Poor performance with good system spec

[rootsrat]

I have a bit of a problem that has been bothering me for a while now and I can't resolve on my own, so I kindly ask for some  community support :)

 

First of all - my specs.

 

In addition:

Win7 x64

4 GB RAM (1600)

OS installed on SSD

Skyrim installed on HDD

GPU: ASUS GTX660 Direct CU II TOP 2 GB VRAM

 

I use MO as my mod manager.

 

My Skyrim build.

 

So I have nearly 400 mods installed, but my build is stable, I get no CTDs, permanent no freezes, no infinite loading screen etc. 

 

Various monitoring tools indicate that my VRAM never goes beyond 1.7 GB (apart from maybe couple of times when it nearly touched 1.8 GB). 

 

However, I get some stuttering and temporary freezes in external locations only (internal locs are perfectly fine) - especially when turning around and during combat. Freezes are more likely to occur during combat and stutters during turning around. This indicates that there is VRAM problem, but as I said - I don't reach the limit, according to monitoring tools (I mainly use GPU Tweak tool that came with my graphics card).

 

My GPU usage sometimes reaches 99%. 

 

My RAM usage is about 80%, 90% tops.

 

After the game loads up I need to wait couple of minutes until everything is loaded up (I can tell by HDD working hard :) ), once that's done though I can play normally, but after some time the stuttering and freezes starts... I turn around - the HDD starts working extensively and the game stutters. Combat - It freezes for a few seconds (sometimes 15-20 seconds!). It's very annoying, as I've spent lots of time getting this build to be stable.

 

Ah, I optimised vanilla/HR textures and I'm using Vanilla Optimised Textures mod as well. I mostly use 1024 textures, a few rare 2K ones.

 

Can anyone think of what may be causing this? Is this RAM related issue (not enough?)? Or maybe me INI files are messed? I did not change ini files much, just added a few STEP recommended changes (not all of them either), amended the entries to get ENB to work - that's it...

[torminater]

I'ld make an educated guess, that it is RAM limitation, since I cannot get good performance on my laptop with 4 GB RAM either. Even if it shouldn't make a difference to Skyrim ...

[MontyMM]

I would say you could be hitting both VRAM and RAM limitations. The stuttering while turning I would say is almost a guarantee that VRAM is short.

 

Also, with only 4gb of RAM in the system, Skyrim can only use a portion of that, so the rest of its memory use will have to be on disk. Since it keeps textures in memory, it is quite possibly being forced to swap textures during play, which could account for some hideous slowdowns.

[rootsrat]

Thanks for your input guys.

 

I am pretty sure it can't be VRAM, as I used nearly same build before buying this card earlier this year. I had 1.5 GB card so additional 0.5 GB is now available, that should be plenty. And as stated, I use mainly 1k textures... 2GB VRAM should really be more than enough for that, no?

 

I was assuming it's the RAM - but I did not want to rush and buy more memory without confirming first, although I was planning for this purchase for a while now.

[MontyMM]

I am pretty sure it can't be VRAM, as I used nearly same build before buying this card earlier this year. I had 1.5 GB card so additional 0.5 GB is now available, that should be plenty. And as stated, I use mainly 1k textures... 2GB VRAM should really be more than enough for that, no?

 

 

I would have thought so.  But, the stutter while turning is such a good indication of low VRAM, that I would find that more compelling than what the metrics in the monitor app appear to be telling you.

[rootsrat]

Yeah, definitely agree and that's what i thought in the first place. Would the error threshold be 200-300 MB though, or maybe even more? That seems a lot...

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

[MontyMM]

I'm really not sure. I wouldn't necessarily see any reason for an error threshold with the VRAM metric, assuming it works properly. The difficulty is normally the other way round, in that it reports what it's reserved, rather than what it's necessarily using. What I don't know, is how things behave as VRAM approaches its limit - perhaps part of it is reserved, or that it deliberately tries to avoid filling beyond a certain threshold. This is total speculation though.

[rootsrat]

Well, even if it is VRAM - I still don't understand how I am reaching the limit with 1K textures for pretty much everything with 2GB VRAM :o_O:

 

Guess I have some further testing to do. I really don't want to further reduce visual quality of my game! :yucky:

[Aiyen]

Would be very strange if it is not due to lacking resources.

 

With that many scripted mods on your list then depending on what your doing ingame, then the portion of memory reserved for scripts can get rather large.

Especially combat increase the amount of scripts running, and if the CPU is waiting for other cycles to finish then you get stuttering. Which in turn becomes freezes since the papyrus engine is rather sensitive.

 

Also with only 4Gb, then it would be almost impossible for the game to use more then 2Gb at any point since the OS would take up the rest. Hence almost all texture swapping would have to go to disk... and you have your Skyrim on a slow HDD, so that would produce even more stuttering.

 

I am positive that just getting another 4Gb RAM block to put in your machine would solve quite a bit of the issue.

 

Edit: I do not think you will gain much from going lower in visual quality, since you would still need to wait for the about 200-500Mb of new textures being swapped when changing cells. This is a rough estimate from my testing of cells that have a bit of everything, forest, winter forest tundra etc. The more diverse the region the larger the amount of new textures (obviously!).. but also the larger the stuttering.

[WilliamImm]

I am positive that just getting another 4Gb RAM block to put in your machine would solve quite a bit of the issue.

In fact, I'd suggest you put two additional 4GB blocks in your system to boost your memory to a healthy 12 GB - which should give you plenty enough ram to run Skyrim without stuttering.

[MontyMM]

Yes, I've a suspicion it could be both. The problem with using system metrics to work out what's going on with a specific program, is that they're not really designed to tell us the information that we want. They can give an indication, but not the accurate overall figures we would like.

[rootsrat]

I can confirm that this was RAM issue. I purchased new RAM (Corsair Vengeance 2x4GB, 1600 9CL, really good reviews) and after doing some initial testing I can confirm the problems are gone. I ran the game on the same settings as previously and it was never running more smoothly! I then inreased grass & trees drawing distance and there was no performance loss. There is some minor stuttering, but nothing that breaks my game, I can live with that.

 

I am so excited!  It's time to fine tune my texture mods and ini settings so that I can squeeze all the juices out of my machine! I am so close to getting the perfect Skyrim build I always wanted! 

[Aiyen]

Glad to hear that the hunches where correct!

Hope you get many good hours in that crazy build of yours! :D

[rootsrat]

I revised my current build. This is what I'm on now: https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Rootsrat/My_Skyrim_Build (this is my base build, I add more profile-specific mods to this one).

 

385 mods, nearly all 255 esp slots taken. It's been pretty stable so far. I would get ocassional CTD, presumable to the amount of scripts running in the background? The crashes didn't happen very often anyway, sometimes I was able to play for a few good hours without a single crash, and sometimes - rarely though - it would crash after about an hour or so at the very least.

 

I'm eager to play with new RAM installed to see if that's gonna help :)