FPS drop until Alt+Tab

[xxsleepyxx]

Ive had this problem ever since i first got skyrim and ive just been dealing with it, but its really getting annoying.  I dont find any answers on google, just alot of other people trying to figure out how to fix it.  I figured i would ask here cuz theres alot of skyrim savvy people here.

 

The problem:

Fps drops to like 5 or less, sometimes its only when i look in certain directions, sometimes it dont matter where i look.  It happens usually after loading an area, sometimes just randomly while im playing.  I alt+tab and then its fine until it happens again at an unpredictable time.

 

Things ive tried:

updating drivers yada yada obvious stuff, making sure background programs arent hogging, making sure gpu power priorities are right, fiddling with skyrimprefs.ini, im sure there was other stuff i cant remember.

 

This doesnt happen in any other games and it seems it happens no matter what i change my graphics settings to(unless i missed something).  As many people ive seen having this problem, someone should know a fix by now.

 

Graphics: gt 240

CPU: Intel core i7

8gb ram

win7 64 bit

[sora3]

What mods do you have installed? The reason why I'm asking is that the GT240 isn't a powerhouse in gaming. If I had to describe the power it has, then think of a lawn mower engine fitted to a car.

[xxsleepyxx]

It has nothing to do with mods.  it did this b4 i ever installed a mod.  And when its not doing this, it runs very smooth.  its more like an old honda cb 750 with a fat chick on back.  its smooth until it gets bumpy.  and if it was the card, i dont think it would quit when i alt+tab.

[Rayblue]

Either you're playing with high-res textures or high-poly meshes, and they'll not do good on a GT240, especially with ENB on, or you'll have to downsize all textures to 512x512.

 

Frankly it's a terrible waste of i7's processing power, so you're having the bottleneck and FPS drops with the video card (you should be at least using a GT6XX series nVidia).

 

[Groovtama]

Are you playing in Full-Screen (Exclusive Mode) or Window-Mode (Borderless/Window).

First one sometimes causes problems with resources that's why maybe playing in Window Mode (Borderless) over ENB is a way to solve it.

[xxsleepyxx]

Either you're playing with high-res textures or high-poly meshes, and they'll not do good on a GT240, especially with ENB on, or you'll have to downsize all textures to 512x512.

 

Frankly it's a terrible waste of i7's processing power, so you're having the bottleneck and FPS drops with the video card (you should be at least using a GT6XX series nVidia).

not using high res textures or enb, except those on my character, but like i said, it did this b4 i added any mods. if it was from high res textures or mesh then alt+tab shouldnt have an effect, and it would chug all the time they are shown and not just at some random time.  Im thinking some kind of graphics effect is triggering it tho. ive just now figured out what becuase its hard to test because if i look in a spot or load a place where it started chugging previously, then it might not do it in that area the next time.

 

Are you playing in Full-Screen (Exclusive Mode) or Window-Mode (Borderless/Window).

First one sometimes causes problems with resources that's why maybe playing in Window Mode (Borderless) over ENB is a way to solve it.

Im playing in full screen mode without borderless window, if i play in windowed or borderless window, then alt+tab has no effect and it stays shitty fps and unplayable.

[Groovtama]

My other guesses:

 

Overheating problem

Power-saving mode problem

Nvidia Driver Install/Settings gone bad (reinstall with settings reset)

Memory-Leak

 - Nvidia Driver Memory Leak (latest Driver/older Driver may help)

 - With the ini settings you can cause stack overflows or make normal happening stack erros into a much worser stack overflow (slows the game down but don't crashing it, alt-tab may reset the memory usage), if you trash the ini file.

 - Latest Skyrim version, old version may have more memory leaks

 - Windows memory leak (itself or some other driver)

[xxsleepyxx]

My other guesses:

 

Overheating problem

Power-saving mode problem

Nvidia Driver Install/Settings gone bad (reinstall with settings reset)

Memory-Leak

 - Nvidia Driver Memory Leak (latest Driver/older Driver may help)

 - With the ini settings you can cause stack overflows or make normal happening stack erros into a much worser stack overflow (slows the game down but don't crashing it, alt-tab may reset the memory usage), if you trash the ini file.

 - Latest Skyrim version, old version may have more memory leaks

 - Windows memory leak (itself or some other driver)

 

Thank you for ur reply.  The memory leak thing,  I think your on to something with that.  The other stuff ive already checked into and have tried numerous nvidia drivers and have the latest skyrim version.  I dont really know how to check for this the memory leak tho, any ideas on how to find out or fix this?

 

Edit: i meant check for the memory leak to see if it is indeed happening, i know how to check the versions.

[Groovtama]

Did you make a custom installation for the nvidia driver and tick on the complete reinstall or just allways the quick install?

I would do the comple reinstall of the driver first. Because it purges the settings and the driver completly from the system.

(BTW look if 3D Vision is ticked on sometime old cards had settings bugs)

 

Latest skyrim version is 1.9.32. Just open the properties of the TESV.exe in your Skyrim folder with windows it should be standing there.

For the inis delete them and try again.

For windows do windows update and reinstall the latest version of all your drivers or upgrade to 8 or 8.1.

[ballsy]

A GT 240 is lower than the recommended specs for Skyrim, so run the Skyrim Launcher and set every option to disabled or lowest possible. I'm not telling you to stay with those settings, but just run around with it and see if the problem persists. 

[xxsleepyxx]

Did you make a custom installation for the nvidia driver and tick on the complete reinstall or just allways the quick install?

I would do the comple reinstall of the driver first. Because it purges the settings and the driver completly from the system.

(BTW look if 3D Vision is ticked on sometime old cards had settings bugs)

 

Latest skyrim version is 1.9.32. Just open the properties of the TESV.exe in your Skyrim folder with windows it should be standing there.

For the inis delete them and try again.

For windows do windows update and reinstall the latest version of all your drivers or upgrade to 8 or 8.1.

 

Its been awhile since i was messing with the drivers, but as i remember it i always unistalled completely sometimes using driver cleaners and always installed everything the graphics drivers offered, i even reinstalled windows a couple times.  a few days ago when i updated i just used that nvidia tray and it did it and i did complete.  always same results with everything i did.

 

I know how to check for versions, i meant i dont really know how to test or find evidence or fix memory leaks.  Something i noticed is that my memory usage never exceeds 4gb, could this be capped somehow?  but idk if that is shared with grapics memory or related to the problem.  I suspect its something with graphics memory(1gb) because what it feels like is its somehow filling up with unnessesary data(which i guess thats essentially what a memory leak is) and when i alt+tab it purges it.  if there was a way to set it to purge unused data just the way alt+tab seems to be doing, i imagine that would fix it.

 

 

 

A GT 240 is lower than the recommended specs for Skyrim, so run the Skyrim Launcher and set every option to disabled or lowest possible. I'm not telling you to stay with those settings, but just run around with it and see if the problem persists. 

 

The recommened is for running settings on ultra.  gt240 is well above the minimum and is for medium/high, which it runs great and smooth on high for me around 60 fps it feels like, until the problem starts.  If i turn the settings down to medium, it still does it except the framerate dont drop quite as low, about 15 feels like.  If i turn it to low it doesnt have the problem but then again playing it on low is like playing wolfenstein 3d back in the 90s, its like a whole different game.  so naturally when u play wolf 3d on a card with 1gb of ram ur not going to have any problems.

[ballsy]

The recommened is for running settings on ultra.  gt240 is well above the minimum and is for medium/high, which it runs great and smooth on high for me around 60 fps it feels like, until the problem starts.  If i turn the settings down to medium, it still does it except the framerate dont drop quite as low, about 15 feels like.

The GT 240 is above the minimum requirement but Beth states that having a GTX 260 or better is recommended. I had no idea being below recommended specs meant that you'd still be able to run the game at its highest-quality options. When did that become the new standard?

 

Just go to your launcher setting options to lowest/disabled and go run around in-game. Move your textures folder away from Skyrim since you use high-res textures for bodies, and it'll be affecting performance on a GT 240 whether its 2k or 4k. If you still get low as crap fps and for some reason it drops after playing for a while, then you're onto something.

[xxsleepyxx]

 

The recommened is for running settings on ultra.  gt240 is well above the minimum and is for medium/high, which it runs great and smooth on high for me around 60 fps it feels like, until the problem starts.  If i turn the settings down to medium, it still does it except the framerate dont drop quite as low, about 15 feels like.

The GT 240 is above the minimum requirement but Beth states that having a GTX 260 or better is recommended. I had no idea being below recommended specs meant that you'd still be able to run the game at its highest-quality options. When did that become the new standard?

 

Just go to your launcher setting options to lowest/disabled and go run around in-game. Move your textures folder away from Skyrim since you use high-res textures for bodies, and it'll be affecting performance on a GT 240 whether its 2k or 4k. If you still get low as crap fps and for some reason it drops after playing for a while, then you're onto something.

 

 

there has always been min specs and the the seperate recommended, the recommended has always been for the crappiest card that will run the highest settings.  In this case ultra.  i dont run mine on ultra, just high.

 

I have tried it on low, If i turn it to low it doesnt have the problem but then again playing it on low is like playing wolfenstein 3d back in the 90s, its like a whole different game.  so naturally when u play wolf 3d on a card with 1gb of ram ur not going to have any problems. 

 

and u must understand that if it were a problem with my specs, it wouldnt run so great when the problem doesnt happen.

[Endiness]

Card may be downclocking as a method of throttling. The card may be overheating. Use something like gpu-z to monitor temps and clocks.

[NokoKoko]

Skyrim manages poorly VRAM. In short, this shit happens when the vram is full and the game is trying to swap and load textures from the regular ram, and then you get a slideshow. lol. Anyway, you can try cleaning the vram just by looking at the sky for 5-10 seconds or more, (use fraps to monitor the frame rate) and when the FPS is stable (60fps on with vsync), you are good to go. No need to alt+tab. Also it is best if you upgrade to something like gtx 760. The card has awesome PtP value and and it's great choice. You can even get a 4GB variant for a few more bucks. It will help with the HiRes textures and skyrim.  R9 280x is also a great option.

[CGi]

Skyrims engine is not really managing VRAM poorly. We just tend to mod the game close or even past the limits, it was made for.
So optimizing textures is always a good starting point, especially if the amount of available VRAM, compared to the amount of needed VRAM becomes an issue.

[Groovtama]

Memory Leak testing:

For practical memory leak test: http://battlefield.play4free.com/de/forum/showthread.php?tid=87779 (it's for BF3 but works here the same just throws ram into swap so the programm has to take all back into the physical ram so unused stuff gets freed again)

 

Over Monitoring the programm (time consuming)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff545405(v=vs.85).aspx

Windows Performance Monitor or PoolMon

alternative: VMMap

http://blog.dopus.com/2010/11/new-guide-how-to-find-components.html

 

BTW use an ENB just for stoping the vram thrashing in the ram, disable the graphic processing in the enblocal.ini to conserve gpu power and enable the memory stuff in enblocal that way you can also get a better overview with the tools above.

http://wiki.step-project.com/Recommended_ENB_Profiles

(DisableGraphics: UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true)

(Memory Stuff: ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true; ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true; DisableDriverMemoryManager=true; DisablePreloadToVRAM=true; EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false; ReservedMemorySizeMb=512; VideoMemorySizeMb=2048)

Set Skyrim testwise to Window mode and set in the ini file (ForceBorderless=true, ForceBorderlessFullscreen=true) that way you can monitor the tools better. (you should be able to simulate the Alt+Tab with CleanMem)

[sora3]

If you'd adamant on fixing this issue, then I'd probably check the following:

 

1. Make sure you have the latest WHQL drivers from nVidia. There are newer drivers that may contain fixes and additional optimisations for Skyrim so check that you do.
2. Check that you do not have a memory leak occuring. Usually, Skyrim is crap at memory management in general and any program that interjects will affect the game as well.
3. Worse case scenario is that the graphics are just getting too hot so you might need to pop off the side of the case and stick a fan in there to get the air to move.

But I'd definitely think you're probably pushing the graphics too hard. High quality settings on a GT240 is stretching it and I do agree with ballsy that minimum settings are there to make sure you can run the damn game, not pushing it to the highest level then bitching about it.