Stumbles / Lag / Something

[p4ck3tl055]

My modded configuration is based on STEP 2.2.7 (You can see my complete setup here.), and I'm pretty happy with it.

 

BUT....  (There's always a but, huh?)

 

I have a LOT of stuttering. Not micro-stutters, (Although I'm sure that's happening too. Not tested for it) but lagging while the game does something - I think loading textures.

 

Let me try to explain by describing a fairly repeatable situation: I can walk into Whiterun, climb the steps to the left, pass the stone wall and look to the right.  As soon as I move the camera to the right, my game just freezes for a split second.  It recovers rather quickly, and all is normal afterwards. During that "freeze", my framerate drops from mid-50s to as low 12, then bounces back up.

 

These "stutters" happen at seemingly random places and vary in intensity.  Most just make the game feel not as smooth as normal while moving.  Some - like the Whiterun one above - are more pronounced and literately bring the game to a halt for a split-second.  The very worst of these actually feel like lagging and last for several seconds.

 

At any rate, my previous computer did this as well, with a very similar mod load.  My current computer is beefier with 4x RAM, 2x VRAM, a ton of additional GPU power, and the OS/game are loaded on an SSD which my testing indicates has at least 5x the performance of my prior RAID0 setup.  This makes me think that I'm hitting the 3.1GB limit for Skyrim itself or I've got something wrong somewhere.

 

To that end, I'm looking for any advice to help reduce or eliminate these stumbles.

 

One thing that I'm curious about.  I've told Mod Organizer to extract BSAs for all the mods that it installs.  But I DID NOT extract the BSAs for the original game, the DLCs or the HD Texture packs that came down from Steam when I installed Skyrim.  Could this be part of it?

 

Would optimizing the textures (with DDSOpt or Optimizer Texture or the like) help?  I'm pretty sure that, when given the option, I chose 2048 textures for everything but character textures.  I chose 4096 for skin and face textures when available.  Maybe that's it? Grab the 1024 textures for most things????  (I'm recording a let's play based on this setup and I really want it to look great, which is why I did that.)

 

Could it be something else?

 

I'm using the latest nVidia drivers, the most up to date DirectX, latest MSI Afterburner beta, ENB 246 and the latest Phinix Natural ENB (I know my guide says RealVision, but that was yesterday. LOL.) I'd say 90% of the time this stuttering isn't a problem, but the other 10% is simply driving me crazy.

[Aiyen]

Make sure you setup your enblocal.ini file properly... you cannot just use the one the ENB author just provides and expect it to work.

Most stuttering issues when ENBoost is involved can be traced back to this.

 

Best suggestion is to play with the values in the enblocal.ini file. If that fails entirely then you most likely need to use smaller resolution textures since the load is just too much for your rig to handle.

[p4ck3tl055]

Make sure you setup your enblocal.ini file properly... you cannot just use the one the ENB author just provides and expect it to work.

Most stuttering issues when ENBoost is involved can be traced back to this.

 

Best suggestion is to play with the values in the enblocal.ini file. If that fails entirely then you most likely need to use smaller resolution textures since the load is just too much for your rig to handle.

Interesting.  I did set the proper memory for my card in the enblocal.ini file, but pretty much left everything else alone.  I'll go back and check it out the remainder of the file tonight.  If that doesn't help, then I'll start looking for 1k versions of the textures that I have.

 

 

Just so I'm clear in my head:

 

1). The mixed BSA and loose file arrangement that I have is not a problem?

2). Using DDSOpt is not going to help me?

 

I'll report back after I dig into my ini file.

[p4ck3tl055]

I'll report back after I dig into my ini file.

Looked in the INI and it all looked fine - until I stumbled across this guide.  I followed several of it's recommendations about the Skyrim.ini and the enblocal.ini, mainly because I'm running the alpha version of SKSE which incorporates the memory patch.

 

I also cleaned the main Bethesda ESMs as shown in Gopher's video in that same guide.

 

One other thing that I changed, I disabled AA and AF in the nVidia driver (using nVidia Inspector).  THIS helped a TON.  This setting change alone eliminated the mini-stutters and a screen tearing effect that I saw when rotating the camera quickly.

 

I also reduced a handful of texture mods to 1k versions.

 

Played and recorded all night - about 3.5 hours - I had the smoothest night of my life.  No CTD, only two stutters of the medium variatey as  I roamed the tundra of Whiterun hunting for deer and elk.  Load screens are much quicker now - probably because of the smaller textures.

 

I'll play for another couple of days and see how things go.

[EssArrBee]

Are you using AA and AF from other source or are you just playing without it?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[p4ck3tl055]

Are you using AA and AF from other source or are you just playing without it?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm using AA and AF supplied by Phinix Natural ENB.  I think the AA is provided by Sweet FX and AF is supplied by ENB itself.  At least that's the way I read it in the enblocal.ini.

enblocal.ini