GTX 560 Major Lag Spikes in Skyrim? [Crashing was fixed]

[reconrey]

Fixed: Installing the 290.53 drivers and uninstalling Asus GamerOSD fixed the problem. Thanks for all the help.

Well my computer has been experiencing major lag spikes [strike]and crash to desktops[/strike] while playing Skyrim on my Nvidia GTX 560 (not ti). I am almost positive its my graphics because I swapped it out with my old GT430 and it runs smooth, no lag spikes and no crashing. I changed no other settings when swapping the cards. I have the latest GT430 and GTX560 drivers (I just checked).

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Edit: I have a Phenom II x6 1090T @ 3.2GHz.

 

[Squall_Rinoa86]

Well my computer has been experiencing major lag spikes and crash to desktops while playing Skyrim on my Nvidia GTX 560 (not ti). I am almost positive its my graphics because I swapped it out with my old GT430 and it runs smooth, no lag spikes and no crashing. I changed no other settings when swapping the cards. I have the latest GT430 and GTX560 drivers (I just checked).

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

1) what's the rest of ur specs?
2) did you do a clean install of drivers each time?

I'm running a 560 GTX Ti with Skyrim and have no problems what so ever with 290.36 beta drivers

 

[reconrey]

1) what's the rest of ur specs?
2) did you do a clean install of drivers each time?

I'm running a 560 GTX Ti with Skyrim and have no problems what so ever with 290.36 beta drivers

Will the beta drivers help? I don't think I have them.

And what does a clean install do?

Here's my specs:
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
12.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
733GB Seagate ST3750528AS ATA Device (SATA)

 

[theitaliansico]

Will the beta drivers help? I don't think I have them.

And what does a clean install do?

Here's my specs:
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
12.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
733GB Seagate ST3750528AS ATA Device (SATA)

Please include info on your power supply regarding the wattage as this could be your issue. In addition I have a GTX 560 and i have expierenced random crashes in the middle of the game. I lowered the settings and it has happened twice since then. Try lowering settings. on skyrim the most you should be pushing that card is 1920x1080 High AA turned down alot or off. Also 666mghz is very slow for RAM these days espiecially DDR3. Lowest i have seen is 1333Mghz. This could be a problem... Is that a typo? where did you get these specs?

 

[reconrey]

Please include info on your power supply regarding the wattage as this could be your issue. In addition I have a GTX 560 and i have expierenced random crashes in the middle of the game. I lowered the settings and it has happened twice since then. Try lowering settings. on skyrim the most you should be pushing that card is 1920x1080 High AA turned down alot or off. Also 666mghz is very slow for RAM these days espiecially DDR3. Lowest i have seen is 1333Mghz. This could be a problem... Is that a typo? where did you get these specs?

I have tried lowering the settings on Skyrim and it does nothing, even when I bring it all the way to low. I am playing at 1920x1080, and I have a 550 watt PSU. It is 666MHz, I have two 2gb chips at 666MHz, and two 4gb at 1333MHz, should I try removing the 666MHz ones so it will be 1333MHz? I got the specs from a program called Speccy, and when I bought the comp I remember it saying 666MHz.

Thanks.

Here are some links to my parts if you want more info:
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016
RAM (1333MHz chips): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231422
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849
Graphics Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121446

 

[chippies]

Something sounds very fishy with that memory speed. It doesn't seem to be a standard DDR3 speed (it was one of the speeds available for DDR2 though). Remove those 2 2GB chips and see what happens.

The only time I've had significant slowdowns is when going through doors and F@H GPU core is running in the background because I forgot to shut it down. All this is with a GTX 560 Ti

 

[reconrey]

Something sounds very fishy with that memory speed. It doesn't seem to be a standard DDR3 speed (it was one of the speeds available for DDR2 though). Remove those 2 2GB chips and see what happens.

The only time I've had significant slowdowns is when going through doors and F@H GPU core is running in the background because I forgot to shut it down. All this is with a GTX 560 Ti

I removed the 2GB chips, and put the 4GB chips in the spot the 2GB ones where, and it is still being recognized as 669MHz, but its 8.0GB...so does my motherboard not support speeds higher than 669MHz? I'm going to test Skyrim, and see if anything changes...

RAM says: "8.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-9-9-24)"

I am positive it is 1333MHz RAM too.

EDIT: I have tested Skyrim and its basically the exact same... :[

 

[Sunius]

Where are you getting that info? Maybe it's displaying RAM frequency without including Double Data Rate (DDR)? That's probably the thing, my KINGSTON HYPERX BLU 8 GB 1600 MHz RAM are shown as 800 MHz. Try downloading CPU-Z and clicking on memory tab. Then you have to multiple the result by 2 to get the real value.

Also, please download the drivers when your GTX 560 Ti is inserted and select Clean Install. That might help.

Last thing. Download MSI afterburner, and launch the game. Play for 10 minutes and then check the temperatures.

P. S. It crossed my mind just now: Since you had GT430, it isn't high-end card, so it probably had the power from PCIe slot. GTX 560 need additional connectors from the PSU. Did you connect them? I think there are two 6-pin ones, just like on GTX 560 Ti.

 

[reconrey]

Where are you getting that info? Maybe it's displaying RAM frequency without including Double Data Rate (DDR)? That's probably the thing, my KINGSTON HYPERX BLU 8 GB 1600 MHz RAM are shown as 800 MHz. Try downloading CPU-Z and clicking on memory tab. Then you have to multiple the result by 2 to get the real value.

Also, please download the drivers when your GTX 560 Ti is inserted and select Clean Install. That might help.

Last thing. Download MSI afterburner, and launch the game. Play for 10 minutes and then check the temperatures.

P. S. It crossed my mind just now: Since you had GT430, it isn't high-end card, so it probably had the power from PCIe slot. GTX 560 need additional connectors from the PSU. Did you connect them? I think there are two 6-pin ones, just like on GTX 560 Ti.

Yea, on CPU-Z it says 669MHz under DRAM Frequency, and that x2 is ~1333MHz, right?

I have the latest drivers, I used clean install, and I even tried downloading the beta drivers (with a clean install too).

I did the MSI Afterburner and my temp at idle is ~40-42C then I played Skyrim for as long as I could before it crashed and the temp was brought up to ~70-72C, that seems like a massive increase right? Here is a screenshot of the afterburner results, I have my mouse right over the point when it crashed:

And I did connect the power cables, both of them.

Oh and I was running Skyrim at High quality, but I shut the Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering off.

EDIT: I did another Skyrim test, same settings and all that stuff, but I set my fan speed to a different setting, my temp went down over 10C from last time, but it still crashed. Here's the screenshot:

 

[17seconds]

DDR = Dual Data Rate... multiply by 2 to get the effective speed, i.e. 666 mhz = 1333 mhz. No problems there unless your RAM speeds don't match for each stick.

You need to turn on XMP in the BIOS to get your RAM running consistently at its rated 1600 mhz (800 x 2) speed.

By the way, Skyrim has had a problem crashing to desktop from time to time with the new beta drivers. I would look through your Nvidia Control Panel Skyrim settings to see if you have something configured incorrectly. I would start by making sure that Ambient Occlusion is set to Performance or Off. Then make sure that Antialiasing is set to Application-controlled. At the bottom, make sure that Vsync is set to Force off.

Then check this out:
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/OPS/Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-GeForce-GTX-560-OPS
and:
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1

 

[Sunius]

72 degress is nothing to worry about. Could you download HWMonitor and check CPU temps after playing?

 

[chippies]

Sorry for the mistake about RAM speeds.

 

[reconrey]

DDR = Dual Data Rate... multiply by 2 to get the effective speed, i.e. 666 mhz = 1333 mhz. No problems there unless your RAM speeds don't match for each stick.

You need to turn on XMP in the BIOS to get your RAM running consistently at its rated 1600 mhz (800 x 2) speed.

By the way, Skyrim has had a problem crashing to desktop from time to time with the new beta drivers. I would look through your Nvidia Control Panel Skyrim settings to see if you have something configured incorrectly. I would start by making sure that Ambient Occlusion is set to Performance or Off. Then make sure that Antialiasing is set to Application-controlled. At the bottom, make sure that Vsync is set to Force off.

Then check this out:
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/OPS/Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-GeForce-GTX-560-OPS
and:
http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1

Disabling AA, Ambient Occlusion, and Forced Vsync off seemed to make it not crash randomly, but it now crashes sometimes when I fast travel or when that loading screen is displayed. I was able to play for about 15 minutes this time before crashing, opposed to the 5 minutes before changing those settings.But my overall FPS seemed to change from about 45-50 down to about 30-35 and all the settings, beside the Nvidia settings where the same.

72 degress is nothing to worry about. Could you download HWMonitor and check CPU temps after playing?

Here's a screenshot of the monitor after about 15 minutes of gameplay, the low is the temperature when its idling, the high is the peak it reached during Skyrim, and this screenshot was taken after the crash so the current is not what it was when I was playing Skyrim:

 

[17seconds]

The crashing is a known bug. It happens to me. Be sure to save often.

 

[Sunius]

I'd say reinstall skyrim. If that doesn't help, I suppose the next step would be clean installing OS..

@ matto

His problem is major, it's not only crashing every few minutes, but it's lagging as well, which shouldn't be the case. I know for a fact, skyrim doesn't crash every 10 minutes on my PC, more like every 3-4 hours.

 

[17seconds]

He's describing the same types of crashing I have noticed with screen transitions, randomly. The other thing about measuring FPS in Skyrim is that it varies wildly depending upon your location, towns vs. open land vs. interiors, etc. The only way to know if you are truly experiencing a lag problem is to run through the same scene while measuring FPS after each setting change.

You shouldn't have to disable AA and Ambient Occlusion, though, if everything were working normally. You might want to delete your skyrim.ini file and let the game install a fresh one, in order to reset things back to default (please save a copy first, just in case). This should accomplish the same thing as reinstalling the entire game. If you have the Steam version of the game, you can have the game "Verify integrity of game cache" under the Skyrim game Properties in Steam. That will also reset files to default.

 

[reconrey]

The crashing is a known bug. It happens to me. Be sure to save often.

Well save every 2 minutes, and have to constantly re-open Skyrim? On average it crashes every 10-15 minutes....

I'd say reinstall skyrim. If that doesn't help, I suppose the next step would be clean installing OS..

@ matto

His problem is major, it's not only crashing every few minutes, but it's lagging as well, which shouldn't be the case. I know for a fact, skyrim doesn't crash every 10 minutes on my PC, more like every 3-4 hours.

I tried reinstalling Skyrim, and I don't know if a fresh windows insall would help because I tried playing it with my old GT430 and it ran fine, so it must be a driver issue, right?

Thanks.

He's describing the same types of crashing I have noticed with screen transitions, randomly. The other thing about measuring FPS in Skyrim is that it varies wildly depending upon your location, towns vs. open land vs. interiors, etc. The only way to know if you are truly experiencing a lag problem is to run through the same scene while measuring FPS after each setting change.

You shouldn't have to disable AA and Ambient Occlusion, though, if everything were working normally. You might want to delete your skyrim.ini file and let the game install a fresh one, in order to reset things back to default (please save a copy first, just in case). This should accomplish the same thing as reinstalling the entire game. If you have the Steam version of the game, you can have the game "Verify integrity of game cache" under the Skyrim game Properties in Steam. That will also reset files to default.

Yea, but I get the lag spikes in all of those locations, and I do get more FPS indoors vs outdoors (but I can see why). I tried deleting the .ini file and it didn't do anything, and neither did verifying the game cache.

Thanks.

 

[Sunius]

I tried reinstalling Skyrim, and I don't know if a fresh windows install would help because I tried playing it with my old GT430 and it ran fine, so it must be a driver issue, right?

If it's corrupted driver issue, clean windows reinstall WILL help. Just note: it's not NVIDIA's driver issue as a whole, just that it somehow probably got corrupted.

Oh one more thing crossed my mind. I can't recall you mentioning other games.. How are they? Might be that since skyrim requires active connection all the time, if you connection isn't 100% stable, you may get thrown out of the game.. Just a thought.

 

[reconrey]

If it's corrupted driver issue, clean windows reinstall WILL help. Just note: it's not NVIDIA's driver issue as a whole, just that it somehow probably got corrupted.

Oh one more thing crossed my mind. I can't recall you mentioning other games.. How are they? Might be that since skyrim requires active connection all the time, if you connection isn't 100% stable, you may get thrown out of the game.. Just a thought.

Hmm, I may try a fresh install then...

Oh, other games are fine, I was able to play the Battlefield 3 beta maxed out and had no lag issues whatsoever. Most all games run fine, and why would Skyrim need an active connection - can't you play offline through Steam?

Thanks!

 

[reconrey]

The 1.3.1 Update eliminated crashes entirely, but I still get lag spikes (even when playing on medium or low) and I don't think and I getting anywhere near as much performance as I should be getting. According to the Nvidea website I should be getting about 48 FPS on ultra, but on high I can barely get 30, and I constantly get lag spikes. I have a Phenom II x6 1090T @ 3.2 GHz so I doubt that my processor is holding it back, but I think that my motherboard might not properly support it because it seems like I can max it out fairly easily - is it possible my motherboard isn't treating it like a hexa-core processor?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[17seconds]

Go over to the Nvidia website for the latest beta drivers just released today:

290.53
This is the second beta release from the R290 family of drivers. For more information, read the 290.53 driver article on GeForce.com.

This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.

New in 290.53

Optimizations for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

•Increases performance by up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. 290.36 drivers (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 19x10 Ultra – Indoor Scene). Results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and in-game location.
•Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
•Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
•For a full Skyrim tweak guide, visit GeForce.com.

 

[reconrey]

Well the 290.53 drivers helped a ton, but I still go the lag spikes so I tried uninstalling Asus GamerOSD (FPS monitor) and that made it run flawless. I have had no crashing or lag-spikes since.

Thanks.

 

[reconrey]

Best answer selected by reconrey.