Massive macro-stuttering after a couple of minues outside

[aufisch]

I have suddenly a problem with massive macro-stuttering outdoors or in large indoor areas only. This occurs always after only a couple of minutes of being outside. I limit my game to 60 FPS but it suddenly drops down to below 10 FPS constantly. It basically jumps back and forth between less than 10 and 60 FPS within seconds, making it almost impossible to play.

 

Things I have tried so far:

 

- uninstalling ENB

- Disabling all plugins except Vanilla, DLC and CC plugins on my old, and with a new game

- deleted and let the game create new Skyrim.ini, and SyrimPrefs.ini files

- Tried every possible combination of settings I could think of beetween EngineFixes.toml, Nvidia_Reflex.ini, Shadowboost.json and SSEDisplayTweaks.ini.

 

Nothing seems to make a difference.

I am using 2k textures and as a base I am using Kartoffel's optimized textures, which were running smoothly until now.

 

Has anyone an idea where to look next?

 

As an Info: I am using SSE downgraded to 1.5.7 (best of both worlds).

[anjenthedog]

 

... suddenly...

"Suddenly" implies that it didn't used to work this way.

 

Which in turns implies a recent (suddenly) change in your game, and if my own experience is any measure, probably by adding this or that or even more likely, those mods.

 

If it was only one, you could try disabling it or uninstalling it, which often resolves said problems (for me) in short order, presuming I open a save made prior to installing it, after first uninstalling or disabling it.

 

If more than one mod, and if you've already "dug in" to trying to fix it, things get less clear.

 

Then there's the general glitching...

 

Two basic ways it usually affects me

1) "Script bottlenecking" - To many mods asking for the system to attend to its scripts at the same time.

2) Excessive Stacks/Frames

 

excessive stacks/frames can be checked for in Fallrim Resaver.

 

What I do, when that happens, and when no simple solution exists (uninstall that last mod that just isn't playing nice), I find a safe space, ie, a small cell-isolated (ie interior not open world) player home, and chill out for several game days, sleeping and crafting, then saving, checking with fallrim resaver (and cleaning if it calls for any), loading the saved file and doing it again a few times. It seems to give "Skyrim" housekeeping time to clean up after itself. I've had initial stack frame counts in the tens of thousands whittle away down to near zero over a few game days inside and saving and "fallirimming" and loading the checked or cleaned file. (I like to close the game a couple times too, just to shake loose crap of out of the game's cache.

 

fwiw.

[aufisch]

Thanks for your answer. I had checked in fallrim resaver but I didn't have a huge amount of active scripts hanging.

 

The trouble is, that if I start a new game, I have the same problem, even with all my mods (except cc, textures and skse-mods that don't require and esp/esl) disabled, I still get the same massive stutter after just a few minutes. It almost feels like a massive memory leak in just a few minutes. It has me really stumped.

[anjenthedog]

Hmm... So what changed then? The question (likely) is... "what did you do to your game that resulted in a sudden change in its behavior?"

 

Did you modify ini settings? Add a mod? Remove a mod? Add or remove several mods? Or maybe recently updated a mod(s)?

 

And if not, maybe an OS or other driver update happened recently? (unlikely cause, but you never know)

 

When you say it flips between 10 and 60FPS, how fast? Is it once every 30 or 60 seconds, or "flip flop flip flop"?

 

Are you able to monitor the CPU and GPU activity while it's happening?

[aufisch]

"Hmm... So what changed then? The question (likely) is... "what did you do to your game that resulted in a sudden change in its behaviour?""

- Yea, that's a very good question. If only my goldfish-brain could remember. Hence why I disabled ALL mods trying to find the problem.

 

When you say it flips between 10 and 60FPS, how fast? Is it once every 30 or 60 seconds, or "flip flop flip flop"?

- It starts out once every 15 seconds and then it very quickly turns into flip-flop-flip-flop (aka. very fast). Once it has started it will not go back to normal even after fast-travelling. I will however be able to go into an dungeon (except Mossmother-cave and other huge caves) and play normally at a steady 60fps. As soon as I come out of the cave, the stuttering is back.

 

Are you able to monitor the CPU and GPU activity while it's happening?

- I will install Skyrim performance monitor. in order to do that.

 

There are two other things I will try:

- clear out my SKSE folder completely and start a new game without any mods loaded.

- re-run DynDOLOD in case I have somehow used too large settings (can't remember doing that though).

 

That will take some time though. I will let you know. Thanks for your input

[Dashyburn]

A few suggestions if you don't already know them, CPU priority, read the sticky post by Edenfall to manually set affinity as well https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/50129

 

Skyrim does not do a good job creating your ini's, this does https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4875

 

Much better performance for exteriors https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/54907

Edited October 24, 2023 by Dashyburn

[aufisch]

Thanks for your suggestions Dashyburn! Unfortunately I already use all of those. I even sett the affinity manually. Thing is; my Skyrim ran like a peach up until a couple of weeks ago and now I broke something. As I have a 1400+ carefully bugfixed mod-setup, I am hesitating to just scrap and start from the beginning.

[aufisch]

I just wanted to let you know that I have continued to work on this problem. And I have at least partially resolved it. 

Problem Nr. 1:  GPU overheating; according to Skyrim performance monitor,  my GPU reaches 100°C and the stuttering seems to correlate to the GPU-Throttling due to thermal stress. There is not much I can do about that, as it is a laptop. Revving up the fans didn't improve anything in that regard.

Problem Nr. 2: Interference from on-board GPU: Even though NVIDIA-Control panel was set to use the distinct GPU for Skyrim and Fallout 4 (which strangely started to stutter at the same time), and even though I set the distinct GPU in the Windows 11 settings as well, somehow the on-board GPU seem to have interfered (or tried to take over). Disabling the on-Board GPU in the BIOS-Settings seems to have done the trick and....

...I now have the system to a point where it might still stutter occasionally when I sprint non-stop from  the Solitude City-Gate to Dragonbridge and back (with Enhanced Solitude, Enhanced Solitude Docks, and Lux Via installed) but the systems seems to recover immediately and the stutter doesn't become permanent after a short time (as was previously the case).

[slowman87]

I was reading posts (like this one) around internet to solve a similar problem, my game had a sudden FPS drop without a clear reason, over like 3 hours of searching and testing I decided to do a "CLEAN REINSTALL" of my graphics card drivers, and BAM!!! super  high FPS like I never experienced in this game, I mean... WTF??? I have been playing this game with FPS problems for a long time, the FPS got even better before this problem emerged today. I'm just posting this in some places, so maybe someone can find this solution. PD: If you want even more FPS use lossless scaling, a cheap software you can buy at STEAM, that gives you easy and powerful scaling and FrameGen implementation into  the game.