Stutter/Framerate issue

[masani23]

So I've got my game pretty well optimized now, the only thing is that there is an occasional stutter or lag in my game and usually the footstep sound stops then when my game goes back to normal it's as if all of the sound is delivered to me at once.

I looked at the New Vegas Stutter Remover and it said with the newest version you shouldn't need it. I am going to look into it anyway, but am not sure if that is the only potential cause for problem.

I run my game on the highest settings. I also use NMCs large texture mod (and 4GB NVSE). Would downgrading to a smaller NMC file help with this stutter, or maybe lowering anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering? I do not know too much about this sort of thing, but any other tips for how I can optimize my game would be great. Because what usually happens is I go too crazy with mods, and then the game doesn't work. But everything seems to be working fine now, aside from this issue and one other.

The other is that in the background, my game looks ugly as I can see the shitty faraway textures, and for some reason they are often twitch-y and distracting. I have tried Dynavision 3 but it caused my game to crash I believe. What can I do to fix this as well?

[Werne]

First things first - post your hardware specs and load order.

[masani23]

http://imgur.com/a/odQGa#0

 

Load Order

 

Specs:

Nvidea GeForce GTX 580 3GB

8GB RAM

2TB HD with 7200 rpm

Older Quad Core processor from 2008/09

Windows 7 64bit

 

If you want to know what a mod in the list is, ask and I can link.

Edited November 22, 2013 by masani23

[Werne]

I think I found why you have problems - your load order is a clusterf***. And you should export it as text then paste it into your post instead of taking screenshots, much easier to sift through it that way. Another two possible issues (and that's not either - or, this is two other possible issues on top of 106 issues you have already) is your CPU which can't process the amount of scripts and stuff those mods are throwing at it, or RAM usage, can't know for sure since you didn't post the CPU model, and you didn't specify if you use the 4GB Enabler.

 

Now, pardon the following, but since I see this nearly every day, here's a standard rant...

 

[rant] People learn how to use mods before applying them. You basically installed a bunch of mods with two clicks and wondering why your game runs like crap. Do your research before applying mods, it'll save you hours of headaches trying to fix the game, which you will now likely need. [/rant]

 

 

Now to get to business...

 

 

What you should do now is purge your current saves (all of them, or you'll likely be back here asking why your game is crashing every 2 minutes) and purge all your mods (and I mean all of them). Make sure all that ENB stuff and HD textures are removed as well, if you use any of that. Very much recommended is to use FOMM (or Wrye Bash) instead of NMM for mod management, it won't download and install with two clicks and you won't be spoon-fed, but it's much more mature and robust, a swiss army knife for anyone looking to use mods. Of course, with FOMM you'll be repacking unsupported archive structures manually and you won't have a fancy UI.

 

That's just simple cleaning out the trash, now comes the hard stuff.

 

After your game becomes squeaky clean, it's time to start adding mods again. First thing to do is simple - read the description of the mod you're getting, the entire description, check for mod conflicts and known issues there and see what each plugin does. Then when you get the mod, read it's readme, the whole readme (or multiple), that's if it's included. Then, and only then, you install the mod if all conditions are satisfied. Not reading the description/readme can result in severe game issues since you have no freakin' idea what you're doing that way.

 

Then you'd need to run BOSS to sort the mods you have in the right order, so you don't have a mod in the wrong position clashing with another 10 of them being in wrong positions, like that clusterf*** you have right now. BOSS should be ran each time you add/remove mods. After that, you'd need to use FNVEdit to make a merged patch in order to reduce conflicts between mods by merging stuff like leveled lists and containers affected by various mods, a patch that has to be removed and re-created each time you add/remove mods.

 

But wait, there's more! Once you reach some 100 plugins there comes time for merging to reduce the load-order and reduce the strain on your game from looking up references of a bunch of plugins, something you'll need Wrye Bash for. You see, Wrye Bash is a mod manager has this handy functionality called "bashed patch" which is used for much the same thing as a merged patch. Even so, I use both since each covers some things the other one doesn't. It merges smaller plugins into the bashed patch in order to reduce the actual load order size. Like the merged patch, it needs to be re-created each time you add/remove mods.

 

 

That's when it comes to maintaining your load order, I'm sure there's more but I can't remember at the moment, been a while since I played FO or made any mods for it. The above is referred by something I've heard a lot of people saying - "You spend more time modding the game than actually playing it", due to various tools used in the process.

 

So, to put all that stuff simply, applying mods to a game is not just point and click, there's a lot of work involved in that. Don't want to do the work, don't use mods, simple as that.

Edited November 22, 2013 by Werne

[masani23]

First off, I know you are trying to offer help but if we are going to get anywhere you need to get off that horse. I may know less than you about modding but being spoken to like that will not solve anything for me, it just paints you as a know-it-all a**hole who gets off on talking down to people. For example, I ALWAYS look for a compatibility section to be aware of any issues, and if there is none I check for a readme. I've been modding the past 5 years, I just haven't formally introduced myself to most of the stuff. It's all self learned, which has its merits and its downsides.

 

Second, I did specify if I was using the 4GB enabler in my first post. Read better.

 

Now, as you put it, "to business":

 

I know all about doing what I like to call, "the vanilla restore" (you called taking out the trash) which is getting the game back to the unmodded state. I also know not to hold onto my profiles as they are quite dependent on the mods in them and almost any changes b***f*** them. I know. I'm not as new to this as you think. That's why the file I have going now is just a test file until the game is working. Something I won't get attached to. It was meant for this testing. I also use BOSS though I was trying to keep the load order organized based on intuition this time as I have found what BOSS likes to do with my load order inconsistent. The only things I don't use are Wrye Bash and FNVEdit. Those things confuse the hell out of me- I've been to there pages and read them and just read your explanation- so repeating it back to me with snarky remarks (as I am sure you would if I didn't add this) isn't going to help. If you could help me understand these things differently that would be great.

 

And, now that I recall, I don't think there is anything wrong with my game, the way I installed mods, or anything like that- which it seems to me you jumped to the conclusion that that is what it must be. I'm pretty sure this is an issue of me not optimizing the games settings or my PC itself. The reason I say that is because the only reason I think something could be wrong is simply because you told me so, and before you said anything I had no such thoughts, so maybe you are jumping the gun. I have yet to crash and have yet to find any weird errors, and this type of stutter to me doesn't seem much different than what you might encounter if you are simply playing a game on too high of settings.

That is all to say- I will keep in mind what you said about mods but before I toss my current settings (which I've been particular about when I install any of the mods you saw save like the last 10 as I was messing around with those) I am going to mess around with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. If you know which of those settings would affect performance more- or texture mods maybe, knowing which causes how much strain would be great, as that was the intent of the post.

 

Also:

Processor Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

 

Lastly, how do I limit my use of mods? I try to keep it low-key but always end up going mod crazy as "I can't play without that" (in reference to most of the mods you saw in my load order)

Edited November 22, 2013 by masani23

[Werne]

First off, I know you are trying to offer help but if we are going to get anywhere you need to get off that horse. I may know less than you about modding but being spoken to like that will not solve anything for me, it just paints you as a know-it-all a**hole who gets off on talking down to people.

Well, when you sift through about 30 threads a day with all having the same issue, that being lack of educating on the matter of using mods, you tend to develop this kind of behavior because it starts to be increasingly frustrating. And then imagine having to deal with those kinds of users on about 45 of your mods as a bonus. Hence the attitude, I do need to vent occasionally and you came in a bad time.

 

By the way, I actually am a know-it-all a**hole, thanks for noticing. But unlike some other know-it-all a**holes, I actually do know what I'm talking about. :smile:

 

Second, I did specify if I was using the 4GB enabler in my first post. Read better.

4GB NVSE does not mean 4GB Enabler, one is a script library, the other is an exe hack.

 

If you could help me understand these things differently that would be great.

Look, using FNVEdit and Wrye is simple, the documentation sucks though and I agree with that, but how-to-use is something I don't even read, it's useless. So here's the short version of that (since the long version is the documentation itself):

 

How to make a Merged Patch (FNVEdit):

1. Start FNVEdit

2. Load your mods

3. When everything loads select all your mods, then right-click on the mod list and select "Create Merged Patch"

4. A small window will pop up asking you to name your patch, write something and click Create

5. Now when exiting FNVEdit another window will pop up named "Save Changed Files", click OK

6. When starting FOMM or FO:NV Launcher put your patch LAST in the load order and check it

 

How to make a bashed patch (Wrye Bash):

1. Start Wrye Bash

2. Right click and select "Create bashed patch" in one of the sub-menus

3. Right-click the newly created patch and select "Rebuild bashed patch"

4. Set options to your liking, click "Done" (or was that OK?)

 

Can't remember exactly how a Bashed Patch is made (I explained it roughly and it should be quite correct) since I rebuild it rarely, and play very rarely as of late too (wife is pregnant and hormonal so I can't play/mod cause of that). FNVEdit stuff is correct though since I copy/pasted it from one of my mods. Merging, I'll explain that tomorrow. I have Wrye Bash but I'm too lazy to boot into Windows when I already wrote half the post, so I'll edit the post or make a new one in the morning. Right now it's late, I'm too tired for that and I need sleep.

 

And, now that I recall, I don't think there is anything wrong with my game, the way I installed mods, or anything like that- which it seems to me you jumped to the conclusion that that is what it must be. I'm pretty sure this is an issue of me not optimizing the games settings or my PC itself. The reason I say that is because the only reason I think something could be wrong is simply because you told me so, and before you said anything I had no such thoughts, so maybe you are jumping the gun. I have yet to crash and have yet to find any weird errors, and this type of stutter to me doesn't seem much different than what you might encounter if you are simply playing a game on too high of settings.

That is all to say- I will keep in mind what you said about mods but before I toss my current settings (which I've been particular about when I install any of the mods you saw save like the last 10 as I was messing around with those) I am going to mess around with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. If you know which of those settings would affect performance more- or texture mods maybe, knowing which causes how much strain would be great, as that was the intent of the post.

The weakest link in regards to hardware on your PC that can cause such problems is the CPU itself, the graphics card is still good (HD textures will make the game lag due to it's low texel rate though) but that CPU is getting old. The most resource-intensive CPU tasks are sound, light, script and havok processing. And those are not something you can just reduce, you'd have to reduce the overall game quality. In that regard, you have two options - overclock or lower the number of mods. Lots of those are scripted, which means they use a lot of CPU power.

 

And there is another thing you may try - optimizing the ini settings for multiple threads. By default, NV will use one main thread (heavy use) and one for lighter processing tasks, once set to utilize two cores effectively (since it can't use four), it may ease things out.

 

However, while my bet was on the mod clusterf***, now I'd say it's a mix of that and hardware. You said it yourself that you tried to use visual enhancement mods like Dynavision, which are CPU intensive along with being GPU intensive. ENBs also stress the CPU quite a bit. HD textures on the other hand will be problematic for the card only. Which is why I said to make the game squeaky clean, along with the load order being a mess, you're stretching the game to very limits of your hardware capability.

 

Lastly, how do I limit my use of mods? I try to keep it low-key but always end up going mod crazy as "I can't play without that" (in reference to most of the mods you saw in my load order)

Hah, I got no idea. I got over 500 of the bloody things and I don't even know what half of them does anymore, but I can't play without them. :laugh:

 

Lucky for you though, Bethesda games have a limit of 256 plugins (total number of loaded plugins, DLCs and main esm included), so that's how many mods the game can take before blowing up. You can only reach my number of mods through merging, which is something I do often.

[masani23]

I'm glad you didn't take my accusations personally, because they weren't meant to be. As for the 4GB I guess I should choose my words better. I am not using some thing that combines NVSE and 4GB. I am using NVSE (latest version) and the 4GB enabler with is now compatible with NVSE (when I last played you needed a special 4GB NVSE version). So I am using the latest 4GB enabler. I've heard of overclocking but what exactly does it mean and how do it do it? I would like to compensate for my PCs low processor, but I don't think I can afford an upgrade. That and the reason I never changed it was because it was stuck to my motherboard. I can't remember why but when I was doing upgrades that was a reason not to mess with it.

 

If I were to do a vanilla restore, could I perhaps seek your guidance in getting my New Vegas as stable-y modded as possible? I am not using half as many mods as you are, and you seem to be able to make everything work for yourself.

[Werne]

I've heard of overclocking but what exactly does it mean and how do it do it?

It's tuning the system for greater performance by increasing the number of cycles CPU/GPU/graphics memory can do in a set amount of time.

 

If you look at the banner in my sig, you'll notice that it says "CPU: AMD FX 8320 @4.72GHz", that CPU had a stock frequency of 3.5GHz. On stock, it had 3% faster per-core performance than your q6600 and 2x better multi-threading (due to having 8 cores). At 4.72GHz, it has ~45% greater per-core performance than your q6600 and ~3.5x better multi-threading, because it can do ~45% more cycles in the same time. Per-core affects older games like FO3, FO:NV, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc while multithreading affects next-generation games, and older ones too since my cores are less stressed.

 

In my case, I overclock using the CPU multiplier which is unlocked, meaning I can increase the frequency in increments of x0.5 multi, which translates to 100MHz, without touching BCLK (base clock, aka FSB) and affecting other components. Your CPU has a locked multiplier and it's overclocked through the FSB (front-side bus), so it's a bit trickier but also more precise at the same time.

 

Since I used to have an overclocked Core 2 Duo, I know how to OC a Core 2 Quad, which is rather simple. Reboot, go into BIOS, find the FSB (it should say 266, seeing as how your CPU is a 1066 FSB model) and raise it to 270 for a start, set the CPU multiplier to the maximum value (I think it's 9, not sure) which will disable power-saving but it'll give a slight boost as well. Boot, get Prime95 and run it for about 20 minutes, don't forget to monitor temps. If there are no problems, continue raising the FSB in increments of 5MHz and run Prime95 after each change. Once Prime95 fails, go to last stable frequency and run a 3 hour Prime95 run, if it fails even then, tone it by another step. Once it passes the 3 hour run, further tweaking begins like adjusting RAM ratio/latency, CPU VCore voltage, NB voltage, etc.

 

For the graphics card, I'm not actually sure how to overclock Nvidia cards, I only ever used AMD cards. I think MSI Afterburner should be able to OC those. Either way, you increase the core and memory clocks in steps of 15 (one at a time, don't raise both core and memory at the same time or you won't know which one is making problems) and run a benchmark for about 20 minutes. Once the bench fails, tone the frequency down a step and do a 3 hour run, if it passes you can tweak it a bit more if you like, or go adjust the other clock. I don't advice fiddling with voltages cause that's an easy way to fry a graphics card, CPU is much more resilient to high voltages.

 

It sounds complicated, but it's actually simple once you get used to it. One thing to remember is to always keep an eye on temperatures so you don't boil your components, I'd keep the CPU below 60^oC, not sure how much heat the card makes and what's it's maximum temperature so I can't say anything about the card's temps. Cards don't generate much heat from simple frequency adjustments, they do when you touch their voltage though.

 

The reason I never changed it was because it was stuck to my motherboard.

You mean you couldn't remove the heatsink? If so, it's likely because you didn't pull it out right.

 

If it's a stock Intel heatsink, pull the plastic pins out, make sure the white part of those pins is pulled out of the motherboard holes, then pull the heatsink off with a gentle twisting motion (just twist it left and right gently), it's likely that your thermal paste is dry which is making the cooler harder to remove. Don't worry about damaging the CPU, the IHS is glued tightly to the PCB and it's being held tightly by the tray, you'd need to worry if it were an AMD though since it uses a PGA socket and no IHS fastener, or if you glued the cooler to the CPU by liquid metal.

 

To remove the CPU itself, release the lever holding the CPU tray in place. If you're reading the CPU label, the lever is on the left side (I think), held by a piece of the socket frame and having a U-shaped end. Just pull it away from the socket until it's released from it's metal holder, then flip it to loosen up the tray. Then just open the metal tray and take out the CPU. Do apply good thermal paste to your CPU, that will help with temperatures and any CPU/cooler removal afterwards since it won't harden as fast. I use Arctic Cooling MX-2, lots of bang for buck in that one.

 

Do note that newer CPUs don't use the 775 socket like Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, Nehalem and Westmere use different sockets (1156), same as Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell (1155 and 1150 respectively). 775 has been dead for a while now, you'd need to change the mobo too unless you intend to get a higher-end C2Q (if so, check CPU compatibility list with your motherboard's documentation), you might even need to change RAM if you have DDR2.

 

If I were to do a vanilla restore, could I perhaps seek your guidance in getting my New Vegas as stable-y modded as possible? I am not using half as many mods as you are, and you seem to be able to make everything work for yourself.

That's because I use simple mods that don't utilize heavy scripting, I have maybe 10-15 of those scripted ones. Mostly I use content-adding mods, like armors, weapons, etc that strain the hardware less. Plus, my hardware can take it since the game runs on CPU cores that usually stand idle, meaning the CPU delivers 100% of it's power to the game.

 

Trick is to examine the mods, see what they do, what they change. I often tend to make compatibility patches on my own in FNVEdit to make all that stuff work, a lot of the mods I use conflict with each other. And I use very little scripted mods, unless they're quest mods since I can initiate them when I want to. Knowing how far your hardware can be pushed before it begins to have problems is also nice to know, so you can avoid straining it too much. Merging mods when I have about 100-150 of them also reduces strain on hardware since the game doesn't have to process every plugin individually.

 

By the way, guys using that many mods usually run on Intel i5/i7 processors (mostly Ivy Bridge) that are even more powerful than mine in regards to per-core performance (about 50% faster per core out-of-the-box, even more if overclocked well). I on the other hand make do with what I got and stuff works, ain't easy at all but I like the challenge.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Werne

[masani23]

So I got my game back to vanilla (with all of the DLC) and before I did I messed around with FNVEdit and think I know how it works. Where should I go from here? My mods I want most of all are Nevada Skies, WMX, PNV and The Legacy of X13. What are some of the mods you use that use scripting?

Edited November 23, 2013 by masani23