Microstutter with Crossfire enabled. Perfect with Borderless Window.

[Malachor]

Hi All,

 

As the title suggests, I cannot resolve the age-old issue of Microstutter with my game with Crossfire enabled.  I have 2 x MSI 7970 Lightnings 3GB in Crossfire (not overclocked) with the latest stable (14.4) drivers.  I should point out that TESV.exe is optimised EXACTLY as pointed out in section 1.E.1.1 of S.T.E.P 2.2.9 and CCC Guide.

 

Here's what I've tried thus far:

 

• Setting an FPS limiter in enblocal.ini to 42, 59 and 60fps
• Setting Crossfire Mode in Catalyst Control Center (CCC from now on) to "Alternate Frame Rendering Friendly"
• Tried different permutations of "Wait for vertical refresh" in CCC to 'Always off, Always on, Unless Apllication Specifies" etc.

When Crossfire is on, i.e. full Window - both cards light up and Microstutter occurs.  Mainly when close to dungeon walls or interiors.  It's extremely frustrating and I can't play with that kind of jerkiness.  But, if I turn Crossfire off, or use Borderless Window (not full screen, so Crossfire is disabled by default) then the game is butter smooth and silky - perfect; but, of course I'm not getting anywhere near the kind of performance I'd get with having them both enabled.

 

I've had this issue since S.T.E.P 2.2.5 and have rebuilt my machine 4 times during that period - all with different drivers and all with drivers removed in safe mode using the AMD Driver removal utility, restart, then install new drivers; yet the issue persists.  I'm not really content to leave it "as is" and play with one card because that essentially means I bought the second card for nothing and its a complete waste of money. It's also niggling at me and I can't leave it because it's personal now

 

Has anyone else had this or know of anything I can try to resolve this? I know my hardware isn't at fault because I can play Diablo 3 for 10+ hours with Crossfire enabled with no stutter or issues of any kind.  I can also run Heaven benchmark with Crossfire enabled for hours on end - no issues. 

 

One thing I noticed too is that, with Crossfire enabled, when bringing up the game menu, there's a yellow flicker in the background, which is just awful.  With Crossfire disabled, it's not there.

 

Been banging my head against the wall with this for over a year; so it's doing my nut in! Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.  Thanks very much all :)

 

Regards

 

Malachor.

[phazer11]

First Question: Are you using ENB? If so that's probably your problem. ENB and Crossfire are not the best of friends. Of course the game is just kind of glitchy with multi card systems even SLi.

[Malachor]

Hi Phazer11 :)

 

Many thanks for the response.  I can confirm I'm only using the ENBoost portion of ENB.  I'm not using any kind of ENB graphics-related enchancements. 

 

Kind Regards

 

Malachor.

[DoubleYou]

Try setting DisableDriverMemoryManager to true in enblocal.ini.

[hishutup]

after using enb and CF I've found that wait busy render helps but I don't know the side effects other than script latencys go through the roof which shouldn't be a problem if you are at 60 frames... 

Keep your frames above 30 period. There is an odd slow down when the frames are decreasing from 31-29 and speed up when going from 29 - 30... Dont use DOF and if you can don't use adaptation, they both cause this weird flicker. For DOF, if you set the delay or whatever its called to 0 you can get it to work, sometimes and other it'll do this weird white flash in interiors which can be bad for your health especially  only if you have epilepsy. For adaptationif you can toggle on and off adaptation and/or use effect which might make the flicker less apparent. Dont worry about any of those .dll hacks they dont work nor does renaming the exe. If you have more than 2 GB then try this:

 

[MEMORY]

ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true //If you have SKSE settings below then false

ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true

DisableDriverMemoryManager=true

DisablePreloadToVRAM=false

EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false

ReservedMemorySizeMb=256

VideoMemorySizeMb=1920 //or equivalent 

EnableCompression=false // when true this causes weird stutter for me

AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

 

SKSE:

 

[Memory]

DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768

ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

 

I spent days trying different things this seems to work for me.

Most importantly keep your VRAM under control. The lag literately triples.

 

I found that using ewis inis help tremendously.

Edited July 22, 2014 by hishutup

[phazer11]

How much VRAM do your cards have again 3GB yeah(if the OP is correct)? If so try setting your VideoMemorySizeMb=3072 or setting AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true. Also, try adding the following to your SKSE.ini it shouldn't make much of a difference but couldn't hurt.

[General]ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

Also, regarding the game .ini's we don't recommend 90% of .ini edits since they either don't help (as in might be detrimental) or are of dubious use.

[hishutup]

I left out that SKSE line because everyone should have it.... The reason I recommended the ini is because I didn't see any abnormal or weird tweaks other than the papyrus times are different 1.4 instead of 1.2 but shouldn't make a difference but I would say put them back to 1.2. 

theres been some debate about AutodetectVideoMemorySize whether it should be true or false.... main argument is it might not be correct...

I say trial and error because there is no true answer.

 

dont use enb fps limiter if you don't need to

disable the adaptive quality in local ini...

try disabling skylight and image based lighting (I've noticed input lag with this on)...

 

side note: AMD has pretty weird driver problems because it says I have 8 graphics cards... 

Edited July 22, 2014 by hishutup

[Malachor]

Hi All,

 

Thanks very much for the suggestions - it's appreciated :)

 

I can confirm my cards have 3GB of VRAM and also can confirm I have the following lines already present:

 

skse.ini

 

[General] ClearInvalidRegistrations=1

 

[Memory]

DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768

ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

 

enblocal.ini

 

VideoMemorySizeMb=

AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true

 

The only ini tweaks I have are those suggested by S.T.E.P 2.2.9 sections 1.D.1 & 1.D.2

 

I'd rather not change anything I don't have to because I don't want to introduce anything that could cause instability further down the line.  The game runs fine with just one card enabled and I'd like to have a serious play through this time round (I've spent sincd Oct 2013 just trying to get the game stable), which is why I have hand-picked 29 plugins only, tested each one individually and ensured they play nice together.  I should also point out that:

 

• Mods were installed with Mod Organizer (v1.2.9) in the order depicted by the tables in the guide, following the "detailed instructions" for each mod and reading the related mod information page for compatibility/installation issues
• Mods were sorted using LOOT 0.6.0
• Mods tagged as unclean were cleaned with TES5Edit individually in the manner outlined in the guide
• Wyre Bash was run via MO to create a bashed patch to merge the levelled lists.  This created a bashed patch in the overwrite folder of MO, which was then installed 'as a mod' by using the 'create mod' feature.  This was placed at the bottom of the left-hand pane window and was automatically at the bottom of my 'plugins' list.  Both are checked.
• Each mod was checked individually to ensure dummy plugins were disabled, mod-specific tweaks were applied i.e. Flora Overhaul ini tweaks for grass, bashed tags for AmidianBorn Content Addon (was unsure about this one as Wyre Bash said it had no tags and was set to 'automatic', LOOT didn't suggest anything for it but Skyrim Revisted guide via S.T.E.P states this one needs 'relev, delev' tags.  I've just left this as 'automatic' within Wyre Bash)
• Tested game stability for 15 mins using Speedmult 1500 - no issues.

Regards

 

Mal.

[Breems]

Do you get stutter when playing the game in a completely vanilla state?

[Malachor]

Do you get stutter when playing the game in a completely vanilla state?

Unfortunately yes 😦Sorry for double post. Phone session issue.

[DoubleYou]

Do you stutter in Crossfire WITHOUT Enboost?

[Malachor]

I do. Apologies. This is why I'm at the end of my tether with this. Appreciate you guys still chipping in 😊

[Halde]

What is your FPS when the stutter occour? Because as far as I know, microstutter appears for SLI/Crossfire solutions if FPS is ~30.

[Breems]

I hate reading this because I have this problem too, and I know how annoying and persistent it is. I've tried an infinite combination of fixes and tweaks, but these suggestions are the only ones that have worked for me:

 

Option A

• Disable VSync everywhere, i.e. in your INI files, GPU settings, and enblocal.ini. This should eliminate stutter but will probably result in screen tearing and other strange glitches. Setting an FPS limit of 60 while disabling VSync may work for you, but I doubt it.

Option B

• Download the FPS Limiter on Nexus (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/34/?).
• You can either disable VSync and set a limit of 60 FPS or enable VSync and leave this setting untouched. I recommend the latter.
• Set 'RenderAheadLimit' to 1. This will almost certainly reduce or eliminate your stutter, but it comes with a heavy performance cost.

Option C

• Disable the game's VSync and enable VSync in enblocal.ini. 
• Use Dxtory to limit your FPS to 60.

Option C works best for me. Dxtory's FPS limiter seems to function differently than the limiters provided by ENB and the one I linked to on the Nexus. 

[Malachor]

Thanks so much for the suggestions!

 

When I get an opportunity to test them I will update this topic with my findings.

 

Thanks again and I really appreciate the helpful feedback and your time :)

[hishutup]

do not disable v sync. It helps the stuttering but you'll get more flying animals, objects in houses decide to flip out. and sometimes you have dead animals pop up next to you.

Its happened to me... 

Edited July 23, 2014 by hishutup