Stumped. Huge FPS drop - No config change

[Holymartyr]

I've been using the same Skyrim installation on my laptop that I've been using on my desktop.

 

Only difference is my laptop I use the lowest settings, have shadows removed, and have cut all textures in half with the Texture Optimizer (as stated in the STEP guide).

 

Up until today, the game was running fine, constant 30-40 FPS (easily and happily playable - I have a GT 540 M and an i3 2.53 Dual core with 4GB Ram).

 

Then for some reason, I sit down to play some more, and the game will only run at 7 FPS IF I'M LUCKY. GPU/CPU usage IS NOT maxing out (GPU hovering around 20-40% and CPU hovering around 70-80%), Disk usage is normal, nothing out of the ordinary. I have no clue what happened. I haven't changed anything at all as far as I know.

 

Any ideas before I completely delete everything? (probably going to reformat just because indows gets absurdly slower and slower over a few months)

[Vond]

Have you checked the GPU cores are running at the speeds they should? There's a bug with the last few sets of NVIDIA drivers that causes the cores to stay locked at idle values. Then again usually that's fixed after a reboot which I'm pretty sure you already tried, so most likely isn't that. :/

[Neovalen]

Check your save game size... is it horribly bloated?

[Holymartyr]

CPU AND GPU are running at proper speeds, and I'm using a savefile where I saved with a COMPLETELY CLEAN Skyrim install RIGHT outside of the Helgen cave (beginning of the game).

[ivactheseeker]

Are you sure you're running with Nvidia gpu and not the integrated one? Because this is the drop i see when running Skyrim with intel. What mod are you using?

[frihyland]

Is your disk more than 80% full? windows starts slowing down after the disk hits about 70% and takes a nose dive at 80% and over regardless of disk size. Its the main reason windows should always be on its own disk thats mostly empty. Stupid Microsoft... sometimes it feels like voodoo to keep the system working optimal

 

Is it just skyrim thats slow or is your whole system slower? try running other applications or games that would stress it and see.

[Holymartyr]

I've only used 196 out of my 385 GB on my laptops SATA HDD. So disk capacity isn't the issue. Testing if other games are slowed down as well.

 

Edit: Sniper Elite 2, League of Legends and Wargame: European Escalation are all running just fine, same old same old.

 

Just seems to be skyrim for whatever reason. As I said I haven't changed anything at all from earlier yesterday to later yesterday (when the problem started occuring) as far as I know. Just a random drop in performance with seemingly no explination.

 

Some added info that I suppose could possibly help - I love RCRN, but to get it to work with Optimus, I have to take a Hex Editor, and rename all references to d3d9 or D3D9 in the TESV.exe to d3fx or D3FX. I then rename the RCRN d3d9.dll file to d3fx.dll. With this modification, my laptop will load Skyrim WITH RCRN AND the Nvidia GPU. I've been using this fix for optimus for a month and half I'd say (since I found it), and never had any problems with FPS.

 

Just thought I'd mention I was using this 'fix' even though it doesn't seem directly related to my problem in any way. But I don't know how all this works in fine print, I just know the basics of Optimus and what the d3d9.dll files do.

[torminater]

well either it is caused by this fix or sth else. ^^

have you checked your background processes? ESPECIALLY check for Realtek processes eating up 25% of your cpu. There is an easy fix for that.

[Holymartyr]

Nope, everything that could possibly be closed is closed. And as I said I don't see how it could be the fix I use (From my perspective) because this fix has been working just fine for me for months and then randomly yesterday Skyrim's FPS dropped. There's no connection (once again from what I can tell). Nothing at all was changed configuration-wise that could/would affect Skyrim.

[Holymartyr]

Well reformatting laptop. No clue what happened. But a reformat is needed anyways (imo) - Windows is just too slow for my taste.

[torminater]

well, if you want to set up your laptop OPTIMALLY follow this guide.

https://www.tweakguides.com/files/TGTC_7_1.3.zip

It's the best one I've found so far.