Like the titles sais I get the absolute worst framrates indoors. Specifically the Helgen introduction dungeon at the part where you face the spiders gets barely playable at lower than 10 fps..

Outdoor or even in Cities the game flows nicely but when I go indoor it stutters. It makes no sense .. Tried running the game windowed.. no difference at all. I also tried the new Acceleration Layer mod, it helps a bit for cities and adds some fps overall. But the indoor problem remains.. I run the latest Nvidia beta drivers.. with lowest shadows

Is this normal? It feels strange that I can play the game no problem with great mountains and far views but once inside at tiny house it runs slow?

This is my system spec for those interested:

CPU: Intel i5 M 480 2.67 ghz
RAM: 4gb
GPU: Geforce Cuda 315m 512mb - Beta patch 290.53
Operative system: Windows 7 64-bit
Using Acceleration Layer mod
No other mods.

I play with the custom resolution 1120x630 or 1024×576 . Havn't decided wich one to stick with.

I have Vsync on and get playable FPS everywhere outside, no problem at all in cities. But interiors often Slow down and seems to skip frames.

Would be interesting to know what your PC specs are. I haven't purchased the game yet... afraid my 4yr old PC won't be able to handle it.

I'm playing this game with a cheap laptop. ie5 processor and a Gforce cuda 315m.. I actually think this is the weakest GPU nvidia offers.. The game is completely playable on medium-low settings and some low draw distances .. to my surprise. But in interiors it is going slow. Most of all in the first dungeon you encounter in the beginning of the game.

Try setting shadow quality to low, and makes sure you have the very latest Nvidia beta driver installed.

Thanks for the reply, I forgot to mention this. I already run the latest beta drivers and have the lowest shadow setting.

Ok mate, have you tried running skse and using this mod?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1322128-tesv-acceleration-layer-offers-massive-possible-performance-increases-now-in-skse-plugin-format-thread-2/page__pid__19877567__st__30#entry19877567

Hm yeah I mention in the first post I tried using the Acceleration Layer mod It helps overall but not with the dungeon specific and interior performance issue. It seems like the situation is reversed for me it is nice to go outside because it usually eliminates all stuttering but playing in dungeons and interiors makes the game slow down..

Hard to provide answers without more info mate, or else you'll be playing the "did you x?" "yep did x" or "what x you got?" game all day.

More detailed pc specs
dxdiag
driver versions
other non-game programs running
"completely playable" = ?? fps normally?
game version
resolution
mods
etc

Odd, I seem to be having this very problem in dungeons. Nothing I've done has helped either. I have to wonder if it has anything to do with the latest patch. Should the problem persist, I'll just revert back to the original exe...one that I don't remember having this problem with.


One other thing that has me thinking is that my save games have steadily grown over the last 122 hours gameplay, and are now totaling over 15 MB each...which seems awfully high to me.

@ op: wish I had an answer for you, I'm interested in knowing the solution as well, because it has really become a problem on my end as well.

Many indoor scenes seem to be badly GPU limited due to the crappy lighting technique not scaling up to PC resolutions and large numbers of light sources present.

Does dropping the game's resolution to a very low setting drastically increase your framerates? The GPU's the only thing that gets extra work from more pixels on the screen.

I dropped shadows and blur to medium and turned off AA and it is acceptable but still stutters next to large groups of candles. The mage light spells also seem to hurt performance so I raised the brightness and stopped using it. Another problem area is the theives guild cistern. That is where I did most of my testing.

Light sources indoors cause stutter especially in 1st person view. It can be fixed by running the game in a window, there is a fullscreen window mod at Skyrim Nexus called Simple Borderless Window. It fixed the issue for me.

Just to clarify, my problem was lightsources such as flames causing stuttering, however according to Fraps my FPS wasn't actually dropping, but it was quite choppy, especially playing at high settings. The problem was completely fixed by doing the above. If your actual FPS is dropping instead of this strange stuttering it might not help, but could be worth a try.

I tried running in a window at 720p and it still svcked in the cistern so I figured that mod won't help. I'm going to try third person out.

Helped me a lot off lightingshader
FPS went from 5-10 to 30.

add skyrim.ini end file.
[LightingShader]
fDecalLODFadeEnd=0.0
fDecalLODFadeStart=0.0
fEnvmapLODFadeEnd=0.0
fEnvmapLODFadeStart=0.0
fEyeEnvmapLODEnd=0.0
fRefractionLODFadeEnd=0.0
fRefractionLODFadeStart=0.0
fSpecularLODFadeEnd=0.0
fSpecularLODFadeStart=0.0

If you use the saveini command, these lines should already be in your ini file. I've made a backup of mine just in case something goes wrong. I then zeroed out those values. Will test out later.

Guys you're not meant to use the saveini command because it creates a Fallout ini not a Skyrim one and causes issue with your game.

It does not create a Fallout ini. I don't know where you are getting your information from, but it is erroneous. Saveini can cause issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will. My issue stemmed (i think) from using the old ini from pre update...can't speak for op though.

Here's the deal for me; after a complete reinstall of Skyrim (same save game) and using the saveini command again, I took a trip back through one of the offending dungeons. I can happily report that I maintained a steady 66 fps (my monitors (forced) refresh rate) the whole way through.

@OP: It may be a bit drastic, but maybe if you did a complete reinstall of Skyrim that might help. If you use the saveini command, then just be careful of which settings you alter.

Thanks for the suggestion , edited the first post with more clear info

It does improve the FPS so it seems to be GPU related like you say. It is just puzzling to me that environments that seems much more GPU intense, like the first dragon attack scene or standing in a city looking over the cloudy mountains doesn't seem to bother my system at all. But a tiny room in a house or dungeon makes it crawl sometimes.

Thanks for the tip I will try it out. Does it completely disable the shaders though or what is the consequence? I havn't delved to deeply into the ini settings yet.

Hm but the spots I have gotten low fps seems to have been persistent whatever I have done so far. The Helgen dungeon was the absolutely worst spot even with the fresh install. Just that the game in general was slower.

A simple search of the forum:


But I don't know if its relevent to the OP as he says he hasn't delved to deep into the .ini

But before making .ini changes I would advise trying windows mode and Medium quality preset. If it works, increase settings gradually from there.

^^^^^....And if you look at Fallout's Creation Kit you will see plenty of Oblivion stuff in there. It doesn't Make it an Oblivion mods kit. Perhaps some of that Fallout stuff is there because Bethesda are planning on making another Fallout game... and there is no sense in removing something only to have to go back and put it back in. that's a waste of time and resources.

Before I did a full reinstall, my ini was named Jump 100 ini, oddly enough that is the name of one of the mods I was running. On a clean install of Skyrim it is now named Update ini, I have no idea why, but it most certainly is not being saved in my games when using the saveini command, it goes directly into my game's data folder. You shouldn't be scared to make ini changes, I've been doing to Bethesda's games for years, you just need to know what can be changed and what can't...as well as what should remain on file, and what can safely be deleted from your ini file.

Changes to the ugridstoload is found in the ini, as well as changes to the map, which is how you get mods like http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=145, as well as mods like http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1661. Without ini changes, these would likely not have been made yet.

Ever since I reinstalled and typed in saveini, and altered that to my liking, it has been smooth sailing. I've got my fps as well as the mods that were accomplished through those ini changes that you advise against. Don't be afraid to make those alterations, sometimes they are worth it.

I have been editing my .ini and using mods too (and have in previous Beth games too, though never FallOut, I still need to get around to playing that).

But, I edited from the original file and have only changed values that have been confirmed to do things and not cause issues. I'm a clean freak, I wouldn't want any of the limb dismemberment options or anything from FallOut appearing in my .ini, even if they don't actually affect the game. Anyway I'm just passing on where I found the info myself, I haven't and won't be using the saveini command.

Just saying, if you're trying to fix a technical problem, its probably best to stick to the tried and tested rather than wacking in a great big ini where half of it is obsolete.

The Nvidia beta drivers add Ambient Occlusion support and yah that feature is incredibly taxing and as you mentioned 'near large bunches of candles' that's a very telling sign that it might be what's killing your indoor performance since I too saw massive decline in indoor performance (relatively speaking here) when setting that from off->performance->quality->full quality. Check out what its setup as within the driver profile and turn it off if its on, very likely this is your fix.