Strange performance issues, solved by alt-tabbing

[NewNamelessOne]

Hi,

I wouldn't have opened this topic if I didn't really need some feedback on my problems by some "veteran" of modding Skyrim.

 

 

• First of all what happens: I spent DAYS building up my skyrim mod list to be balanced and properly ordered (I use mod organizer, so awesome) and my system (spec below) seems to handle all the load pretty well, on the FPS side. What happens is that pretty often I get HUGE slowdowns when (I suppose) loading another cell (even previusly visited)...I'll make an example: I load Whiterun and I walk around town, all perfectly normal at 40 fps average; then I go to the inn, stay there for a while, and when I load back to the city it stays at 1-10 fps. The interesting thing is that when it happens, if I alt-tab and go back to the game..voila!, all back to normal with no issues.

I initially thought my main problem would have been on the cpu side, but from what I've seen the 4 cores aren't capped at 100%. What seems to me is that this can be a vram or (system) ram issue. I don't know which one. What I can tell you is that the vram is always at 1GB, but maybe that's just the standard behaviour. I purposely tried to avoid overloading the memory in my mod list, so I don't know where to look (and if there's a possibility this is a knows issue)

 

• My mod list: http://i.imgur.com/lL72HS5.jpg (notice I've just thought of disabling the proj optimization, to check if it was causing problems)
• INI files: http://i.imgur.com/BB3jJS8.jpg

 

• My specs: win7 64 bit, 4bg of ram, gtx 560ti 1gb

Edited April 2, 2014 by n@meless-one

[MotoSxorpio]

Sounds to me like your 1GB of VRAM on the GTX560ti is getting overloaded. The game likes to keep the last cells in memory so that loading time for door/cell transitions is faster. There are a number of things to try to overcome this limitation from your 1GB card. ENBBoost, HiAlgoBoost are two most used performance helpers that I might recommend.

[NewNamelessOne]

Sounds to me like your 1GB of VRAM on the GTX560ti is getting overloaded. The game likes to keep the last cells in memory so that loading time for door/cell transitions is faster. There are a number of things to try to overcome this limitation from your 1GB card. ENBBoost, HiAlgoBoost are two most used performance helpers that I might recommend.

 

Thanks, I'd really like to solve it since I'm not planning to upgrade the pc in the near future.

To further support your theory consider this:

 

- I just loaded on Whiterun city, and I assume it takes already a big chunk of vram.

- When I load the inn, I got the issue. A lot of time loading (but I hear the sould of the door closing a lot sooner)..and then huge fps lag for about one minute.

- And consider that when I am in this state (walking after the initial huge slowdown) I keep lagging a little and in the meanwhile hearing the fan on the vga going on and off, on and off (so again, it's not a problem of "power")

 

Can you give me some direction using the enb, and why it should help? I really don't like hialgoboost.

 

PS: oh and I'm running the 1.7 version of skse, so I'm already with the last "memory patch".

Edited April 2, 2014 by n@meless-one

[NewNamelessOne]

Incredible, I think I've found the culprit: ONE freaking number on the ini file.

If you look on the screen of the ini file, you see there are four values for the shadow resolution. One is on the fist ini, three are on the second. Changing those values all to 2048 was one of the first things I did before posting here, but with no improvements.

 

Well..while I was making the screenhots I realised I didn't see the THIRD value of the second .ini. Changed that too to 2048 and bam!, no more huge lag spikes after loading a cell. I still have medium to poor performance on a big and quite modded place like Whiterun, but everything loads quickly now. Just tested it.

 

 

One f* number, can you believe it?

Edited April 2, 2014 by n@meless-one