Long load times, low-res textures, low fps - what gives?

[el2mador]

I've no idea but for the past couple of days, the textures in my game have suddenly become low res.

https://imgur.com/a/zDzZQ

- the Institute patch on the jacket looks smudged
- the flowers look a bit blurred
- the trees look like they're made of paper
- the walls look terribly low res

I have my game set to Ultra since I started playing and haven't had issues like this in the past before.

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I did note that my save game file size increased from the usual 10 mb (a month ago), to 23 mb (for the past week).

I'm assuming this is due to the number of active mods I have - for instance I have several companions with custom armor pieces running around; I also have built up Sanctuary, Graygarden, The Castle, and Oberland Station using a ton of stuff.

I was using a mod called Settlements Expanded (which allowed unlimited building). I'm guessing that my game's save is bloating due to those settlements also being loaded by the game world automatically.

Would this mean that I should avoid having multiple fully built outdoor settlements?

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The last straw is after I picked up a custom companion called 06-Synth. I had the mod active, and have seen the npc before in Diamond City, but it's only now that I just picked her up.

No problems occurred at first - I did a couple of quests with her and a couple of other companions (using AFT for multiple followers).

I got back to Sanctuary and was changing her armors. Because there was something wrong with her texture (I don't think it's compatible with the CBBE preset I had - slim physics - her body looked smudged when I was making edits).

I loaded up an earlier save before I made those edits and... it took 20 minutes for the game to load.

I closed the game, launched it again - and once more, it took 20 minutes to load. The game is now crawling at a snail's pace.

The latest save I had before getting her was around 2+ hours ago worth of a playthrough, so I loaded that one up and had no issues.

Is it possible for one companion to suddenly slow the game down?

I honestly cannot remember anything else I did after getting 06-Synth except doing two radiant settlement quests. I did not build any settlements further. All I did was try to edit her appearance and clothing.

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[ehtyeci]

Don't know if you're using ENB, but random low resolution textures is typical of ENB video memory setting being set too high.