Pausing/stuttering when turning

[JdeFalconr]

After installing the official high-res texture pack I've noticed that, with all setting maxed, I'm getting some ugly stuttering/pausing when I change facing. This normally happens outdoors but can happen indoors as well. My concern is that my rig should be more than powerful enough to not have this happen, even with the HD texture pack and my settings all maxed. I'm playing the game at 1600x1200 and have not made any tweaks to the game's config files except to enable screenshots. FPS is silky smooth when I'm moving/turning (FRAPS confirms this - generally in the mid 50's and rarely with a drop).

 

I've noted that when this stuttering/pausing happens my GPU memory is maxing out, or is nearly maxed, while the GPU's load is somewhere around 70%. CPU is maybe at 40% or so. I can see how VRAM might be the bottleneck, especially with the HD textures. Dropping the texture quality from "high" to "medium" greatly lessens the issue and makes the game playable again.

 

However I have difficulty thinking there isn't something else going on when I clearly meet the recommended specs, even for the HD pack. Perhaps there's something in my settings I need to adjust? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and keep with medium HD textures and accept that my VRAM just isn't fast enough to keep up?

 

Computer specs:

i7 920 (stock speeds)

2x Sapphire HD5770 1GB/ea (not OC'd)

6GB DDR3-1600

Win7 x64

Catalyst 11.11c (Haven't updated further as I don't think any of the drivers after this yield performance improvements for Skyrim).

CAP 11.12

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Edited February 27, 2012 by JdeFalconr

[brianfist]

After installing the official high-res texture pack I've noticed that, with all setting maxed, I'm getting some ugly stuttering/pausing when I change facing. This normally happens outdoors but can happen indoors as well. My concern is that my rig should be more than powerful enough to not have this happen, even with the HD texture pack and my settings all maxed. I'm playing the game at 1600x1200 and have not made any tweaks to the game's config files except to enable screenshots. FPS is silky smooth when I'm moving/turning (FRAPS confirms this - generally in the mid 50's and rarely with a drop).

 

I've noted that when this stuttering/pausing happens my GPU memory is maxing out, or is nearly maxed, while the GPU's load is somewhere around 70%. CPU is maybe at 40% or so. I can see how VRAM might be the bottleneck, especially with the HD textures. Dropping the texture quality from "high" to "medium" greatly lessens the issue and makes the game playable again.

 

However I have difficulty thinking there isn't something else going on when I clearly meet the recommended specs, even for the HD pack. Perhaps there's something in my settings I need to adjust? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and keep with medium HD textures and accept that my VRAM just isn't fast enough to keep up?

 

Computer specs:

i7 920 (stock speeds)

2x Sapphire HD5770 1GB/ea (not OC'd)

6GB DDR3-1600

Win7 x64

Catalyst 11.11c (Haven't updated further as I don't think any of the drivers after this yield performance improvements for Skyrim).

CAP 11.12

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[kythlyn]

After installing the official high-res texture pack I've noticed that, with all setting maxed, I'm getting some ugly stuttering/pausing when I change facing.

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/568896-frame-rate-drops-when-turning-around/page__p__4610304__fromsearch__1#entry4610304

[JdeFalconr]

After installing the official high-res texture pack I've noticed that, with all setting maxed, I'm getting some ugly stuttering/pausing when I change facing.

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/568896-frame-rate-drops-when-turning-around/page__p__4610304__fromsearch__1#entry4610304

 

Interesting! Thanks for posting that. What happened when you went to a different HD texture pack other than the offical one? I agree that the textures are obviously the problem we're both seeing. I haven't tried one of the other texture packs yet as I would suspect they would make the problem even worse (considering I hear they're higher-resolution than the Bethesda ones).

[brianfist]

After installing the official high-res texture pack I've noticed that, with all setting maxed, I'm getting some ugly stuttering/pausing when I change facing. This normally happens outdoors but can happen indoors as well. My concern is that my rig should be more than powerful enough to not have this happen, even with the HD texture pack and my settings all maxed. I'm playing the game at 1600x1200 and have not made any tweaks to the game's config files except to enable screenshots. FPS is silky smooth when I'm moving/turning (FRAPS confirms this - generally in the mid 50's and rarely with a drop).

 

I've noted that when this stuttering/pausing happens my GPU memory is maxing out, or is nearly maxed, while the GPU's load is somewhere around 70%. CPU is maybe at 40% or so. I can see how VRAM might be the bottleneck, especially with the HD textures. Dropping the texture quality from "high" to "medium" greatly lessens the issue and makes the game playable again.

 

However I have difficulty thinking there isn't something else going on when I clearly meet the recommended specs, even for the HD pack. Perhaps there's something in my settings I need to adjust? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and keep with medium HD textures and accept that my VRAM just isn't fast enough to keep up?

 

Computer specs:

i7 920 (stock speeds)

2x Sapphire HD5770 1GB/ea (not OC'd)

6GB DDR3-1600

Win7 x64

Catalyst 11.11c (Haven't updated further as I don't think any of the drivers after this yield performance improvements for Skyrim).

CAP 11.12

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[brianfist]

You're saturating your VMEM. You really need more than 1 gig VMEM to run this pack without hitches. Turning shadows down to "HIgh" helps but that won't eliminate the problem. Using the lite version of the HD pack will fix the problem and you won't notice much difference.

[JdeFalconr]

You're saturating your VMEM. You really need more than 1 gig VMEM to run this pack without hitches. Turning shadows down to "HIgh" helps but that won't eliminate the problem. Using the lite version of the HD pack will fix the problem and you won't notice much difference.

 

Thanks brianfist. I wasn't aware there's a "lite" version of Bethesda's texture pack. Where can I find it?

[kythlyn]

Thanks brianfist. I wasn't aware there's a "lite" version of Bethesda's texture pack. Where can I find it?

 

I don't think there is one from Bethesda. I ended up leaving their HD textures disabled and have been enjoying a solid 60FPS ever since. I did experiment with Skyrim HD 2K Textures, but experienced similar stuttering with the full version. My understanding is that their Lite version will perform as well as the original textures from Bethesda, but I've been waiting for a Lite version of 1.5 to try it.

Edited February 27, 2012 by kythlyn

[JdeFalconr]

Thanks brianfist. I wasn't aware there's a "lite" version of Bethesda's texture pack. Where can I find it?

 

I don't think there is one from Bethesda. I ended up leaving their HD textures disabled and have been enjoying a solid 60FPS ever since. I did experiment with Skyrim HD 2K Textures, but experienced similar stuttering with the full version. My understanding is that their Lite version will perform as well as the original textures from Bethesda, but I've been waiting for a Lite version of 1.5 to try it.

 

Thanks, I'm going to give the lite version of HD 2K a shot, even if it's only version 1.4. I'll try and post here what my findings are.