Problems with weird frame rate drops? All help is appretiated!

[dantattersall13]

Hey guys, so lately I've been playing a Hella ton of Fallout NV, and I've just recently encountered a slight problem... So I'll set the scene, I'm walking around in the Mojave as per usual, when suddenly I get this huge burst of lag and my game essentially begins to stutter, but this is like micro stutter on buffout, I'm getting frame rate drops from about 60fps, all the way to about 1-5fps, then back up to 60 within the space of about half a second, it wouldn't be bad if this only happened every once in a while but it just continues and goes on and on for a rather long time waiting about a second between each spike... Now, sometimes it stops randomly, I may not have even moved from where I was before but it'd just stop, and it starts just as spontaneous...
I've had it before where I could be in a modded cell/worldspace, for instance Area 51, and it'd start doing so, or It could be in the barren wastes with nothing but sand for miles... And it doesn't even matter if I stay or leave , even if I save the game and restart, it will carry on. But what interests me is if I save when I'm not lagging, then reload that save when I do lag, even if it's in the same place, it will go back to not lagging... I've got NVSE installed, and Microstutter remover installed too, and the micro stutter remover is installed correctly... I have a small idea of what the problem may be, I do have CASM installed at the moment, but it isn't working because I need a plugin aswell but to me it seems as though CASM might be trying to save, but it can't and is creating some errors so I'm going to test if it fixes the problem removing it, if so, I'll tell you guys cause I know I had a hell of a time trying to look on the internet for a fix for this, I don't know if anyone else has this problem so yeah.
Also, last note, just ask if you need system details/mod load order. As of now, I have approx 45 mods installed and about 40 active on my game, some are small some are large but either way, just ask if you need any additional information.

Thanks in advance guys!

PS - To any Admins and such, sorry if this has already been asked/stated as a problem, coudln't find anything else on the bug

[talgaby]

It can be caused by two things. Or more precisely I can think of two things:

One is less common, but way more noticeable: if you have a single HDD, especially a SATA2 or worse one, then when something tries to read and write at the same time, the system slows down to a crawl. So there is a possibility that something is trying to read quite large save files that are automatically created. Usually an antivirus does that.

The other is the more common issue. The game is not optimised for multi-core, it uses mainly the first core, plus does some additional computing on the second. The problem is that lots of mods using NVSE bog down the main core. Since you have the Stutter Remover, you can go to its INI file and enable heap replacement to balance the load a little better. The TXT file next to the INI will guide you through it. (I should also mention that on some systems the heap replacer can cause massive instability in the game leading to severe memory management errors.)

[dantattersall13]

Thanks man, I'll have a look at these problems and try and fix them as you said cause both seem very probably cause I have an AMD-FX 6300 Six core rated to 3.5GHz, so it might be likely that the load isn't being spread correctly, it could also be the Anti Virus problem as I do have Norton 360 running alot of the time so that could cause some problems. I'll try some things and the things you said and I'll see if it sorts it out...

Also, for anyone with an interest - I de-activated CASM from my game and it worked in a way, it did reduce the spikes but not by much, but atleast they don't last as long now

[talgaby]

Ah, FX series. Though it's a very good CPU with excellent performance/price ratios, the single-core performance on those chips is beyond horrendous.
Try heap replacement with the Stutter Remover. It's more than likely that you will get frequent crashes, but if not, that will help with your problem quite a lot.

[dantattersall13]

I've done as you said and I've seen a huge improvement both with the current problem and general frame rate, however the problem still occurs, it's no where near as bad and I am grateful but any extra ideas you have will be brilliant. If not then it's fine cause as I say, alot of the problem has been sorted it's just these last few problems I'd like ironing out

[talgaby]

To iron those out you'd have to get rid of mods that use lots of scripts. As long as it's tolerable the best idea is just to live with it until you get bored of your current mods and try some new ones.

[dantattersall13]

Alright dude, thanks, I'm trying to remove the mods that I don't really use and what I just threw in there like Enclave commander and such so hopefully this does the job and one of them is the problem. Anyways thanks for all the help man, I really appretiate it :)

[dantattersall13]

Alrighty man, thanks, I was looking at doing one last night because I've heard this before but I looked and my hard drive is only 14% fragged and it didn't seem too bad and I didn't want to have my computer on all night since it's abit noisy but I'll give it a go tonight, I should defrag it more often cause I never really do it

[talgaby]

14% fragmentation on the system disk? It's not too bad, yes. It's downright terrible.

[dantattersall13]

Ahh right, well in that case I shall do that now haha, thanks for the help :) I shall get on this right away

[dantattersall13]

I dunno about that hah, it's been running for about 2 hours and hasn't even reached 1%, however it has finished Analyzing

[talgaby]

Something tells me you made the mistake of using the Windows built-in defrag. Download Auslogic Disk Defrag or Defraggler. Both are freeware and do a better and more importantly: faster job.

[dantattersall13]

Ahhh right, well I just did it with Windows defrag this time and I had to cancel it since it had only reached 45% in nearly 12 hours, so I cancelled it and now my hard drive is fragment free so I guess I'm off the hook for now but I'll make sure to download one of them for next time! :)

[dantattersall13]

Even after all this, the game still lags but I've finally found the source of the problem... it's the XRE Vertibird mod, I disabled it and the lag stopped... It's too bad cause it's one of my favourite mods too :( I would have never suspected it cause every other time ive used the mod it hasn't done this but I also havent used the mod apart from now since I got my new CPU so that could be why... Either way thanks guys, you've been really good help! :)