Deteriorating performance Skyrim SE with Anniversary upgrade

[Don Sebastiano]

This post is a bit of a Hail Mary; I don't expect this to be enough info for people out there to figure out but I figure I should broaden my search as I try to contact customer support.

I bought Skyrim SE with Anniversary upgrade on sale. Been absolutely loving it so far. 9 hours or so in, I boot it up for the second time that day and the frame rate's suddenly dropped to like 17 FPS. I try a bunch of things with my graphics options, graphics card settings, screen res etc, to no effect. In fact it's down to like 13FPS I reinstall it that evening and - hooray! - it's working smoothly again. This morning it's down to like 7FPS. I reinstall it AGAIN, and expect the issue to be resolved - if only for the time being. Nope. Now at about 3-4FPS.

I don't believe I have any mods installed on this laptop as I haven't played Skyrim in what feels like forever and I haven't had this laptop for very long. Does anyone have any idea what's going on with my install? Any ideas or even next steps for an investigation into the problem would be appreciated.

Things I've considered:
DS4 Windows - pretty sure this isn't the problem but I did download it to get my dualsense working on this laptop.
Mods? - I have downloaded mods in the past on previous computers and I do have some old backups but tbh I feel this is a long shot.
Driver issues - I have the latest drivers etc

[Skumboni]

Anniversary Edition is not an upgrade. It is all the Creation Club Crap stacked in one pile. I do not have AE and I have no problems.

[SpeedFreak1972]

I have the full package, but I run a smooth 60 fps so unlikely it's the AE package .... I mean the base game is still the same

[Nabinkemper]

Many laptops have integrated graphics as well as a dedicated graphics card. Check to make sure that Skyrim is using the dedicated card.

If you have an Nvidia GPU
1. Open the NVIDIA Control Panel:
a. Right-click on your desktop and select “NVIDIA Control Panel” from the context menu.
2. Manage 3D Settings:
a. In the NVIDIA Control Panel, go to “Manage 3D settings” on the left sidebar.
3. Program Settings:
a. Click on the “Program Settings” tab.
b. Click “Add” and find the Skyrim SE executable (usually located in the game’s installation folder).
4. Select Preferred Graphics Processor:
a. In the drop-down menu under “Select the preferred graphics processor for this program,” choose your dedicated NVIDIA GPU.
5. Apply Changes:
a. Click “Apply” to save the changes.

If you have an AMD GPU
1. Open AMD Radeon Settings:
a. Right-click on your desktop and select “AMD Radeon Settings.”
2. Switchable Graphics:
a. Go to “System” > “Switchable Graphics.”
3. Add Application:
a. Click “Add Application” and find the Skyrim SE executable.
4. Set Graphics Mode:
a. Set the graphics mode to “High Performance” to ensure it uses the dedicated GPU.
5. Apply Changes:
a. Click “Apply” to save the changes.

Additionally, if you have the hard drive space, you may also allocate additional virtual memory for page filing. The process is described in the links below.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-virtual-memory-size-windows-10

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-on-windows-11

[Don Sebastiano]

Thank you for your detailed reply. I had done the above (found similar instructions on the website) with undetermined effect. The issues had actually gone away for a few days and this morning came back. I'll have to figure out if there's a program running in the bg that is causing the issue... So for now I have no idea what's activating and deactivating this issue so to speak. I will update if I figure out what's going on.