fps limit removes falling from heaven mammoths and flickering enemies and improves the performance by a lot due to removing what i call "water everywhere" bug. which causes splash noises everywhere and makes game think each step you take is either underwater or above water. (including animations, thus the splash sound and floating mammoths, game can't think if they are walking on land of swimming on top of water, thus in air) oh and everything explodes out of shelves upon entering room and/or items rattling in cupboards, tables and such.

well, some laptops have two graphics chips. one to be used when on battery power and want to extend battery life (and not play games) and other for heavier stuff. as stated, laptop specs show no nvidia stuff in there. (i'd believe this more than the "they provide drivers for it for this laptop") line though although.. technical specs listed wont necessary be correct either. drivers for said laptop show nvidia drivers. but that is website stuff... it wouldn't be first time when something is sorted out wrong in those pages. is there nvidia chip or not? it's still probably easiest to check with gpu-z which should list pretty much all of them.

except as 4th post states, machine is a laptop. changing integrated graphics on those is iffy at best if laptop is not made for that and lets face it, most are not. since it isn't mentioned, i guess there are no weird stutters or dramatic drops without real explanation in fps while playing. also the fact that fps stays same low or max details, somehow hints that something besides graphics card is slowing whole thing down. (GPU has time to draw everything it is given low or max details) this is usually processor but might also be memory or hard disk related also. good suggestion would be to monitor CPU and GPU usage and see if either tops off or near max. possibly simplest way to do that is process explorer (task manager replacement) which allows you to check both (in most cases) for each process. (and network usage but that isn't a deal with skyrim) run skyrim run process explorer select tesv.exe, right click, properties. make quick check on both performance and gpu tabs to get the graphs rolling. alt tab back to skyrim (or just play if playing in windowed mode) play some go see the graphs during heavy load either limiting part should be in 90 to 100% area and if other part is not limiting it, it would be lower. or plug in external display and use both at once to see graphs as you play. also as oddity, A505 S6005 doesn't list nvidia stuff as alternate display adapter but still lists nvidia's driver as one of the necessary drivers. bringing up interesting question.. does laptop have both intel and nvidia gpu's? if so, gpu-z should see both or.. actually any half decent graphics tester. If above is the case, it might be game is using intel instead of nvidia and.. well... i'm pretty sure that nvidia would be faster.

sounds like a possible ini problem somewhere but since i don't use ENB myself, i'm not sure where. most probably something to do with ENB though. abandoning ENB should allow you to play normally without problems though. Also, if you have managed to narrow it down to ENB itself, making a new post with more descriptive title might be decent idea. after all original 4 pages of this thread don't have much in relation to the real problem and those who know more about ENB might not look on 5th page of every problem posted here.

short answer is, "not really" bloodshed. past what closing the resource using other programs or services allows. Games usually use all they are given up to the point where they have more than they know what to do with. In some cases though, some things sometimes cause games to not use everything fully. main reasons for CPU side is that game is old-ish and couldn't run on multiple cores at once limiting it to pretty much single core. other than that, it might be some weird error/problem in game and/or drivers for the GPU to not be used fully. Those can sometimes be hard to track down. best bet to check if your game uses enough of both is to get something that draws usage graph for GPU and CPU so that you know for sure that it's not using all of it. one of the simpler ways to do that is to use process explorer (alternate task manager) which has better graphs for a LOT of things than windows default. including CPU and GPU usage for each process. (not always correct and wont work for all games but... it's one of the more simple ways. so.. run skyrim, run process explorer, check properties for tesv.exe and look at both performance and GPU graph tabs to get the graphs running. alt tab back to game... play some and alt tab back out so see the usage. if either GPU or CPU is maxed out... thats the limiting factor, you cannot get more than 100% out of either one.

in theory, that could be done in bios. depending on laptop brand and type, you can usually get there by mashing DEL, INSERT or F10 key. there is usually brief "press X" to access bios message at start of boot process. other possible way is to just disable it in device manager but... that isn't same thing and i'm not sure how well that would work.

well, i wouldn't put much hope on that mod based fps limiter. you see.. i use msi afterburner to limit my fps to 59 (screen refresh rate 60) and it works to remove all weird stutters. (which are due to odd water everywhere bug causing all AI actions to be recalculated multiple times/second and thus... using up whole processor causing graphic card to not get enough data.) so.. to recap after testing fps limiter http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/34 i can say: -it doens't limit FPS in main menu -it doesn't limit FPS ingame -it doesn't remove my weird water everywhere bug -it causes periodic stutters of 0 to 8 frames/sec at most. same as vanilla game. while for me MSI afterburner limiter (well.. it's meant for nvidia but who cares? it works for my AMD cards) -limits FPS in screens -limits FPS ingame -removes water bug -removes odd stutters due to dropping FPS. so.. my suggestion? forget the nexus mod and use real limiter that actually works. for me that is msi afterburner with onscreen display server, where i use wrench to change limited to fps number to 59. afterburner is also good if you want to monitor Graphic card usage to some extent but that is more than i need it for.

Apples, oranges, bananas and pineapples are different fruits, they taste different and the way you peel and eat them are different. that said, assuming something is okay since one or two things run fine doesn't make it so. now.. your processor should be more than enough, i admit that much. however you provide little actual information. for example: what kind of framerate you get and at what resolution that is? possibly also CPU and GPU usage if you think one or other is causing problems. seemingly you say that while windowed, it works fine but... resolution is lower. how much lower? and what framerate you get with that? wild guess is, skyrim might be stupid and force computer to use that intel HD4000 on fullscreen (and yes, that is totally crappy as far as games go) and game uses radeon on windowed (just a possibility) and thus runs lot faster there. without any resolution and framerate data though, no one can say if what you are experiencing is "normal" or not. lso, as you say, it runs fine at some times. are the slowdowns tied to something like being out in the world? (or in towns/cities or dungeons?) or when you see lot of npc's or??? also good question is, do you have any extra mods? some mods can add massive amounts of things to calculate at specific times which might make most machines cough.

well... that laptop has both that 660M and intel HD4000 (from what i could find out) and while i'm certain that you have selected to use the 660 with skyrim.. machines might be stubborn. if you can disable that intel thing in bios or somewhere else it might do the trick. alternately you could check if that intel HD4000 display adapter is used instead (shows some GPU usage while playing skyrim) that'd at least make it a fact.

well... long thread and sadly fps limiting didn't help. as you said in original post, your CPU usage is at around 30% while playing. next question is.. what is GPU usage? since if that isn't in high 80's to 90's while playing, something else besides processor or display adapter is slowing stuff down. for seeing GPU usage i think that msi afterburner had the ability to draw GPU usage graph and i'd suppose most other things can do that too. if either one is not maxed out, i'm not sure that i can be of much help but some others might know more about it once the cause of slowdown is found.

i think this has been argued somewhere before but.. as far as skyrim goes, there is nothing but steam version. (legal anyway) yes, you can have retail copy of it but it will install/need steam and work through that.

click on the wrench near top right. set framerate limit to what you want and that is about it.

i would say... use Frame rate limiter like radeon pro or msi afterburner. (i've not used radeon pro) install msi afterburner, run msi afterburner onscreen display server and set refresh rate to 59 should work. as weird as it sounds, it upped my GPU usage from 50 to 95% (and increased frame rate at that) i have no clue how limiting it to 1 below refresh speed of the display (normally 60hz) will get it to use GPU more fully but it did that for me.

using msi afterburner to limit fps (frames per second are not hz) to 59 (one below screen refresh rate to avoid screen tearing) fixed weird water bugs for me. it also fixed weird outdoor mob bugs and improved performance (why? no idea) by a lot. i cannot tell if it helps for you but... it's easy enough to use, run it, run game.. see if it improves.. and close it if you do anything else.

have you tried limiting fps with afterburner? since for me that did a lot of things. including: average of 200% boost in FPS fixing "water splash sounds everywhere" bug fixing "glitching distant monsters/npc's" where they jump up/down erratically and/or suddendly fall from the skies. stopped weird "lag for 1 to 2 secs" whenever i saw more than two hostile enemies at once. (yes.. happens each time i turned to "see" them) This was only in outside world though. CPU usage at 24 to 49% GPU usage at 50% (for both cards) resolution and display settings had no say to any of that. now.. all runs 90 to 95% time smoothly at 59FPS (monitor refresh rate is 60) CPU usage at 24 to 80% GPU usage 80 to 95% (for both cards) except when warzones mod throws 50 people on screen.. then it may drop to 25-30 1900x1200 8xAF 8xAA and all settings up to max in launcher. so.. for me, it fixed all my problems. what i don't quite understand is why it runs so well after limiting FPS since... 60's were rare before limiting it. is it something along "oops, i prerendered 250 frames.. and you need only 2 of that kind? what do i do with these 248? trash them? okay... wait a bit until i manage to render new frames for you." or something.. i'm not sure. oh.. right... specs.. if anyone cares. (shouldn't since nothing in specs or changes to it affected any results) FX-4170@4200Mhz 16GB RAM @1333 HD6870 crossfired with HD6870 stock speeds.