Skyrim stuttering 2014

[mezz1945]

i hardly get above 30 fps, especially outdoors (so many grass sprites from flora overhaul and grass on steroids). as a result i get mouselags. so i capped fps at 30 with ENB. whenever my fps theoretically exceed 30 fps, mouselags are gone. outdoors, when i look at many grass and plant sprites, my fps drop below 30 (something like 25), i get mouselags. it's a typical vsync mouselag and i cant get rid of of it. i deactivated vsync whereever possible.

 

i also experience those micro stutters, but not only outdoors, so changing fTreeLoadDistance would not have such an impact in cells like caves and dungeons. i first experienced it in meridias dungeon (the one under her statue) for meridias beacon quest. ever since i get micro stutters.

rebooting my pc helps. but i need more testing. im lazy and didnt reboot all the time i got micro stutters (in fact, i did it once, that one time it helped).

Edited August 4, 2014 by mezz1945

[goozor]

I was writing long detailed post, but accidently reloaded the page. : /

Don't feel like writing it again.

But this is extremely critical and I will tell you briefly what I found out.

 

So, basically... This game has this infamous "64hz bug", There actually is no single solution which works. Tried them all.

I can confirm that I've been running game smoothly with iFPSClamp set to 60, BUT!

It is incorrect to do so since iFPSClamp set to 60 breaks some parts of this game. For example animation. Set iFPSClamp to 60, summon flame atronach and you will notice that fire trails it lefts on the ground are static. Yet there are other problems which will persist when you apply this setting. It has something to do with game cycle update time and animations/physics/maybe some other parts of this game rely on this game cycle setting.

I won't tell you what 64hz bug exactly is but here is the thing... To be able to play Skyrim properly with fps higher than 30 you need 64hz monitor. No other solution will work.

As I said I accidently lost my post when refreshed the page. I wrote how to overclock your display to 64 hz (most displays can do this easily) but won't write those instructions again.

 

I'll tell you this. Skyrim can only work well at 30fps and 30 iFPSClamp/64fps and 64 iFPSClamp. Also use driver vsync and keep fTreeLoadDistance at 40000 value or lower (tested it on different hardware configs and the results are identical. That tells us that there is some kind of bug with loading tree lods, since you don't cap video memory/ram/etc but still stutter exist)

 

So this is basically it...

If you have good hardware and can maintain minimum 64fps all the time then overclock your monitor to 64hz, add iFPSClamp=64 to your Skyrim.ini, add fTreeLoadDistance=40000 to your Skyrimprefs.ini, force on vsync through nvidia control panel, enjoy NOT-BROKEN, BUTTER-SMOOTH, STABLE Skyrim.

Good luck! Going to play Skyrim at last without thinking about stutters/engine problems/etc etc etc.

 

P.S. Some say display overclocking may be dangerous! Try this at your own risk!

Yet I didn't find any single evidence about broken hardware while oc'ing monitor.

 

P.P.S. Can you stick this thread or this post? I think this is extremely useful information and if somebody told me that earlier it could save me from so much headaches....

 

Thank you so much for sticking with this thread until you found the resolution. I have been trying to fix this issue for over 2 years, and when the ltatest ENB came out with the VRAM fix, I thought that would fix it. Skyrim looks fantastic, but I couldn't eliminate the stutter. I've applied your suggestions, I : 1) set my laptop screen to 64 Hz, 2) set ENB to EnableVSync=true, EnableFPSLimit=true, FPSLimit=64.0, 3) set NVidia Driver to Tripple Buffering ON, but VSYNC Off. Finally, a stutter free Skyrim. Thanks again.

[Akreontage]

So... Since I found my old topic about stuttering, I can post my Skyrim Perfromance Monitor pictures here.

 

All settings are set to default maximum values. Shadow resolutions are set to 4096.

Both benchmarks were made on identical route.

Stutters are completely reproducible at the exact same spots.

 

fTreeLoadDistance=40000 (no stutters)

http://postimg.org/image/40rfilofr/full/

 

fTreeLoadDistance=75000 (rare stutters occur)

http://postimg.org/image/dei74j4fh/full/

 

The problem that matters the most is that nothing shows strange behavior at stutter times. I mean... Look at those graphs. No hdd usage increase. No VRAM capping (far from it). Etc etc...

Of course CPU usage looks strange (spiky as x-mas tree), but hey... Is shows such behavior in Skyrim (only in Skyrim) all the time.

 

What the hell is wrong with those damn LODs? Don't get me wrong, I know how to fix stutters (setting fTreeLoadDistance to 40000 and not using mods which add distant lods), but it just drives me crazy not knowing why is that happening despite having huge resource reserve for this game.

 

P.S. Also I know now why I didn't have any improvements with RAM disk!

Because Skyrim almost doesn't even use hdd while in-game! :D 50~megs here and there.

 

P.P.S. Also here is graphs of Skyrim running @ 7 grids, 40000 tree distance. http://postimg.org/image/c7nd5z5fb/full/

There are no stutters, as if uGridsToLoad=7 require less resources than distant trees. That is just nonsense.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Akreontage

[Deleted1275843User]

Thank you Nexus community for this thread. I had been trying to get my Skyrim running smoothly (as is possible on my aging hardware) for some time now, and this has been of great help in alleviating some of the issues I was having.

 

I have tried and do not personally favor the use of OneTweak (formerly Simple Borderless Window), as it causes Skyrim to disobey driver settings (AA, VSync). I have also tried ENB VSync / FPSLimit and DXTory and I likewise do not favor these. Many threads much like this one have recommended the use of one thing or another from here and each has caused placebo-level improvements(?) and introduced their own issues. iPresetInterval=0 is my preference as it observably makes the slowdowns that do occur not as bad (drops to ~45 instead of 30).

 

I have taken some advice from this thread and setup a 64Hz refresh rate (inbuilt in the nVidia control panel). My monitor natively supports 75Hz but it seems to be behaving better overall, not just in Skyrim, at 64. I have set iFPSClamp=64 to align with this, and forced VSync through the driver to enforce the hard limit of 64FPS. Again, I noticed that Skyrim does not obey this limit (or other driver settings) with OneTweak, in case anyone here was wondering/trying that.

 

I do experience some asset loading stutter. I imagine this is simply the nature of my aging hardware beast, and I'm sure I could combat it with a faster processor / SSD / faster clocked RAM / expensive upgrades I'm ruling outside the realm of possibility right now. Making the best of what I have was my goal all along. I had already set all the ini Distant LOD settings to the Medium values in the interest of fighting this. I use uGrids=7 because it has no noticeable detriment over the default =5 (asset load stutter is the same). I have tried uGrids=3, this offers no noticeable improvement but introduces CTDs for me that I could otherwise go dozens of hours without.

 

For those with aging hardware like mine I strongly recommend the use of the Shadow Remover plugin on the Nexus, along with its recommended ini settings. Shadows have been the bane of my machine and this was a night-and-day improvement for me. Looking over the OP's specs I imagine he has no need for such a thing, but hey, maybe someone browsing here will. There are a number of other performance-focussed mods I have set up as well but I can't be arsed to link them all when there are numerous threads here that do.

 

My setup, for anyone interested:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.5GHz x 4, hyperthreaded)

8GB DDR3 RAM @ 1066MHz

1TB 7200RPM HDD, no pagefile

2GB GTX 750 Ti Superclocked - this is probably the best GPU on the market with this low a power usage.

Crippling 300W PSU, bolted in along with mobo - this is a prefab tower I've been trying to eke the life out of.

 

I hope this helps. Skyrim is still chugging along on this machine - it works hard - but it spins up to that 64FPS sweet spot every chance it gets and stays there nicely in indoor cells. Never drops below half (32FPS), no load time issues, and looks a far sight better than XB360.

[slowman87]

i have a very f***&%g heavily modded skyrim, and im impressed, after lot of testing and different configurations my game finally runs sooo smooth, this is my configuration:

-install the one tweak mod.

-turn off the game's vsync.

-turn off ENB vsync.

-USE the drivers Vsync on Nvidia's control panel or AMD contro panel (catalyst control center).

-Distant object detail, turn it to high or medium, do not use ultra.

 

if you want, you can read this guide to improve your game (i don't optimize textures cause i don't like it)
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214/?

 

NOTE: english for my bad sorry.

[fcfusion]

Quick Fix: kill steam.exe after starting skyrim !!!

 

This solved the stuttering for me. I don't know what the hell steam does to skyrim but I suspect it's something related with the Steam Overlay. Found this by chance when the overlay started acting weird and I closed all steam processes. And then....voilá ! No more stuttering.

 

With this solution I don't need any tweaks, ENBoost or RamDisk. It's worth to try it.