Framerate changes. Don't know why.

[simpliztik]

The framerate of my game has been increasing and decreasing more frequently lately. Last week it was fine but now my framerate just can't stay still. When I'm walking around town in the daylight, when most NPCs are active, I get at least 35-40 FPS. It's really not that bad until I enter into an inn where my FPS drops to 20. When I head out for adventuring my framerate starts fluctuating and it bothers me. In dungeons, low-medium populated areas gives me 35-40 FPS but when I clear out the dungeon I get to a very smooth 60 FPS.

 

I'm confused here. The weeks prior to this week I used to run at a solid 45-50 FPS no matter where I went. Has anyone encountered this problem?

Edited June 27, 2012 by simpliztik

[Georgiegril]

What card? Which update? What are you using to monitor your fps? Have you tried a frame rate limiter?

Did you update your driver or make other changes to your game or your computer just before the problem started?

[simpliztik]

nvidia GTX 560M

latest update

fraps

I'm currently trying dxtory's FPS limiter and it works like a charm but too bad i have buy a licence :(

 

I downloaded this NPC editor mod last week. I extracted the files to my Skyrim directory and when I booted up the game and loaded my last save my framerate dropped to 15-20 FPS. I reinstalled the game and it worked fine but the next day I started having the problem I mentioned in my opening post.

[Georgiegril]

Who makes your Nvidia? I have an EVGA card, and I use EVGA precision...it has a very easy fps control that is free. MSI's Afterburner is based on the EVGA one, but it works with MSI cards, and others. I think the Precision might work with others too, but my guess is that the specific software for your specific card will be best. I tried Afterburner but had some issues with it. In any case seems strange to have to pay for something that the card manufacturers provide for free...there is also a free fps limiter mod on the nexus (i assume yours isn't from the nexus? I believe it is against Nexus use policies to require payment for a mod)

 

Another question, you have 301.24? If you did not update using the new procedure NVidia requires, your old versions are still on your computer and could be causing problems, including strange clocking, temps, ability to properly be controlled with driver tools, even the official NVidia one, all of which might end up with your noticing lower fps. Check out this linkto properly update your cards and remove old drivers. Also you might want to try rolling back to see if an earlier card works better, but you are no longer able to do this properly through the device manager function of windows. The link I gave you also covers proper rollback.

 

If you lower your graphics settings, do you still experience the problem? Also, have you checked to see what your GPU running temp is during the game, but especially when the fps drops? (you can see this with either of the programs I mentioned above, or with NVidia's own monitoring tool, or with something like CPU-Z) If your card is overheating (might be due to the update issue) then it could be shutting down to the 2D clock specs, and your fps would drop.

 

Not sure about "this NPC editor" not enough info, but if you think it might be the issue, you could try a complete uninstall and then run the steam verify cache after that. If it still is giving you trouble (assuming the mod is completely correctly removed) then the mod install might be incidental to the issue. However a lot of high texture mods could cause a slowdown. If you download a driver monitor tool, then you can see the effects of uninstalling various mods to see if they have any effect on your fps.

 

Another thought, just to be sure...if another program on your computer has priority (for example an auto-update or virus scan) it can take up your RAM, which can also lead to slowdown, although often its more of a stutter than a steady fps drop. Still, have you tried using something like GameBooster or GBoost to turn off background processes? Or manually done this? Also your anti-virus program may have a gaming mode, which stops it from scheduled scans and updated if you are in game.

 

EDIT: You might also want to check out this post in Bben's blog: it has more strategies to address a slow computer. :smile:

 

Hope something here helps, let me know!