Immense lag spiking and stuttering when loading cells.

[TreshMek]

I'm not sure where to put this topic.

 

These lag spikes have only caused a CTD once but they are ever present. On average, the duration of these lag spikes last from a few seconds to almost half a minute. I've narrowed the cause of the lag spikes to the Armorsmith Extended mod... which is a shame because a lot of mods that use an AE plugin are also the causes of CTD's. Thankfully those specific mods have a "No AE" option which rectifies the CTD errors.

 

Still, even with LOOT and manual load order sorting, I still haven't found the exact cause of these lag spikes. I will be doing further troubleshooting but, for now, AE seems the most suspect.

 

So, what is happening to my game exactly?

• Severe lag spikes and stuttering when traveling through cells.
• Game appears to freeze completely but does not outright CTD.
• Most severe in urban areas and outdoors. Lasts for several seconds to almost a minute.
• Also just as severe when there are many NPC's existing at once. More specifically, NPC's with modded leveled lists. MS Azalea, for example, caused a lag spike just as intense as if I was walking towards Libertalia.
• Least severe in interiors or in enclosed areas like Diamond City. Lasts for a very brief moment or simply nonexistent.

 

I have a few mods in my load order that may also be contributing to the lag spiking:

• Unique NPC's (with HD-DLC replacer): Enemy NPC's seem to take a second longer to load in if I sprint into their cell faster than the game expects. When they actually do load, the game does the exact stuttering as described above. This is a likely suspect.
• Super Mutant Redux (No AE): same as above. Likely suspect.
• The High Resolution Textures DLC. Even with my "beefy" computer, the high-res pack takes a toll on the loading times in some areas, especially in the urban areas. I've toned down the graphics to the absolute minimum, so this DLC should not be a likely suspect.

 

It might just be my computer, but I'd appreciate some guidance on this. I hope this all made sense. I also hope that I am not looking in the wrong direction.

 

[HeyYou]

What hardware are you running the game on? How old is your harddrive? Checked it for errors lately?

[TreshMek]

What hardware are you running the game on? How old is your harddrive? Checked it for errors lately?

 

I have the game downloaded on an external hard drive while the mods are on my desktop's hard drive. If anything, I think now the external hard drive is part of the problem. It is about as old as Fallout 4 itself.

Here are the specs:

• OS: Windows 10 64-Bit
• CPU: Intel Core i7 4790
• RAM: 20.GB DDR3
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
• Desktop Storage: Samsung SSD 860
• External Hard Drive: Seagate Backup+ SL SCSI

Will definitely do some disk cleaning and error checking!

[HeyYou]

How much ram on your vid card? And how did you manage 20 gig of RAM??? :)

[TreshMek]

How much ram on your vid card? And how did you manage 20 gig of RAM??? :smile:

 

If you're referring about the graphics card, it's 6 GB. For the 20 GB of RAM, I shoved an 8 GB DDR3 with three other 4 GB DDR3's in my desktop RAM slots. This is mostly for Minecraft related stuff (you know, shaders, texture packs, etc...)

[HeyYou]

Vid card is good, ram configuration leaves a bit to be desire though. Given that you have mismatched sticks, it won't play in double data rate mode. That leaves you with a single channel for ram.... which becomes a bottleneck. How much of one though, is open to question. (RAM is FAST...... but, yours could be faster.)

 

I assume your playing the game from the internal solid state drive??

 

Are you seeing lags/freezing when moving from one cell to another? (especially outdoors.)

[TreshMek]

Vid card is good, ram configuration leaves a bit to be desire though. Given that you have mismatched sticks, it won't play in double data rate mode. That leaves you with a single channel for ram.... which becomes a bottleneck. How much of one though, is open to question. (RAM is FAST...... but, yours could be faster.)

 

I assume your playing the game from the internal solid state drive??

 

Are you seeing lags/freezing when moving from one cell to another? (especially outdoors.)

 

For your first question, I guess I'm playing from the external hard drive. I've downloaded Fallout 4 onto the drive because it takes way too much space in the internal drive.

 

For your second question, it's what I've mentioned in the original post. The stuttering and freezing occurs most often in outdoor cells, especially in the city areas.

[HeyYou]

Playing from the external drive is likely a major contributor to the problem. USB/ESata is not nearly as fast as a drive connected to the motherboard sata bus. And if you go for textures, and other prettification mods, that's even more data that needs to move along that little pipe.

 

SSD's have gotten to be dirt cheap..... Ever consider buying another one to install games and such on? We sell Terrabyte SSDs for a little over a hundred bucks these days, I am thinkin' that would solve a lot of your problems. :D

[TreshMek]

Ah

 

Playing from the external drive is likely a major contributor to the problem. USB/ESata is not nearly as fast as a drive connected to the motherboard sata bus. And if you go for textures, and other prettification mods, that's even more data that needs to move along that little pipe.

 

SSD's have gotten to be dirt cheap..... Ever consider buying another one to install games and such on? We sell Terrabyte SSDs for a little over a hundred bucks these days, I am thinkin' that would solve a lot of your problems. :D

 

Ah, shucks. I figured downloading the game on the external drive was going to be an issue.

 

Well, my SSD is powerful enough so, thank you anyways!

[TreshMek]

Yep, transferred all the files back into the internal drive. It basically solved this entire conundrum. I guess my external drive will be used as a backup save then.

Edited March 25, 2020 by TreshMek