I found out why Skyrim stutters?

[Rennn]

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.

 

I've added similar tweaks already, soon after I noticed the stutter. I'll try to find more specific ones to this problem. It wasn't so bad before, but a vanilla install didn't fix it. Maybe it's a patch thing. Skyrim normally uses only 1-2% of my CPU at any given time. Checking the history (sorry to repeat myself) it's a fairly constant 1-2% use, with periodic spikes to 100%.

 

I'm going to try deleting those tweaks temporarily, since after a little forum searching, some people say that they can corrupt saves or cause other problems.

 

Edit: Deleting those tweaks didn't help. It didn't seem to hurt, but I might as well keep them in.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Rennn

[fms1]

It's not an ini. tweek, it's a threading tweek set in task manager, I'm still looking into it...

 

EDIT: OK it looks like I was wrong here.

Edited May 1, 2012 by fms1

[fms1]

Here's something I found interesting The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Performance Test > CPU Scaling and Performance

[Perraine]

Try this website ...ini config file generator... It has a LOT of extra settings for Skyrim not added by default, including, but not limited too, Number of Processor Cores and Pagefile size, helped me out tremendously ...

 

** WARNING ** Copy and paste your GC Hardware "name" from your old ini file (for some reason it didn't recognize what I typed and reassessed everything and generated a new ini file as soon as I opened the Launcher, pasted the old name into the new file and no problems

 

*** Warning *** Check to make sure you set the "Launcher" to allow file selection, or Data Files will be greyed out ...

****Warning **** Your mouse acceleration MAY need to be re-adjusted in game after using the new ini file ...

 

Also if running Win 7, check your Advanced Power Management Settings, mine was set to turn OFF the HDD after 20 mins, not sure if this caused Skyrim to CTD but certainly if the game suddenly called for a different texture set to be loaded and the HDD was asleep, I could see it possibly causing a CTD .. I'll have to test and see if increasing this number (to like 200000) will stop the crashes ...

[GnatGoSplat]

I don't have any lag or stuttering, and my setup is similar to yours. Using Phenom X4 965BE oc'd to 4.0GHz, MSI Hawk GTX460 1GB factory OC. Only real difference is I have 16GB RAM, not sure that it would matter since I don't think Skyrim uses that much RAM. I don't use any extra game booster programs. I have never seen a load screen more than maybe 3-4 seconds like you said your friend's machine is.

 

I'm using Win7 x64, my PM settings is "Balanced", completely default FWIW. CnQ is enabled and allowed to dynamically adjust CPU speed from 5% to 100% based on PM settings.

 

Do you have many mods? Have you tried running vanilla? Do you still have this problem with a fresh game? Maybe you just have a borked save game.

 

Is your GTX460 factory OC, or you OC'd it? If the latter, maybe try slowing it back down to defaults and see what happens. Although probably not it, bad OC usually results in random black screen and an exclamation in systray that the driver quit responding and has recovered. You never know though.

Maybe run OCCT and test your CPU and GPU overnight.

[fms1]

I think the real difference (assuming Rennn's not got other programs eating extra ram), is that you overclocked your CPU to 4.0Ghz, where Rennn's is stock @ 3.2Ghz. The link I posted up in this thread has some interesting benchmarks covering this exactly. Btw I run an AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Black Ed. @ 3.2Ghz (also stock clock), very similar to both of yours, but having 2 extra cores, I barely notice anything. Although I have a HD 6870 (factory OC'd, but nothing more), still somewhat similar, but not the same.

[GnatGoSplat]

I don't think my overclock is what prevents stuttering though. I played probably 95% of my Skyrim game at stock clock of 3.6GHz. As well as it performed at 3.6GHz, I would think it should also be fine at 3.2GHz.

 

That's something else I forgot to mention, is I think he needs to make sure his RAM usage isn't getting too high. I've noticed Windows starts getting bogged down with even around 80% RAM usage.

[fms1]

I don't think my overclock is what prevents stuttering though. I played probably 95% of my Skyrim game at stock clock of 3.6GHz. As well as it performed at 3.6GHz, I would think it should also be fine at 3.2GHz.

 

That's something else I forgot to mention, is I think he needs to make sure his RAM usage isn't getting too high. I've noticed Windows starts getting bogged down with even around 80% RAM usage.

 

Yes, I agree, Rennn says that CPU usage drops to 1-2% at times and then to 100%, and keeps going back and forth, AFAIK mine don't, I can't remember for sure though so I'll try it and report back.

 

EDIT: Yes, as I thought, my CPU usage is staying fairly consistent, I mean it goes up and down, but generally stays between 25-35%, never dropping below 25%.

Edited May 1, 2012 by fms1

[beazalbob69]

One thing you can check is if your video card GPU clocks are switching to max after starting up Skyrim. I had horrible load times and really bad stuttering at times and I checked Nvidia inspector and found out that my GTX 460 was trying to load and run the game at 50mhz GPU and a memory clock of 135mhz and something like 50MB's of video ram! Turned out the power states for the video card were not switching correctly. Was like trying to run Skyrim on a video card from 1994 lol.

[shuriken88]

Well man, that sounds pretty insane, since you have a MUCH better PC than me, but my longest ever load time in Skyrim was probably something like 1 minute, seriously, its usually no longer than 20 seconds. I also get MAD stuttering a lot too, but it doesn't seem to be as frequent as yours. There has to be another reason for yours messing up so badly. Baring in mind I DO have my graphics toned down quite a bit though, plus I'm SLIGHTLY overclocking my GFX card and setting the fan speed to max (so it sounds like a Harrier jet is outside my window). I also use "Skyboost" in conjunction with the ENB performance fix (NOT the ENB graphics enhancer!!), and finally running "pseudo-windowed" mode using "SBW". Heres what I have my game set to:-

 

Res:1152x864 (decided to knock it down from 1280x1024)

AA: 0

AF: 0

FXAA: None

 

Texture Detail: High

Radial Blur: Low

Shadow Density: High (probably gonna set that to medium)

Decal Quality: Ultra

 

Water Reflections: Everything

 

View Distances: Mostly around 50-70% for everything

Distant Object Detail: Medium

Object Detail Fade: Yes

 

Performance for me on these settings pretty much fluctuates between "barely acceptable", to "nice n smooth". But again, I also suffer from those f*cking stutter spasms, and sometimes their really bad. Luckily it doesn't happen incredibly often.

 

I can post my specs if you want, but their FAR inferior to what you've got LOL. Im in serious need of an upgrade I think. BTW I've heard a few people saying this game is REALLY CPU hungry, while others say its REALLY GPU hungry. I dont know who to believe, maybe its just both... probably!

Edited May 1, 2012 by shuriken88