Powerful PC, HUGE FPS drops in Skyrim

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Fedelias

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Oct 17, 2014
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Just built my new system, here are the specs:
i5 4690k
GTX 970
8GB Memory
Windows 8.1

Game runs smooth at the beginning, then right as I approach Helgen BAM I drop to single digit FPS. Here's my mod list:

-SKSE
-SkyUI
-iHUD
-Unofficial Skyrim Patch
-Civil War Overhaul
-SkyDie - Prepare to Cry Edition
-Ultimate Follower Overhaul
-Convenient Horses
-Complete Crafting Overhaul
-Cutting Room Floor
-Static Mesh Improvement Mod
-Project Parallax
-Climates of Tamriel
-Climates of Tamriel - Weather Patch
-Project ENB
-AOF HD Tree LODs
-Lanterns of Skyrim - All In One
-Ultimate HD Fire Effects
-Skyrim Flora Overhaul
-W.A.T.E.R - Water and Terrain Enhancement
-Unique Border Gates
-Skyrim HD 2K Textures
-Signs of Skyrim
-Xenius Character Enhancement
-Brows
-Beards
-The Eyes of Beauty
-Superior Lore-Friendly Hair
-Enhanced Blood Textures
-Improved NPC Clothing
-AmidianBorn Book of Silence -Armors, Creatures, Dragonborn, Unique, Weapons
-Follower Commentary Overhaul

I'm really excited to play modded Skyrim, but single digit FPS is completely unplayable. Any thoughts on how to fix this?
 
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A
Got a phenom ii 965 OCed at 3.9GHz. At least, I am monitoring GPU and CPU cores usage and FPS most of the time, I can say I haven't encountered a game yet with CPU at ~98% and GPU less than that... it's the other way around in most games, GPU at 99% and CPU cores at 60-70% at most.

Having say that, there have been cases of low ~30-40 fps and neither GPU nor CPU are at ~98%... these scenarios are very frequent in skyrim, even with pure vanilla skyrim, I get those with GPU and CPU usage less than 50% :|... so I can only think that Skyrim performance may be hindered by RAM.

A friend of mine will soon build an i5 4690 + gtx970 + 8GB DD3 aaaand he plays skyrim... I'll certainly be there for benchmarks purposes and report back :p
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atmos929

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Apr 21, 2010
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I was just like you, upgraded my GPU from a ati5850 to a gtx970, an also PSU, and wanted to run heavily modded skyrim smoothly... I did notice an increase of performance, but not as much as I wanted.

I went as far this weekend as to do a fresh install and install small groups of mods at the time and test performance (also a good chance to update mods and get things right, took me 2 days to finish :p).

But what really got me was to find out that pure vanilla skyrim would give me 35-40 fps in Whiterun and other heavy foliage areas. I was also monitoring GPU and CPU usage only to find that none of them was maxed, so I am not so sure if I can blame my RAM (DDR2 800MHz).

So, my point here is, if you could dedicate a couple of days to start over from a fresh install, you could tell exactly what could be causing your performance loss. You can start by testing vanilla skyrim and checking maxed AA and AF and then turning them off (which they should be off, since ENBs will do AA and AF).

From your list, I think only the ENB and Skyrim Flora Overhaul are heavy on performance, pretty much due to grass meshes... I had to take it down to recover 6-7 fps.

Now it's been a month since you posted this thread, you probably found another answer on your own, it'd be cool if you shared your findings as I am still in this neverending skyrim modding quest. :p
 
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Vynavill

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Nov 30, 2013
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@atmos929
IMO yes...you can pretty much blame your RAM being DDR2...
With a MoBo still supporting those, I get the feeling your CPU might also take part of the blame, as it's probably proving to be a bottleneck for the GPU (unless insanely overclocked and extremely watercooled).

In any case, if you didn't already do so, I highly suggest you guys to follow this guide here.
Bought Skyrim some time ago on a Steam offer, but never found the time to follow this in its entirety or download the mods I wanted to. However, AFAIK, the preparation steps and the explanations given are quite useful from the looks, and allow for a much smoother experience on a heavily modded Skyrim.

You're kinda spot on with the Flora Overhaul and the ENB (depending on which ENB he used, meaning if it's using presets/custom shaders from someone else or if it's just the plain library), but SMIM and HD2K textures also take their good toll, depending on which pre-set he installed.
I also used to read that, while XCE provides quite the boost in character textures, it can take away a good slice of performance as well, especially in densely populated areas on slow HDDs.
 
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atmos929

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Apr 21, 2010
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Got a phenom ii 965 OCed at 3.9GHz. At least, I am monitoring GPU and CPU cores usage and FPS most of the time, I can say I haven't encountered a game yet with CPU at ~98% and GPU less than that... it's the other way around in most games, GPU at 99% and CPU cores at 60-70% at most.

Having say that, there have been cases of low ~30-40 fps and neither GPU nor CPU are at ~98%... these scenarios are very frequent in skyrim, even with pure vanilla skyrim, I get those with GPU and CPU usage less than 50% :|... so I can only think that Skyrim performance may be hindered by RAM.

A friend of mine will soon build an i5 4690 + gtx970 + 8GB DD3 aaaand he plays skyrim... I'll certainly be there for benchmarks purposes and report back :p
 
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Vynavill

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Nov 30, 2013
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Well, that's a nice 500Mhz OC you got there, which IMO is actually not bad at all for a CPU that already heats up like nothing :D
If temps keep under 60-65°C as well, you're pretty much golden there.

Good luck with the benchmarks I guess.
 
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