Performance issues with a beasty config (IMO)

[nico53laval]

I've run thrgouh everything recommended by STEP (including texture optimizing to 2048K), set the viewing distance to 7 and I've installed a few mods (Immersive Environments instead of RCRN, Amazing Follower Tweaks, Script Dragon with POS1 horse spawn, auto level... and some body and hair mods). I've enabled VSync because without it, I experience huge tearing issues. But with it, I sometimes drop to 40 or 30 and that makes the whole game feel laggy although those frame rates should be quite acceptable. Also, I experience some freezes and (rarely) CTDs but that's the less important issue to me. The question is : why does that when I've got a far better config than the STEP writer (sorry, forgotten his name ^^).

AMD Phenom II *4 965 BE @ 3800 MHz

Gigabyte GTX 670 @ 1360 MHz max core and 6400 max memory

8 gigs of Kingston HyperX genesis @ 1600 MHz

defragmented HDD (no SSD)

Skyrim v 1.5

Thanks for your help and advice.

[torminater]

ever tried to disable raid?

not sure whether it works alright with ssd's. if you know better, nvrmind ^^

- are you using a gamebooster? if yes, try it without, if not try it out.

- run steam in offline mode and disable steam overlay in game.

- deactivate your real-time security from your anti-virus.

- run perfmon on tesv.exe for 1000% detail or just use "Skyrim Performance Monitor". maybe you find the culprit.

- activate logging, tracing and debugging for papyrus in your skyrim.ini and see whether the lag is somehow to be backtraced to a bad script.

- delete all scripting related mods and try to reproduce the lag.

[JudgmentJay]

No gamebooster, no real-time monitoring from AV, and it can't be script-related since it happened on a vanilla install as well. I'm going to try the Steam offline mode/no overlay as well as trying to disable my sound card to see if it might be the culprit. I'll try out Skyrim Performance monitor, thanks.

[JudgmentJay]

So here's my performance while running down the path from Ivarstead with a ton of stuttering.

 

[frihyland]

Looks fine really, no strain at all on the cpu, vram use is a bit high but it never overflows, could be gpu that would be next to test, and if its not that, then its your harddrive speed or another interfering program (or bad programming).

[JudgmentJay]

Did a Papyrus log of the run down the hill. Is it normal for a ~2 minute run to have 20,000 lines of warnings/errors?

 

A vast, vast majority of them are:

 

[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM] error: Cannot call GetStageDone() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
	[None].monitor_polling.Update_System() - "monitor_polling.psc" Line 47
	[None].monitor_polling.OnUpdate() - "monitor_polling.psc" Line 65

There are also a few of these:

 

[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM] VM is frozen
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM] Dumping stack 13313057:
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  Frame count: 2 (Page count: 1)
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  State: Waiting on latent function (Freeze state: Freezing)
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  Type: Normal
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  Return register: False
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  Has stack callback: No
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]  Stack trace:
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]   <unknown self>.utility.Wait() - "<native>" Line ?
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    IP: 0
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    [param1]: 2.000000
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]   [ (00060EC6)].critterSpawn01.OnLoad() - "CritterSpawn.psc" Line 83
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    IP: 354 Instruction: 15 Line: 83
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    [::temp0]: True
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    [::temp1]: True
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    [::temp2]: 0
[07/11/2012 - 07:44:30PM]    [::nonevar]: None

A few other .psc troublemakers are DCUpdateQuestScript.psc, USKPCWCampLeadersFixScript.psc, and UBG13UpdateQuestScript.psc.

 

So how do I find out what mod these files belong to?

[JudgmentJay]

Just started a new game and logged for about 15 minutes, and I had very few errors. Could the errors in my main game be the result of me trying out and deleting mods haphazardly? If so, is there any way to clean up my save files?

[frihyland]

When you try out a mod you need to revert to a save before you used it or you get the results you are seeing, the troubleshooting guide on the wiki has detailed advice on the subject.

[JudgmentJay]

Welp, just did the whole clean save procedure on a vanilla install, reinstalled all my mods, and the problem persists ;_;

 

So I guess my only choice is to start over. Lesson learned I guess!

[LeetMiniWheat]

yeah this is why I've intentionally not played that far, cause I'm still experimenting with mods. sorry to hear about your dirty saves. what I usually do is always create a new save everytime i save and when my saves folder gets bloated i .rar the old ones in case i ever need them

[nico53laval]

Sorry guys, I had no internet for a few days so I couldn't reply. So, I did some tesing with other games, with 32* CSAA, high quality AO, all settngs maxed out, including BF3, everything runs fine at almost constant 60 FPS (with vsync, only AC Revelations (a console port again) seems to have issues with VSync). So, I think that the problem is actually the VSync and not the VRAM, the scripts etc. But, sadly if I disable it and set a FPS cap or if I pick adaptive VSync, the tearing makes some games, including Skyrim, unbearable...

[torminater]

32 CSAA is not effective for skyrim.

[MadWizard25]

I would roll back to an earlier driver version. The latest beta drivers game me horrible tearing with adaptive or standard vsync. Now im back to using Nvidia Inspector to cap at 58fps, and everything is fine.

[nico53laval]

32 CSAA is not effective for skyrim.

I didn't use it for Skyrim, it was just to test out if there were driver-caused performance issues in other games.

[nico53laval]

I would roll back to an earlier driver version. The latest beta drivers game me horrible tearing with adaptive or standard vsync. Now im back to using Nvidia Inspector to cap at 58fps and everything is fine.

Which driver works fine without fearing with only an FPS cap? 301.42 WHQL?

[torminater]

yup, seems as if it is a farely good driver...