32-bit conversion to 64-bit PC gone Bad?

[sgensemer42]

Though not strictly a STEP issue (yet), I would like an opinion from the Master Modders out there.

 

I had Skyrim installed on a 32-bit Win 7 PC. (Asus P5N-D SLI Mobo, Intel Q9400, 4GB DDR2 RAM, 650W PS, nVidia GT 9500, all about 3 yrs old.) Decent; but not stellar. Game loaded fairly quickly. Used SKSE and HiAlgo Boost.  Fraps clocked at 25-30 FPS during gameplay. Game ran fine; but kept having CTD issues. Decided to convert OS to 64-bit for performance improvement, and to try STEP. No hardware changes.

 

Surprise:

Installed 64-bit OS from scratch. No other changes except current drivers for all. Skyrim almost will not run. Takes about 4-5 minutes to launch. Loading screen is at 15 FPS (Before it was 35 or so). When game starts - Fraps reports 4-6 FPS. (Yes - four to six.) Exterior/Interior. Combat goes to 1-3 FPS. Game is setup per STEP 1.B to 1.E. Setting game in launcher options to Low only gains about 1 (one) FPS. NO mods installed. Just vanilla game and all DLC's.

 

Tried about every test I could think of (CPU-Z, HD Tune, RealTempGT, GPU-Z). All report hardware is nominal. No issues I can see. Running Heaven DX11 also reports 4-6 FPS. Low or High quality. GPU-Z reports only about 100MB of VRam used. GPU load is 95-100% (I do not know what it was using on the 32-bit OS). All temps nominal. CPU load is ~35%, Ram use is ~45%. Overall, PC is running slower than before (program and OS response).

 

I cannot believe this at all. Components are all 64-bit compliant. I am using 64-bit drivers.

 

Has anyone else experienced this? If so - any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[Kelmych]

I haven't seen any mention this problem on the STEP forums, so I'm at a loss to suggest what to try.

[TechAngel85]

Lets start with the basics:

 

What version of Windows 7 are you using? (Starter, Home Basic, etc)

 

Did you make sure you have all the correct drivers for your hardware now that you are running 64bit? Most hardware will require 64bit drivers to run properly on 64bit architecture.

 

Did you reinstall the game as well or did you just restore it from a backup or a separate hard drive or partition?

 

Just out of curiosity... If you was going to spend the money to upgrade, why didn't you just upgrade to Windows 8 64bit rather than sticking with Windows 7?

 

 

Latest Video Drivers:

https://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-320.49-whql-driver.html

 

Motherboard (wasn't described accurately bc ASUS didn't know what "P5N-D SLI" was...you can manually search for it and choose the correct OS (windows 7 64 bit) from the drop down menu.)

https://www.service.asus.com/#!downloads/c1wax

 

I HIGHLY recommend you use Driver Genius. If you don't want to pay for it, it'll at the very least show you a list of drivers that are out-of-date and need to be updated from which you can manually search for and download individually. I have the paid version and it does an amazing job. (Just don't use it to download and install the graphics drivers. Get those manually from nVidia.)

https://www.driver-soft.com/

[c0c0c0]

I'm having almost exactly the same symptoms without the OS upgrade. Are you sure that's the trigger?

[sgensemer42]

Am using Win 7 Home Premium.

 

All drivers "should" be 64-bit compliant.

 

Nvuidia driver updated to current.

 

ALL software reinstalled from scratch.

 

Did not do Win 8 because I already had a Win 7 copy. I just changed it from 32-bit to 64-bit. AS I do not have a touchscreen, I do not see the point to Win 8...

 

Mobo is Asus P5n-D. It is SLI capable (As is my video card.) BIOS is OK. Not sure about drivers. I will give Driver Genius a try. Thannks.

[Wormheart]

Did Steam do it's pre-launch installation of stuff when you first started Skyrim after the reinstall? (installing Directx, visual studio runtimes, etc.) if not, you might have to install at least Directx.

[sgensemer42]

Not really sure... When I re-installed Steam, Skyrim showed on the list of games, ready to install. I clicked on the game and it started downloading. All you see in Steam is that the package is downloading. There is NO breakdown of what is installing. Nothing on checking pre-reqs either. Took ~12 hrs to download. Yuch.

 

I have DirectX 11 installed courtesy of Windows and my Nvidia drivers. I doubt Steam installed 9c; but there is no way to tell. DirectX 11 "should" handle 9c games. It did when I was running a 32-bit system. I tried downloading DirectX 9c anyway, but I can't tell whether or not it actually installed. It does not show up in installed apps or any other DirectX install check I know of.

 

Again - The ONLY change I made here is changing my Win 7 Home Premium 32-bit OS to a Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. No hardware change. This required basically a reformat of the HD, (all handled by the Windows install routine) so all apps had to be reinstalled. Should not be ANY holdovers from the 32-bit OS.

[TechAngel85]

Open a Run box or use the search feature in the Start Menu and type in "dxdiag" (without the quotes) and hit Enter. This will open the DirectX Diagnostic Tool and allow you to see which version you are running along with a lot of other information. You can also click through the tabs at the top to see if it's found any issues.

[sgensemer42]

Did that already. Only shows DirectX 11. Does not indicate if any other (older) version is present. Does not show any issue, either.

 

Do you know of any tool that shows ALL installed versions of DirectX? I found nothing on a web search...

[Aiyen]

Reinstall the game would be the most obvious choice I think. If you are using Mod Organizer then it is really simple to just load in your mod order and load order etc. again.

 

If you are doing a reinstall of an OS then it is always a good idea to start everything over as well.... otherwise strange issues like this will happen.

[Kelmych]

DirectX 9 isn't typically installed by default in Windows 7. Running Dxdiag should tell you whether all the DirectX 9 components are currently installed. If DirectX 9 isn't installed, a search can point you to the download site at Microsoft.

 

By the way, you are losing some of the advantages of a 64bit OS with only 4Gb RAM.

[sgensemer42]

Yeah, I know about the memory. Baby steps. At least I've gained 1/2 GB!

 

Where are you seeing directX 9c info in dxdiag? I don't see it on any tab, 32 or 64 bit runs...

[Kelmych]

it might be hard to tell from dxdiag which components are from which version of DirectX. Most web discussions of DirectX 9 say Win 7 installs most but not necessarily all of DirectX 9.  You can always install DirectX 9  in case some components are missing.

[sgensemer42]

In Answer to Aiyen's statement about mods - This is occurring with a totally vanilla install. NO Mods. Only vanilla Skyrim and the three DLC's and Bethesda HRDLC's. A brand new install, too. I did happen to uninstall and start again with no change...

 

I was benchmarking my install prior to installing any mods. I had all of these DLC's in my 32-bit install as well.

 

All:

Still can't fathom why the same game would run so poorly on a 64-bit OS when it ran fine on a 32-bit OS.

 

Any other ideas?

[sgensemer42]

Oddly enough - I rebuilt my PC and reinstalled the 32-bit OS. Framerate still too low. WTF? Using the STEP configuration and running in windowed mode, I was able to gain back FPS so I'm now running 15-25 FPS most places/conditions. Wouldn't work on 64-bit. The only thing I can think of is that no matter what the Video card documentation says - it is NOT completely 64-bit compliant. So far I've installed ~60% of the STEP mods with no diserable degradation in FPS. Sweet.

[Aiyen]

Been looking over this old thread again and think its because your hardware is woefully outdated. And looking at which components you have, then even when they where new they where not among the better components on the market.

I am almost certain that would be the main reason. But if it works nicely enough at 32bit then keep it there.

If you are going to upgrade to a 64bit system with the reasoning "I will get more performance" then you need more memory.