Freezing In External Cells

[Goatroth]

Hello all. This "little" problem has been plaguing me for a while now, and it's got me tearing my hair out in frustration. I've installed only the core mods from STEP, including of course all the 1024 versions where possible, and I have constant stuttering in outdoor areas, and sometimes even a CTD or complete freeze (gotta alt+tab and close process). I've monitored GPU-Z and the Skyrim Performance Monitor during these times, and have found that my VRAM is maxed, and Skyrim is never taking up more than 2GB of RAM.

 

I'm using all the core mods (and only core mods) from STEP 2.2.3, RLO, and an ENB. Here are my specs:

 

AMD Phenom II X4 925 @ 2.8GHz

XFX Radeon HD 4850 1GB GDDR3 VRAM, 695MHz core, 993MHz memory

4GB DDR2-800 RAM

7200RPM SATA HDD

 

And I play at 1440x900, no AA (except EdgeAA from ENB), 8xAF, high settings from the launcher.

 

If anyone has any insight into what's going on and how I can fix it, I'd be very grateful. Thanks.

[Goatroth]

I think I might have found the culprit, at last. Static Mesh Improvement Mod. I disabled that, and was able to play for 2 hours straight with no crashes or freezes, whereas with it enabled it would crash after only 10-30 minutes of play.