PC Performace issues in dungeons

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tstng

New Member
I have a strange issue inside "dungeons" (caves,hideouts,towers,ruins, etc). Sometime my fps drops drastically into single digits when looking in a particular direction. I does not matter what's on screen (i could be staring at a blank wall), but anywhere inside that dungeon if i am looking in that specific direction, the fps drops to the floor, and jumps right back up when turning away from the "anomaly". I am running the game on ultra (shadows high), 4xAA, latest patch, latest drivers (11.11b, AMD obviously).
This only happens indoors, outdoors, while the fps is lower, it never drops below 30, and in dungeons that don't have this issue the fps is rock solid 60.
On a side note, this seems to happen most often when there is water inside the dungeon, but it isn't always the case. Bthardamz, Ustengrav and Ilinalta's Deep are good examples with this issue (Ilinalta's Deep is practically flooded so it's a great example). Outdoors, i could be staring at the biggest waterfall in Skyrim, and the fps is just fine. It's only indors. I'm stumped.
 

Finalchrono

Time Bandit
Hey, sorry. The only thing I could dig up is that Bethesda knows that water in the game causes lag issues. Why yours is isolated to dungeons only is beyond me though. Have you tested running graphics on very high and going to the same dungeon you had lag in? The only thing I can think of is that reflective rendering can cause huge amounts of lag and still-water is more reflective than flowing water.
 

tstng

New Member
Settings are on ultra (with only shadows reduced too high instead of ultra, and 4xAA instead of 8x). The low fps is there every time in those specific dungeons. Even tried disabling all water reflections, no change whatsoever. Outdoors it doesn't matter how much water is on screen, no issues, but indoors, the water doesn't even have to be on screen and it only affects one specific direction i am facing, and that is what really bothers me. Why only one direction? Why doesn't it affect the entire dungeon? What can cause frame rate issues that only appear when facing one specific direction inside a dungeon, irrelevant of what is on the screen? It's mind bending.
 

tstng

New Member
Wow, I can't belive it, I figured it out. I must thank you, Finalchrono, for nudging my brain in the right direction. So, the problem was from the very first tweaks that appeared after the game launch. There were some ini tweaks relating to water. Because the tweaks were a bit vague at the time, I placed the commands in both the SkyrimPrefs.ini and the Skyrim.ini. And after tweaking, modding and patching the game for a month now, those settings were still there, and i completely forgot about them. Apparently they are not supposed to be in Skyrim.ini.

Thanks again, Finalchrono for the brainstorm.:D

BTW, solid 60 fps inside Ilinalta's Deep. Going to check out the other offending dungeons right now.
 

Finalchrono

Time Bandit
Glad you figured it out. Yea, there's no way I could have came to that realization if you didn't mention having mods/tweaks lol.
 

Trind

New Member
You never said how you fixed it! What tweak specifically fixed it? I'm having the same issues and I can't even play the game because of how bad the framerate drops. Thanks in advance.
 

tstng

New Member
There where some water related
You never said how you fixed it! What tweak specifically fixed it? I'm having the same issues and I can't even play the game because of how bad the framerate drops. Thanks in advance.
In my case, there were some water related tweaks that were supposed to go in skyrimprefs.ini, not skyrim.ini, specifically:

iWaterReflectHeight=1024
iWaterReflectWidth=1024
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1

I just deleted anything water related from skyrim.ini.
 

Trind

New Member
There where some water related
In my case, there were some water related tweaks that were supposed to go in skyrimprefs.ini, not skyrim.ini, specifically:

iWaterReflectHeight=1024
iWaterReflectWidth=1024
bUseWaterDisplacements=1
bUseWaterRefractions=1
bUseWaterReflections=1
bUseWaterDepth=1

I just deleted anything water related from skyrim.ini.

Thank you so much! I'll give that a try later this afternoon.
 

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