Skyrim movement stuttering.

From the day I downloaded Skyrim, I had no issues with it. Playing it for a few days straight, I had no problems. But after not playing it for about a week, I just started it up, and I'm getting a small issue that is driving me mad. When I move my mouse to look around, I get these small stutters. Now it's not a huge issue, but it's really been bugging me. It's not the graphics stuttering, just my looking movement, and it only happens when I'm walking/Running. When I'm standing still, my movement is perfectly smooth.

Any ideas? This is really just starting to bug me.

Reply to SchuylerLE

have you tried rebooting your computer? or how about you list what you've tried to already to fix the issue so we don't waste time suggesting it

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Reply to AntiZig

I had the same problem. Here's what I did:

Turn off the AA and Filtering options in the settings menu of the game. Leave everything but decals and shadows maxed. Shadows on high looks OK, but on ultra my fps drops very low. Not sure about decals but I leave them on medium.

Force those AA and filtering options with CCC.
I just did this and now I have better quality AA than the game could provide, a minimum framerate of 40-45 outdoors, maxes out when I'm inside buildings (at 60fps)
The game looks great, there's no more stuttering and my framerate is higher than it was when using in-game AA (which didn't even look good)

Here's my setup: single XFX Radeon HD 6870 1gb
My CCC settings (and a crop from RealTemp)

Message edited by brownfountain on 11-22-2011 at 11:29:12 PM

Reply to brownfountain

I tried a few things. I downloaded the latest drivers for my video card (Which is kindof dated..), I restarted my computer, I disconnected and reconnected my graphics card, tried fiddling with the graphics settings on the Skyrim launcher, ran in different compatabilities modes, and nothing.

Now I know my card is dated, and Skyrim auto-sets my graphics to low. But I messed with the settings so I run at about 30FPS average, with most settings onto max and AA and other filtering options off, and I ran it decently.

Unfortunately, my GPU is Nvidia, so I don't have CCC, but I'm trying to match your settings best I can. I'll report my progress after some fiddling. Thanks~

Reply to SchuylerLE

OK good luck!
Don't forget to turn off all the game AA and texture filtering or it might try to implement both and slow it down more.

Reply to brownfountain

Just tried to match your settings best I could, and tinkered with them as well, but to no avail. Though, I do have much better graphics with still the same FPS rate, which I'm grateful for.

The stuttering is weird. It's almost like the movement is doubling back on it's self for a short second. Oh and just to clarify, it's not my "Character's" movement, it's just me looking around while moving.

Reply to SchuylerLE

I know what you mean. I noticed that the mouse movement is quite stuttery (I'm assuming from the fact that it's a console game and it's using an emulator to translate mouse movement into xbox controller movement essentially)

I play in 90 degree field of view (default is 65 degrees which is horrble, like wearing a pair of telescopes!)

hit the key above tab and to the left of 1/! .... `
Console apears. Type 'fov 90' or 80, 85 (all pretty realistic fields of vision)

I found that seems to smooth out the movement a little.

If you have a lower spec gfx card, try turning AA off or down to lowest settings. Turn texture filtering off and shadows to low.

Can you post your specs here for us?

Reply to brownfountain

Right now, i can't post my specs. I just had to run to campus as i have class in ten minutes. I can give a rough estimate of a few things on my computer, and my GPU model, which is an Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT, an older model than the current one. I have 3GB of ram, and I can't think of anything else vital to that right now.

But what's confusing, and frustrating me the most is that when i first downloaded Skyrim, and played for a few days, I had no problems at all, other than the fact that i couldn't run with the AA or Filtering options on (Those both killed my FPS, so I defaulted them to off.). And yet now, without changing anything, suddenly there's a problem.

Anyways, I have to run to class. I'll be back soon and when I can I'll post the proper specs. Any more ideas or information is appreciated until then!~

Reply to SchuylerLE

check your background processes. Skyrim is highly reliant on CPU, so if your CPU is busy with other tasks it might be causing the stutters

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Reply to AntiZig

I usually run Skyrim with most background apps closed, so I don't think it's that.

But anyways. So I return home from class....And Skyrim refuses to launch. Steams "Preparing to launch The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim..." window stays up, and nothing happens.

HURRAY.

Reply to SchuylerLE

So steam finally decided to let Skyrim launch. I enter the game no problem, but I still have the stuttering, even with FOV set to 90(Thanks for that by the way. Actually looks a whole lot better.)

I closed all other processes except vital ones, and still the stuttering. I attempted to record a small part of the stutters with fraps to upload to youtube to maybe help a bit, but when I reviewed the footage, I didn't really notice the stuttering in it. So, I'm at a loss.

Reply to SchuylerLE

seems to me you're hitting some bottle neck. full specs and temps would be nice

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Reply to AntiZig

try these tweaks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] experience

Reply to tekmage

Specs

Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU E2200 @ 2.20GHz, 2200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
3GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT.

Not sure what else to paste

I tried a few of the fixes, and none of them worked at all. Thanks though.

Reply to SchuylerLE

No ideas?

Reply to SchuylerLE

have you tried lowering everything to low as game defaulted to and then turning things up gradually?

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Reply to AntiZig

I have. People don't seem to be focusing on this fact hat. I played the game with the VERY SAME SETTINGS a week ago, and it ran perfectly. I had played for a Total time of 30 hours without encountering this problem, with the graphics settings I had. As far as I know, nothing has changed. No settings have changed, my computer's settings haven't changed, so I'm totally at a loss as to what this could be.

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Reply to SchuylerLE

I am having a very similar problem to SchuylerLE's. I can run the game smoothly with most of the settings medium to high for a few minutes and then randomly the frame rate drops to an abysmal number for usually no longer than 30 seconds before returning to normal. This seems to happen less frequently in homes or small caves and more frequently when there are a lot of NPCs around. Running the game on low settings does not reduce the frequency of this happening, but it does somewhat reduce the severity and I can actually survive a battle if it so happens to stutter during one. It seems to happen randomly. I was fighting a dragon once and the framerate dropped dramatically, so I autosaved and reloaded the save and it ran smoothly. I've just started messing around with RivaTuner and overclocking and I'm a n00b, but I'm not sure that would help anyway.

Here are my specs.

Win 7 64 bit
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz 2267Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
Nvidia 9800M GTS 1GB
4GB RAM

Reply to Shouston

SchuylerLE wrote :

I have. People don't seem to be focusing on this fact hat. I played the game with the VERY SAME SETTINGS a week ago, and it ran perfectly. I had played for a Total time of 30 hours without encountering this problem, with the graphics settings I had. As far as I know, nothing has changed. No settings have changed, my computer's settings haven't changed, so I'm totally at a loss as to what this could be.

yeah that part has me stumped. Has there been any patches to skyrim in the time period you didn't play? I'm pretty sure there was one fairly recently. It's possible in attempt to fix some issues they broke something else for your system that's causing the lag now.

Worst case, try some of the mods from the link tekmage posted. There's a number of those that improve performance significantly

Message edited by AntiZig on 11-24-2011 at 08:40:42 PM

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Reply to AntiZig

I just wanted to update. My problem was completely resolved with a little overclocking using Rivatuner. I can now run the game without any stuttering even on medium to high settings. This is strange to me because I tried several tweaks before overclocking like the low texture mod and the 4gb skyrim with all settings on low and still had horrible stuttering. But anyway, overclocking fixed it completely.

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Reply to Shouston

how much did you OC by? and did you only OC the CPU or GPU as well?

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Reply to AntiZig

Shouston wrote :

I just wanted to update. My problem was completely resolved with a little overclocking using Rivatuner. I can now run the game without any stuttering even on medium to high settings. This is strange to me because I tried several tweaks before overclocking like the low texture mod and the 4gb skyrim with all settings on low and still had horrible stuttering. But anyway, overclocking fixed it completely.

Hey im having the same problem as you and SchuylerLE. I'll try the Rivatuner and see if it works. How much did u overclock by?

Here are my specs:
Processor : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5400+ 2.81ghz
Installed Momory (Ram): 3gb
Video Card: Geforce 8600gt (512)
System Type: 64-bit Operating system

Reply to xtinguisher

I am having the same problem, even after the 1.3 release. It's not my system, I am running 2 6970's crossfired on top of a 2600k 3.8 ghz i7 overclocked to 4.5 ghz processor. I can max out the game's ultra settings and still not see my FPS drop below 55. However, I get these small movement stutters all the time! It is extremely annoying and I'm sure it has something to do with the mouse input being poorly translated into screen movement. Anyone made any headway on this?

Also, I've already experimented with all the INI settings with mouse acceleration and what not and none of those worked...

Reply to jdpwnsyou

your stuttering might the micro stutter phenomenon common with multi card setups. that said, IIRC, ATI hasn't released working CF drivers for Skyrim.

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Reply to AntiZig

CFX works fine for me, not sure what you're talking about!

Looks to me like CPU bottlenecking. It's unfortunate but even people with fast quad cores are bottlenecked. I'm on a 4ghz i5 750 and CPU usage basically just can't go above 50%, so at default Ultra settings my GPU usage is pretty low. I was able to increase that by forcing Super Sampling and higher shadows.

It seems one of the biggest CPU bottlenecks is ugridstoload. Default at ultra is 5. If you set your graphics down to medium I believe that drops to 3 and it should greatly reduce CPU load.

If your GPU is maxing out usage though, then of course the CPU isn't the biggest issue and you'll need to reduce settings. Primarily Shadows are causing the largest GPU usage.

The stuttering though is kind of... odd. I sometimes notice it hugely in cities, which is due to CPU limitations AFAIK. It usually happens during lower FPS points (yet still above 30). On the other hand, in dungeons I'm pinned at 60fps and yet I get stuttering if I sidestep and rotate at the same time. I don't really know what the deal is, but definitely Skyrim's engine is a POS and I really hope game makers start licensing out Frostbite 2 or CryEngine 3 from now on. Those engines know how to multithread!

Reply to wolfram23

I had this problem it was very annoying ruined the game experience even tho it was just micro stutter, tried changing settings and tweaking mods which helped but didnt solve the problem.
Then I remember it all started happening since i made that deadra armor set, i took it off and bam problem solved.. wtf.
i have all other type of armor sets heavy & light and dont get graphics lag when i put them on.
so for me deadra armor = movement stutter.

Reply to shai1co

Well I noticed some stuttering yesterday that wasn't caused by "loading stuff". It was very apparant when looking down, because I was collecting some alchemy mushrooms... basically it's just a super terrible stutter. Looking up is fine and in 3rd person it's fine. Also my FPS was pegged at 60 as it always is indoors.

I've seen reports of this issue elsewhere so I guess it's pretty common. No idea what the cause is.

Reply to wolfram23

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