Looks similar, but who knows if it's exactly the same problem. Because in Skyrim, the problem goes away in windowed mode or when using the Direct3D antilag DLL hook. It might have something to do with triple buffering. Skyrim uses TB by default. It could be that TB is disabled in windowed mode, and also disabled by the antilag DLL. In that case, it would seem that on PCs, the new "Creation engine" is not coded to work correctly with triple buffering. I guess consoles don't have that problem since it runs at 30FPS there.

But who knows for sure. Only the Bethesda devs would know for sure.

I know what MS is and especially since my card is a CFX which is usually plagued with this bug.

I guess that's a waste of time to argue with ignorance, getting 82-98 FPS inside Breezehome and no micro-stutter ever, neither outside in whiterun in 1st or 3rd person, i'll repeat, big fat BS, check your computers because that's not the game fault.

Also when i said 50-120 is to show the range of FPS i can get from inside/outside but i guess that's too hard to understand, /sarcasm. Just to be clearer 50-120 IN and 80-120 OUT as butter smooth 1st person or 3rd person, period.

This is an odd issue for sure. To me it's almost like even though you're happily doing 60/50/45 FPS or whatever every other frame is actually the same as the prior one. This means that 60FPS would feel like 30 (which it does sometimes) or a perfectly playable (in other games) 45fps would feel like 20-something - which it can do sometimes and it's rubbish. The alternative perspective is that the game is doing 59 of those 60 FPS in the first .7 of the second with a .3 second delay before it does the 60th frame.

There IS a bug here. When I first got to Whiterun I applied the settings I use now over the base "Ultra" config @ 1920x1200, i.e. uGrids=9 and a few other little tweaks. Before saving and committing to these changes I tested for at least half an hour running around and my FPS was GREAT with no apparent stutter. Really, it was perfect gaming & I was so pleased with the extra distant detail while maintaining excellent FPS. Now, many gaming hours later, being in the exact same location I get really quite intrusive stutter.

It's the classic stutter issue really, FPS may well be 60, however it's in no way smooth. I never used to get this issue using my current settings - not at all. However now I do. Nothing has changed other than the hours I've been playing.

Additionally, as I've mentioned elsewhere, my CPU load is increasing over time too. Luckily having a 2500k at 4.6 I've ample power and still some to spare despite this bug, yet I still get issues. Oh, I run a pair of GTX 570's in SLI and disabling one card makes very little difference to FPS, the lows are a little lower but the average is about the same. Something not right there.

So yeah, if you don't get the issue that's brilliant, go and enjoy your purchase as you deserve. I didn't initially have issues, but now I do. It's not a matter of purely how powerful your PC is or isn't because things get worse over time, though a more powerful PC will likely mean Skyrim feels playable for longer.

I do hope this can be addressed, I've put over 100 hours into Skyrim now and am having a blast. It's be a shame for the game to actually hit "unplayable".

Oh, incidentally, reducing detail settings etc. reverting to default uGrid of 5 make NO difference to the stutter issue.

Cheers,

Scoob.

Yeah sure. Not a single PC I tried it on was free of this problem. Not a *single* one (I tried 5, two I own myself, three belong to friends.)

Many people report and can verify this problem. The one full of BS here is you, not us.

This fixed the stuttering for me, and also greatly reduced the load on my gpu. I used to hear my gpu fan whirr up to maximum speed within seconds of loading a game, now its much more natural. I must admit I am surprised that micro stuttering is a problem in Skyrim. I have played both Oblvivion and Fallout 3 on the same system without encountering it.

@GrimEleven, you're advice to "buy a better hard drive" is pretty bizarre. Good to hear you can run it without the tweaks that others need, I guess?

Edit: It's also worth noting that I only encountered the micro-stuttering while in first-person view.

I guess when you speak of us you speak for everyone out there who agrees with your nonsense, i do not claim it's a fake problem but it is not caused by your simple explanations but it seems you can't read correctly either. I bet all your machines runs on HDD's there ya go [censored].

Here is a video to prove my point that's it's not a problem for everyone, reduced vid quality a bit for file size, original was 1.8GB, 1080p 9kbps@60FPS fraps. Butter smooth all the time, 140 hours played.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Y8GV6lfNI

Edit youtube only uploaded it in 720p
More edit err now it's 1080 lol

@Snargelfargen Bizarre? you know this game streams a lot of data from the game folder right? yeah it's not the best of game engines but to run it well you need a fast storage device, period. Other game engine work differently and are needing less disk usage/speed. Some people just haven't seen the difference, i did, i had a 250GB seagate 3 years ago and that was the last. ANd no i did tweaks to it but that's not the point to have it work properly, mainly shadow troubles fixed and disabling V-Sync.

Skyrim loads data to ram periodically. That ugridstoload variable everybody is talking about is actually deciding how many "cells" or square sectors roughly 50x50 ft surrounding the player are loaded. A new batch of cells is loaded each time you cross the border to a new one. So even if what you were saying is true, you would only encounter the stuttering briefly once every half minute or so if you sprinted in a straight line outdoors. It also loads from the hard drive whenever a new creature or spell appears, but that doesn't equate to stuttering twice a second.

That said, even a 5400 rpm hard drive on an ancient SATA 1 (1.5GBps) connection wouldn't have too much trouble with this. I happen to be using a 7200 rpm WD Caviar Black with a SATA 3 (that's 6GBps, although not even an ssd can move that much data) connection and I still encounter the micro-stuttering.

SSDs are great, and reduce loading times dramatically. I have one on my wishlist. But they aren't a magic bullet cure-all for any problem.

Edit: I should clarify that in certain places I get a noticeably poor framerate. Looking down at Markarth from the mage tower, or running through Windhelm in certain lighting conditions. The poor framerate is very different from the micro-stuttering I had indoors, in that it slows the game down, instead of adding herky jerky pauses several times a second. I expect this is more my gpu being taxed as it's pretty old (HD 4870 1GB) and acts as a bottleneck for my i5 2500k cpu.

For me, running around doesn't generally produce any apparent stutter and feels fairly smooth. I can run around Whiterun like you GrimElven and get a very similar experience. It may be the encode but in certain places (where you're turning) it does appear less-smooth to me, but not too bad.

Where the stutter is most noticable for me is if I stand still and pan the camera view around in certain places, which may sound a little odd but it's most noticable that way.

I'll say again, I didn't used to get this issue, now I do and on the exact same settings.

With so many varied configs out there it's not really a surprise that something as complex as the open world of Skyrim is causes issues for some. Considering some Xbox users experience issues others do not and they all have essentially the same hardware, suggests how different people can experience different things. Skyrim is hardly alone in this, there was a major issue for just some users of another game I played a few years back. In the end it was traced down to a SINGLE action that some players performed that others didn't caused a resource leak and ever worse performance the more hours played. Imagine if you will if some similar error was the cause of this, i.e. those who followed a very specifc path in a certain plot or visited a certain dungeon at a particular point in time might get the issue.

Cheers,

Scoob.

Hmm sorry but that "6GBps" is worthless here it's bottlenecked to the max, you could even have a 12GBps HDD the SSD Sata2 would totally destroy it, ACCESS time is what you must look for as you might know the SSD does not have mechanical parts hence almost non-existent seek times.

"not even an ssd can move that much data" i beg to differ mine has 210MB/s write and 267MB/s Read
SSD = 0.1ms access time, HDDs cannot touch this.

See the puny Velociraptor FAIL http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/1272/hdtach_chart.jpg

Yes, we agree that no hard drive could ever max out a 6GBps connection. 210MB/s write and 267MB/s is pretty damn good but it also isn't 6GBps.
SSDs are indeed far superior to hard drives and the 10k raptors are a huge waste of money and noisy to boot.

Now that we have established these obvious facts, can we please move on? My point (that Skyrim does not stream constantly from the hard drive and in no way does that cause constant stuttering) still stands.

The stutter we're discussing isn't related to any drive access issues that might occur. We (I think I speak for others here) are talking about situtations where whatever the game needs to render the area in question should already be in ram. I.e. I can do my view panning and I don't see my drive access at all, yet I can still sometime see this stutter effect many are reporting. If the issue was stutter while running around, that could be explained by cells / objects / texture etc. loading from disk - however such loading from a slow mechanical drive would be MUCH more apparent that the micro-stutter effect.

Equally, if data was being loaded, one single 360 pan should, in theory at least, ensure that all needed objects/ textures etc. are loaded so a subsequnet 360 would be smoother - I'm sure many of us have see this effect in games, when entering a new level etc.

There is something not right with some configurations whereas other don't experience a problem. I was in the latter camp for much of my game time, however now that's changed. I'm going to have a play around shortly to see if I can get to the bottom of things...

Scoob.

Still no one watched the video i uploaded = waste of time cyaz

I watched it, and downloaded it for a better representation of gameplay, any chance of an FPS counter in the next one please?

Btw: you mention seeing FPS in the 100's in certain areas, I guess you've disabled the games built-in vSync then? Reason I ask is because I just did the same and get smoother performance, though my reported FPS (using afterburner) is the same except in the menu/load screen where it's in the mid 400's (yes, four hundreds)

Cheers,

scoob.

to add, the micro-stuttering happened after the steam patch update. I distinctly remember not having that issue prior to the update. Also, to describe my issue more accurately, it happens when I stand still and turn (or pan around), typically indoors and not outside.

The only thing that happens outside is a drop in Framerate but thats it. I walk into a dungeon, stand still and turn 0-360 degrees and *surprise* micro-stuttering.

How would you observe micro-stutter in this video in the first place? It's not even a 60FPS video.

You have zero idea about what micro-stutter actually is.

I am also getting this micro stutter and I have a constant 60 FPS. You obviously do NOT understand what it is even though you say that you do. You keep mentioning FPS but this has nothing to do with that. This is a problem that plagued me with Oblivion and my 4870x2. What fixed it was setting it to render frames ahead. This has NOTHING to do with the users systems. FYI- I have the game installed on a Crucial C300 SSD, and have an i5 2500k OCd to 5.0GHZ. I have a 580 GTX OC'd to 950mhz core. I have 16GB of fast ram also. My system is 100% stable and the problem is there when not OCd at all because I tested it.

So you are the one with the "big fat BS" as you stated and obviously don't know a thing about computers.

You also said you have crossfire working on your 4870x2? Well the driver 11.b enables Crossfire ONLY on 6000 series cards with the 5000 series to get support soon according to the catalyst driver team. They never mentioned 4 Series cards so guess what? You don't have crossfire working even though you think that you do. Run afterburner OSD and you will see the 2nd GPU is at 0%

That antilag .cfg did not work for me.

Its certainly not as bad as oblivion but I can see it. When I stand there in 1st person and slowly move around in a circle the stutter is noticeable. I am very surprised to be experiencing this when I don't have SLI or Xfire.

In fact since I built this system 7 months ago this is the first time I have experienced this and I am an expert since I went through this with my 4870x2 in a bunch of games on my old system.

Playing in windowed mode works for some people as well.

Go back to your cave troll, i do know what it is since I DON't HAVE ANY can't you [censored] read? Screenshot for your lack of reading skills
i already stated it was@60 FPS

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/213/79734542.jpg/

This guy has stuttering http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w5dCwnPq7w

My video, the image does not hang, no pause no hiccups, now shut up for once.

i sense .....

What a joke, this stutter has nothing to do with hard drives. My hard drive activity doesn't even coincide with the stutter. It's the same stutter issue that made Oblivion such a dog to play, and it's hardly surprising since Skyrim seems to be based on the same worthless engine. They apply a couple of tweaks to gamebryo and re-badge it as 'creation'. The f@nboys all cry "it's a brand new engine", but everyone with half a brain can see that it has all the characteristics of gamebryo, which is probably the worst engine I have ever experienced.

Chill dude, nobody said that you aren't running the game just fine. This thread is dedicated to people experiencing micro-stuttering, a fixable phenomenon you clearly have not encountered. Go enjoy your game instead of pontlessly arguing with people who have genuine problems.

You guys are calling it microstutter, but be sure to distinguish it from SLI/Crossfire stutter, which is what microstutter means to most people.

Whatever it is, it seems to be similar to Oblivion. When Oblivion first came out I had a single 8800GTX and I had this same problem. I had to set frames to render ahead to fix it back then. I didn't have the 4870x2 till a later play through. The test back then was standing in one place and turning slowly around. You could see the micro stutter even at 60+ FPS. I remember it drove me nuts till I found a partial solution. This time my average FPS overall are much higher than my first run through of Oblivion and so it makes it even more noticeable.

This grim dude doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.