I've done several tests as well and have found the same results. To do my tests, I used dummy esps that had no content to them, less than 1kb of data. In Riften without any esps activated, I have a solid 60 fps. I then activated 75 dummy esps and my fps dropped to about 45. I tried this with Mod Organizer, NMM, and did it manually and got the same result. I then did some searching and actually found a couple threads on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/68qstg/riften_fps_problem_more_info_video_inside_aka/?st=J43YLUW9&sh=fb64e47c https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/6gybug/skyrim_special_edition_active_plugin_count_bug/?st=J43YUAI8&sh=ffc011bc The user meh831, who is also the creator of the Lip Sync Bug Fix, Crash Fixes, figured out that this is related to a setting in the Skyrim.ini and setting it to 0 fixes the esp frame drop. [TerrainManager] bUseNewTerrainSystem=0 This disables almost all terrain, but at least he discovered what is the root cause of the problem. Hopefully he or someone can figure out a fix for this setting while retaining the terrain. I doubt Bethesda will fix this, so the word about this bug just needs to get out to everyone.
