Does a higher uGridsToLoad help with crashes after loading an area?

[Guest]

I'm doing a playthrough that has more larger scale battles with 8 followers and using large ASIS enemy spawns which includes very few dragon spawns from deadly dragons.

My computer can run it for the most part, these are my specs:
16 GB RAM,
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB card
Intel i5-6400 CPU 2.70 GHZ.

However there are still times where it can crash, primarily when fast traveling and loading up an area where 2 or 3 dragons will spawn along with my 7 followers but it can also sometimes crash randomly when I'm just running around with no enemies nearby.

So would setting the uGridsToLoad higher help with this issue of loading an area with many npcs?

I already have the SKSE patch, ENBoost and safety load (which really helps prevent freezing).

[BrimstoneOmega]

Probably not. If anything it's going to give you even more problems. The thing with Skyrim is that it's an old game on an even older engine. No matter what your computer can handle, Skyrim is the bottleneck. Like, you have a 6GB card, but you can only use 66% of that card, because Skyrim will only be able to run 4GB of it. My guess is that there's just too much going on for papyrus to handle, it spazzes out, starts to cry, whippers for a while then just dies. If you raise ugridstoload then you're only going to add to that burden. If you wanted to minimize popins then it may help, but a lod generator would still be a better option than ugridtoload.

 

TLDR; probably not going to help you.

 

But then again, I never mess with uGridsToLoad personally, so this is just an educated guess. And that guess is you are crashing from having 8 followers.

[khumak]

Setting ugridstoload higher will also break a lot of quests and scripted events by triggering things you are not in range to interact with.  I would say the only reason to ever use it is if you're purely just taking some screenshots and never plan to actually play that particular game.  Use DynDOLOD instead if you want better distant detail without affecting quests/scripted events, etc.

[pinky6225]

I would have thought for the fast travel issue amending fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS to 2000 in skyrim.ini would be more beneficial and as far as i can tell increasing the uGridsToLoad is going to improve how the game looks but impact performance so anything above the default i would have though will increase the chances of CTD rather than decrease it

 

Admittedly source bit old bit...

 

 

First off, the function/switch/command "ugridstoload" basically referres to the section of landscape that include specific details/models/animations and so forth pertaining to it. The more you load, the further/more of these will be shown, the further the LOD style (and terrible looking) placeholders are put back. Higher value, Significantly higher levels of detail and quality and of course more stress on your computer in total... I've found personally that the video card is only a minor if not medium factor in this, and that the CPU/RAM/VRAM etc play a huge role.

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1274926-ugridstoload-skyrimini-comparisons-and-explanation-default-57911/

 

 

[Guest]

I would have thought for the fast travel issue amending fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS to 2000 in skyrim.ini would be more beneficial and as far as i can tell increasing the uGridsToLoad is going to improve how the game looks but impact performance so anything above the default i would have though will increase the chances of CTD rather than decrease it

 

Admittedly source bit old bit...

 

 

First off, the function/switch/command "ugridstoload" basically referres to the section of landscape that include specific details/models/animations and so forth pertaining to it. The more you load, the further/more of these will be shown, the further the LOD style (and terrible looking) placeholders are put back. Higher value, Significantly higher levels of detail and quality and of course more stress on your computer in total... I've found personally that the video card is only a minor if not medium factor in this, and that the CPU/RAM/VRAM etc play a huge role.

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1274926-ugridstoload-skyrimini-comparisons-and-explanation-default-57911/

 

 

 

Thanks for the papyrus tweak, is it safe to do though? Won't cause serious problems down the line like uGridsToLoad would right?

 

And thanks for providing information on what uGridsToLoad really does everyone, I wasn't exactly sure what I was getting myself into. I thought with a higher setting it would load up more stuff in the area I travel to beforehand and that would help prevent a sudden crash while I was roaming around.

[pinky6225]

As i understand it you might have slightly longer load times due to that setting but as you are giving the script engine more time to get the cell you are moving to ready i personally think any extra load time is worth it - that said i have a fairly large SSD as my main drive which has steam/skyrim on so i've never noticed an increase in load time

 

The setting effects

 

 

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS

 

This setting controls how much time is added onto the load screen to do additional script processing in case the cell being loaded into needs to set itself up. Adjusting the time will adjust your visible load screen time. Adjust this setting if a cell with very complicated scripting is not getting quite set up in time by the time the player loads. This also may depend on the story manager since quests may not start until the load screen finishes if they are started up right before the player hits a load door. If the quest initial stage has a lot of scripting then it may need the extra time to run before the load screen is pulled down.

Default: 500.0 (on PC), 2000.0 (on Xenon and PS3)

 

 

A good place to look for skyrim.ini stuff is http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=INI_Settings_(Papyrus)

 

I personally use

 

 

[Papyrus]
fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6
fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.2
fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0
iMinMemoryPageSize=128
iMaxMemoryPageSize=512
iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=100000
bEnableLogging=0
bEnableTrace=0
bLoadDebugInformation=0
bEnableProfiling=0

 

 

As i'm running quite a lot of script heavy mods and i have quite a meaty graphics card so i'm sure it can take up any slack from the script engine having a bit more time (although that is only .4 MS above the default for fUpdateBudgetMS which is 1.2)

 

The other thing to mention is whether you have logging enabled since while very helpful when trying to debug a scripted mod (mod authors absolutely love papyrus logs) it does slow down the script engine a lot if it has to wait for stuff to be written to the SSD/HDD so just by having logging turned off you get a performance buff which i would have thought also means a stability buff

[Guest]

As i understand it you might have slightly longer load times due to that setting but as you are giving the script engine more time to get the cell you are moving to ready i personally think any extra load time is worth it - that said i have a fairly large SSD as my main drive which has steam/skyrim on so i've never noticed an increase in load time

 

The setting effects

 

 

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS

 

This setting controls how much time is added onto the load screen to do additional script processing in case the cell being loaded into needs to set itself up. Adjusting the time will adjust your visible load screen time. Adjust this setting if a cell with very complicated scripting is not getting quite set up in time by the time the player loads. This also may depend on the story manager since quests may not start until the load screen finishes if they are started up right before the player hits a load door. If the quest initial stage has a lot of scripting then it may need the extra time to run before the load screen is pulled down.

Default: 500.0 (on PC), 2000.0 (on Xenon and PS3)

 

 

A good place to look for skyrim.ini stuff is http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=INI_Settings_(Papyrus)

 

I personally use

 

 

[Papyrus]

fUpdateBudgetMS=1.6

fExtraTaskletBudgetMS=1.2

fPostLoadUpdateTimeMS=2000.0

iMinMemoryPageSize=128

iMaxMemoryPageSize=512

iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes=100000

bEnableLogging=0

bEnableTrace=0

bLoadDebugInformation=0

bEnableProfiling=0

 

 

As i'm running quite a lot of script heavy mods and i have quite a meaty graphics card so i'm sure it can take up any slack from the script engine having a bit more time (although that is only .4 MS above the default for fUpdateBudgetMS which is 1.2)

 

The other thing to mention is whether you have logging enabled since while very helpful when trying to debug a scripted mod (mod authors absolutely love papyrus logs) it does slow down the script engine a lot if it has to wait for stuff to be written to the SSD/HDD so just by having logging turned off you get a performance buff which i would have thought also means a stability buff

 

Yeah right now I just have my Skyrim and MO all on my HDD; don't really feel like dragging all 80 GB from there but if it helps prevent crashing I might as well move it to my SSD as well. If you don't mind me asking what kind of graphics card do you have? I'd like to compare to mine and see if I can run those settings on papyrus.

 

[pinky6225]

I now have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (MSI) 8GB but i was able to run everything fine with those settings on my previous card which was a R9 270X 4GB - upgrade was done more for future proofing/having the free time/cash rather than to improve skyrim

[Guest]

Thanks man, I changed up my papyrus settings and moved skyrim to SSD and it was well worth it. Such a big change, I can now have large scale battles and don't experience barely any slowdowns or ctds.

 

The only crash I get frequently now is just loading a save initially from the main menu but I think that's mainly due to a lot of FNIS animations, at least that's what the log from crash fixes says. Still find it weird since my animations are under 8000 like Fore recommends.

 

However I can still load it by quickly starting a new game through the Alternate Start mod and then loading my save from in-game there.

[BrimstoneOmega]

You can give this mod a try, It basically does the whole coc qasmoke, LAL start thing for you. That way you can just load up a save or use continue with out the extra hassle.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/78557/?

 

 

[Sladen2019]

Newer versions of ENBoost support a new section called [THREADS] in Enblocal.ini.

This has helped me greatly with crash on loading saves.

DataSyncMode=1 and PriorityMode=0 work excellent for me.

Higher settings than that should probably only be used if you have a really really stuborn save and want to get your character to an easier loading area.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/73618/

[yatol]

No matter what your computer can handle, Skyrim is the bottleneck. Like, you have a 6GB card, but you can only use 66% of that card, because Skyrim will only be able to run 4GB of it.

 

[yatol]

euh.... i wasn't agreing to your blabla... performance monitor max is above 4 gb... (it's skyrim.exe that is limited to 3.1 gb, if your gpu have 16gb, it will use 14 gb, the rest is for swapping)

[BrimstoneOmega]

I just like the pretty colors.    Don't know what any of that means, but looks like 4370 is your max....not 8192 of your VRAM. If I was wrong about Skyrim not using more than 4gb of VRam, I'm sorry, my mistake, sorry for my blabla, just trying to help.

[yatol]

I just like the pretty colors.    Don't know what any of that means, but looks like 4370 is your max....not 8192 of your VRAM. If I was wrong about Skyrim not using more than 4gb of VRam, I'm sorry, my mistake, sorry for my blabla, just trying to help.

 

you think my ssd max is 337 mb/sec because game didn't had more than 337 mb/sec to load?

 

but it's not supposed to go up to 8192, have set 1 gb for swapping (above 7192 it will unload unused texture, to not have to do that when there's new textures to load)

[BrimstoneOmega]

 

 

 

I just like the pretty colors.    Don't know what any of that means, but looks like 4370 is your max....not 8192 of your VRAM. If I was wrong about Skyrim not using more than 4gb of VRam, I'm sorry, my mistake, sorry for my blabla, just trying to help.

 

you think my ssd max is 337 mb/sec because game didn't had more than 337 mb/sec to load?

 

but it's not supposed to go up to 8192, have set 1 gb for swapping (above 7192 it will unload unused texture, to not have to do that when there's new textures to load)

 

 

 

 

 

Umm...Right on?

 

I still fail to see how your graph disproves Skyrim to run on a 32 bit engine that is physically incapable of preforming to the standard of high end modern day equipment, i.e. becoming the point of bottlenecking with higher performance systems, nor how any of this has any bearing on the topic of the thread; which is whether or not raising uGridsToLoad with help stabilize an already unstable game. If I was wrong in my assumption that it wouldn't, regardless of how ever much VRam Skyrim can utilize, please say so.

[pinky6225]

Thanks man, I changed up my papyrus settings and moved skyrim to SSD and it was well worth it. Such a big change, I can now have large scale battles and don't experience barely any slowdowns or ctds.

 

The only crash I get frequently now is just loading a save initially from the main menu but I think that's mainly due to a lot of FNIS animations, at least that's what the log from crash fixes says. Still find it weird since my animations are under 8000 like Fore recommends.

 

However I can still load it by quickly starting a new game through the Alternate Start mod and then loading my save from in-game there.

 

I think everybody that has a modded skyrim has had that and we have all tried to solve it before eventually deciding the work around of keeping a level 1 save for loading of other actual play saves is much easier

 

I just like the pretty colors.    Don't know what any of that means, but looks like 4370 is your max....not 8192 of your VRAM. If I was wrong about Skyrim not using more than 4gb of VRam, I'm sorry, my mistake, sorry for my blabla, just trying to help.

 

As i recall the amount of memory you could set in your ENBlocal.ini changed if you started to use Windows 10 as they fucked up the directx 9 support, previously on windows 7 i could have a much higher figure in my enblocal.ini (this line VideoMemorySizeMb= ) but the tool that Boris the ENB wizard created for determining what value to put there will only allow 4064 if you are on windows 10

 

So as i understand it the base amount that skyrim will use is limited due to being 32 bit and then we had a further limitation forced upon us if we are using ENB and using windows 10 so if you are still on windows 7 you can set a higher value than someone like myself that is now on win10 (think this might be where you are getting the 4GB idea from)

 

 

 

Notice:Windows 8/10 users: Microsoft has, unintentionally, introduced a memory limit for DirectX 9 games/software. This limit is 4GBs (4096) and there is nothing which can be done to circumvent this limit. For users seeing the VRamSizeTest tool reporting 4064 or similar, this is not a mistake. This is actually the limit for the OS in use and the maximum value you can set the VideoMemorySizeMb

 

http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI/Memory