And So The Lag Is Upon Me..

[Erinaea]

I am absolutely certain my PC can run skyrim with all of the settings as high as they can go. It was running fine until recently, now I am randomly getting massive framerate drops. I could be in an area and it will be lag free, I leave the area and return to it, I am running on about 10 frames per second. I have no idea what the problem might be, could it be that I have too many mods? Or that one mod is conflicting with another mod?

 

It's getting very frustrating just trying to play and then getting smacked in the face by lag. :(

 

Any help or idea would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Kalpon777]

First, post your specs and current in-game settings, including ini edits (if any).

 

Second, definitely try deactivating all your mods and see if there's any improvement, taking care not to save over a previous save and lose your stuff :P If it works, you can try activating a few mods at a time until you find the culprit. Some general help to improve FPS:

 

Disable Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filter, or at least lower to 2x or 4x. Higher values yield little graphical improvement but major GPU hog.

 

!!!BE SURE TO KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR WORKING/NON-BUGGED INIs BEFORE EDITING!!!

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [General] change/lower:

[General]
fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=500.0000
fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=250.0000

 

This will decrease the "bubble" zone which trees will be animated in. Lowering these values will make trees further away stand still while only those closer and closer will be animated. Great performance boost if you find yourself lagging in heavily treed areas.

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [Particles]

[Particles]
iMaxDesired=750

 

Edits particle values for better FPS, suggested =250 or =500 for improved performance. Particles are things such as halos around torches, spell effects, etc.

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [Controls]

[Controls]
bMouseAcceleration=0

 

This will disable mouse acceleration, this command is almost necessary to play on PC and will remove "Mouse Lag."

 

Under Skyrim.ini [Trees]

[Trees]
bEnableTreeAnimations=0

 

This command will kill tree animations entirely. Better FPS boost but immersion breaker.

 

Under Skyrim.ini [Grass]

[Grass]
fGrassWindMagnitudeMin=0
fGrassWindMagnitudeMax=0

 

These commands will kill grass animations. Another good FPS boost but hurts the immersion factor. 1 = Enabled, 0 = Disabled.

 

 

I won't promise any miracles as each setup is different, hardware, mods, any number of issues could cause low FPS. I've had a VERY good experience with these commands tweaking my gameplay to something decent (Around 30 FPS solid). Good luck :)

Edited July 28, 2012 by Kalpon777

[Erinaea]

First, post your specs and current in-game settings, including ini edits (if any).

 

Second, definitely try deactivating all your mods and see if there's any improvement, taking care not to save over a previous save and lose your stuff :P If it works, you can try activating a few mods at a time until you find the culprit. Some general help to improve FPS:

 

Disable Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filter, or at least lower to 2x or 4x. Higher values yield little graphical improvement but major GPU hog.

 

!!!BE SURE TO KEEP BACKUPS OF YOUR WORKING/NON-BUGGED INIs BEFORE EDITING!!!

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [General] change/lower:

[General]
fLeafAnimDampenDistEnd=500.0000
fLeafAnimDampenDistStart=250.0000

 

This will decrease the "bubble" zone which trees will be animated in. Lowering these values will make trees further away stand still while only those closer and closer will be animated. Great performance boost if you find yourself lagging in heavily treed areas.

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [Particles]

[Particles]
iMaxDesired=750

 

Edits particle values for better FPS, suggested =250 or =500 for improved performance. Particles are things such as halos around torches, spell effects, etc.

 

Under SkyrimPrefs.ini [Controls]

[Controls]
bMouseAcceleration=0

 

This will disable mouse acceleration, this command is almost necessary to play on PC and will remove "Mouse Lag."

 

Under Skyrim.ini [Trees]

[Trees]
bEnableTreeAnimations=0

 

This command will kill tree animations entirely. Better FPS boost but immersion breaker.

 

Under Skyrim.ini [Grass]

[Grass]
fGrassWindMagnitudeMin=0
fGrassWindMagnitudeMax=0

 

These commands will kill grass animations. Another good FPS boost but hurts the immersion factor. 1 = Enabled, 0 = Disabled.

 

 

I won't promise any miracles as each setup is different, hardware, mods, any number of issues could cause low FPS. I've had a VERY good experience with these commands tweaking my gameplay to something decent (Around 30 FPS solid). Good luck :)

Thank you very much for all the help and suggestions.

 

I have a GTX 570 and an i7 processor. 8GB RAM and I don't remember the motherboard, it is pretty high up there though.

 

It ran fine without any mods and even with Mods that updated textures and such..until recently. All of a sudden it randomly lags, not in heavily wooded areas or anything. Just..randomly. I reload the game and the laggy spot is no longer laggy. That is what aggravates me and leads me to think that there are conflicting scripts or something.

[Sumizone]

Exactly the same issue here too.

 

Usually occurs after moving into a new area, suddenly FPS goes from a smooth 60 to 10-20 fps.

 

I have found (strange though it sounds) that if you Alt-Tab out of the game (save first! incase you crash) and then Alt-Tab back in, the fps is back to 60... What the heck? But 10 mins later you go from one area to the next, and its back. Alt-tabbing in and out all the time is a real immersion breaker.

[Erinaea]

Exactly the same issue here too.

 

Usually occurs after moving into a new area, suddenly FPS goes from a smooth 60 to 10-20 fps.

 

I have found (strange though it sounds) that if you Alt-Tab out of the game (save first! incase you crash) and then Alt-Tab back in, the fps is back to 60... What the heck? But 10 mins later you go from one area to the next, and its back. Alt-tabbing in and out all the time is a real immersion breaker.

 

I have no issues with one of my other characters though. Which is also confusing me. Only two of my characters get hit by it. The third runs perfectly fine.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Erinaea

[Deleted4404112User]

This is happening to a lot of people apparently and hopefully there will be an update for this issue. I'll try these console commands and see if they help my framerate issues as well.

[Erinaea]

This is happening to a lot of people apparently and hopefully there will be an update for this issue. I'll try these console commands and see if they help my framerate issues as well.

 

Any idea what happened? Did they patch the game or something?

[Deleted4404112User]

This is happening to a lot of people apparently and hopefully there will be an update for this issue. I'll try these console commands and see if they help my framerate issues as well.

 

Any idea what happened? Did they patch the game or something?

 

I'm having huge framerate drops. I used to be able to play high settings flawlessly until I started getting these random framerate drops which is causing massive lag. I had to switch to low quality for Skyrim to be playable. It could be the most recent patch that's causing this but hopefully they'll release another one before Dawnguard comes out on PC that fixes these mod and framerate issues people are having.

[Erinaea]

This is happening to a lot of people apparently and hopefully there will be an update for this issue. I'll try these console commands and see if they help my framerate issues as well.

 

Any idea what happened? Did they patch the game or something?

 

I'm having huge framerate drops. I used to be able to play high settings flawlessly until I started getting these random framerate drops which is causing massive lag. I had to switch to low quality for Skyrim to be playable. It could be the most recent patch that's causing this but hopefully they'll release another one before Dawnguard comes out on PC that fixes these mod and framerate issues people are having.

 

When did they patch it? I hope it fixes it as well. I ran flawlessly with all the mods I have on now. Then out of the blue, random framerate drops. >:(

[Deleted4404112User]

This is happening to a lot of people apparently and hopefully there will be an update for this issue. I'll try these console commands and see if they help my framerate issues as well.

 

Any idea what happened? Did they patch the game or something?

 

I'm having huge framerate drops. I used to be able to play high settings flawlessly until I started getting these random framerate drops which is causing massive lag. I had to switch to low quality for Skyrim to be playable. It could be the most recent patch that's causing this but hopefully they'll release another one before Dawnguard comes out on PC that fixes these mod and framerate issues people are having.

 

When did they patch it? I hope it fixes it as well. I ran flawlessly with all the mods I have on now. Then out of the blue, random framerate drops. >:(

 

They patched it a long while ago like last Spring or something.