NKbestK

As other people also seem to have the same issue, and nobody is aware of fix, I think this thread can be closed. While the issue is annying, it does not make Skyrim unplayable, for me at least. Thanks to everyone that replied!

Yes, I have had problems with my earlier graphics card (a 760) where I maxed out my VRAM before, and this is certainly very different. Sadly, decreasing reserved memory in enblocal.ini from 512 to 256, and then from 256 to 64 did not have any effect for me..

I can confirm all your observations now that I have installed the Full version of RealVision ENB (plus ELFX and CoT). I got 60 FPS almost everywhere on a maximum of 50% GPU usage, except for the aforementioned drops of course. With RealVision added, I get 99% GPU usage and about 40-50 FPS everywhere (outside that is). If I move to the Whiterun stairs, my FPS doesn't really fall and stays at an average of 38 FPS. So without ENB, I get ~45 FPS with 50% GPU usage, and with ENB, ~40 FPS with 100% GPU usage.. Perhaps playing with the reserved memory in ENBoost's enblocal.ini helps, as Nozzer66 suggested. I've left that on 512 so far, but I'll give that a shot later today.

That's unfortunate, the OS will have no effect on performance then.. How do you cope with this, scale back performance in the ini's?

I see, perhaps that is the case.. Thank you for replying! I am interested though, what is your setup like? Specifically, what OS are you using? Windows 8?

Hi guys, I have just upgraded to a new videocard and the performance I am getting from this card is not what I think it is supposed to be. So far I haven't been able to figure out why my performance is this bad, and I hope you guys have some ideas. My system: Nvidia GeForce 780 (3072 MB vRAM) Intel I5-4570 Quad Core (3.20 Ghz) 16 GB RAM Samsung Evo 250 GB SSD (Containing both Skyrim and MO) Windows 8.1 Pro x64 I have been modding since Oblivion, and have installed STEP Extended completely about 4-5 times so far, so I would say that I am an experienced modder. This is a fresh installation of Windows 8, with the newest Nvidia drivers. I've optimized the vanilla textures using DDSopt, use ENBoost (no ENB) and generally installed every mod of STEP Extended, with the exception that I've mostly used the higher resolution variants. I use only SMAA as AA, and force AF (16x) via Nvdia Inspector (The only thing I added in that tool). Finally, at the moment I have no additional mods installed, only STEP mods. My files are: skyrim.ini, skyrimprefs.ini, modlist.txt, loadorder.txt and enblocal.ini. The issue: While I can play Skyrim just fine (meaning no CTD, ILS or anything bad), I think I can expect my system to run 60 FPS everywhere, at any time. Generally this is true and I get a nice 60 FPS, but when moving around I get a few dips into 55 FPS, and more annoyingly, there are certain locations where my framerate just drops a lot. After shortly testing Skyrim, I have found three locations, which are areas which were taxing for my system before I upgraded to the 780. These are: in Markarth on the hill overlooking the Silver Mine part of the city (~35 FPS), in Whiterun on the steps to Dragons Reach facing the city (~45 FPS), and in Riverwood across the river facing the village (~50 FPS). Screenshots of these locations: and Now my first idea was that I was simply overzealous with my choice of textures, but I use Skyrim Performance Monitor almost constantly and it shows that all parameters are in the green! GPU and CPU load are consistently under 60%, RAM is under 2 GB and vRAM is under 2.8 GB. There is no reason why I should be getting anything under 60 FPS! Furthermore, when uninstalling every mod (safe for the cleaned ESM's) I still only get 40 FPS in the Markarth location, so removing the mods doesn't help the situation very much. Completely removing ENBoost files from my Skyrim directory also helps, but only little: I get 45 FPS in Markarth, so only an improvement of 5 FPS.. Finally, switching back to vanilla INI files does not improve or deteriorate performance, so even in a nearly vanilla Skyrim I only get 45 FPS in Markath. The other locations now give 60 FPS though.. It seems like my system somehow 'underestimates' my graphics card, so that while it has plenty of juice to spare, Skyrim decreases the framerate instead of making my card work harder. What I've done so far: Inspired by Simondererste's problem which is similare to mine (see https://forum.step-project.com/topic/5869-stepcore-stutterfps-drops-with-a-good-pc-optimization/), I began playing around with enblocal.ini, but that hasn't helped very much. Switching between borderless windows and just playing fullscreen has no effect and neither has tempering with the memory size (I have used 8000 and 10240). As you can see from my enblocal.ini, the rest of the parameters are chosen conservatively, so I don't think they are of influence. This is quite a strange problem, and having framerate drops before even installing any ENB's makes me quite sad. If any of you have some ideas about this problem, I would be very happy! Thank you for any help you can provide!