Skyrim Micro stutter - Any permanent fix?

[twoquid89]

Hi folks, first time poster here.

 

I was wondering has anyone found a permanent fix for the ever so famous micro stutter problem? It's always happened to me since I first owned the game, I've gotten kinda used to it but its still noticeable. I've tries a few different things, playing in border less windows mode seems to work, but I prefer to play full screen.

 

 

I've got v-sync disabled and average between 90-120fps, I thought it might have caused it but it still has a noticeable stutter whilst locked to 60fps. Just to note, I disabled v-sync because despite being locked to 60fps it still dropped into the lower 50's.

 

Any advice folks?

 

Thanks a bunch

[zyg0tic]

I enable v-sync with iPresentInterval=1 and limit fps to 45 using Nvidia Inspector. Try that and report if it improves.

[Elsarian]

  On 12/24/2012 at 3:28 AM, zyg0tic said:

I enable v-sync with iPresentInterval=1 and limit fps to 45 using Nvidia Inspector. Try that and report if it improves.

 

This might sound stupid, but does Nvidia inspector work with AMD based GPU's?

[zyg0tic]

@Elsarian. I don't think so. "Google is your friend."

 

Pretty sure AMD cards have their own equivalent.

[Elsarian]

  On 12/24/2012 at 6:42 AM, zyg0tic said:

@Elsarian. I don't think so. "Google is your friend."

 

Pretty sure AMD cards have their own equivalent.

 

They do: The Catalyst Control Center. However, it isn't as in depth as the Inspector, so yeah. It lacks features like SSAO and probably other features as well.

[bben46]

Stutter is often related to the fps jumping all over. Try capping the fps to a reasonable number. If your system can handle it without stutter - go with 60fps, if not, try lowering the fps until it can.

 

FPS is highly overated, movies and NTSC TV are capped at 24fps. The xbox version is capped at 30. If you can run over 30 without stutter - you already have a higher fps than xbox, movies and TV. Capping fps also frees up some GPU resources that can possibly be be used to improve eye candy a bit. Play with it some find out where your best trade off is between fps & eye candy. :thumbsup:

[Elsarian]

  On 12/24/2012 at 5:01 PM, bben46 said:

Stutter is often related to the fps jumping all over. Try capping the fps to a reasonable number. If your system can handle it without stutter - go with 60fps, if not, try lowering the fps until it can.

 

FPS is highly overated, movies and NTSC TV are capped at 24fps. The xbox version is capped at 30. If you can run over 30 without stutter - you already have a higher fps than xbox, movies and TV. Capping fps also frees up some GPU resources that can possibly be be used to improve eye candy a bit. Play with it some find out where your best trade off is between fps & eye candy. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks for that, bben. However, every time I cap my FPS, my screen tears like hell even with presentinterval activated or vsync being forced from my Control Center. Any ideas on how to fix that issue? It makes so sense to me.

[bben46]

I have not seen any tearing with fps caps. My vsync is disabled. The primary purpose of capping fps is to prevent the fps from jumping up to a high value when displaying a static scene, then down low when changed to dynamic - Going from being still and looking at a simple non moving scene(such as a wall) to turning and finding a dozen moving creatures - npc + other creatures suddenly in your field of view. Water, weather and many magic effects are also dynamic.

[ploppytheman]

As far as I can tell there isnt a way to limit FPS with CCC. I used to use Nvidia but got AMD for bitcoins and I know nvidia had it. But what I do is use Dxtory as frame limiter, its shows your fps too but its uses a lot more resources than fraps to do that (like 10k vs 50k). I think there is some way to show FPS and lock FPS with "digitial on screen server" with MSI afterburner but I couldnt get it to work. If you can figure it out post back. But Dxtory has been the best so far I limit to 62 or 125 (I have 120hz monitor but for casual games you don't need high fps) and it works fine. Its free version and I just have it load when my computer starts.

 

The only thing to remember is dxtory WONT SAVE until you exit, so to save you frustration get your settings down then close and reopen :D

 

  On 12/24/2012 at 5:01 PM, bben46 said:

Stutter is often related to the fps jumping all over. Try capping the fps to a reasonable number. If your system can handle it without stutter - go with 60fps, if not, try lowering the fps until it can.

 

FPS is highly overated, movies and NTSC TV are capped at 24fps. The xbox version is capped at 30. If you can run over 30 without stutter - you already have a higher fps than xbox, movies and TV. Capping fps also frees up some GPU resources that can possibly be be used to improve eye candy a bit. Play with it some find out where your best trade off is between fps & eye candy. :thumbsup:

 

Yeh but movies are done that way so you cant see what is happening to make it look like action and consoles just suck, thats why skyrim was so terrible in the first place lol. Only after about 1000 mods (I have over 50) is skyrim decent and still nowhere as good as morrowind.

 

 

I think you need at least 45fps outdoors average to have this game be playable. Adjust shadows and lighting and turn off LoD (it just makes the game blurry, if you are playing first person you are already using your eyes LoD so why put a tax on your hardware that only makes graphics worse?

 

Turn off grass too, or at least make it sparse, 20 is the lowest 80 is highest, but you can lower draw distance to 0 so there is no grass.

 

Also I heard that skyrims AA and AS are really badly optimized so forcing them with your GPU and turning them off by default might help.

 

Attk Skyrim power loader is nice because it can do a lot to optimize your system and game.

 

Play in 1st person, less to load outdoors (plus its just better overall)

 

I think changing Ugridstoload to 3 might help you but be careful it will mess up your saves if you want to increase it again so look it up.

 

 

 

And then all the usual:

Virus scan

Defrag HD (get a SSD is the real answer esp if you enjoy big RPGs), Registry cleaner, CCleaner, Comodo System Utilities, etc

Close other background programs

Drivers update

Fresh Install of everything (Im about to format myself)

 

 

Personally I was only having issues because of my GPU memory being full, I have 6970s in xfire which have 3gb but you really don't need big shadow or light effects, just check to see if your bumping up against your cap because that was the biggest issue I had and my GPUs are bottlenecked by everything else most of the time and were causing stuttering.

Edited January 18, 2013 by ploppytheman

[Alithinos]

Keep in mind that Skyrim is a game that works different than most PC games.

All Bethesda Softworks games from Morrowind and after work in a specific way. You see because the world is huge it can't fit all together in the computer's RAM,so the game's engine load it gradually as you play.

You might be for example near Solitude. When you are there,the game only has loaded the things that are close to your character,it hasn't load up things further away,like for example the trees and rocks near Riften. So while you walk around the world,the world loads as you play,even if you don't get a loading screen. This loading procedure shouldn't be noticeable normally in the vanilla game,but as you raise up some factors like e.g. the distance in which trees starts to appear,it will become more noticeable,and even annoying.

 

One solution to reduce or eliminate this is to lower the amount of things that the game has to load while you are playing. That's things like returning the value of Ugrids back to 5 in case you raised it up earlier on,or making it so actors,boulders,grass,and trees load up only if you get closer to them,so you have dropped the draw distance.

Of course if you are used in a larger draw distance,lowering it will have an immediate negative effect in the feeling of the world,as you will notice that things a little further away won't be there.

 

Another thing you can do to reduce or eliminate stutter without reducing the draw distance,is to make it so your computer loads things faster.

To do that there are a couple or so few things you can do. One is to replace the hard drive you got Skyrim on,with an SSD in case you don't already use an SSD.

SSDs are more expensive for every gigabyte of data you can store in them in comparison to a hard drive,but the speed with witch they transfer data to your RAM is way faster.

 

And the second thing you can do either alone or along with getting an SSD is to add some more RAM to your computer in case you haven't got already added the max Skyrim can make use of.

If your version of Windows is 32 bit,you are limited to 4gb of RAM for the whole system. In case you have a 64bit version of Windows you can add a little more like 2 or 4gbs,so Skyrim can make use of about 4gb alone,and the Operating System is eating up from the rest of your RAM without stealing some from Skyrim.

Edited January 18, 2013 by Alithinos