Low ram usage when playing Skyrim

[bow absorber]

I recently bought a new pc with the following specs: RTX 2070 (8 gb), 16 gb Ram and an i7-7800X CPU @ 3,50GHz - x12
I use texture 2k texture mods, Skyrim Flora Overhaul and Verdant, however my framerate only drops when I look at certain parts of cities like Whiterun or really dense forests. With Enb my framerate drops to 34 at its lowest and without it drops to around 39. I used a hardware monitor and found that the Ram usage didn't go higher than around 13 % (2,4 gb) and the Vram doesn't go higher than 63% (5-6 gb). My cpu doesn't go above 50%. I run my game at 1080p and don't use g-sync.I suspect it's because of the low Ram usage since 2,5 gb seems like very little, but 5-6 gb vram usage seems to be a bit much. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

[bow absorber]

Help would be very much appreciated, thanks.

[Jouchebag]

That it's completely normal for your VRAM to take as much of the game's data as it can before pushing off to your RAM? You do know the whole game unmodded is only like 12GB, so your VRAM can hold HALF of the ENTIRE vanilla game.

If you don't like the framerate that's probably more of an engine problem. The game's engine was designed 8 years ago and it may not matter how powerful your rig is when there's just limitations in the engine.

[Uncle64]

The game is made for 30 fps, can run in 60.

There is one note, about your grass mods, did you follow the instructions how and in what order they must be installed?
SFO is more demanding then Verdant.

[KingyWingy]

VRAM usage being higher than system RAM usage is typical in many games these days. It makes sense since you are using texture mods.

The data in VRAM has to be decompressed for the GPU to work on it. That is not to say the VRAM does not hold compressed data aswell.

It sounds like you are running out of processing power. You would have to check whether you are CPU limited or GPU limited. Skyrim does not seem to use more than 1 CPU core, the game will never get close to using 50% of your CPU. I suppose you could have another program sapping GPU power, like a sneaky mining program.

How long did you play before you checked how much RAM the game used? I have had the vanilla game use slightly under 4 GB of RAM.

"The game is made for 30 fps, can run in 60." There is nothing to back up this claim. And it is silly sounding claim, made for 30 runs at 60 and the default settings are for 60 hmm.

[Uncle64]

That is not one Claim I have come up whit, it is hard fact since Skyrim was made for console, and ported.
All is about the Havoc in the game.
You need to read up on that. "Old know how" about skyrim you will find around 2 zillions of treads about it.

[KingyWingy]

I have looked and found nothing about it. Searching for "Old know how" also turned up no results.

Havok's default simulation rate is the industry standard of 60 FPS, or 64 or was 64.

Bethesda is a PC game developer first, their engine was built with PC gaming in mind, consoles came later.

Skyrim Playstation VR runs at 60 FPS. Read https://www.polygon.com/2016/3/17/11256142/sony-framerate-60fps-vr-certification

Many developers cap the frame rate of console games to 30 even if the system can do better, but if it can't do 60 they cap it because they think console gamers would rather have a more consistant frame rate than a fluctuating frame rate. Or they may cap it at 30 FPS to cut down on how bad the screen tearing looks or if using V-sync to get potentially less jutter in frame delivery. They do this despite consumers asking them to stop or provide an option for higher frame rate, Some games do have an option for a higher frame rate.

The frame rate being capped at a particular value does not mean the game was entirely designed around that frame rate or such timing as that frame rate. It would be very foolish to program a game this way and I can't think of one that has been coded that way, though there are many games coded in a similar manner.

Also there is a mod for the Xbox One X and PS4 versions of Skyrim special edition to raise the cap to 60 FPS.

And again the default settings on the PC version are for 60 FPS. The game's frame rate limiter only does 60 FPS.

If there are so many threads about the subject then why can't anyone provide a link to one of them.

And Skyrim was not ported from console to PC.

[Chashmodai]

If you mod this game enough, it'll run like shit regardless of hardware.

Side note: Verdant is not compatible with the complete SFO version. Make sure you're using the trees only-version of SFO if you want Verdant grass. Otherwise, I can recommend 3D Trees and Plants[www.nexusmods.com]
Looks amazing with Verdant.

[StarDusT_184]

I just made a test and finish it now. If you play with power consumtion set to Low energy in windows control panel and both nvidia or amd control panel it will make your game stutters. If you play with High power setting it will be smooth like 60 fps constant. And i went from the electricity panel control , it change nothing. It's pretty good news for me then it could help you to give a try ;)

[bow absorber]

Originally posted by Chashmodai:

If you mod this game enough, it'll run like shit regardless of hardware.

Side note: Verdant is not compatible with the complete SFO version. Make sure you're using the trees only-version of SFO if you want Verdant grass. Otherwise, I can recommend 3D Trees and Plants[www.nexusmods.com]
Looks amazing with Verdant.

Thansk for the tip, however I already tried running the vanilla game with only an ENB and running the modded game version without an ENB. In both cases it started lagging looking at certain places, and in both cases the RAM usage seemed to be capped for some reason at around 2 GB. The same would probably happen in Vanilla, except it uses less than 2 GB Ram in vanilla.

[bow absorber]

Originally posted by Infiness ツ:

I just made a test and finish it now. If you play with power consumtion set to Low energy in windows control panel and both nvidia or amd control panel it will make your game stutters. If you play with High power setting it will be smooth like 60 fps constant. And i went from the electricity panel control , it change nothing. It's pretty good news for me then it could help you to give a try ;)

I found that out myself as well on my laptop, however for some reason on my new rig it doesn't seem to go above seemingly low usage percentages. I already tried enboost and opening lots of chrome tabs to see if maybe the pc capped the ram usage itself, but the same gb limit seemed to be in place. I am not even sure if that's the cause of the lag though.

[bow absorber]

Originally posted by KingyWingy:

VRAM usage being higher than system RAM usage is typical in many games these days. It makes sense since you are using texture mods.

The data in VRAM has to be decompressed for the GPU to work on it. That is not to say the VRAM does not hold compressed data aswell.

It sounds like you are running out of processing power. You would have to check whether you are CPU limited or GPU limited. Skyrim does not seem to use more than 1 CPU core, the game will never get close to using 50% of your CPU. I suppose you could have another program sapping GPU power, like a sneaky mining program.

How long did you play before you checked how much RAM the game used? I have had the vanilla game use slightly under 4 GB of RAM.

"The game is made for 30 fps, can run in 60." There is nothing to back up this claim. And it is silly sounding claim, made for 30 runs at 60 and the default settings are for 60 hmm.

Thansk for the reply, however I already tried running the vanilla game with only an ENB and running the modded game version without an ENB. In both cases it started lagging looking at certain places, and in both cases the RAM usage seemed to be capped for some reason at around 2 GB, but the VRAM usage was lower. The same Framerate Drops ocurred though (the textures seemed to have little impact on the framerate as well). The same would probably happen in Vanilla, except it uses less than 2 GB Ram in vanilla. As for the CPU, last time I checked it didn't go above 34%. I also made sure all cores were checked in task manager when the game was running. I tried allocating more RAM to the game by typing the Heapsize command in the advanced startup options in steam, but that change anything eather. It could be a problem with the PC, since minecraft seems to be lagging for my brother also, but games like shadow of war seem to run on ultra when rendered at 4k at a steady 60 fps, whilst I play skyrim on 1080p. I am contacting the company about these problems but checking in just in case. It should also be noted that kingdome come also drop under 50 fps in cities at medium - high settings for some reason. Tanks for the help.

[bow absorber]

Allrigtht I just tested modded skyrim on my laptop witch is supposed to be slower than my new pc, and I found some big differences. My laptop seams to use somewhere between 4-5 gigs of RAM instead of 2. I don't get random fps drops whilst look at things either. In cities I get a stable 45-50 fps and outside of cities 55-60. The game is also more heavily modded, with an ENB, texture mods and everything. I also noticed that the GPU usage was between the 85 and 100% all the time when not using menus. Cpu was around 50%. It's weird to me because My laptop has a gtx 980m 4gb GPU but runs skyrim (and minecraft better as well). I am going to post another discussion just to know other peoples thoughts.

[Chashmodai]

There's a few things you can try, just to rule out

1. Open your SkyrimPrefs.ini and set iVSyncPresentInterval to 0
   
2. Open the Nvidia control panel and navigate to Manage 3D Settings.
   
3. Set Vertical Sync to Fast
   
4. Set Power Management Mode to Performance Preferred(unless you're overly concerned about power usage)

Native Skyrim vsync is rather terrible, the Nvidia vsync works better.