[SKYRIM] Trouble with intermittent lag spikes (mostly in exterior cells, but also interior cells)

[ChaChaLoco]

System Specs

• i7-6700k @ 4.0GHz
• Asus z170 PRO Gaming M/B
• 16GB DDR4 RAM
• Gigabyte r9 390 GPU, 4GB DDR5 VRAM
• Antec TruePower Classic 750w PSU.
• 1920x1080 monitor @ 60Hz

I'm running on Ultra settings and using quite a few mods, but I imagine only a few of the really graphically demanding ones are noteworthy for my issue, these include: SMIM, Skyrim HD 2k textures, Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Climates of Tamriel, and Realistic Lighting Overhaul.

 

My game is otherwise fairly stable and I've yet to experience any crashes. I'm using ENBoost (but not for any of the ENB graphical stuff) and limiting my FPS to 60. In fact, FPS stays at 60 for the most part but will sometimes spike to 45-50 FPS (mainly when moving around, turning the camera, etc.). MSI Afterburner seems to indicate that these FPS spikes correlate with the GPU usage going from ~100% to something much lower (maybe even 0%?).

 

If anyone has any advice or suggestions I'd appreciate it, and I'll provide more information if necessary.

Thanks,

-Caesar.

[Darthsith]

System Specs

• i7-6700k @ 4.0GHz
• Asus z170 PRO Gaming M/B
• 16GB DDR4 RAM
• Gigabyte r9 390 GPU, 4GB DDR5 VRAM
• Antec TruePower Classic 750w PSU.
• 1920x1080 monitor @ 60Hz

I'm running on Ultra settings and using quite a few mods, but I imagine only a few of the really graphically demanding ones are noteworthy for my issue, these include: SMIM, Skyrim HD 2k textures, Skyrim Flora Overhaul, Climates of Tamriel, and Realistic Lighting Overhaul.

 

My game is otherwise fairly stable and I've yet to experience any crashes. I'm using ENBoost (but not for any of the ENB graphical stuff) and limiting my FPS to 60. In fact, FPS stays at 60 for the most part but will sometimes spike to 45-50 FPS (mainly when moving around, turning the camera, etc.). MSI Afterburner seems to indicate that these FPS spikes correlate with the GPU usage going from ~100% to something much lower (maybe even 0%?).

 

If anyone has any advice or suggestions I'd appreciate it, and I'll provide more information if necessary.

 

Thanks,

 

-Caesar.

If I remember right, RLO/ELFX + SMIM + HighRes textures can equal significant FPS drop in certain locations due to complex meshes meeting complex lighting meeting complex textures. It might not be your problem in exteriors though, I believe that was mostly an interior issue, like in the Companions basement being fairly problematic due to that perfect storm above.

 

Is it just an FPS issue or do you get problems with sheathing (audio being off, character animation being delayed), or NPC's jittering, skidding (no legs moving) across the ground, or animals in combat just standing there like an idiot or animals flying really high in the air and falling dead or dragons instantly dying? These are classic signs of script/cpu/engine strain.

 

Otherwise your minimum FPS being 45 is not really that horrible, my minimum is around 40+ in crowded exterior areas in combat and I suffer no major problems. The engine is old I should point out, and no matter how futuristic or modern your build is, it can only do so much with old console based software.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Darthsith

[ChaChaLoco]

 

If I remember right, RLO/ELFX + SMIM + HighRes textures can equal significant FPS drop in certain locations due to complex meshes meeting complex lighting meeting complex textures. It might not be your problem in exteriors though, I believe that was mostly an interior issue, like in the Companions basement being fairly problematic due to that perfect storm above.

 

Is it just an FPS issue or do you get problems with sheathing (audio being off, character animation being delayed), or NPC's jittering, skidding (no legs moving) across the ground, or animals in combat just standing there like an idiot or animals flying really high in the air and falling dead or dragons instantly dying? These are classic signs of script/cpu/engine strain.

 

Otherwise your minimum FPS being 45 is not really that horrible, my minimum is around 40+ in crowded exterior areas in combat and I suffer no major problems. The engine is old I should point out, and no matter how futuristic or modern your build is, it can only do so much with old console based software.

 

 

No, that's what's really strange! I'm not getting any of those issues you highlighted there, the game runs perfectly except for these intermittent 'skips' or 'hangups'. I don't know what it could be, but my 8-core CPU is not even being fully utilised (CPU1 runs at 70-100% usage and the other 7 run at ~20-30% usage). I don't think it's CPU/script strain. Might be some sort of GPU strain as, like I said, these are FPS spikes that happen to correlate with VRAM usage dropping, but I don't know why this is, what's causing it or how I could stop this if that's even the source of the problem.

 

[Darthsith]

 

 

If I remember right, RLO/ELFX + SMIM + HighRes textures can equal significant FPS drop in certain locations due to complex meshes meeting complex lighting meeting complex textures. It might not be your problem in exteriors though, I believe that was mostly an interior issue, like in the Companions basement being fairly problematic due to that perfect storm above.

 

Is it just an FPS issue or do you get problems with sheathing (audio being off, character animation being delayed), or NPC's jittering, skidding (no legs moving) across the ground, or animals in combat just standing there like an idiot or animals flying really high in the air and falling dead or dragons instantly dying? These are classic signs of script/cpu/engine strain.

 

Otherwise your minimum FPS being 45 is not really that horrible, my minimum is around 40+ in crowded exterior areas in combat and I suffer no major problems. The engine is old I should point out, and no matter how futuristic or modern your build is, it can only do so much with old console based software.

 

 

No, that's what's really strange! I'm not getting any of those issues you highlighted there, the game runs perfectly except for these intermittent 'skips' or 'hangups'. I don't know what it could be, but my 8-core CPU is not even being fully utilised (CPU1 runs at 70-100% usage and the other 7 run at ~20-30% usage). I don't think it's CPU/script strain. Might be some sort of GPU strain as, like I said, these are FPS spikes that happen to correlate with VRAM usage dropping, but I don't know why this is, what's causing it or how I could stop this if that's even the source of the problem.

 

 

The game's engine has trouble utilizing multiple cores, it drops off drastically after the third core (the number of cores Xbox 360 and the PS3 had). Personally I still use a quad core without hyper threading because most of the games I play are older and the thing still rips through more modern titles no problem.

 

The game's engine actually has a huge drop off after the first core as well in regards to further core utilization, in fact the engine can be strained/pushed to it's breaking point and not go above 25% cpu usage on a lot of higher end systems due to being poorly optimized. The game was made back when developers were still dragging their feet on making their games multi-core optimized, sufficing for multi-core compatibility, which is not the same thing.

 

Another thing to note is that the i7-6700k is a four core processor with an additional four soft cores, or software based cores which are significantly slower than hard(ware) cores and the game cannot tell the difference between the two of them due to it's age. You can disable this feature called 'hyper-threading' and see if it helps any.

Edited June 22, 2016 by Darthsith

[ChaChaLoco]

 

The game's engine has trouble utilizing multiple cores, it drops off drastically after the third core (the number of cores Xbox 360 and the PS3 had). Personally I still use a quad core without hyper threading because most of the games I play are older and the thing still rips through more modern titles no problem.

 

The game's engine actually has a huge drop off after the first core as well in regards to further core utilization, in fact the engine can be strained/pushed to it's breaking point and not go above 25% cpu usage on a lot of higher end systems due to being poorly optimized. The game was made back when developers were still dragging their feet on making their games multi-core optimized, sufficing for multi-core compatibility, which is not the same thing.

 

Another thing to note is that the i7-6700k is a four core processor with an additional four soft cores, or software based cores which are significantly slower than hard(ware) cores and the game cannot tell the difference between the two of them due to it's age. You can disable this feature called 'hyper-threading' and see if it helps any.

 

 

Hmm, how would I go about disabling hyper-threading? Is that done via .ini tweaks? As I recently just added in a bunch of .ini tweaks like 'bUseMultiThreadedXXX=1' and they didn't seem to make a difference (I added them in wholesale, they were not in their by default and set to 0).

[ChaChaLoco]

 

Is it just an FPS issue or do you get problems with sheathing (audio being off, character animation being delayed), or NPC's jittering, skidding (no legs moving) across the ground, or animals in combat just standing there like an idiot or animals flying really high in the air and falling dead or dragons instantly dying? These are classic signs of script/cpu/engine strain.

 

Hey, so I played a bit more today and I was getting audio problems even though FPS was at 60 while the audio problems were going on. Some examples: some words/lines of characters general dialogue was getting cut short (i.e. it would cut out before they finished the line, or a word would seemingly be 'skipped over' in the line); audio was delayed in some instances (e.g. I would 'collect' three or four herbs near each other and the harvesting audio for all four would play at the same time half a second after I finished collecting them all). Is this script strain? Would it be useful to post my load order to perhaps isolate if it's any one mod causing it?

 

Thanks again for your help,

 

-Caesar.

[Darthsith]

 

 

The game's engine has trouble utilizing multiple cores, it drops off drastically after the third core (the number of cores Xbox 360 and the PS3 had). Personally I still use a quad core without hyper threading because most of the games I play are older and the thing still rips through more modern titles no problem.

 

The game's engine actually has a huge drop off after the first core as well in regards to further core utilization, in fact the engine can be strained/pushed to it's breaking point and not go above 25% cpu usage on a lot of higher end systems due to being poorly optimized. The game was made back when developers were still dragging their feet on making their games multi-core optimized, sufficing for multi-core compatibility, which is not the same thing.

 

Another thing to note is that the i7-6700k is a four core processor with an additional four soft cores, or software based cores which are significantly slower than hard(ware) cores and the game cannot tell the difference between the two of them due to it's age. You can disable this feature called 'hyper-threading' and see if it helps any.

 

 

Hmm, how would I go about disabling hyper-threading? Is that done via .ini tweaks? As I recently just added in a bunch of .ini tweaks like 'bUseMultiThreadedXXX=1' and they didn't seem to make a difference (I added them in wholesale, they were not in their by default and set to 0).

 

Hyper threading would not be disabled anywhere in the game menu or it's INI files but on your system somewhere, there are a number of guides for it if you google 'disable hyper threading'. It is not that difficult from what I am told, I have never been sold on i7's soft cores, I was even reluctant to go quad-core for a long time and those were real cores, choosing instead the over-clocking of dual cores for older game compatibility, but that was awhile ago.

 

 

 

Is it just an FPS issue or do you get problems with sheathing (audio being off, character animation being delayed), or NPC's jittering, skidding (no legs moving) across the ground, or animals in combat just standing there like an idiot or animals flying really high in the air and falling dead or dragons instantly dying? These are classic signs of script/cpu/engine strain.

 

Hey, so I played a bit more today and I was getting audio problems even though FPS was at 60 while the audio problems were going on. Some examples: some words/lines of characters general dialogue was getting cut short (i.e. it would cut out before they finished the line, or a word would seemingly be 'skipped over' in the line); audio was delayed in some instances (e.g. I would 'collect' three or four herbs near each other and the harvesting audio for all four would play at the same time half a second after I finished collecting them all). Is this script strain? Would it be useful to post my load order to perhaps isolate if it's any one mod causing it?

 

Thanks again for your help,

 

-Caesar.

 

 

This is a classic example of script strain, the action of picking a flower runs a tiny script that adds an ingredient to your inventory IIRC, so sound being off typically means scripts are being processed slowly at that time. Examples where this might be normal or at least understandable might be on cell load, that is when you are running towards a flower and as soon as you get to it, the game unloads five cells behind you so that it can load the five cells in front of you just as you click to harvest the flower.

 

The Script Latency Tester mod will tell you in milliseconds how long it takes for scripts to be processed, and the ideal ranges for them to be at in milliseconds (under 50ms and never peak above 100ms IIRC).

 

But posting your load order might clarify things, there are a number of mods which are script heavy, moderate and slight, but have too many of any of them and you can run into problems, but one or two usually work fine unless they use bad modding practices in regards to scripts.

 

Here is a list of mods to stay away from:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/dangerous_mods_masterlist

Edited June 23, 2016 by Darthsith

[ChaChaLoco]

 

This is a classic example of script strain, the action of picking a flower runs a tiny script that adds an ingredient to your inventory IIRC, so sound being off typically means scripts are being processed slowly at that time. Examples where this might be normal or at least understandable might be on cell load, that is when you are running towards a flower and as soon as you get to it, the game unloads five cells behind you so that it can load the five cells in front of you just as you click to harvest the flower.

 

The Script Latency Tester mod will tell you in milliseconds how long it takes for scripts to be processed, and the ideal ranges for them to be at in milliseconds (under 50ms and never peak above 100ms IIRC).

 

But posting your load order might clarify things, there are a number of mods which are script heavy, moderate and slight, but have too many of any of them and you can run into problems, but one or two usually work fine unless they use bad modding practices in regards to scripts.

 

Here is a list of mods to stay away from:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/dangerous_mods_masterlist

 

 

Wow, thanks! Bookmarking that Reddit link, I have a bunch of mods on that list installed! Looks like I've got a bit of work to do, I'll clean out all of the outdated/problematic mods and see if that resolves my issue. If not I'll post my load order here and hopefully you can spot the culprit. Thanks a lot for your help, really appreciate it! :)

[ChaChaLoco]

 

This is a classic example of script strain, the action of picking a flower runs a tiny script that adds an ingredient to your inventory IIRC, so sound being off typically means scripts are being processed slowly at that time. Examples where this might be normal or at least understandable might be on cell load, that is when you are running towards a flower and as soon as you get to it, the game unloads five cells behind you so that it can load the five cells in front of you just as you click to harvest the flower.

 

The Script Latency Tester mod will tell you in milliseconds how long it takes for scripts to be processed, and the ideal ranges for them to be at in milliseconds (under 50ms and never peak above 100ms IIRC).

 

But posting your load order might clarify things, there are a number of mods which are script heavy, moderate and slight, but have too many of any of them and you can run into problems, but one or two usually work fine unless they use bad modding practices in regards to scripts.

 

Here is a list of mods to stay away from:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/dangerous_mods_masterlist

 

 

Okay I finished cleaning out all those problematic mods (or getting the correct fixes), the problem seems to be significantly reduced according to my initial tests (I still have to grab that Script Latency Tester and give that a try, though). Figured it may still be useful to post my load order to see if there are any glaring issues. Note that I have CWO installed, if that's a huge problem I'll just remove it. Load order attached below.

 

EDIT: Tried the script latency thing. Averages 60-70ms, but can have 'high' spikes of 90+ if moving around, even 100/200/300+ if loading in new exterior cells and at one point 1300+ when loading a few new cells in.

 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2016 by ChaChaLoco

[Darthsith]

 

 

This is a classic example of script strain, the action of picking a flower runs a tiny script that adds an ingredient to your inventory IIRC, so sound being off typically means scripts are being processed slowly at that time. Examples where this might be normal or at least understandable might be on cell load, that is when you are running towards a flower and as soon as you get to it, the game unloads five cells behind you so that it can load the five cells in front of you just as you click to harvest the flower.

 

The Script Latency Tester mod will tell you in milliseconds how long it takes for scripts to be processed, and the ideal ranges for them to be at in milliseconds (under 50ms and never peak above 100ms IIRC).

 

But posting your load order might clarify things, there are a number of mods which are script heavy, moderate and slight, but have too many of any of them and you can run into problems, but one or two usually work fine unless they use bad modding practices in regards to scripts.

 

Here is a list of mods to stay away from:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/wiki/dangerous_mods_masterlist

 

 

Okay I finished cleaning out all those problematic mods (or getting the correct fixes), the problem seems to be significantly reduced according to my initial tests (I still have to grab that Script Latency Tester and give that a try, though). Figured it may still be useful to post my load order to see if there are any glaring issues. Note that I have CWO installed, if that's a huge problem I'll just remove it. Load order attached below.

 

EDIT: Tried the script latency thing. Averages 60-70ms, but can have 'high' spikes of 90+ if moving around, even 100/200/300+ if loading in new exterior cells and at one point 1300+ when loading a few new cells in.

 

 

 

 

I'm fairly certain you can ignore the spikes when a new cell is being loaded, that is normal, and when in a menu IIRC.