Low FPS and extreme stuttering

[Arci996]

Hi everyone, in the last days I've been following this guide and today I finished it, I started a new game as a recruit for the Companions, the problem is that when I go to the lower floor of Jorrvaskr I have a big frame rate drop (from 60 fps to 30) and a lot of stuttering, if I turn off the ENB everything is fine at 60fps. Is it just a performance issue or could it be something else? (it seems a bit strange to me), I'm running Skyrim on a i5-3570k at 4,5GHz and a 7970 with 3GBs of memory.

[Turkeys]

That is a known problem spot for FPS drop. I had mine drop to single-digit freeze-frame levels of slow on my old GPU. I'm not sure why, but it could be the light sources and all the NPCs that congregate there maybe? There is a mod, Skyrim Project Optimization, which uses occlusion culling in that area and other spots to alleviate the FPS drop, but I think that is already included in the guide.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Turkeys

[Arci996]

Thanks for the reply, yes, that mod is already included in the guide, well, good to know it's a know heavy spot^^

I also noticed another error, I get this in Mod Organizer:

16:56:52 [C] failed to parse esp file C:\Mod Organizer\overwrite\ASIS.esp: file incomplete

Is it bad? I tried to run SUM another time but it did nothing, any solution?

Edited November 26, 2014 by Arci996

[Aiyen]

It is a common spot for issues... most often related to shadow calculations. If you reduce your shadow quality to 1k it will (almost never) happen at all. 

 

The most common culprit for that area was the chandeliers.. but afaik then brumbek fixed the issues with those ages ago.. perhaps you have another mod which overwrite those meshes. 

[Arci996]

Ok, tried to lower the shadow resolution to 1024 instead of 2048, fps went from 30 to 60 and the difference in quality is barely noticeable, thank you very much.

[Aiyen]

What can I say.... the classics never go out of fashion! :) 

[Quahogs]

@Arci996 -  I had the same problem.   It's an issue with SMIM chandelier and ELFX.  There is a patch that specifically fixes that.  

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/58061/?tab=2&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmodfiles%2F%3Fid%3D58061&pUp=1

[Arci996]

Thank you again, that fix worked like a charm :D

[Arci996]

Ok, I'm playing and I'm noticing that the enb is a bit unpleasant on my system (and I can't play under 50FPS), so I'm trying this mod https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/52718/? and I'm finding it amazing, the only problem is that i noticed by turning on and off the ENB that it applies a kind of "stretching" to the textures (no idea how to describe it, it can be noticed a lot on walls, where bricks are rectangular shaped with the ENB and kind of curved without it), I was wondering: is there a way to get that effect without using the ENB?

NVM I can live with the texture stretched, the problem now is that the game hit the 3,1GB limit and ctd, I tried turning off every enb effect and using the enb only for the enboost with sweetfx as a proxylibrary but I still get a massive fps drop, any idea?

Edited November 28, 2014 by Arci996

[Aiyen]

Parallax effects only work properly with ENB on, since it fixes the underlaying bugs that the default game have with that particular effect. If you do use parallax textures and meshes without ENB you will get weird stretching due to those bugs. 

[Arci996]

Ah, ok, so if I want to turn off the enb I have to remove every parallax related mod?

[Aiyen]

No Just get mods that do not have parallax enabled. It is a setting in meshes that determine if the effect is used or not. ENB just provides a fix so it behaves properly. 

[Arci996]

Ok, I disabled Project Parallax and got the non parallax version of Real Ice, but now I have CTDs for the 3,1GB limit :( Using the enb to use the memory patch eats up half my fps, and if I enable only the patch in enblocal.ini d3d9.dll from the mod I linked before doesn't work :( Does enb apply some effects even if everything is set to false in enbseries.ini? 

[Aiyen]

Even with everything but the memory manager and parallax fix enabled there is still a cost. Also the sweetFX profile you link to will also cost something... even though it is not much.

 

In general it sounds a bit weird if you go to super low FPS using just a sweetFX profile on the card you are using, so most likely there is a setting somewhere you have missed. 

[Arci996]

Using just the d3d9.dll provided with the sweetfx setting I get rock solid 60FPS everywhere, using the enb i get drops to 40FPS while I'm traveling around Skyrim (interiors are fine), while with everything turned off in enbseries.ini and the d3d9.dll from the sweetfx used as a proxy library to get the memory patch and the sweetfx settings I get roughly 2-3 FPS more than if I was using Vividian ENB (the standard settings) with DoF turned off (that's just a matter of taste, it doesn't affect frame rate that much but I don't like it); and if I use only the memory patch by setting UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics to true in enblocal.ini I still get 60FPS, so there must be some effects that must still be on even if I set everything to false. Is there something to deactivate even after the [Effects] section in enbseries.ini?

[Aiyen]

There is an overhead of having ENB on... since internal functions etc still needs to run. The cost of this depends entirely on your system. 

You can think of it as the cost of doing the memory things. You do not just get it all for free. And 40 FPS is still quite good. If you do not like the fluctuation between 40 and 60 FPS you can just lock the FPS at 40 at all times.