Its seems some buildings or forts create huge FPS drops. It seems to happen regardless of their size or your graphical settings.

I noticed this while doing quests for the companions, involving the silver hand. The first two forts have crazy FPS drops. Just looking at them creates a ton of lag. Its like your gpu is loading a ton of invisible content.

I know its not my settings. I can look acrost the dense forest surounding falkreath and not lose more than 5 fps for a second or two. So its some kind of crazy rendering problem Im assuming.

Is it just because the map and the engine were optomized for the xbox?

It's to do with the scripts for the AI in that location playing heavy with your CPU.

What's your specs? And are you using the latest 1.4 patch released on steam a few days ago?

My system specs are in my signature. I am curently using the default ultra settings, aside from Ugrids 9. However even when reducing it to 5, I can still see a heavy impact on my FPS in those areas.

I understand that Ugrids can load distant AI pathithing. The problem here is, Im right on top of crazy pathing. I guess its because therto 6 npcs in the tiny, house sized, fort. Would overclocking my CPU help? Will they be able to minimize the clutter with the creation kit? Will Bethesda fix this crap!

I mean it seems like a no brainer. Dont put 5 or 6 NPCs with a ton of scripts in a tiny area?

Ive had 20 NPCs on screen with no performance hit. There is something else going on.

No, overclocking wont help unless you can get it 500MHz or higher, realistically. Though doesnt your CPU have a turbo boost that automatically kicks in when needed?

Yea I figured it wasnt the NPCs but, I have read about them causeing problems.

Im pretty sure its the fort its self. The huge forts dont seem to do it as bad. Its the small holds that do it.
I have 60 fps in freakin falkreath forest and 2 GTX 580s. It has to be the code. It kinda seems like there are "holes" where the engine renders crap that is super far away or something.

Yea I know, terrible explination lol. I dont have the tech knowledge to explain it though.

Yes the my cpu has turbo. It will go as high as 3.8ghz default is 3.4ghz.

Perhaps if you let us know the exact forts you're having problems with, we might be able to help? Also how are you measuring this? What's your "normal" outdoor FPS rate? What's your rate from the infamous Whiterun viewpoint looking at the tree? What does your FPS drop to by the forts? How far away from the forts are you?

I run with a relatively puny core i3 530 CPU and I rarely have any FPS drops outside. Everything ultra apart from AA (2x) and shadows (medium).

Edit: what mods are you using?

My normal outdoor FPS is 60 flat because I use V-sync. I havnt tested my FPS without Vsync on. I have 50 FPS from the very top of the stairs in white run, and I mean the top.... not halfway down.

The most recent example of the problem i described is "Trevas Watch". Ill post 3 screen shots of it.

This one is facing east with 60 fps.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/833/trevaswatch2.jpg/

This one is facing west with 40-48 fps. They jump around like crazy when facing this direction.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/831/trevaswatch1.jpg/

This one is just for the sake of showing its location on the map.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/100/trevaswatchlocation.jpg/