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.

[JudgmentJay]

I started a new game and I still get the stuttering at Ivarstead :( Did Papyrus logging and there were 0 warnings/errors, so I can rule that out. I also tried rolling back to several different graphic drivers with no luck. Finally, I thought I might be running into bandwidth limitations, so I enabled PCI-e 3.0 via the nVidia patch. This too did nothing.

 

I did discover that if I revert the z-fighting tweak the stuttering is greatly decreased. If I open the Skyrim launcher and set the View Distance tab values to their "High" preset values, the stuttering is gone. That said, I shouldn't have to do this. I know my PC is capable of handling this.

 

As torminater suspected, I'm starting to think it's related to my SSDs/raid0. Maybe the SSDs lack the throughput to load so many large textures/distant LOD objects, or maybe my stripe size is too small. Or maybe Skyrim doesn't like being on the same drive as Windows. At any rate, I'm going to break the raid up, format both drives, do a fresh install of Windows on one and install Steam/games on the other. I'll be pretty sad if this doesn't work =/.

[LeetMiniWheat]

I doubt it's related to your raid, unless your SSD's have some intermittent lockup/freeze issues like some do. if anything, your SSD's should be improving texture loading. mine certainly has.

 

as for drivers, i've been using 304.48 and 304.79 and the general consensus seems to be that they are far better than 301 WHQL

 

 

although I'm actually troubleshooting some performance issues too now, even on vanilla with no mods I'm getting dips in fps down to 60-75, and fog seems to be one of the culprits