A few questions for you experienced pros here regarding stutter and general FPS issues in my game. The issue is, that despite my (slightly above average) computer specs, I am having terrible trouble with stutter, lag and generally low-ish (however more importantly, inconsistent, FPS).

My specs are:

Processor: AMD FX-4100 Quad Core 3.6GHz Bulldozer

GPU: MSI 7850 1GB

RAM: 8GB Kingston HyperX Genesis DDR3 1600mhz

Monitor: Packard Bell Maestro 242DX

HDD: Hitachi HDT721032SLA360 320GB ? full
Running on: Windows 7

The benchmark shown http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/11/05/msi-radeon-hd-7850-1gb-review/5, if it's anything to go by, that at my resolution (1920x1080) I should be seeing a minimum of ~50fps with a higher average, however this is far from the case.

Although it is true that I do see numbers in the 50's and occasionally 60fps. I am far more often in the 30's, with very consistent and irritating dives to the 20's and sometimes below 10. This tends to happen in dense areas, which makes some sense, but I am curious as to whether this is normal.

This is in almost vanilla Skyrim (save for the DLC and HR texture packs) and I was worried that it is something other than my GPU that is causing the problem.

I want to at this point enquire as to the importance of HDD, whether my incredibly outdated, overused and half full 320gb hard drive, could be the source of the problem, and that by updating (as I hope to) to an SSD would remove the stutter issue. If not is it more likely that it is my CPU bottle-necking my GPU or is 1gb of VRAM simply not enough to cope?

Thanks for any advice, or answers in advance,

I've been looking into this issue myself lately. From what I've read this is a game engine issue and since Bethesda Softworks reuses a good portion of their code it appears in a lot of their games, if not all of them, to some degree. I've learned that people using much more powerful hardware than yours or mine have this problem. It happens to Nvidia and AMD users so ignore any really devoted fan or hater nonsense.

I've read a lot about several solutions but none have worked for me. I play with a ton of mods and ENB effects, with all the bells and whistles, and my frame rate will dip down from the 50s to the 40s and even high 30s then back up again. This doesn't happen everywhere but in certain areas. Skyrim's game engine just isn't very efficient.

This is an interesting read on the subject:
http://benchmark3d.com/microstutter-case-study-skyrim-wtf-edition


Now, for solutions to try

- set Distant Object Detail to High/Medium or Low if you have it on Ultra

- In the SkyrimPrefs.ini set bMouseAcceleration=0

- Skyrim Stuttering 64hz Bug Fix
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/2581/?

- OneTweak - running the game in borderless window mode
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/40706/?


Let me know if you have any success or not with these fixes.

EDIT: I never said "really devoted fan". That was a forum edit. There's a big difference. I think you know what I meant

Keep in mind that the site you linked, with the benchmark refers to an overclocked i5-2500 at 4.2GHz.

Also it says: We use a section where we are able to run forward in a straight line for a minute without being attacked so the benchmark remains consistent, and use the third person camera view.

This has nothing in common with your: "This tends to happen in dense areas"

So running in a straight line without anything happen, and using the third person view, is a good example for getting best framerates.

Try it out yourself. Go outside Whiterun, and run in third person view in the open areas. You will get good framerates.

So this, has nothing to do with an populated (animated) city life area.

Also, you must check if you have other working programs running in background. That can lower your framerates as well.

Do some changes in your Graphic card properties, and in skytim options menu as well, to see if you get higher frame-rates on populated cities.

Yo should be able to play at 1920x1080 with that configuration at high settings.

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You could do a defragmentation of your HDD drive.

Your drive runs with 7200rpm and has 16MB of cache. So no problem in that matter.

I play with a ton of mods and ENB effects, with all the bells and whistles *, and my frame rate will dip down from the 50s to the 40s and even high 30s then back up again.

* With that in mind that's pretty normal.

It might be common but it's not normal. I'm talking about quick frame rate dips regardless of how much has to be drawn in a given view or whether you've entered a new dense area or have suddenly turned around to face a previously undrawn scene. This game engine just isn't very efficient. Some of those tweaks and mods I've posted above have fixed the issue for some users.