Gradual and Unexplainable FPS Drops even in Vanilla

[mmesa]

SOLVED: It was my hard drive. Run a disk check, improved fps drop and stutter but caused my inventory/looting to be a bit delayed. Need to install new hard drive.

 

I've been having this issue for the past week or so and it's been driving me up the wall. I have searched and searched here and elsewhere...and nothing solves this. So I apologize if I missed something, but I've dug through so many forums/websites/posts already.

 

The problem: Skyrim always has run a good 40-60fps outside for me based off the settings and mods I have. 50-60, usually capped at 60fps indoors. This has always been the case in my game with medium-high settings with several mods. FPS drops were normal in certain areas, but not constant or gradual. I played with most of these mods and the high res dlc for years with no major issues.

 

I reset my laptop to factory settings in the New Year and reinstalled Skyrim a little bit ago. Hadn't played in about a year. Put in some a few new mods etc. Whenever I load the game, it runs extremely smooth as I've explained above. But then, it'll drop to 20-30fps just randomly outside, no matter where I am. It's mitigated by quick-saving and reloading, but it's not always the case. Sometimes, it'll just keep going down back to 20-30fps. I can be looking at a wall and the framerate will drop. This happens in a clean vanilla install without mods. Tends to happen most of the time during daytime in game.

 

My specs (mediumish laptop):

i7 3610QM (2.3 up to 3.0 turboboost)

Nvidia 650M 2GB

16 GB Ram

500 GB 7200RPM SATA

Windows 7 64bit

 

My Mods (some I realized I left out, being Interesting NPCs and Meeko Reborn)

Skyrim Ini

Skyrimprefs Ini

Mod Load Order (LOOT)

 

Most recent SKSE (just downloaded it...again a day ago or so).

Unofficial Patches, most recent as well

Most recent game version, checked

I used Nexus Mod Manager to install (except Interesting NPCs, I did that manually because it was so big)

All DLC (Heartfire, Dragonborn, Dawnguard, High res packs)

I am not using an ENB

 

 

My troubleshooting and what I've already tried (long wall of text):

 

 

1. Clean vanilla install without Mods

Let launcher set to recommended settings and tweaked them to my liking, an image here, not pictured are the draw distance which is set to low for everything. Ran around the outside of Whiterun. Good, solid 40-60 fps depending on what was happening. After 5-7 minutes, fps dropped to 20-30fps. Even to 10 fps when just looking at a stationary object stuck as a wall or the ground. This has never happened to me when playing vanilla Skyrim.

 

Tried with lower settings (AA and AF off and low options). Same issue.

 

2. Cleaned my fan and vent

No change.

 

3. Put the settings to low

No change.

 

4. Reinstalled again with no mods. Verified game gache and validated files through steam.

Even cleaned the registry with ccleaner. Deleted the ini files before allowing the launcher to set them. Same issue.

Verifying cache and validating files caused one file to be downloaded. Not sure what. But it didn't solve anything.

 

5. Gave up and decided to troubleshoot my laptop.

Virus scan two times w/different programs (Malwarebytes, Spybot, Security Essentials). No issues came up.

Defrag'd. No change.

Did a clean install of drivers. No change.

Updated drivers. Updating the Nvidia driver caused Skyrim to no longer recognize my 650m and use the Intel HD 4000 card. Despite the ini files stating it was the Intel GPU, my Nvidia tray still displayed Skyrim being run by my GPU. Deleting ini files or attempting to change it to my Nvidia card does not change the Launcher nor did it solve the fps drop. For the rest of my troubleshooting I stayed on an older Nvidia driver (353.84).

Set my power to high performance mode. No change.

Used AlienAutopsy to check my hardware. No issues.

Checked my CPU and GPU temperatures. No issues when idling or running Skyrim. About 58C idling. Up to 78C when running modded, windowed Skyrim from what I could check with Speccy. I am not too sure about this part though, but I've never had issues with overheating.

Killed some background tasks, made sure GPU was not allocating memory to any other programs. No change.

 

6. Set the Nvidia Control Panel Options

Forced my GPU. Turned on Vsync. No change. But got rid of some of the screen tearing. No fps change, still dropped.

Enabled triple buffering (read that is solved some people's problems). No change.

Right click, run with high performance GPU. No change.

 

7. Used the d3d9.dll from FallOut NV Nexus

No Change

 

8. Tried disabling certain mods during my modded save/install. Also used save-editor to clean.

Disabled Purity and Imaginator. Started a new file. Same issue. Disabled ELFX. No change. Having these mods or any texture mod did not impact or change the fps drop. Cleaning saves for broken scripts did not help.

 

9. Tried the 4GB Patch because why not

Despite hearing that is was obsolete, I gave it a try. No change. Obviously.

 

10. Messed with the ini settings.

I can't remember what all I tried but I used the STEP wiki to help. Mainly iMinGrassSize=50 helped the best for a while, delaying the FPS drop for a few minutes. Managed to get a good 40-50 fps running around in a heavy rainstorm with Wet and Cold's effects and shaders, in a dense forest area.

 

Weirdly, once it stopped raining and became day ingame, the fps issue started. It happened in snowy areas as well until becoming day.

 

11. Turned the shadows to low and then off.

FPS issue delayed but was still inevitable. I have never played with the shadows on low or off. I don't know what would cause this. FPS drop still happened in vanilla when I put the settings to low. When I played vanilla Skyrim back in 2012, I played on the recommended settings set by the launcher (which is higher than the one I normally play on) and never experienced a sudden fps drop outdoors for no reason. I was able to ride horses around with little stutter, but now I can barely ride horses because the fps drop and stutter is horrendous.

 

12. Stopped Playing Skyrim because maybe I am being too observant/obsessed with framerate on a medium rig

Came back. Still noticed the fps drop because it makes outdoors combat insufferable. Can't ride horses without major fps drop to 10-20fps. Even on the lowest settings in vanilla.

 

13. Googled and Googled for 2 weeks on and off to try to figure this out

To no avail.

 

Which is why I am here as last resort.

 

 

From what I know: The fps drop is not caused by any mods. Vanilla Skyrim exhibits the same behavior of the sudden fps drop. My rig is not super amazing, yeah I know. But I played almost 800 hours without this issue on this machine.

 

Skyrim performance monitor will not work. Every time I use it, Skyrim instantly crashes or does not start up. Not sure what is causing it so I haven't checked my VRAM or it there is any bottlenecking. Again, I will stress that I have never had outdoors drop to 10-30 fps randomly. Or maybe my computer is just old now.

 

I've gotten no CTDs from the fps drop. In fact, besides that, my Skyrim is super stable and the loading screens are rather quick. Only issue I have is shadow striping, which is uglier and more pronounced on low shadows. No mods fix it.

 

My only other options are wipe and restore my laptop again or just deal with it and constantly quicksave (which does help if I die or CTD but is rare). I doubt the former is time-consuming and may or may not even work. Or I can just suck it up until I can afford a desktop.

 

Sorry that this is SO LONG and if I left anything out due to not being computer savvy enough. But I wanted to describe my issue in detail and what I've already tried. I really appreciate any help or insight!

Edited August 18, 2016 by mmesa

[twiztedmongoloid]

Since nobody else has jumped in here ill give you my thoughts.

 

Make sure you have all drivers up to date as well as all .NET framework and direct X

 

Make sure windows is optimized with minimal background programs...and as above up to date.

 

Make sure your system is virus and malware free.

 

Verify that your hardware is working correctly.....i think benchmarks are good test for this.

 

Also test other games.

 

Doing all of the above should easily troubleshoot this issue.

[mmesa]

I tried all above and I think I figured out what the issue is. Testing my hardware and updating, everything came up fine...except my hard drive.

 

Running ePSA upon rebooting gave me error 2000-0142 which indicates hard drive failure as Google seems to indicate. Which makes no sense to me because I haven't gotten any BSODs regarding it nor do I hear any omnious sounds. Maybe it's just old and overused (4 1/2 years).

 

I want to upgrade my harddrive anyway, so I'm going to look into ordering a new one and getting it installed. Hopefully, it doesn't take too long as I do need my laptop for work/research related things.

 

I'll see if it fixes this issue. Even though I'm planning to transfer over into using a gaming desktop, having my laptop is still useful for grad school.

[gastovski]

Exaclty same issue. I had geforce 550ti back then and my fps was just fine with high settings. Now i have r9 280x but losing fps just like you.

 

i5 4590

16 GB Ram

SSD.

 

I think this is because that damn high resolution texture pack.

Edited August 16, 2016 by gastovski

[mmesa]

Exaclty same issue. I had geforce 550ti back then and my fps was just fine with high settings. Now i have r9 280x but losing fps just like you.

 

i5 4590

16 GB Ram

SSD.

 

I think this is because that damn high resolution texture pack.

Have you tried running hardware diagnostics? My laptop is a Dell Alienware and I have AlienAutopsy and ePSA on boot that informed me of my harddrive issues with the error code and (apparently) some bad sectors. If you have programs like that, it might be able to identify any issues. Your set up is better than mine so you shouldn't have any issues running on high settings with the dlc (granted, if you don't run too many mods).

 

I went ahead and backed up my data. Gonna call to see how long it'd take to reinstall the OS on it. I'd do it myself, but I can't find enough information on how to do it with an additional recovery drive, plus my hard drive is under my optical drive which seems tricky/sensitive to remove. Plus, I'm just gonna replace the one I have, not upgrade. SSDs are rather expensive and my laptop can only handle up to 256 gB for SSD, which is not enough room for me, especially considering I'd rather allocate more money to my desktop.

 

After I get the hard drive fixed and reinstall Skyrim, I'll update if the issue fixed (which it should). Already, just doing disk clean up and checking the drive on boot alleviated the worst of the fps compared to the other methods I've tried, but it's still there.

[mmesa]

Sorry for the double post--but I sort of fixed my issue and I wanted to explain how. As well, I'm going to mess around with ini preferences some more now that the issue is narrowed down.

 

It was my hard drive. After doing a disk clean up, a defrag (again), and a disk check, the fps issue improved greatly. Instead of dropping to 20fps it drops to maybe 35-40fps. I'm still installing a new hard drive this weekend to be safe, as it seems that my loading times for looting or opening my inventory have increased. I'm also going to mess with the ini settings some more.

 

What also sort of helped is forcing Vsync and triple buffering through the Nvidia control panel. I found out that Setpoint, my Logitech mouse's settings program, put my CPU under a lot of load, which I did not expect. Turning it off dropped my CPU idle temperature to 45C from 68C. Modded Skyrim with my personal preferences only increases my core temperatures to about 70-75, at most 80 depending on what is happening. I'd like to point out that I live in a hot, humid climate and my room temperature is about 79F due to AC problems.

 

Installing the new hard drive should fix the loading times and eliminate my fps drop. And get rid of the looming chance of my 4 1/2 year old hard drive randomly failing on me.