What causes my game to freeze only in the overworld at intervals that increase as the playthrough continues?

[InDarkestNight]

This is a problem that's been vexing me for years. I've changed operating systems, and having no mods installed at all, and this issue continues.

As I continue a playthrough, the game randomly freezes or ctd. Oddly, this only happens in the overworld. Never in an interior cell, such as a dungeon or city. Even more strangely, this increases in frequency as the game continues, making it increasingly annoying to play, and eventually impossible.

What on earth could be causing this? I've installed every possible fix I can find. I've changed OS. I've even tried to run without so much as a texture replacer, and the issue persists. Literally nothing I do makes a difference. I'm sick of having to save every few seconds while walking around because of the crashes. I'm scared to even travel the overworld now. And yes, using fast travel does decrease the frequency of crashes. I've had to stop using Touring Carriages just because you can't save while in the stupid cart. It was rare I was able to get to my destination with that mod installed, seriously.

Fixes I've installed have done things like fixing crashes at cell borders, but no matter what I do more just seem to appear. Hell, today I crashed while performing a kill move. And no, I have no combat mods installed. All I have is graphics mods, the few stability mods that help, and ordinator, nothing else. Is smim a dangerous mod? Skyrim Flora Overhaul? Northern Grass? Noble Skyrim? Ordinator? The unofficial patch? Safety load?

I'm now thinking of installing a mod mid-playthrough that makes my game autosave in time intervals, because I'm sick of doing it manually. And yes, I just froze seconds after making a save; all I was doing was walking through an open field. Wtf?

Also why does no one else on the internet have this problem? I can find no info on it all, and poeple in the past have accused me of lying because they refused to believe it was possible. Is it just an issue with my hardware? I've changed from the sshd to an ssd, so that can't be it. I even upgraded the ram. This required me to put in all new chips, because apparently my comp wouldn't run with ram chips of different sizes, no matter how they were configured. Is my graphics card bad? My cpu? What else could possibly be wrong? Here is my hardware:

Lenovo ideacentre 710-25ISH

Memory 16.0 GiB

Intel® Core™ i5-6400 CPU @ 2.70GHz ×

NVIDIA Corporation GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti]

Disc Capacity 2.0 TB

Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

64-bit

GNOME version 42.9

Windowing System X11

Keep in mind, as I've said, I've changed out the sshd, the operating system, and the ram. It didn't make a damned difference regarding this one issue. What else could possibly be wrong? No other games have ever given me these problems. None at all. Why is skyrim unique? Why is my problem unique? Am I doomed to never be able to play past level 10~15 due to my game becoming too unstable? Will I be forced to abandon the last game I own because of stability issues? I actually can't remember the last time I've completed a questline its been so damned long. Should I just install permadeath mods and focus on short playthroughs from now on like in that one horror load order recommended by Heavy Burns? Seriously?

[xkkmEl]

Many random CTDs seem memory-related.  Don't think anyone has the definite answer.

I doubt it's a hardware or OS issue.  The memory CTDs are linked to the 4G limitation of oldrim, not your HW or OS.

Quote

All I have is graphics mods, the few stability mods that help, and ordinator, nothing else. Is smim a dangerous mod? Skyrim Flora Overhaul? Northern Grass? Noble Skyrim? Ordinator? The unofficial patch? Safety load?

I've had to roll back on many graphics mods, because of similar issues.  I don't use any of these mods (save SMIM), though I use others.  I also find that using Cathedral Asset Optimizer to cap texture resolutions at 2K helped a lot.  I would even bring it down to 1K for flora mods and the like... it's a matter of total ram usage, so these mods that add a lot of large textures to be loaded all at the same time put a lot of stress on memory management.  This would be consistent with overworld CTDs being more common than indoor or underground.

[InDarkestNight]

The reason I'm running with graphics mods now is because I haven't in over 6 months. Removing them and setting the game to the lowest possible resolution makes no difference. Can my comp not handle 1k textures? This machine can handle SE running 4k paralax textures and any enb I wanted with no more than a drop of 2 fps. LE clearly can't handle the same thing. So removing everything made no difference. Hell, when I first installed linux I spent a month or two playing the game completely unmodded because I was still in the process of getting things running. Didn't help in the slightest. As I said, not having a single mod installed made no difference. I didn't even have skse installed. It can't be a mod and that's more obvious than the sun. It has to be a hardware issue BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY THING I HAVEN'T ELIMINATED. What, are you saying I need to play the game with that ultra low-res texture overhaul? How can I fun mods then? How could I run LotD given all the new textures it adds for its own assets? What, do I have to install that then mod like I'm running this on Playstation?

[xkkmEl]

LE is a 32-bit application.  It cannot address more than 4G of memory, main RAM and VRAM combined.

SE is a 64-bit application.  It can use any and all the ram + vram on your machine, no matter how much you have.

Doubling the resolution quadruples the memory requirements.

I can't be sure your problems are due to memory limitations, but in my own experience I've found that I have many fewer issues since I've been using CAO to cap the texture file sizes.

At 1920x1080 resolution, there is very little point to 4096x4096 textures.

Of course, this is me... you may have a different setup and different priorities.  But if you want a hires experience, I am not surprised you are feeling dissatisfied with LE.  As I understand it, that was the whole point of the new 64-bit SE.

And, if you were having these problems before adding all the hires textures... well, it's likely I'm wrong anyhow.

[InDarkestNight]

I'm running 2k textures right now. As I said, textures make no difference. I was having the same problem when I was running 1k textures, and even with no textures at all.

Either way, that doesn't explain why the problem increases as time goes by. Why should the same area eat up more memory depending on play time? That makes no tense. The textures and models aren't changing. Hell, I even have the unofficial patch removing clutter that normally fails to despawn. If the problem increases, then it must be something that is changing as a character continues. Is it save game bloat? Can my save files just not get too large? I'm not keeping an excessive number of saves; six plus the three auto-saves. My saves are taking about 7.5k.

Also, I've run tests where I've run a circle around the entire of Skyrim (following that road that circles the map). I doing this even multiple times with a fresh character, I can't get a single crash. Come level 10, I can barely walk 10 or 20 feat without a freeze or crash. Wtf is that? Its like my character level is the problem! I've even run across the map with my grass density set to high by accident once, ANOTHER WENT WRONG OTHER THAN THE OCCASIONAL STUTTER. If my memory is the issue, then what is that? Also, if LE can't handle hi-res textures, then how are people running all these 4k and even 16k textures that are coming out? I've always been baffled by that. I mean, Spring Forest Overhaul makes my game lag. Tetrachromatic makes load screens take so long my game rarely completes it. How can these mods exist if my game can't run them? I exceed the system requirements, and no its not my OS; I last tried those mods on windows 10. Besides, enb doesn't work on linux anyway. I couldn't try this again if I wanted to. How can this be? How can mods exist that I cannot run? It makes no sense. I should be able to push this game to its limit, but I cannot. Keep in mind, I was running 4k parralax textures and enbs on s#*! edition without issue (minus s#*! edition being far more unstable even completely unmodded, in particular I had a guaranteed crash in dragonsreach that wouldn't go away no matter what I did, in fact THE ISSUE STILL PERSISTS TRYING IT OUT NOW AND I DON'T HAVE SKSE OR EVEN MO INSTALLED FOR s#*! EDITION RIGHT NOW). As for why I have s#*! edition installed at all, honestly its just for the beyond skyrim project. I have no intents on playing 'skyrim' anymore. In fact, I intend to use an alternate start mod so I can start outside of Skyrim and never ever enter that province again within s#*! Edition. Of course, thinking about it, can that even be done considering that worthless asshat Arthmoor purged his mods from the nexus purely because he didn't like being forbidden from burning his own artwork EVEN THOUGH IT WAS OBVIOUS HE NEVER PLANNED TO DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. We had people logging in for the first time in 5 years just to delete their crap. What the hell? What the hell is wrong with these people? They need freaking medication. I even asked how they justify this just to give them a fair chance, and all I got is 'it just is'. What the hell?

Sorry, I'm just frustrated with a lot of things right now. I'm particularly unhappy about my last game potentially being taken from me.