Occasional stuttering in Skyrim

[iceurface18]

Hey guys,

 

I've been experiencing in-game stuttering and it's quite irritating. The stuttering causes the game to freeze for five seconds. However, the stuttering doesn't cause an FPS drop. It runs fine on my computer. I am not sure if the stuttering occurs when I enter into a new cell because the stutter still occurs while inside an interior cell. Anyways is there a solution to this problem? The game shouldn't be stuttering like this.

 

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have the Dawnguard DLC installed.

Edited February 1, 2013 by iceurface18

[Georgiegril]

Have you checked to make sure you aren't experiencing this due to background processes? I had a similar problem at one time because my computer kept "waving" to my external hard drive.

 

 

Another thought is that if you are maxing out your RAM (not VRAM) that you might experiencing similar lags as your computer clears out available memory for you. In that case, you'd probably hear a lot of thrashing. Shutting down background processes, services, apps would probably help that, too.

 

Just a thought!

[ripple]

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have the Dawnguard DLC installed.

 

Just the DG DLC? No other mods? What's your system specs? What graphic settings do you run?

Edited February 1, 2013 by ripple

[iceurface18]

Have you checked to make sure you aren't experiencing this due to background processes? I had a similar problem at one time because my computer kept "waving" to my external hard drive.

 

 

Another thought is that if you are maxing out your RAM (not VRAM) that you might experiencing similar lags as your computer clears out available memory for you. In that case, you'd probably hear a lot of thrashing. Shutting down background processes, services, apps would probably help that, too.

 

Just a thought!

 

Would I have to shutdown the background processes through my task manager to prevent the stuttering issue? (Noob question... lol I'm still learning about CPs.)

 

P.S. I forgot to mention that I have the Dawnguard DLC installed.

 

Just the DG DLC? No other mods? What's your system specs? What graphic settings do you run?

 

Yes, I just have the Dawnguard DLC and about 30 mods installed. My spec are below.

 

OS: W7 Home Premium 64-bit

CPU: AMD A6-3400M APU with Radeon HD Graphics (4 CPUs), ~1.4GH

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6520G

8.00 GB RAM

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

Edited February 2, 2013 by iceurface18

[ripple]

If you have 30 mods installed.....need to see your BOSS log (with the messages) and the list of unrecognized mods if BOSS produced one.

[iceurface18]

If you have 30 mods installed.....need to see your BOSS log (with the messages) and the list of unrecognized mods if BOSS produced one.

 

Are these the correct logs?

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

Recognized Plugins:

 

Skyrim.esm Active

 

Update.esm Active

Contains dirty edits: 52 ITM, 1 UDR records. Needs TES5Edit cleaning. (http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Cleaning_Guide_-_TES5Edit)

 

Dawnguard.esm Active

Contains dirty edits: 602 ITM, 82 UDR records. Needs TES5Edit cleaning. (http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Cleaning_Guide_-_TES5Edit)

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

 

ApachiiHairMales.esm Active

 

Brawl Bugs CE.esp Active

 

Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp Active

Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: Delev, Relev}}

Note: Recommend to use the Unofficial Dawnguard Patch in addition to Dawnguard. This is need for correct work with Dawnguard.

 

BreezhomeAlchemyLabFix.esp Active

 

Blackout_Skyrim.esp Active

Contains dirty edits: 3 ITM, 0 UDR records. Needs TES5Edit cleaning. (http://www.creationkit.com/TES5Edit_Cleaning_Guide_-_TES5Edit)

Note: This is an ENB mod. Be sure you have the correct ENB setup installed.

 

Blackout_Dawnguard.esp Active

Note: This is an ENB mod. Be sure you have the correct ENB setup installed.

 

SIDT.esp Active

 

IMAGINATOR - Visual Control for Skyrim.esp Active

 

Run For Your Lives.esp Active

 

Headtracking.esp Active

 

Unique Region Names.esp Active

 

Beards.esp Active

 

getSnowy.esp Active

 

RealisticWaterTextures.esp Active

Note: Old. Use WATER mod instead.

 

 

 

Unrecognized Plugins:

 

BoundGear.esp Active

 

MoreEyebrows.esp Active

 

TairPresets.esp Active

Edited February 2, 2013 by iceurface18

[ripple]

That doesn't look like "30 mods".....but I am guessing you have a number of texture replacer type mods that do not come with esp's. You might have to consider curbing the number of HD texture mods and such, if you have them (or at least keep those to a minimum and use slightly reduced versions of others, if available). The game engine is aging poorly (it's basically an enhanced version of the Oblivion Creation Engine...) and can only do so much, no matter how powerful your rig is. Sometimes, this can be mitigated by ini settings (just don't change the default ugridstoload=5). Freezes could be mods stressing the CPU. Keep in mind that Skyrim can really only utilize 2 cores at best (and not very well at that). Try disabling one of the mods with continually updating scripts and see if that mitigates the freeze. Maybe 'Player Headtracking' if you find that your freezes tend to occur in populated areas where the engine has to render a lot of AIs.

 

1) download TES5Edit from that link and follow the instruction to clean the esp's and esm's flagged by BOSS as containing 'dirty edits.'

 

2) You'll need to set the load order of the 2 esp's not recognized by BOSS. Right now they are loading at the end of the load order and that should not be allowed to happen. The only reliable way to fix this is to load all your plugins in TES5Edit, and check to see if the esp's not recognized by BOSS contain any conflicting records with the other plugins in your load order. Then decide, based on that, where in the load order they should go. There are only two so it shouldn't take up too much time. You can then use something like the 'BOSS Userlist Manager' to set custom rules for the esp's not recognized by BOSS, so their load order position won't get reset every time you run BOSS (which you should do every time you install new mods).

Edited February 2, 2013 by ripple

[iceurface18]

That doesn't look like "30 mods".....but I am guessing you have a number of texture replacer type mods that do not come with esp's. You might have to consider curbing the number of HD texture mods and such, if you have them (or at least keep those to a minimum and use slightly reduced versions of others, if available). The game engine is aging poorly (it's basically an enhanced version of the Oblivion Creation Engine...) and can only do so much, no matter how powerful your rig is. Sometimes, this can be mitigated by ini settings (just don't change the default ugridstoload=5). Freezes could be mods stressing the CPU. Keep in mind that Skyrim can really only utilize 2 cores at best (and not very well at that). Try disabling one of the mods with continually updating scripts and see if that mitigates the freeze. Maybe 'Player Headtracking' if you find that your freezes tend to occur in populated areas where the engine has to render a lot of AIs.

 

1) download TES5Edit from that link and follow the instruction to clean the esp's and esm's flagged by BOSS as containing 'dirty edits.'

 

2) You'll need to set the load order of the 2 esp's not recognized by BOSS. Right now they are loading at the end of the load order and that should not be allowed to happen. The only reliable way to fix this is to load all your plugins in TES5Edit, and check to see if the esp's not recognized by BOSS contain any conflicting records with the other plugins in your load order. Then decide, based on that, where in the load order they should go. There are only two so it shouldn't take up too much time. You can then use something like the 'BOSS Userlist Manager' to set custom rules for the esp's not recognized by BOSS, so their load order position won't get reset every time you run BOSS (which you should do every time you install new mods).

 

I have some mods deactivated and they didn't show up on the logs I'm assuming. Anyways, I just played a saved game with my level 3 Altmer mage for a few hours and I noticed that the random five second freezes did not occur while playing as my mage. It would seem that the random freezes occur on my level 30 Nord warrior. I also followed your advise but nothing seemed to work. I tried using the TES5edit program and it was a little confusing to operate but I managed to follow the instructions on how to clean the esps that had dirty edits.

Edited February 3, 2013 by iceurface18

[ripple]

If you are using high resolution texture replacer mods, that might one of the things contributing to the degradation of your game performance (and since they don't come with esp'sor esm's, they don't show up on your BOSS log). One possible explantion might be if you are using some high resolution armour or weapon texture, so they stress your system when you are playing a warrior character, but not a mage since the mage isn't using the same equipments. Do you know have a list of texture replacers you used? An alternative is to use the 'Texture Optimizer' to compress the textures to a lower resolution and see if that gets rid of the freezes. Edited February 3, 2013 by ripple

[iceurface18]

Active texture replacer mods:

 

Improved NPC Clothing - High Res

W.A.T.E.R. - Water And Terrain Enhancement Redux

Beards - High-Res Normal

Straight hair retexture - straight hair 1_1

HiRes Legible Road Signs - Hires Road Signs Version 3

aMidianBorn Steel Plate Armor - amidianborn steelplate

Detailed Lips - Detailed_Lips-1_20

Septim HD

Weapon Retexture Project

Better Females by Bella

Cinematic Fire Effects

Icy Chillrend with transparency

 

I used the Texture Optimizer and sadly there is still no luck. Could the random five second freezes be a result of overclocking?

 

I'm still trying to figure out the my load order atm.

Edited February 3, 2013 by iceurface18