Microstuttering in 3rd person running/horseback riding on good rig

[scorpgul]

I am using STEP:EXTENDED 2.2.9, (EDIT: Now using a fresh install of STEP:EXTENDED 2.2.9.1 and stuttering still persists unless "Distant Object Detail" is set at High down from Ultra) have followed all instructions to the letter and used GamerPoet's Bash Patch, FNIS, DSR guide but I am having stuttering despite having a good rig. I am playing on a GTX 780 Ti which has 3GB VRAM, an i7 3770k at 4.5GHz, 8GB RAM, Windows 8.1 64 Bit(EDIT: Now on a GTX 980 Ti 6GB, 16GB RAM and Windows 10 pro 64 Bit) and when I tried using the 2k resolution textures for all the texture mods, I had massive stuttering/brief freezing when roaming outside on horseback. I had to reinstall everything a second time using the "Baseline" 1K or lower textures to reduce the stuttering which I STILL get every few seconds when on horseback outside.

Most of the "Baseline" Textures are aimed at people with 1GB to 2GB VRAM so why do the 2k Textures give me this problem with 3GB VRAM (EDIT: Now 6GB)? And as I said I still get stuttering every few seconds when outside on horseback especially, its just not as severe as when I used the 2k textures.
 
Meanwhile, I saw Gamespot's video where they used full 2K and up to 4k textures on almost EVERYTHING plus ENB preset with a GTX 780 and they get butter smooth gameplay without any stuttering. What could be going wrong? I followed all the instructions.
 

I make sure everytime I play a game that the ONLY programs running are Steam and the game itself. I always close all explorer windows and unnecessary processes beforehand. I am well aware of the craziness in Skyrim when going above 60 fps as I have a 120Hz monitor and it was not pretty when I played the game at over 100 fps average. I change my monitor's refresh rate to 60Hz everytime before playing Skyrim. I have the game installed on a Samsung EVO 840 250GB SSD. I had it on a fully defragmented Western Digital 7200 RPM hard drive before and frankly the only difference it has made is speed up loading screen time. The stutters I had before are still present so I doubt this is an I/O issue.

 

My CPU is watercooled and My GPU never exceeds 77 degrees when under full load. In Skyrim it does not even reach 74 degrees. My GPU usage is actually really low in the game, never exceeding 40%, however RAM usage seems right, I have seen it close to 2.8GB. I have Hyperthreading disabled when playing Skyrim and the load is spread across all 4 cores with core 1 having noticeably more load. I am using ENBoost and all the recommended settings found on the EnbLocal.ini guide on STEP guide. I am using Sheson's memory patch as recommended on STEP guide.

Now to the stutter itself. Inside cities and dungeons the game is SMOOTH and VRAM usage is the most. I have actually seen VRAM usage exceed 3.5GB inside dungeons with absolutely no stutter at all which surprises me. Once I go outside in 3rd person view/horseback and I start running, I am hit by microstuttering as soon as I cross borders. I closely monitored my GPU usage and VRAM usage and found that GPU usage is never more than 50% and VRAM usage is MUCH lower than inside dungeons. In First person the stuttering is almost nonexistant, even when I cross borders. As soon as I mount my horse/switch to third person view and start running, micro-stuttering starts. It's as if the game can't keep with the loading. My UGrids values are at the default, never messed with them. (EDIT: After enabling "tb" command, I can confirm that the stutters happen EXACTLY at cell border lines.)

Sometimes the microstuttering turns into actual mini freezes where the game just freezes for like 5 seconds then resumes as usual, though they were much more severe when I was using the 2K textures. Since downgrading to 1K textures the minifreezes are mostly gone, but they will still happen. I also noticed that as the stutters happen, I can clearly see things pop in the distance at the same time. Some areas where the stutter is very noticeable are the tundra outside Whiterun, the road from Helgen to Riverwood, the road from Whiterun to Falkreath and the intro carriage ride which gets really choppy just as Helgen becomes visible, almost like a mini-slideshow until the gate opens and the carriage enters Helgen.

 

I do not understand however why it happens when I have the game on an SSD, have a powerful GPU with 3GB VRAM (EDIT: Now 6GB VRAM) and have 8GB system RAM (EDIT: Now 16GB system RAM). I have done some digging and it seems as if it has something to do with cell loading stutter and increased I/O activity.
 

 

EDIT:

I have now done a fresh install of Skyrim and the full STEP:EXTENDED 2.2.9.1 modlist exclusively, with install instructions followed to the letter using Mod Organiser. The original Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini files located in MyDocuments are vanilla intact and the ini files I use are the Mod Organiser ones. In fact, my whole Skyrim install is pure Vanilla. Everything is done from Mod Organiser. I can play Vanilla Skyrim if i don't launch the game through Mod Organiser. It contains the original intact .esm files.

 

All the texture mods are the 2K variants. (EDIT: I have now downgraded every single 2K Texture Mod to 1K version after experiencing severe stuttering/mini freezes and stutter is STILL present, but less severe) STEP:EXTENDED Patch, Bashed Patch, Dual Sheath Redux Patch, FNIS Patch and Dyndolod steps have all been successfully completed and are working.

 

Nothing has changed. The stutters are still there even though I have made substantial hardware upgrades. Lowering "Distant Object Details" to High, ESPECIALLY fTreeLoadDistance is still the only "fix" that works, but one that I think I should not have to do. Some people are increasing those values to crazy high amounts to combat z-fighting  and getting smooth gameplay with lower end hardware. In this current state, I couldn't even think of doing that. I tried it and it DID get rid of z-fighting but the stutter was severe and the minifreeezes more frequent.

 

 

My Mod Load Order straight from Mod Organiser:

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Plugins Load Order straight from Mod organiser:

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT:

Skyrim performance Monitor logs:

Log1:

 

Log2:

 

Log Download Links:

https://www.mediafire...Stutter Log.log

https://www.mediafire...utter Log 2.log

 

 

My Full Specs:

i7 3770k @ 4.5Ghz - Watercooled

EVGA GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition - Watercooled(EDIT: Upgraded to a MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6GB with latest Geforce Driver, problem persists)

8GB G-Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 RAM 1600Mhz(EDIT: Upgraded to 16GB RAM, problem persists)

Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD(EDIT: Disabling pagefile/Moving Pagefile to another drive has not made any difference)
Corsair RM1000 1000Watt Power Supply
Windows 8.1 PRO 64 Bit(EDIT: Upgraded to Windows 10 PRO 64 Bit, problem persists)

 

 

Similar 2015 Thread on Nexus forums. His system is almost identical to mine and he has the exact same issues:

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2448284-object-fade-setting-random-stuttering-on-powerful-pc/

 

 

Thanks!

Edited August 21, 2015 by scorpgul

[scorpgul]

It shouldn't unless it's running out of VRAM and RAM. That's the only time a pagefile would be used by any game.

So in essence, disabling pagefile completely should NOT affect Skyrim in any negative way and instead remove a possible "bottleneck" and boost performance shouldn't it? Especially when I have 6GB VRAM and 16GB System RAM?

Edited August 20, 2015 by scorpgul

[TechAngel85]

That's correct; however, that doesn't mean other programs wouldn't use it for other reasons.

 

Have you disabled all unneeded background processes? At this point I'm starting to suspect the card itself or something else in the system that is choking your performance. Simply because it runs other games okay wouldn't really matter. Skyrim is most likely using a lot more resources than other games would. Find another game that would use the same or more resources as Skyrim to find out if they card is the cause. I currently don't have any recommendations on that, but perhaps others would. I doubt any benchmark software would do the trick.

[Greg]

So in essence, disabling pagefile completely should NOT affect Skyrim in any negative way and instead remove a possible "bottleneck" and boost performance shouldn't it? Especially when I have 6GB VRAM and 16GB System RAM?

There is very little difference in performance and it's a common misconception that the page file reduces performance. It is possible for the page file to use significant I/O (commonly known as thrashing), but this indicates a significant lack of physical memory for the workload.

 

I think your post that Windows is running low on memory 30 seconds into a playthrough clearly indicates you don't have sufficient physical memory and virtual memory to run Skyrim along with everything else that's running in the background. This may be due to other applications running in the background that are using a lot of memory. You may be able to overcome this by finding and closing applications that are using lots of memory, but you'll have to be willing to keep memory usage below the physical memory limit if you don't have a page file.

 

My best advice is to let Windows manage the size of the page file. 16GB sounds like a lot of memory,  but even on my system I have only 2.7GB free before I start Skyrim. Granted, Firefox and two instance of Visual Studio are eating up a little over 3GB but that still leaves 10GB used by the system and other processes.

[scorpgul]

That's correct; however, that doesn't mean other programs wouldn't use it for other reasons.

 

Have you disabled all unneeded background processes? At this point I'm starting to suspect the card itself or something else in the system that is choking your performance. Simply because it runs other games okay wouldn't really matter. Skyrim is most likely using a lot more resources than other games would. Find another game that would use the same or more resources as Skyrim to find out if they card is the cause. I currently don't have any recommendations on that, but perhaps others would. I doubt any benchmark software would do the trick.

 

Every single unnecessary background process is disabled when I game and even when I am doing other tasks. I constantly monitor usage and new processes that appear.. My antivirus (Windows Defender & its Firewall) are the only processes I could think of that are running in the background. I have disabled them and the stutter is the same.  It cannot be the card as the same issue happened on my GTX 780 3GB and my GTX 780 Ti 3GB and every other game runs flawlessly. My PC makes short work of any other demanding game you can think of at max settings, even using downsampling. Crysis 3, Wtcher 3, both Metro games run fine. I have Crysis/Crysis Warhead heavily modded with textures, draw distance and trees/grass density increased to insane amounts to the point where you can see every single small object across the map, running at 4K downsampled using more than 3.5GB VRAM and the games runs like a knife through butter, not a single stutter. It is simply impressive.

 

Also remember that I said that in 2012, before patch 1.4/Official High Res Textures came out, I had 0 stutter using a GTX 780 3GB at everything Ultra settings. I played a character to level 50 doing almost everything,  then I took a break from Skyrim. When I came back after the patch/dlc I was greeted with this exact same microstutter using the same GTX 780 which persists to this day despite upgrades. Nothing changed with my system when I started playing again back then. Same motherboard, RAM, GPU and it was a mechanical harddrive. What I did not mention however, it was a Torrent version I downloaded as soon as Skyrim released to "try" the game. So the version i played did not get patched/dlc added at all. It was pure vanilla. As soon as I bought Skyrim and started a new game, this problem started. Redownloading/reinstalling the game, formatting PC did not help as it still persists today on a fresh install of Windows 10. This leads me to believe that something is wrong with the official game or steam or one of the official patches. Also remember I linked a thread where a guy with similar specs to mine had the EXACT same issues? It cannot be a GPU fault.

 

However, I am not ruling out the possibility that something else in my system could be choking the performance. I have stress tested my GPU to the max and can safely say that it is not faulty. The SSD I am using has been tested and compared with benchmarks other people have done and it is actually FASTER lol so I doubt I/O is the issue. The RAM could use some testing. I read somewhere that some motherboards do not have the bandwidth to transfer so much data that is why stutters happen sometimes. I have an ASUS Sabertooth Z77 which is 3 years old and uses Intel Chipset. I don't think its so ancient to struggle with bandwidth speed. Have installed the drivers on ASUS website.

 

 

There is very little difference in performance and it's a common misconception that the page file reduces performance. It is possible for the page file to use significant I/O (commonly known as thrashing), but this indicates a significant lack of physical memory for the workload.

 

I think your post that Windows is running low on memory 30 seconds into a playthrough clearly indicates you don't have sufficient physical memory and virtual memory to run Skyrim along with everything else that's running in the background. This may be due to other applications running in the background that are using a lot of memory. You may be able to overcome this by finding and closing applications that are using lots of memory, but you'll have to be willing to keep memory usage below the physical memory limit if you don't have a page file.

 

My best advice is to let Windows manage the size of the page file. 16GB sounds like a lot of memory,  but even on my system I have only 2.7GB free before I start Skyrim. Granted, Firefox and two instance of Visual Studio are eating up a little over 3GB but that still leaves 10GB used by the system and other processes.

 

Thick8 is the one who got the "Windows running low on Memory" warning when disabling pagefile and he has 8GB RAM. I never had this problem even when disabling pagefile. Like I said I have nothing else running in the background when I play a game except my antivirus/firewall and even when I disabled them, the stuttering persisted. Have you had a look at my Performance Monitor Logs on the first post? I/O usage is very spiky and the mini spikes match the Fps fluctuations. You can also see RAM and VRAM usage. Does anything look abnormal to you?

 

Posting them again:

 

Log 1:

 

Log2:

 

Downloads:

https://www.mediafire...Stutter Log.log

https://www.mediafire...utter Log 2.log

Edited August 21, 2015 by scorpgul

[scorpgul]

Hmm with that card and 'just' STEP:Extended you wouldn't expect that much stuttering. Perhaps a matter of ENBoost [MEMORY] ini settings? With Distant object details do you mean DynDOLOD or ini settings? You could try the Medium or Low presets if you use DynDOLOD.

My ENBoost settings have been verified by TechAngel85 and I have even made the changes he suggested. In fact, even vanilla Skyrim gives me this problem, with or without EnBoost/Sheson memory patch etc.

 

By Distant Object Details, I mean the actual game option itself, which controls the following ini settings:

 

fTreeLoadDistance

fBlockMaximumDistance

fBlockLevel1Distance

fBlockLevel0Distance

fSplitDistanceMult

 

fTreeLoadDistance being the main culprit. Its Ultra value is 75000 and its High value is 40000. The stuttering becomes VERY noticeable once I go over 50000 and if I use 2k Textures on top of that, the stuttering starts to get severe, turning into actual minifreezes. I am already using Medium DynDolod.

 

Right now, I have every texture mod at 1K, DynDoLod at Medium and the Skyrim Slider settings at halfway except Grass all the way to the right, just like STEP recommends (I thought having a beast rig that exceeds STEP Extended requirements would let me set all sliders to maximum, looks like i was wrong)

 

I have also set fTreeLoadDistance at 55000 and this modest combo is the only way I am able to play the game without the stuttering really getting on my nerves and ruining it.

55000 is the absolute maximum I can set it to while using 1K textures. If I was using 2K, it would stutter bad.

 

It is not totally gone but it is more tolerable than before. Also worth mentioning is that playing at 1080p or 4K does not make any difference to the stutters. This is the only way it seems that I get to compensate for the 1K textures, by being able to run the game at 4K which does look MUCH better than 1080p even at 8xantialiasing

 

I would so love to go crazy with full 2k/4k textures, enb and all that stuff but this game does not agree with my rig for some reason and simply refuses to run without stutters without lowering settings/textures

 

 

Stuttering with just STEP Extended and GTX 980 Ti????   

 

Something must be seriously messed up in your configuration...ENBoost, Memory Patch, ini files, etc!

 

i mean I am running Skyrim with SR:LE + REGS + a ton (i mean myriads) of other mods, 2K/4K graphics where applicable (not 4K landscape textures, just clutter here and there) + Vividian ENB default version on an AMD 7970 3GB and only encounter a very small stutter when i load up exterior cells for 2-3 seconds and then all normal.

I mean in my case you could have expected that but on a 980 Ti & Step Extended only??

I am in shock! ...and I was thinking of purchasing an MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6GB on September...!!!

Even I am shocked, which is why I am still trying to understand how this is possible. And posts like yours are what make me sad :( lol

Yep, STEP Extended only and running at 1K textures. Ini, Enboost, Memory patch are all STEP recommended values.

 

If you read my first post you will get a better idea. I have Performance Monitor Logs, Load order screenshots etc.

Edited August 21, 2015 by scorpgul

[Thick8]

I haven't dropped down from the ultra settings and 2k textures. I too have turned off all non essential processes. Granted I game at a resolution of 5918x1080, but still; I can play Farcry 3 with every in-game visual option maxed out, 4xAA, and 16xAF while maintaining a locked FPS of 30.

I think it's just Skyrim. I can live with the micro-pause when crossing borders but running out of memory resources with 8Gb of Vram and 8Gb of physical ram is a little frustrating. I find myself having to save my game every 5 minutes because I never know when it's going to freeze at a load screen or just CTD in the middle of a fight. Just last night I had a CTD and the game would not restart. In looking for the problem I ran LOOT and it said that CCO was dirty with 97 ITMs. cleaned it (tes5edit didn't find any issues) re-installed it (97 ITMs still there) and the game won't start.

I thought to revive Skyrim and play through it with all the new eye candy but it doesn't look like that is meant to be.

I will spend  some (not much) time this evening trying to resolve this new issue. If it works, great. If not then I will probably give Witcher 3 a go.

[oqhansoloqo]

A long time ago (maybe 2 years) I was having HORRID FPS issues... I couldn't figure out what was the problem for a couple weeks.  Then I decided to look at my hardware and found out that somehow my CPU heatsink had partially detached from my CPU.  So I cleaned the surfaces, used an excellent thermal compound, re-set the heatsink onto the CPU.  After doing that I got speeds I never had before.  It made me wonder if my heatsink hadn't been always partially detached ever since I first started using it up until that point.

[Thick8]

I know heat is not the issue. I have a geothermally cooled custom built water cooled system. My CPU never goes above 56c and my video cards never get above 49c. I have waterblocks on my CPU, NB Vreg array, SB, and both video cards.  Those temp are the highest it goes when running both Furmark and Prime95 at the same time with my FX-8350 clocked at 5Ghz and my 290s clocked at 1175/1475. Nothing like good ol' mother earth to keep your rig cool

Edited August 21, 2015 by Thick8

[TechAngel85]

Looking at your logs, your FPS dips coincide with spikes in your GPU and sometimes CPU. I don't know the cause but this was my observation.

 

Can you make the following changing to your SkyrimPrefs.ini in MO: https://forum.step-project.com/topic/3758-shadow-optimization/?p=137458

[scorpgul]

Looking at your logs, your FPS dips coincide with spikes in your GPU and sometimes CPU. I don't know the cause but this was my observation.

 

Can you make the following changing to your SkyrimPrefs.ini in MO: https://forum.step-project.com/topic/3758-shadow-optimization/?p=137458

I made the changes and bumped ftreeloadDistance back to 75000 and the stutters started again. The shadow popins also were very distracting with those settings. Distant Detail really is the enemy it seems, even with 1K textures

Edited August 22, 2015 by scorpgul

[TechAngel85]

At this point, I'm out of ideas.

[Lonewolf]

I know this may sound stupid, but since you have tried everything... Maybe try to restore a clean STEP install and activate the FPS limiter of the ENB (Or even better, the Nvidia one from Nvidia Inspector) and limit the FPS to 55-59? Last time I solved my stuttering this way.

[darkside]

I have similar spec with scorpgul - i7-4790K, 980 ti 6 GB VRAM, 16GB RAM, Skyrim is on Samsung 840 PRO SSD, Playing at 1920x1200 60hz. This spec should run Skyrim smoothly. I thought.

I have heavily modded Skyrim SR:LE + REGS + MMO pack. This setup is much heavier in term of textures and script load than STEP Extended. I use only 1-2K textures and ini tweaks per SR:LE guide. DynDOLOD at high settings. Terrain manager at Ultra setting.

I have the exact same problem as scorpgul. I will call it macro-stutter when loading new cells. I tried everything I can think of as well as tweaks suggested in various forums. No improvement.

Changing to 1K textures does nothing. I don't think textures are problem. My VRAM usage never goes over 4GB even with all 2K textures

I tried setup without DynDOLOD. The game is as smooth as butter. I also tried DynDOLOD at low setting, which is acceptably smooth.

I even tried SDO out of desperation, it performs worse than DynDOLOD

Conclusion

- I think a combination of script load and new distant objects loading cause this macro-stutter when loading new cells. I expect more from my 980 ti, but this may be limitation of Skyrim engine.

- DynDOLOD itself is not a script heavy mod, but it may be the last straw that broke the camel's back (heavily modded Skyrim).

- From reading forum, I noticed that only newer cards seem to have this problem. I don't know that there are any intrinsic problems with these cards (780, 970, 980, 980 ti)

Further testing and idea for solution

- I will try to cut down some constant running script mods (eg. EBT, Foot print, BFS effect, Wet&Cold, Frostfall) to run higher setting of DynDOLOD.

Edited October 18, 2015 by darkside

[Pretendeavor]

I've had similar problems for weeks and found that tweaking (or removing) DynDOLOD did the most to increase performance. I think it simply adds too many objects to an already heavy build. Try making manual profiles based on the 'low' profile after reading its manual, you can increase performance but still keep distant animated waterfalls etc.

[sheson]

I can confirm that with the vanilla game, no dlc, no mods, no skse, no enb, both with full screen or windowed mode, in third person, whenever the player character or camera (whichever comes first for the new cell) crosses a cell border together with a high value for fTreeLoadDistance=1000000 causes drop in fps. It seems like the game stops everything else for a brief moment to do something. If I had to hazard a guess it probably iterates over all 40k++ LOD trees over and over again.

 

It stands to reason the engine always does this loop and it only becomes really noticeable when there is a large amount of LOD trees to be processed. I did look at other ini settings but haven't discovered any that would change this behavior - slim chance. However, I only spent a couple hours on this problem.

Since I can reproduce this with just vanilla, I can conclude the cause of the problem has nothing to do with mods, scripts (AFAIK no papyrus script executes because camera crosses cell border) or size of textures etc.

There is no such effect when in first person. To me this fact alone points to something odd being done in the game engine. Also happens with version 1.8 btw

Tests done with i7 @ 4.5GHZ and NVIDIA 980ti. I am assuming hardware doesn't matter, but you never know - while very unlikely, maybe the odd thing is done in a driver/directx and doesn't halt everything else in other versions. Some testing with other hardware/drivers should be done.

Just to recap, the drop on fps and stutter is noticeable in a vanilla game with high settings and only fTreeLoadDistance changed to 1000000. The easiest way to test this is to stand near a 4 cell border intersection and pan camera around the player character. Cross the cell borders in first person and there is no stutter at all.

 

If it comes to tree LOD and DynDOLOD, currently one workaround is to completely disable tree LOD and use the ultra trees from DynDOLOD. (see Options\trees.ultra\ in the DynDOLOD archive) However, if the hybrid trees are too performance/memory hungry, the 2D billboards (LOD8 setting from ultra) can be used instead for LOD4 and then overall performance should be the same as with tree LOD. The downside currently is, that object LOD always fades - tree LOD switches. Also this method only supports vanilla trees because atm it requires manual work to create the 2D mesh versions. Also the 2D flat trees included are supposed to be used for LOD8/16 and the textures may appear too dark and coarse for LOD4. These are all things that would/can needed to be worked on to "solve" this problem.

There is the option to use tree LOD only for the same distance as LOD4 object LOD, and then add the 2D billboards to static object for LOD8 and LOD16. The problem with that is, that tree LOD always switches 4x4 cells, while LOD8 switches 8x8 cells, so I think there needs to be a bit of overlap. I will program this option into next version of DynDOLOD so people can try and test it.

Otherwise play in first person all the time or limit max LOD tree distance.