Enabling Crossfire = Flying/flickering mammoths and tearing

[Malachor01]

Hi All,

 

I've been playing Skyrim for 26 hours without issue and its all of a sudden started going nuts on me i.e. flickering enemies, flying mammoths, screen tearing and texture explosions. This only happens when crossfire is enabled in certain areas outside e.g. the giant den outside of Whiterun (with mammoths near it & a lake). I started the game with a clean install (now my 5th), game updated to latest version and mods installed afterwards (including texture pack combiner and extra mods on top - I can post a screenshot if needed). Seeing as how I have a fairly powerful rig (3930k @ 4.6Ghz stable, 2 x 7970 Lightnings, dedicated SSD for Skyrim etc) I upped the UGRIDS to 9 and created a custom ATI application profile for TESV.exe which overrides application settings (Skyrim AA/AF turned off in config tool and turned on in CCC - everything maxed). I'm running ATI Drivers for Windows 7 x 64 Ultimate - version 13.3 BETA with latest CAP profile.

 

I tried reverting to earlier driver versions (13.1, 12.8 etc) but the issue remains - only in crossfire though. I have made sure to disable VSYNC by turning it off in CCC ("wait for vertical refresh" always off) and "iPresentInterval=0" is set in SkyrimPrefs.ini, and am using MSI Afterburner tools to limit my FPS to the refresh rate of my 1920 x 1080 monitor (60hz) to 60fps (confirmed with Afterburner) yet the issues above still occur.

 

I've re-installed the game 5 times, loaded my most recent save with ALL mods enabled, NO mods enabled, old ini's, new ini's, ensured that when I did load them they were in the correct loader as per the BOSS plugin summary, ensured update.esm and other susceptible plugins were cleaned of dirty 'bash' files using TES5Edit (selecting one mod only -> apply filter for cleaning -> remove identical to master records -> delete references etc) yet issues still occur. I've gone through the correct process of reverting back to UGRIDS 5 via the console and creating a new save game after this yet i'm having no luck.

 

I'm really stuck as to how to proceed. I've honestly spent twice as much time trying to get this game to work than I have actually playing it. It's a real shame because I'm dying to get stuck in and think it's an absolutely amazing game. I'd really hate to have to start over; but, if I do, rest assured it will be with NO mods and NO ugrid changes save for official DLC's from steam.

 

If there's any way to make things run smoothly in Crossfire by doing something I haven't checked I'm well up for it. At this point I'll try anything. All of my above efforts have been through vigorous self-tutilage via copious amounts of reading and tinkering; but alas, I'm still a complete n00b at this stuff.

 

If anyone could save me from this nightmare I'd be eternally greateful.

 

Many thanks and nighty night!

 

Mal :)

 

 

[RitualBlack]

With my crossfire setup (6970m's) I only have flickering water which has been present for me since release. You can try the following if you want:

 

 

*NOTE* CAP's are integrated to the CCC, which is why they haven't change since cap 12.11#2. First thing you should do before anything else is uninstall your caps

Verify integrity of Skyrim

Default UGrids

TESV CAP assigned to SKSE.exe

V.Sync On

Use application settings

AA/AF controlled by ENB (smaa/x16af in enb config) and disabled in Skyrimprefs, though you will not need enb to get rid of flickering. Make sure it is working with Skyrim aa/af first.

When all else fails, sometimes disabling and re-enabling crossfire seems to get things working a bit better though it could just be me.

 

This is how I have it set up. Try getting rid of your CAPs first than if that doesn't work you can go from there. There are no guarantees about the drivers though since our cards are very different.

[Malachor01]

Hello,

 

Thanks very much for the response. It's appreciated :)

 

I don't use ENB so may I ask how I would go about using this to control the sampling? All I've ever done is use CCC (supersampling x24 + EQ with AF x 16) and made sure Vsync was always off and "crossfire mode" was at "default" (I also tried AMD optimised, 1x1 optimise etc to no avail). Also, how would I assign a TESV CAP to SKSE.exe? (It doesn't allow me to select SKSE.exe within CCC as an aplication profile; only TESV.exe or SkyrimLauncher.exe). I tried disabling/re-enabling crossfire many times however it doesn't resolve the issue for me. You also mentioned verifying the game cache. Whilst I have done this - and it more often than not says "1/2 files failed to verify and will be re-acquired", doing so makes the 'update.esm' file 'dirty' again when using BOSS, which requires another TES5Edit clean; so I've left it 'as is'. I can confirm that, prior to posting this, I uninstalled all CAPS and made sure to re-install AMD 13.3 drivers from scratch using driver fusion & reboot in between to make sure it was as clean as possible.

[RitualBlack]

When you are in the CCC there are the forced aa/af settings. Set those to use application settings and you can use a mod like the configurator to set in game aa/af without messing up your load order. They will not be as high quality as hardware settings but if you get it working without flickering you can try setting them back. Your driver install sounds like a good clean install so that will not be a problem. When you are in your gaming setting there should be a manage profiles section. In there you should see a button that either says save or something along the lines of ‘create new profile’. Either way you should set TESV as the default cap and upon hitting save there should be a windows navigation box which shows up. Browse to your SKSE shortcut and save the new profile to that.

 

If none of this works you could always try the 13.2 Beta 7 drivers. The 13 series of drivers have been a bit strange for me so I don't want to try my luck with getting rid of my current drivers for a while until an official release. For example 13.1 wouldn't even be recognized by my computer. I think 12.4 was one that caused crazy flickering for me but on my cousin similar card they were perfectly fine. Just shows how differently they can act from system to system.

 

Try setting everything in your custom SKSE TESV profile to use application settings (including v.sync) until you can trace down the exact cause of the problem. After that you can set everything back to how you had it.

 

Hopefully something I have listed here works. I know how annoying crossfire bugs can be ;D . One card can’t run the game on the settings you want + graphics mods (well for me on my laptop at least) and it is a hassle to disable crossfire for just one game.

 

Configurator:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/814

[psavola]

Hi All,

 

I've been playing Skyrim for 26 hours without issue and its all of a sudden started going nuts on me i.e. flickering enemies, flying mammoths, screen tearing and texture explosions.

 

Mal :smile:

 

 

long answer short.. use FPS limiter like radeon pro or msi afterburner. and limit FPS to screen refresh rate -1 (so 59 for most monitors) to avoid tearing.

 

meh.. should have read a little farther.. you tried that already.. however for me, fps limit removes falling from heaven mammoths and flickering enemies and improves the performance by a lot due to removing what i call "water everywhere" bug.

 

which causes splash noises everywhere and makes game think each step you take is either underwater or above water. (including animations, thus the splash sound and floating mammoths, game can't think if they are walking on land of swimming on top of water, thus in air)

oh and everything explodes out of shelves upon entering room and/or items rattling in cupboards, tables and such.

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2013 by psavola

[Malachor01]

My sincere thanks to all who responded with suggestions. Having tried all suggestions and still experiencing isues, I have decided to revert to a pristine vanilla install and start over from scratch, but this time incorporating S.T.E.P 2.2.4 and using Wyre Bash instead of NMM.

 

Thanks again everyone.

 

Mal.

[Malachor01]

Oh....my...word?

 

The S.T.E.P 2.2.4 Project includes 272 mods. It's taken me the best part of 5 hours to download them all. The new setup will utilise the following:

 

Wyre Bash

BOSS

BOSS Userlist Manager (BUM... lol?)

TES5Edit

DDSopt Texture Optimiser

Extreme S.T.E.P ini tweaks

 

I'll post an update when I can to inform of any progress :)

[Georgiegril]

Just a thought in your new setup--

1. screen tearing is a result of disabling VSync. Although some see it more than others, if you have it and it is too bothersome, the only real solution is to enable VSync and deal with the fps or lag issues (if you get them).

2. Flying mamoths and the llike can be the result of your 9 grids to load, which is unstable in skyrim, regardless of how powerful your rig. Try 7 grids to load and I am guessing the problem will not reappear.