I found out why Skyrim stutters?

[Rennn]

Skyrim always stutters a little for me, but this past week it's been terrible. Terrible, as in I'll try to turn around in Whiterun and I'll actually finish the turn 15 seconds later. The stutter sends me from a perfect 60 fps to less than 1. More like 1 frame every 3 seconds. It happens every time I turn around in Skyrim, but it's worse in towns. I need to run 40 fps above my cap just to avoid the worst of the stutter. It's unbearable. My specs should be able to run Skyrim on very high settings with 60fps, seeing as people with inferior rigs max Skyrim and run Fraps at the same time on Youtube, without stutter.

 

I've tried two installs, and nothing fixes it. Today, after it got really bad while in Whiterun, I tabbed out of Skyrim angrily and checked my performance in the task manager. I realized that while playing Skyrim, my CPU has been idling at regular intervals at about 1% speed, and then once every few seconds it shoots up to 100% use and falls back down. This is definitely the problem. My load times take forever (10 minutes every time I load a building), and I think this is probably the cause for that as well, since compared to similar rigs I should be loading in 3-4 seconds, which is about how long it takes my friend with a similar PC to load.

 

Now that the problem has been identified, how do I fix it? It's an AMD Phenom II 995 Quad-Core at 3.2Ghz, btw, and the rest of my specs are in my sig as well. It runs Skyrim at 40c, and never passes 50c. My internal temperature is at about 55c when I game. This could have gone in tech support, but before I started typing I meant more for it to be informative rather than a request for help, and it ended up like this. Sorry about that.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[fms1]

I thought you were running GameBooster and it's supposed to increase your CPU to max frequency. I know you run a Nvidia card, but for AMD\ ATI CCC there's an option in the Performance tab called CPU Power, that I can manually change my min. and max CPU frequency, does Nvidia's not have this? Either of these should hold it to max if you set it right, does these not work for you?

[Rennn]

I thought you were running GameBooster and it's supposed to increase your CPU to max frequency. I know you run a Nvidia card, but for AMD\ ATI CCC there's an option in the Performance tab called CPU Power, that I can manually change my min. and max CPU frequency, does Nvidia's not have this? Either of these should hold it to max if you set it right, does these not work for you?

 

I have Game Booster set to increase my frequency to 100%, but it doesn't work for some reason. Not only that, I tried setting a high-performance power plan manually that is supposed to enforce a frequency of 100%, but that doesn't work either. I'm beginning to think my CPU has "gone rogue" as it were. IObit PC Care didn't find any drivers, but I'm going to check manually. I'll have an update on that in a several minutes. I suppose it's possible that my Nvidia card controls CPU frequency and might be overriding Gamebooster, I'll check it.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[VileTouch]

i remember something like that happened to me in oblivion and it was not a problem with my computer because i had been playing for months with no problem until one day it slowed down to a crawl...i tried everything. check my ram, added more, checked temperatures, checked for viruses, eventually reinstalled the os, and the problem was still there... until one day i heard of the A-Bomb that have plagued Oblivion,Fallout and now Skyrim for years!

 

if it looks like this, then you definitely have it

 

 

hope it sheds some light

[fms1]

You might want to check your Windows settings as well, because Windows has power plan settings in Control Panel also, I don't remember if it has the frequency option though.

[Rennn]

Okay, some info, though no progress. There's a "bug" in "Skyrim" where load times take forever, but are easily fixed by tabbing out of the game and back into it. I tried this, and looked at my CPU performance in the task manager. As Skyrim loads, my CPU is running at roughly 2%, with a spike up to 70-100% every few seconds. I can assume that it would continue this horrible cycle until the game loads. However, tabbing out of Skyrim immediately pushed my CPU to work at about 50%, loading Skyrim instantly, which is why that supposed fix works.

 

In addition, turning off Game Booster didn't affect much. My CPU still spiked and ebbed, but the spikes were at about 50% instead of 100%. It seems that Game Booster isn't actually forcing my CPU to run at maximum frequency, it's just making the spikes appear at 100% frequency when it stutters, decreasing the stutter. While it does help, it's still not able to get my CPU to do what it's supposed to do.

 

I checked my Nvidia Control Panel, and it can't control the CPU from what I can tell. I'm off to search AMD's home page for drivers for my CPU.

I have my Windows Power Plan set to High Performance Mode, which is also set to make my CPU run at 100%, so that's not working either.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[Rennn]

i remember something like that happened to me in oblivion and it was not a problem with my computer because i had been playing for months with no problem until one day it slowed down to a crawl...i tried everything. check my ram, added more, checked temperatures, checked for viruses, eventually reinstalled the os, and the problem was still there... until one day i heard of the A-Bomb that have plagued Oblivion,Fallout and now Skyrim for years!

 

if it looks like this, then you definitely have it

 

 

hope it sheds some light

 

Edit: Oh, I see. The problem is I haven't kept a single profile for longer than 50 hours yet (yeah, I know, lol). I don't think it would hit that quickly, and I don't think my animations are slow themselves.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[fms1]

The A-Bomb, if I remember correctly was the Animation Bomb in which your animations would lag terribly, I didn't know it would cause this though. Also the Blue line is your frequency (or CPU clock frequency), the Green is how much of your CPU's total performance is being used at the time.

[Rennn]

The A-Bomb, if I remember correctly was the Animation Bomb in which your animations would lag terribly, I didn't know it would cause this though. Also the Blue line is your frequency (or CPU clock frequency), the Green is how much of your CPU's total performance is being used at the time.

 

A mistake in my wording then. Anyway, the green line is jumping to 100% sporadically, from 1-2%. Replace every time I said "frequency" with "CPU usage". Sorry about that, it was a noob mistake. So Game Booster is working as intended, but there's still the problem of my CPU usage starting very low and shooting up to very high amounts with way more stutter than should be possible.

 

I've checked AMD's site, and they don't have drivers for Windows 7 for an AMD Phenom processor. That option is out then.

 

Edit: Huh. I got a new record. My last freeze lasted 34 seconds. Normally it's more like annoying stutter, but that lasted beyond the realm of simple stutter and became a fully-fledged snack break.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[fms1]

If it's what I think, you may be using 2 or 3 cores a lot more than the other\s, mine uses 2 cores about 100% at times while the other 4 only 10-15%, if so there's supposed to be an ini. tweek that will make Skyrim use all the cores more evenly. I was going to look into this myself, I just haven't yet, I guess here's my chance.

 

EDIT: Skyrim still only uses about 20-30% of my CPU at any time.

Edited May 1, 2012 by fms1