Skyrim-stuttering in firstperson view.

Status
Not open for further replies.

space oddity

Distinguished
Apr 11, 2011
31
0
18,530
I'm getting a consistent 60fps and everything looks great, however there are certain moments in the game when I'm looking around or fighting when the games starts to stutter a bit. There's no slowdown, just as though the screen were skipping a few frames. I'm using an Xbox 360 controller, so I know it's not my mouse. Weird thing is, when I switch to third person view, the stutter is gone, and everything runs perfectly smooth at all times.

Any fix for this?
 

grahamquest

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
1
0
18,510
I have the same issue and I'm trying to fix it. I'm also using a 360 controller and its butter smooth in 3rd person. I have an i7 920 overclocked to 3.8ghz too...so I don't think its my CPU at all... sigh! Maybe it's just the game?
 

Lephys

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
17
0
18,510
Does it ever happen if you're just running straight at a cliff wall or something? Or does it only seem to happen when you're turning, or looking around, or progressing down a road (times during which a varying amount of stuff is being rendered into closer, more detailed view as you go)?

A lot of times when you seem to get little negative spikes in framerate, it's the simple fact that your graphics card and CPU are handling everything smoothly for the time being, but then they have a quick, tiny struggle when new things change (you spin completely around, or 7 bandits run out and start performing various animations, etc.). It's kind of like juggling. Once you get a few items into a rhythm, they're juggled smoothly, but if someone tossed you 3 new things all of the sudden, you might have a little difficulty catching those and keeping the rhythm going smoothly. Except, you know... with GPU's and CPU's, and pixel data and software code. 8P
 

space oddity

Distinguished
Apr 11, 2011
31
0
18,530
Ya, i usualy get the stutters when i'm just looking around..

here are my specs if its any help:

XFX Radeon 6870
i5 2500k @ 3.3 Ghz
4gb rams.

I see people with the same set up as mine running the game smoothly.
 

Lephys

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
17
0
18,510
Only other thing I know if is the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering problem, unless they fixed it. Basically, the game auto-detected my system at ultra settings, but when I loaded the game, it was very stuttery. WAY worse than what you're describing, though. So, I lowered it to High settings, but then I still had some pretty decent stutters going on (but a playably smooth framerate). Well, I found that that SOME people with ATI cards, at least, are experiencing some problems (it seems to vary as to the actual specifics of the problems) that are fixed by turning anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering completely off in the game's graphics settings drop-down menus. I did that, and now I can run it on ultra without a hitch. I still get little tiny stutters here and there, but I think that's really just my slightly old and not-quite top-of-the-line PC having a tiny bit of difficulty here and there for a split second whenever it's rendering something new. I barely notice them.

How much VRAM is on that card? It MIGHT be possible that at maxed out settings, your system is running out of VRAM and having to use slower methods to swap out the graphics info. *shrug* Something along those lines. No matter how amazing your graphics card and processor are, your RAM can only store so many textures, etc, for rendering, at a time.
 

Lephys

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
17
0
18,510
I'm not sure if it will or not. I don't know enough about that fix. I suppose it could.

I apologize if I missed it, but have you tried turning the anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering off?


"Simply open the tool and select TESV.exe in your Skyrim folder (Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim), tick Large Address Aware Flag and then click Save.

As a final tweak, I recommend you edit Skyrim.ini (found in Documents\My Games\Skyrim) to add the following under [Papyrus]:
iMinMemoryPageSize=100000
iMaxMemoryPageSize=5000000
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=1800000000"


That's totally worth a shot. Just copy that .ini file somewhere before you do it, so if it doesn't work you can just swap the original file back into the folder.
 

space oddity

Distinguished
Apr 11, 2011
31
0
18,530


No, i have not done that yet, i will try it and see if it works.
 

Lephys

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
17
0
18,510
Sorry, I realize my last post was potentially quite confusing. That quoted bit was me referencing that link you posted (to that specific solution). I was just saying that that was probably quick and easy to try.

Turning off anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering is simply done in the Options/Settings in the main menu (after you launch Skyrim but haven't actually clicked "Play").

And sorry if you knew all that already and weren't at all confused. I just wanted to correct my post.
 

DogFart

Distinguished
Nov 19, 2011
2
0
18,510
I have the same issues. I am beeting that everyone with this issue is also running an ATI video card. I say this because other games that I play have a setting to fix "ATI stuttering" and since this game does not have this setting it's my (very uneducated) guess that this is our problem. Please let me know if there are any people running Nvidia cards with this stuttering in Skyrim. Or if there is a fix for it...

Rig: i5 2500k/ ATI 6970/ 8GB ram/ Logitech G500 mouse set to highest sensitivity on the actual mouse (level 3 of 3)

Oh yeah it only happens to me in first person view as well.
 

tekmage

Distinguished
Oct 27, 2011
174
0
18,710
try this. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556
Large address aware

If you are using a mouse, use this.

Here's the fix:

Launch a Windows Explorer window (win key + e)
Navigate to \Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim\Skyrim
Open SkyrimPrefs.ini in Notepad.
Locate [Controls] and then find 'bMouseAcceleration=1'
Change bMouseAcceleration=1 to bMouseAcceleration=0 instead; this will disable "mouse smoothing" and "mouse acceleration" in Skyrim.
 

tekmage

Distinguished
Oct 27, 2011
174
0
18,710


The degree it affects you is going to depend on your mouse as all mice act differently. I have a Razor Diamondback and it is very responsive so I have a tendency to drop down the speed of it. Acceleration is something that a lot of gamers aren't even aware of and they need to be because it can result in inconsistent behaviour with their mouse. Put simply, acceleration increases the speed of your mouse cursor based on the speed you move your mouse. This might sound like a good idea but it causes problems - if you move your mouse from point A to point B then you'd expect your cursor to do the same thing each time you move the mouse between those two points; with acceleration enabled it won't because you'll vary the speed that you move the mouse between those two points and end up with inconsistent aiming. Good example of this is something that you see in the mouse control panel. It's called "pointer precision". This is essentially Microsoft's version of mouse acceleration and can cause problems in games. It's handy for use in windows when you are flipping through your apps but not for gaming for the above reason given.

 

bckai2003

Distinguished
Feb 21, 2009
20
0
18,510


Strange, I could swear that I wrote this same exact thing on another forum... :eek:

Anyway, the fix I found was to run it in windowed mode. There is a mod that actually will remove the tool bar from the window and force Skyrim to play in fullscreen while windowed.
 

Lephys

Distinguished
Nov 17, 2011
17
0
18,510
That's really odd... Windowed mode is usually MORE taxing, since, even if it's maximized, it's treating the game as a mere object in the desktop space rather than a dedicated full usage of ALL the desktop space like in fullscreen mode.

I'm not denying that it works. I just think that's weird. 8P
 

bckai2003

Distinguished
Feb 21, 2009
20
0
18,510


Yeah it's not a performance issue. It's just a strange optimization issue.

And by the way thanks for copying and pasting my original post: http://www.overclock.net/t/1167717/skyrim-stuttering-in-first-person-view ;)

Anyway, try it out. The strange stutter in first person view goes away when I implemented windowed mode.
 

dakjones

Distinguished
Nov 23, 2011
4
0
18,510
Im having a similar issue. Im running the game on a desktop and a laptop (using the XBOX controller on both). The desktop runs it perfectly. It has an SB i5 2500k @ 4.2 Ghz, GTX 570, and 8GB or DDR3 Ram. The laptop is a brand new XPS 17 (l702x) with SB i7 2670qm @ 3.2 Ghz with turbo boost, GT 555 GPU, and 8GB of DDR3 ram. The laptop can run it near max but I get the stuttering issue as discribed here only when im inside buildings, castles, dungeons ect. Out in the open is smooth. Weird huh?
 

unfather

Distinguished
Dec 7, 2011
2
0
18,510
If you are having this mouse stutter issue but it doesn't effect 3rd person view, IT DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PERFORMANCE. You're rendering more in 3rd person than 1st so there's nothing logical about the performance association that's been theorized. Don't bother tweaking your game settings or throwing the 4GB switch unless you've extinguished the options below first.

a) Seems plenty of people were able to solve this problem by changing bMouseAcceleration=1 to bMouseAcceleration=0 in SkyrimPrefs.ini, so try that first. Even if that doesn't help, just leave it that way because mouse acceleration sucks anyway (it makes your cursor move faster the further you move it, which means you're not getting 1:1 transference of movement between your hand and avatar). Also you might as well go to Control Panel > Mouse > Pointer Options and uncheck 'Enhanced Point Precision', which is the same thing but applied to the OS.

b) If that doesn't work to fix the stutter, change the game to Windowed mode and test it again; this is what fixed it for me. Don't worry about the off-center window until you've tested to see if that helps. If it fixes it, download the Simple Borderless Window mod which has the fringe benefit of making alt-tab work better:

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4#content

If those two things don't fix it then you don't have the same problem this thread is referring to. But to help with perf, turn down shadows and anti-aliasing for the biggest initial gains (you can completely disable AA and check the FXAA box for alternative anti-aliasing that looks just fine). You may also want to tweak various viewing distance options, but honestly that's an awful way to gain frames.

My final tip, which I haven't seen anywhere else so I claim it it's mine mine!, is to adjust the particles a bit. Go into SkyrimPrefs.ini and find the [Particles] section:

You will see iMaxDesired=750. This adjusts the quantity of particles, which have an immense effect on performance especially with high light, shadow, or AA settings enabled. Examples of particle effects include smoke from torches and firepits, the fire from shouts or magic spells like Flames and Frostbite, dragon breath, and the fog around swamps/bogs or inside dungeons.
If you change the value to 0, you will no longer see the flames from your Fire Breath shout or dragons breath and only a single tuft of smoke will occasionally emit from torches. So, change this value to either 500 or 250 for an immense perf boost without losing the particles themselves (they will just be less voluminous). I went with 250 and actually prefer the less voluminous fog, as Dwemer ruins no longer look like they've been hot-boxed.

I know I sound like a dick, but there are way too many wasted posts about perf issues and I'm trying to save everyone else's time.
 

unfather

Distinguished
Dec 7, 2011
2
0
18,510
Oh, one last note:

I already beat this game once and put in over a 100 hours on that play through, and I DID NOT have this problem until I reformatted my computer yesterday and reinstalled the game. I honestly don't know if that has anything to do with it, but it might help someone out so I thought I'd mention it.
 

dek_81

Distinguished
Dec 12, 2011
1
0
18,510
for me this was fixed by going into the settings before loading the game and dropping shadows from ultra to high

since doing this i have had no slow downs, hope it helps someone
 
Status
Not open for further replies.