FPS Drop when loading new area

[bubbaisagod]

After changing HDD configuration, reinstalling Windows, steam, Skyrim and ± 120 mods ...

time came to enjoy all my hard work and play skyrim.

There's only one problem, skyrim is lagging like a b***h!

My FPS drop from a capped 35FPS to 16 FPS when loading new areas and i can't find a solution.

 

I turned AA off in skyrimprefs.ini (iMultiSample=0) and tried FXAA instead, it didn't help,

turned off my fps capper, disabled all my mods, deleted my ini files, changed graphic settings, ...

but nothing worked.

My last hope is that a genius on the nexus forums knows a fix for this problem :)

 

Skyrim: Version 1.8.151.0.7 + Dawnguard & Hearthfire

SKSE Version: 0.1.6.6

GPU driver: GeForce 310.90 - 05/01/2013

 

System specs: (DXDiag)

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1

Processor: Intel® Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz (Turbo @ 3.70GHz)

Memory: 8192MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 8168MB RAM

Page File: 2533MB used, 13802MB available

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Superclocked)

Manufacturer: EVGA

Chip type: GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Display Memory: 4050 MB

Dedicated Memory: 978 MB

Shared Memory: 3071 MB

Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (59Hz)

HDD's 2x 500GB RAID1 + 1 SDD SATA3 (used for steam library)

 

Greetings from Belgium

...

[gamefever]

I would stop useing ENB

 

I would also Defrag my drive after the procedure you have used.

 

I would have posted my load order, and boss report.

 

I'd give a kudo's to gamefever, Ripple, or BBen becuase those are the only ones active in trouble shooting that know what they are talking about with mods and load order.

 

More to the point you were having problems with a stable game. So you reinstalled everything a whole lot of work and reinstalled the stuff that was cuaseing the issue.

 

45 FPS is the Gold standard under stress Check Nvidea website. Under Stress means in combat and scripted situations with water nearby.

 

When the game devits below 45 FPS you can expect that it's not stable.

 

You've been playing at a cap of 30ish FPS so go figure.

 

Chances are you have a TON of conflicting mods in your load order.

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/753253-only-you-can-prevent-forest-fires/

Edited February 1, 2013 by gamefever

[bubbaisagod]

Hey,

 

Thanks for the response.

A bit more info: the reason i reformatted my pc had nothing to do with skyrim,

I reformatted because i never turn my pc off and after 18 months windows became unstable.

==> defrag won't help, i checked fragmentation 0% (all drives)

 

game stability: true i have 120 mods and this can cause serious problems, the thing is the game runs smooth except for the FPS drop.

Even if i spawn 5 dragons and use a few followers i don't CTD or notice a sudden (huge) FPS drop ==> the game keeps running @ a stable 35 FPS.

with or without my ini tweaks but no mods i run a stable 60 FPS and still get the random FPS drop.

Nothing seems to work or even explain why this is happening.

 

Why i cap my FPS: With all my mods my FPS rate drops under 40 in extreme weather conditions or fights with lots of npc's and followers.

So the 35 FPS are only to keep things running smooth and without micro stutter

 

Mods: +90% of the mods i used before and only 2 mods aren't recognized by BOSS: DovahkiinTemple & AlchemistsHiddenValley.esp

 

load order

 

 

 

Skyrim.esm Active

 

Update.esm Active

 

Dawnguard.esm Active

 

HearthFires.esm Active

 

ApachiiHair.esm Active

 

JSwords.esm Active

 

SPIKE.esm Active

 

WinterholdDestruction.esm Active

 

HighResTexturePack01.esp Active

 

HighResTexturePack02.esp Active

 

Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp Active

 

HighResTexturePackFix.esp Active

 

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp Active

 

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp Active

 

Chesko_Frostfall.esp Active

 

Better Dynamic Snow.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Illuminated Spells.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Dungeons.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Minor Cities & Town Interiors.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - Major City Interiors.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Weathers.esp Active

 

Realistic Lighting Overhaul - 3.5 Dawnguard Weathers.esp Active

 

Warmer Magic Lights v2 - Big.esp Active

 

Light Up Dawnguard.esp Active

 

83Willows_101BUGS_V4_HighRes_HighSpawn.esp Active

 

BirdsHFclean.esp Active

 

Birdsofskyrim.esp Active

 

Chesko_WearableLantern.esp Active

 

FishingInSkyrim.esp Active

 

hqsnow.esp Active

 

Lanterns Of Skyrim - Around Cities_bright.esp Active

 

Lanterns Of Skyrim - Bridges x2 - OnOff_bright.esp Active

 

Lanterns Of Skyrim - Villages.esp Active

 

UnlimitedBookshelves.esp Active

 

morevillageanimals.esp Active

 

SabreFurBag.esp Active

 

skyBirds - Airborne Perching Birds.esp Active

 

Skyrim Flora Overhaul.esp Active

 

Auto Unequip Ammo.esp Active

 

Chesko_LoreBasedLoadingScreens.esp Active

 

Footprints.esp Active

 

IMAGINATOR - Visual Control for Skyrim.esp Active

 

WetandCold.esp Active

 

SkyUI.esp Active

 

iHUD.esp Active

 

AsharaPrinceOfTheWoods.esp Active

 

Cloaks.esp Active

 

1nivWICCloaks.esp Active

 

1nivWICSkyCloaksPatch.esp Active

 

Daedric Extra Armor.esp Active

 

Dovahkiin Mercenary Armor and Weapons CBBE.esp Active

 

DreamBurrowsSageOutfit.esp Active

 

hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp Active

 

HuntressArmor.esp Active

 

Insanity's Dragonbane.esp Active

 

JSwordsDistributionBalancePlugin.esp Active

 

Lady of Death.esp Active

 

MashupUNP.esp Active

 

Ritual Armor of Boethiah.esp Active

 

Sovngarde Steel Armor and Weapons.esp Active

 

Dr_Bandolier.esp Active

 

HarvestOverhaul.esp Active

 

HarvestOverhaulDawnguard.esp Active

 

HarvestOverhaulCreaturesDawnguardHearthfire.esp Active

 

Lock Overhaul.esp Active

 

DeadlyDragons.esp Active

 

DeadlyDragonsArmory.esp Active

 

Beautiful Whiterun.esp Active

 

RealisticWhiterun.esp Active

 

Quest_SeaOfGhosts.esp Active

 

The Paarthurnax Dilemma.esp Active

 

Guard Dialogue Overhaul.esp Active

 

Headtracking.esp Active

 

NonEssentialChilds.esp Active

 

torches for realistic lighting.esp Active

 

Drinking Fountains of Skyrim.esp Active

 

ExpandedWinterholdRuins.esp Active

 

RealisticNeedsandDiseases.esp Active

 

RND_Dawnguard-Patch.esp Active

 

RND_DrinkingFountains-Patch.esp Active

 

RND_HearthFires-Patch.esp Active

 

RND_USKP-Patch.esp Active

 

conjure_chest.esp Active

 

Nature of the beast.esp Active

 

Phenderix's Magic Evolved - Cleaned - No Perks.esp Active

 

DragonbornAscendant.esp Active

 

DragonbornAscendantDawnguardExpansion.esp Active

 

dovahkiinrelax.esp Active

 

Magelight Multi Cast.esp Active

 

ForgottenMagic.esp Active

 

Crimson Tide - Blood.esp Active

 

SkyRe_Main.esp Active

 

SkyRe_Combat.esp Active

 

SkyRe_EncounterZones.esp Active

 

SkyRe_EnemyAI.esp Active

 

SkyRe_EnemyScaling.esp Active

 

SkyRe_StandingStones.esp Active

 

SkyRe_Survivalism.esp Active

 

SkyRe_hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp Active

 

GDO_Plugin_SkyRe.esp Active

 

Acquisitive Soul Gems.esp Active

 

HarvestOverhaulSkyReCompatibility.esp Active

 

EMCompViljaSkyrim.esp Active

 

HothFollower.esp Active

 

UFO - Ultimate Follower Overhaul.esp Active

 

UFO - Dawnguard AddOn.esp Active

 

UFO - Heartfire AddOn.esp Active

 

FFNords.esp Active

 

Follower Trap Safety.esp Active

 

moveit.esp Active

 

Spousetocustomhome.esp Active

 

Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp Active

 

SkyRe_Races.esp Active

 

WATER.esp Active

 

RND_Water-Patch.esp Active

 

Cartographers Map Markers.esp Active

 

RaceMenu.esp Active

 

RaceMenuPlugin.esp Active

 

DovahkiinTemple.esp Active

 

AlchemistsHiddenValley.esp Active

 

ReProccer.esp Active

 

 

(Armors are patched for my body mods)

 

 

 

 

I hope this gives a better insight and enables you to help me

but however this turns out:

 

A massive thank you!

[Georgiegril]

Capping at 30 should be fine. Lots of people, BBen included, have pointed out that this is where consoles have the fps set, so you should be fine with that.

The problem with loading new areas sounds to me like you are simply overloading your memory. You may want to try a few less mods that affect textures, or try the lower-res options. Also, did you increase your ugridstoload value? If so, that might also be the problem. (If not, I wouldn't start...)

 

I agree with gamefever, you may want to consider not using ENB-type mods--they take up a lot of your graphics power. Just removing them (exactly as the mod author instructs) might be enough to solve the problem for you.

 

Also, you might want to check the settings on your graphics interface (NvidiaInspector or whatever) to make sure all the settings are where you want them. There have been a few issues lately with driver updates setting these strangely, like forcing the game to use the GPU, forcing multiple monitors or SLI when not appropriate, etc.

 

Cheers!

[bubbaisagod]

Hey,

 

thanks for the reply.

 

ugridstoload=5

The texture packs are all lite versions ==> 2048x2048 textures

Water forced to 2048p and shadows lowered to 2048p

I just did a rollback to the "306.97-desktop-win8-win7-winvista-64bit-english-whql" GPU driver a few hours ago

and checked all settings: nvidia control panel, skyrim.ini and skyrimprefs.ini

another thing i tried is multi-threading some graphic options but that made the game unstable

(used skyrim configurator for that)

 

Tomorrow i'm going to start again without the eye-candy mods and try and find the source of my FPS drops.

[gamefever]

@ Georgiegril

 

That's sound advice, do be careful when using invideaInspector it gives you controls to do things that are purposefully kept from the mainstream market.

 

Your load order is a strenoius one.

I'll just hit on some of the reasons why your experienceing problems when loading new cell's

You have a tremendous amount of AI's (actors) ie Birds and Bugs...Quite a few are put into the world space by those mods, as Ripple would say there's a sound reason for why Skyrim has the population of a post nuclear world.

 

You are using a few eye candy mods, ie smim and water are heavy hitters, so they will hurt when loading fresh areas, even transitioning into new overworld cell's could be problematic with the 5 mods I see in the order.

 

Crimson Blood,

It's quite dated now, alternative would be Enhanced Blood

 

Other than using Wyre Bash and Bash patching consider picking up TES5edit and learning on that to make merge patches by hand.

 

Other than that the LO could work on some computer's at 60 FPS stable so it's a matter of works for some and not for others.

 

Good Luck

[bubbaisagod]

I will check the "Enhanced Blood" mod and compare it with crimson tide ... thanks for the suggestion.

 

About TES5Edit:

I have it installed and use it to clean files manually.

I only edit things i know, this means only 35%-40% of the records get cleaned ... it's not much but better than not cleaning at all.

 

Merged patches:

I use them in FO3 & FO:NV but in skyrim is stopped using them for one reason;

==> T3nd0s Skyrim Redone and the ReProccer - Automated SkyRe patch generator.

If i use skyre without the reproccer patch i CTD and my game doesn't start if i use a merged patch + reproccer patch.

 

 

The FPS drops:

 

things i have done:

- Deactivated all mods, deleted the 3 .ini files, deleted all my save games and validated my game files.

-Checked NMM for mod updates

 

Next on my list:

-Turn off the turbo mode on my CPU and OC it so the CPU always runs @ 3.8GHz

(I build this PC for overclocking so it won't be a problem)

- Start a new game and tweak the .ini files (checking game stability with the tweaks in place)

- install mods (graphic mods first, then NPC mods like birds & animals, overhauls, armors, abodes, ...

==> I will lower the birds and graphic settings so skyrim runs a stable +50 FPS

 

obviously this will take some time but i will keep this updated because i'm 99% sure there is/was a simple reason for the FPS drop

[bubbaisagod]

I have found the source of all my woes!

Apparently the fps drop was caused by High Quality LODs by Ethatron (Medium Res. Meshes).

A great mod but for some reason it doesn't play nice with my system.

 

After tweaking my .ini files is did a stability test and the game ran smooth @ 60fps,

then i added mods to improve the distant terrain and i had the same problem as before ... after exiting a building 16 fps.

so i turned 1 of and tried again and by process of elimination found the cause.

 

High Quality LODs by Ethatron ==> deactivated

Distant Detail Hearthfire Edition by Kazoomie

Enhanced Distant Terrain by SparrowPrince

Better distant LOD waterfalls by hexaae

Alternate Start - Live Another Life by Arthmoor

 

Example of a stress test: youtube link

_{method of stress testing: turn god mode on, spawn 10 elder dragons in Whiterun attack a few people after that start running in and out stores, houses, ...}

 

 

 

A big thank you to all the people who tried helping me!

bubbaisagod