Huge FPS drop

[shioriharu]

So i used to have a solid 48 FPS in skyrim with ultra settings, wonderful graphics, with only SkyrimURWL + WATER mods as graphical changes.

 

I took a 4 month break and recently gotten dawnguard and hearthfire DLCs (via steam)

installed them with the latest update to skyrim and updated my graphic drivers and now my game is totally fcked up.

 

Theres no light source (aura?) around my character, when im in dark, the character is all black and basically the whole screen is pitch black (adjusting brightness doesnt solve this)

Wielding a torch solves it for the time being, but i didnt need to use the torch ever before, and now if i dont use it, i see literally nothing at night. This isnt normal.

 

Second, my FPS from the solid 48 has dropped down to 10 in outside areas and its max 22 inside small areas.

Its stuttering as hell, expecially in battle, i can hardly shoot an arrow becuase the mouse is lagging too.

The sounds are way ahead of the visuals, this also includes NPC lipsyncing is 1-2 secs late compared to their speech.

 

all i did besides updating skyrim is trying out the ENB series mod but deleted it completely shortly after.

 

Ive tried numerous FPS boosting methods including setting all my graphical settings to minimal, ini tweaks, disabling x360 controller and stuff, to no avail, the only thing which seemed to work was Hialgo GPU booster or something like that, but even that gave me like +15 fps for a really irritating 20 years old pixelated quality image while moving.

 

Anyone knows a REAL solution for increasing the FPS ? Its driving me nuts

Thanks in advance!

 

System config :

AMD AThlon II X3 440 - 3 ghz

Geforce GT 240 1gb GDDR5

4 GB ram

Win 7 64 bit OS

DX 11

Used to run skyrim on ultra without problems until now

Edited December 7, 2012 by shioriharu

[bben46]

If the computer or Operating system is running poorly, the game will run poorly.

Optimize the computer & Operating system FIRST, then the video card, and the specific game LAST.

Do all of this before trying out any mod that claims to improve FPS - most just trade eye candy for FPS. I actually find it hard to believe you ran on Ultra with that computer and got a consistent 48FPS. If so, maybe some of this will help to get it back. :thumbsup:

 

Here is a link to my troubleshooting blog.

Pay particular attention to the General section.

http://s1.zetaboards.com/bbenlibrary/topic/4751769/1/#new

This is updated often so come back later for more.

 

If you use any of this and have some success - or even if nothing works - please post back here what you did that worked or didn't work. That kind of information can be invaluable to other members having the same or similar problems - And to me in fixing any problems in the blog.

[shioriharu]

Well ok, here are the steps i did now, by reading the threads you linked.

 

+Disabled all my mods (i have only like 11 mods), leaving only official DLCs and update.esm to be checked - this seemed to solve some lighting problems (prolly caused by Ultra Realistic World Lighting mod) - Max FPS outside 13/ inside 20 still

 

+Disabled official mods, DLCs - this makes the game crash to desktop on launch

 

+I am very careful in reading mod descriptions and installing, activating/disabling it in my mod manager, because uncareful modding is what made my Oblivion installment became ruined so every mod installed is done as intented

 

+My sound card and graphical card is the same thing, and is using the latest driver around. Windows has latest directx, .netframework, etc...ive got Avast home on my comp, sniffing all kinds of malicious stuff and i turn it off whenever im playing an offline game (like skyrim). To make sure im clean of malware i used spybot search & destroy too, it found more than 400 entries of adware+spyware and whatnot, cleaned it up then tried running the game after that - FPS outside still caps at 16, inside its still 22-25.

 

+Did a cleaning up using MSconfig, which didnt change anything FPS related.

 

+I didnt want to risk messing with my GPU/CPU temperature but i dont think that can be a problem since i can run the latest games without a problem on nearly max settings, only The sims 3 and this causing me heavy stutterings, lags, screen tearings and stuff, and Skyrim started it only recently.

 

I dont know if it would help in investigating the problem if i would attach a screenshot from the game from 4 months ago (the last time i played skyrim) and a screenshot about how it looks now (2 days after installing the latest updates) because there is a very noticeable visual change, (it looks rather terrible now, and its slow too) and the only thing changed in 4 months skyrimwise, was the official updates + an ENB installment/deinstallment.

 

Ive read some threads by people with similar problems, and there was an unofficial statement that steam fcked something up with the latest skyrim updates and dawnguard and theres no fix for it yet.

I rather dont want to believe that.

 

Anyways thanks for posting helpful stuff, unfortunately it didnt fix my problem, although i skipped the very deep parts of it (messing with temperature, overlocking cpu and stuff) as i found it too risky and besides i have absolutely no problems with other games

 

As ive stated before, changing anything in the .ini file, or downing the graphics of skyrim to minimal only screws up the visuals even more, but the FPS remains at 10-20 at BEST, which is not normal im sure of that.

Edited December 7, 2012 by shioriharu

[shioriharu]

UPDATE : I managed to squeeze a maximum of 52 FPS out of skyrim by running it in windowed mode, and stretching it out to look kinda like fullscreen. Im pretty sure i never had to run it in windowed mode before and i dont know why i need to do it now to play normally but im fine with this temporary fix for now. (would need a real solution tho)

 

BUT still having issues with blackness covering my character at nights and having a really thin white glowing line around characters, and the shadows still look weird.

 

UPDATE: Managed to get 68 FPS max in full screen by totally killing off any "Ambient Occlusion" appearing in both nvidia inspector, and in nvidia control panel global...even though i disabled it in the "skyrim profile" i had to turn it off in global setting too. (I dont remember EVER switching it on tho)

 

I hope my struggle provides help for someone >.>

All i need help with now is to get rid of the constant darkness-really dark nights

Edited December 7, 2012 by shioriharu

[shioriharu]

Heres a comparison of how it looked back then, and how it looks now on ultra settings >.>

 

 

 

 

Something is still seriously fcked up imo.

 

EDIT : The game seem to just fixed itself sometime upon entering windhelm and is running smoothly with good graphics at 60 fps now..

Edited December 8, 2012 by shioriharu