Hey guys, I got a strange problem with Skyrim,

It runs perfectly fine, but when I quit the game my computer runs sluggish and choppy. If I go back into Skyrim again according to Fraps my FPS is halved!!! From bouncing 60 in the wilderness to bouncing 30 FPS. Same in Trackmania 2, if I play Skyrim and then go and play TM2 the game is all choppy and laggy. Even Firefox is laggy. If I restart my computer everything is fine.

Does anyone else have this issue or know whats causing it?

Running Core i5 2500k
Radeon 5870
8GB RAM
Win 7 64bit

No mods in Skyrim, or .ini tweaks at this time either.

Hey guys, just a bump as I posted this a couple of weeks ago and I'm still getting the issue now. I was on 1.1 at the time, I've kept up to date with the patches so I'm now running the current version of the game with the 4GB fix.

Again I'll describe the problem.

My computer runs fine.
Open any other program, quit, computer still runs fine.
Open Skyrim game runs fine.
Quit Skyrim, computer becomes laggy and unresponsive, there is graphical lag even on the windows desktop and things take a long time to load.
Start any program after quitting Skyrim and if its a game (including Skyrim) the FPS is awful, otherwise just some mouse/menu lag in programs like photoshop, also increased load time.
Restart computer after quitting Skyrim and I have to wait for a background program called "Steam Screenshot Manager" to close before my computer restarts.
Once the computer restarts everything is back to normal until next time I quit Skyrim.

I've tried reinstalling the game btw. No difference.

That's an interesting problem... I've not encountered that before. Not sure what could be causing it though.

Anyway, I suggest trying some tool like Process Explorer to help troubleshoot the resource hog:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

It's free and does a decent job of breaking down memory, thread, disk, etc usage per running app.

Good suggestion, look for a hanging Skyrim or Steam process, or anything that keeps using 100% CPU (or 50% on a dual core, 25% on a quad core, ....)

I did get two crashes on shutdown recently, may be in your case something keeps running in the background.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

@Sir Garnon: I will try this tomorrow (late at night now).

I'm going to do a quick test using the task manager now. Before starting Skyrim sitting at Windows desktop my CPU Usage is jumping between 0% and 1% while my Physical Memory Usage is at 19%.

I'll start Skyrim run for a few mintues and quit and see if those numbers have changed.

Okay I started Skyrim ran from the top to the bottom of the 7000 steps, waited 12 hours and quit game. Now according to task manager while sitting at the Windows desktop my CPU usage has changed from 0% to 1% to 25% to 37% and my physical memoy usage has changed from 19% to 20%.

Edit: Maybe someone else can make more sense of this information than me, because I'm not sure what it means.

System Idle Process is running about 50-55 CPU
Explorer.exe and CCC.exe are both running at bout 20

Loads of other things are on there most at 00, some jumping between 00 and 01.

Sounds like the memory leak is staying in your system even after quitting Skyrim...
Hmm maybe manually setting your memory paging file? Not sure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak#Effects

Try disabling the Steam overlay.

Another thought: your system is overheating.

You didn't mention any other games except Trackmania which is probably not even half as stressful on your computer as Skyrim is.

I'm guessing Trackmania limits your frames (60? 100?), so your system stays cooler since it's not breaking a sweat generating those frames.

Skyrim's performance is all over the place, even for beast computers.

In this scenario, restarting the computer gives your system a chance to take a breather.

There are many programs to check temperatures including Rivatuner, Realtemp, etc.

Check to see if your computer needs to be cleaned of dust. If it does, do not use a vacuum! It will kill your computer. Use a can of compressed air instead.

Heya,

Here is my temps, are these normal or hot? CPU 48 degree C, Motherboard 34 degree C

Here is my system specs again for quick reference:

Running Core i5 2500k
Radeon 5870
8GB RAM
Win 7 64bit

Its got to be at least 30 mins since I quit Skyrim now and the CPU usage hasn't changed its the same as I reported above, the Physichal Mem has gone up by 1%

Edit: Extra info, my CPU fan is set on an intelligent mode and is running at 33% with those temps,

I remember having the same problem with Oblivion, if I played with various moding tools running in the background. I know it's a different thing, but maybe this helps you to find the cause.



EDIT: By the way, try typing in pcb in the console before exiting Skyrim.

Since you're using Windows 7 you have the excellent tool "resmon" (Resource & Performance Monitor) at your disposal. Windows Key + R to bring up Run dialog box, type in "resmon".

The Overview tab gives you a good view of everything and you can expand each item to look at them in more detail. Look for high CPU usage (CPU), high Disk I/O (Disk), Hard Faults/sec (Memory), and used Physical Memory. You can click on the tabs at the top for more information for CPU, Disk, and Memory, as well as Network which we'll be ignoring for this.

CPU tab -- really nothing here that I can think of that's already shown on Overview, although you should check "Services" to make sure nothing there is using up much CPU time.

Disk tab -- Under "Storage" look for disk queues that are consistently greater than 0.

Memory tab -- This will be your most informative tab, as it has a handy graph under "Physical Memory".

For instance you mentioned CCC.exe was using up 20% CPU time...if that's a consistent amount (an average amount during a 5-second period) after exiting Skyrim, that's not right. CCC is the Catalyst Control Center, AMD Video Chipset software.

I encountered a nearly identical problem not four weeks ago after the launch of Skyrim. After spending nearly two weeks of investigation on the side, I found out that RadeonPro had gotten corrupted after the install, and was hammering my registry after a DX game was closed.

If you use any 3rd party GPU or card utilities, uninstall them and reboot, see if it helps. If it still exists, uninstall your graphics drivers completely (get instructions on how to do a clean uninstall on them), then reinstall them fresh and test again.

There's also the possibility it is a corrupted DirectX install. You could re-download the installer and do an update on your rig.

I'd be willing to bet though, that your registry is being hammered just like mine was.

I uninstalled my graphics drivers, rebooted in safe-mode, cleaned the drivers using Driver Sweeper, installed new drivers and still the problem persists

After exiting Skyrim my CCC is using 20% CPU, but before entering Skyrim its using 00 to 01% CPU. I tested with other games, Dragon Age origins and Trackmania 2 and Plants vs Zombies and when I exit those games my CCC is running at 00 to 01%, its only Skyrim causing this issue. I'm quite baffled.

I am baffled as well. Like others said, it may be a memory leak. But not cuased by your system, just the way the game is. There were reports of Skyrim causing it but I am too lazy to use Google right now

I cannot think of any other way to at least prevent this...

Hmmm... I recently had 2 x 5870 in cf, but don't recall exactly if CCC can be exited or not.

Anyway, I found this interesting link - may or may not be helpful, but it's an interesting read:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/258815-33-catalyst-control-centre-problem-activity-when

One person disabled their HD audio driver to fix the problem.

Played around a bit more and found something even more odd.

What I was trying to do was Exit or Quit the CCC, there used to be an option right click, exit on the tray icon, but it seems its no longer available in the new drivers (last time I used it was years ago so I don't know when they removed the ability to quit the CCC). Opening the CCC after quitting Skyrim causes the CCC to freeze, usually I just restart the computer when this happens, but this time I left it open because I was reading the forums at the time. After about 5 minutes it now responds and the CPU usage has gone back to normal. So opening the CCC and leaving it for 5 mins seems to fix the issue, very, very strange.

To be honest I'm fed up of the Radeon anyway and thinking of switching back to Nvidia in January. I swtiched to the Radeon because my last Nvidia card a Nvidia 280 GTX melted within 6 months of my buying it But I've got really fed up of Radeon since I keep seeing things about improvements in performance from Nvidia drivers, OC options only availble in Nvidia, FXAA Nvidia tech doesn't work as well in Radeon etc

FIXED

Uninstalled my graphics drivers again and this time installed the 11.12 drivers instead of the 11.11c. I also reinstalled Skyrim. This didn't fix the problem

But then I was looking to find a way to fix some microstutter around indoor flames and someone mentions a borderless window mod. I'm now running the game in a borderless fullscreen window and oddly enough, it also fixed this issue with the CCC taking up lots of CPU after quitting Skyrim. I have no idea why the problem still persists even after a driver update and a game reinstall if I play in Fullscreen, but is gone when I play in a Window.

Anyway, I'm happy, the fullscreen borderless window looks just like a fullscreen mode and it fixed two problems in one go

Hey guys,

This thread was long forgotten because I found using the borderless window mod fixed the issue. I'm "re-animating" this dead thread for anyone else who had the same problem, because it seems to be gone as of the latest patch. So, if you had the same issue as me (nobody confirmed) and were using Borderless Window to fix it because I said it fixes it, well, now you can stop using Borderless Window as of the latest patch.