I'm haveing "Lag Spikes" sometimes up to 6 seconds. Worked

[KnightRangersGuild]

Thanks for the advice, I checked and I don't think I have any sound programs, but I noticed I have Nvidia drivers and some other nvidea programs and I have ATI Radeon. I have no idea how this got there. Could this be the problem? Thanks for you help

 

You are saying that you have an ATI Radeon GPU but NVidia drivers? I can't imagine that the drivers would even load.

 

Can you post your computer specs--drivers, GPU, CPU, MOBO? Where did you see the NVidia Drivers on your computer? (What folder)

I saw them in Add/Remove programs. I have a 2.20 processor, ATI Radeon 4800 series GC, 4 gigs of ram, I don't remember my Mother board but I have a good one, maybe that is why it runs Skyrim just fine I dont know. Until the lag spikes it's been running Skyrim great! I know I need a better processor though.

[Georgiegril]

NVidia drivers, Radeon GPU. That is new to me. I can't see how they would affect your card, but they might possibly cause a problem with the game finding your real drivers.

 

If you go into your Radeon folder (Probably something like C:/Radeon) and open the drivers folder there, what files are inside?

Also, if you open your prefs,ini, what Graphics Processor does it list?

(look for this line)

sD3DDevice=(your device, should say something like Radeon 4800)

[KnightRangersGuild]

NVidia drivers, Radeon GPU. That is new to me. I can't see how they would affect your card, but they might possibly cause a problem with the game finding your real drivers.

 

If you go into your Radeon folder (Probably something like C:/Radeon) and open the drivers folder there, what files are inside?

Also, if you open your prefs,ini, what Graphics Processor does it list?

(look for this line)

sD3DDevice=(your device, should say something like Radeon 4800)

Ok I looked in my radeon folder and I didnt see drivers, and I looked in prefs.ini and it does say I'm useing Radeon 4800. I think I'm just going to uninstall all the nvidea programs since I dont know how they got there to begin with. I hope they are not used by another program but I dont care at this point , I will let you know thanks again.

[bben46]

If you don't have an nvidia card then removing the drivers shouldn't hurt anything. If you find you need them you can always reinstall them.

 

Check to see if any drivers are obsolete, make sure the game is patched up to date through steam

 

Turning off your internet connection may not stop a program from trying to call home and stealing the CPU time until it times out - usually 10 seconds or so.

 

There is an old HP printer driver that does this- trying to auto-update by calling a site to check for updates - but the site was moved so it doesn't get a reply - it keeps calling about every ten minutes. I had this one a long time ago with Oblivion. I imagine some other sites do the same thing.

 

Try the free version of Game Booster - Link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Iobit_Game_Booster_d5952.html

it kills off a lot of background processes while you play and may help you find the problem.

[onson]

see how large your save game file is , I had a problem like that and my save game was bloated, about 30mb. With autosave on the game will lag will it saves such a large file. Just an idea.

[windaddict]

see how large your save game file is , I had a problem like that and my save game was bloated, about 30mb. With autosave on the game will lag will it saves such a large file. Just an idea.

 

Agree with the above, check your save file size first, if its over 20MB, then its bloated.

 

I had the same problem, first thing to do is save your game, (store the save file as a backup so you can always go back if you completely screw it up!), then rename your mesh, textures and scripts folders to something like oldtextures, oldmeshes etc, and disable ALL mods, load your save game, enter PCB at the console, close the console and hit escape so its at menu screen. Walk away from your PC for 10 mins (don't sleep the character), come back, save your game and check the size of it. If it goes down in size it means its slowly removing the bloat. Keep doing this until it gets near 9MB in size.

 

I went from 40MB down to 8MB doing this, now my game no longer stutters.

 

Rename your textures,meshes and scripts folder back to original names, load the game play for a few mins, save and see if your save file goes up in size. If so, you have a dodgy mesh, script or texture. (process of elimination now)

 

Slowly enable mods and play for a few mins, save your game and check the size to see which mod(s) are causing the issues.

 

Once you have found the culprits, go back to your save that you backed up, remove the dodgy mods/scripts/meshes etc and again the the PCB thing and wait.

[KnightRangersGuild]

see how large your save game file is , I had a problem like that and my save game was bloated, about 30mb. With autosave on the game will lag will it saves such a large file. Just an idea.

 

Agree with the above, check your save file size first, if its over 20MB, then its bloated.

 

I had the same problem, first thing to do is save your game, (store the save file as a backup so you can always go back if you completely screw it up!), then rename your mesh, textures and scripts folders to something like oldtextures, oldmeshes etc, and disable ALL mods, load your save game, enter PCB at the console, close the console and hit escape so its at menu screen. Walk away from your PC for 10 mins (don't sleep the character), come back, save your game and check the size of it. If it goes down in size it means its slowly removing the bloat. Keep doing this until it gets near 9MB in size.

 

I went from 40MB down to 8MB doing this, now my game no longer stutters.

 

Rename your textures,meshes and scripts folder back to original names, load the game play for a few mins, save and see if your save file goes up in size. If so, you have a dodgy mesh, script or texture. (process of elimination now)

 

Slowly enable mods and play for a few mins, save your game and check the size to see which mod(s) are causing the issues.

 

Once you have found the culprits, go back to your save that you backed up, remove the dodgy mods/scripts/meshes etc and again the the PCB thing and wait.

Cool that's a little complicated, do I have to do it that way or can I start a new game? all but 1 are bloated , what causes bloating?

[KnightRangersGuild]

What causes save game bloating? How can I prevent it? How do I prevent it in my own mods so players don't have to do this when they DL one of my mods?

[steve40]

Very little diagnostic info to go on means everyone is firing shots in the dark. Only by sheer luck will anyone figure out the problem. You need to follow a top-down diagnostic procedure:

 

Run a program such as "DPC Latency Checker" and make sure that your PC isn't suffering from a hardware latency problem.

 

Also check your power saver settings and make sure that your power saving profile is set to maximum performance. The default Windows power profile actually throttles the CPU to some extent and can cause latency.

 

Also check that you are not using any hardware monitoring applications that regularly poll your hardware, such as a hard disk monitoring tool. I had a major problem with such a program a while back, it was polling my hard disk every 30 seconds and causing the system to lock up for a couple of seconds each time, causing lag in games, even freezes sometimes.

 

Once you are sure it is not a hardware problem, then start looking at your Skyrim settings. Try deleting your Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files (back them up of course) and then run the game again and let it rebuild your ini files. See if that fixes the problem.

 

Also check in the game menu how often the game is set to autosave. Maybe you have it set to autosave every 30 seconds? The game usually freezes while it is saving.

 

Do you have Papyrus logging enabled? Full stack dumps to the logs will definitely cause lag in the game, if that may be happening in your case. How clean/dirty are your logs, have you checked them for errors? Try disabling logging, it degrades performance, especially if you are getting a lot of script errors.

 

Next I would point the blame at the fact that you are using over 200 mods! Time to disable them all and see if the lag problem goes away, then work from there.

[KnightRangersGuild]

Very little diagnostic info to go on means everyone is firing shots in the dark. Only by sheer luck will anyone figure out the problem. You need to follow a top-down diagnostic procedure:

 

Run a program such as "DPC Latency Checker" and make sure that your PC isn't suffering from a hardware latency problem.

 

Also check your power saver settings and make sure that your power saving profile is set to maximum performance. The default Windows power profile actually throttles the CPU to some extent and can cause latency.

 

Also check that you are not using any hardware monitoring applications that regularly poll your hardware, such as a hard disk monitoring tool. I had a major problem with such a program a while back, it was polling my hard disk every 30 seconds and causing the system to lock up for a couple of seconds each time, causing lag in games, even freezes sometimes.

 

Once you are sure it is not a hardware problem, then start looking at your Skyrim settings. Try deleting your Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files (back them up of course) and then run the game again and let it rebuild your ini files. See if that fixes the problem.

 

Also check in the game menu how often the game is set to autosave. Maybe you have it set to autosave every 30 seconds? The game usually freezes while it is saving.

 

Do you have Papyrus logging enabled? Full stack dumps to the logs will definitely cause lag in the game, if that may be happening in your case. How clean/dirty are your logs, have you checked them for errors? Try disabling logging, it degrades performance, especially if you are getting a lot of script errors.

 

Next I would point the blame at the fact that you are using over 200 mods! Time to disable them all and see if the lag problem goes away, then work from there.

I'm cleaning up my mods now and deleting a bunch before I go and disable all of them. I understand almost all of what you said except Papyrus Logging Enabled? whats that all about and how do I check? Thanks for your help.