Will add my load order later (at work). However, the only two graphics mods I have installed are: Skyrim HD 2K FULL & Realistic Lighting with Customisation. Both are the latest version. I did have Vurt's installed for better trees/plants but have since uninstalled it believing it may have been the culprit. Seems I was probably wrong.

My setup:

I7 920 OC'd @ 4.0ghz
6GB of decent DDR3 Ram
1TB HDD of unknown model (at work so can't check at the moment)
ATI HD 6870 (can't remember its clock or vram)
(ie, it's not cutting edge but its no slouch and is certainly capable of Vanilla Skyrim at 60fps+ with everything on.)

The issue:
I had all 4 parts (Town, Misc, Landscapes, Dungeons) of the FULL version of Skyrim HD 2K installed.

I was having a problem in game however:

Whenever I exit an internal cell into town or the wilds I get between 2-5 seconds freeze with HDD activity when I move my mouse in order to turn and look in a different direction. This makes me think it's happening as the game is loading textures. This might happen a few times during a full 360 degree rotation, after which the problem reduces but I still get the odd pause here and there while turning.

It never used to do this in Vanilla HD, it was smooth as a babies bottom! Because of this I uninstalled the Landscapes part of HD 2K. The problem has reduced a bit but it's still happening a bit.

This has got me thinking that it might be Realistic Lighting with Customization 3.4 that's doing it (which I also have installed), not the texture pack? It loads custom weathers so I'm guessing it's pretty intensive.

Anyone else had a similar issue?

Thanks folks.

Based on quick google, your card has only 1 GB of VRAM? If so that's your problem, and it's what it sounds like too. I'm running Skyrim with significantly weaker GPU (555M) but due to it's massive amounts of VRAM I never suffer any problems with texture packs.

I've actually run Skyrim HD Full, Skyrim Realistic Overhaul 2048, and the Beth HighRes Pack with only 1GB VRAM, worked fine. Loading times were getting on my nerves though, so I downgraded a few texture packs.
Isn't in-game load stutter tied mostly to HDD speed? Might want to defrag that drive, or think about an SSD.

Thanks for the replies chaps.

Cinnamon, The thing is, I'm essentially running a vanilla setup graphically apart from Realistic Lighting w/ Customisation. I know my computer handles Vanilla with the HD pack and no other mods at 60fps+. I've also had previous mod heavy setups without this issue as Arkangel corroborates.

Of course the other thing to consider is that perhaps there are other HDD access heavy mods in my load order...?

LO:


Active Mod Files:

I'm constantly fighting similar problems, and I'm pretty sure you're right that the issue is high-res textures. I generally get in the range of 60+ FPS, but run into specific locations where turning absolutely destroys framerates.

It's easy to pass 1.5 GB of VRAM if you have a lot of HQ textures, and most GPUs have less than that. Another issue is ENB, if you use it (and probably other types of graphics mods like FXAA or SMAA injectors). They induce a small percent of additional memory overhead, but that can be enough to push your card over the edge.

I've found that I can usually remove the stutter if I lower the resolution of selected textures. I dropped a fair amount of 4096 textures (like mountains) to 2048 or even 1024, and it noticeably improved performance. But then you have to be careful when you add new ones, and be ready to substitute (i.e. add some new HQ textures, and reduce the quality of some others to keep the same level of performance).

SMIM, Enhanced Blood, Better Dynamic Snow, and WATER are fairly large graphical mods. They will make a difference. Any of them expendable? At least for testing purposes.

Thanks for more replies.

evilgiraffe, Well I'm getting the luminous blue water thing with WATER from a distance so I was thinking of knocking it on the head anyway. Shame because up close it looks fantastic! It could be part of the problem though aye.

omphaloskepsis, it's not so much frame rate deterioration as plain old HDD access bringing everything to a stop. It completely stops everything (<1 fps) for about 2-5s but as soon as its finished loading I'm generally back up to 60fps, even in the open. It's actually been better tonight though. Weird...

Anyhoo I've ordered a new GPU (Sapphire HD 7850) as I was about due an upgrade anyway. That's got 2GB of vram and is very overclockable. I haven't bothered with a SSD yet as I can't be arsed installing windows again!

Realistic Lighting has no performance impact. All the custom weathers involve utilization of vanilla resources. It requires nothing beyond what vanilla Skyrim uses. Just to knock that one out. Definitely sounds like Skyrim HD - I'd suggest moving to the light version.

Skyrim HD FULL has many 4k textures, though. It's far beyond what most HD graphics packs are. Others like WATER have only 2k textures for the HD. The light version of Skyrim HD uses 2k textures.

All of those mods have a miniscule VRAM footprint when compared to the HRTP DLC and Skyrim HD.

I think this is related to your GPU and probably VRAM. I had Skyrim installed to a SSD drive when I was using my 5870 2GB and I had the same issue as the OP. My GTX 680 4gb doesn't have this issue though, probably because it's overkill for Skyrim.

Thanks folks,

Well I should get my new card at some point this week, so I'll update this thread with the differences. I'll probably download the LITE version of HD2K as well. Doesn't take long now I've got a 80MB connection!

I would downgrade to the LITE version of HD2K, it's what i use. Also if you experience stutter i learned that capping your frame rate to 30 can solve that. I think when the game jumps back and forth in FPS it can cause a stutter, but if you cap it to something it has absolutely no trouble at running at, like 30, it eliminates it.

You can also optimize textures with the optimizer tool by yourself - does more than that 2. Just don't use it on actors as it can cause problems.

my skyrim has been running poorly ever since the latest patch. i have a ton of mod and a nvidia gtx 275 (not the greatest gpu out there), but i was running pretty smooth till the latest patch came out.