Skyrim suddenly VERY slow to load and run

[vlamontagne4]

I've been playing Skyrim on medium settings for a while (default settings that was selected on startup). Everything ran smoothly for about three days, FPS was high and loading screens were quite short, too short to be able to read the hint text displayed. Then, all of a sudden, everything changed, it would take easily 3-5 minutes for each load screen to complete, and FPS came down to about 5-10 FPS, hardly improving on the lowest settings. When I say all of a sudden, I mean within a 60 minute time frame, everything went to hell.

I'm not running any mod at all, I dunno what happened, I'm quite upset about it since I was having quite a blast with the game.

I dunno how my specs would have anything to do with it since it clearly ran quite well before, and I checked online and found similar problems, but no satisfactory solution to help me...

Please help!

[HisShadowX]

If your playing on Medium settings you must have an old rig or a rig thats not a gaming rig which would explain your situation. Skyrim does have bugs but your situation does not sound like its a fault caused by Skyrim but rather your own rig.

It's time to upgrade a current rig should be able to play Skyrim on Ultra or High settings. I'd highly recommend iBUYPOWER. They have some reasonable rigs or even tigerdirect.com for very good deals.

If you're looking to go cheap check out ibuypower's Steambox http://www.ibuypower.com/product/SBX

[raubrey]

Originally posted by vlamontagne4:

I dunno how my specs would have anything to do with it since it clearly ran quite well before, and I checked online and found similar problems, but no satisfactory solution to help me...

Please help!

EDIT: all the information has been summarized and organized and posted here.

Optimizing Skyrim for Low-end PCs & Laptops

http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/613939294465966376/#c613939294484562377

-------------------

Most people here don't give unsolicited buying advice, least of all iBuypower, so don't think the first post is representative of the forum. You didn't ask for such, so feel free to ignore.

But, not knowing if/why your specs matter is not a good reason not to list them when seeking technical help. They do matter and may affect advice. Giving the worng advice wastes your time and ours.

So, what specs do you have?
Do you have the Unofficiall Patch installed?
What FPS are you getting then and now? (high/ow doesn't help much)

Also your profile shows less than a half-hour in the game, not aligning with your original comments. Thus I'm not sure how much time you had "good FPS" for 3 days? Where are you at in the game? Which quest/cit. The longer you play, the more demanding the game becomes.

Depending on your set up if you meet or come close to meeting the minimum requirements you can get about 30FPS with some work, though it's not guaranteed.

[MEOW]

im different mines fast fawarding thru the story

[vlamontagne4]

well i played a... um... trial version... for a few days before deciding on buying the game :)
(I didn't want to drop so much money on a game that wouldn't run on my rig)

basically things stopped working yesterday for some unknown reason. i'm running on a laptop so it is not a possibility for me to upgrade anything.

If you want my specs, here they are:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.GHz 2.30 GHz
12 Gb RAM
Window 8.1
Video Card: Unsure of details, it's built in and its called Intel(R) HD Graphics Family

All in all, it's the only game I've tried that gives me such a bother. All other games I have work fine, as in the sudden changed that affected Skyrim since yesterday has not affected other games.

[raubrey]

For the video card:
Click on Start
Type "Dxdiag" no quotes
Click on Video - the card should be listed and the memory.

Or use this: http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/11231/?p=a


Skyrim is very VRAM (video memory) intensive, laptops are more prone to trouble with the game. Some people do fine, others not so much. If you have less than 1GB of memory it will be slow, if you have less than 512, it is often unplayable. 512 is borderline.

Meanwhile, here is a guy who was underspecc'd I helped out -- a lot of posts won't apply to you (until set up to mod) but check the reference links. Your CPU is better, not sure about your Vid card until you post it.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/613939294408764858/#p2 (this includes recommended mods).

You can also look up your specs in this chart with relative performance to expect.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:System_Requirements

Tweaking and modding can possibly help.

[vlamontagne4]

the laptop model is Acer E1 572P 6884
and the video card is a Intel HD Graphics 4400

that's about all I can dig up on that laptop. When I do Dxdiag, I can't see any video tab or anything like that.

I'll look at your lin, but if you find anything in the meantime, that'd be awesome!

[Factualious]

Are you using a "performance" power management profile... if not, maybe the system is reducing clock speeds to conserve power (just guessing, I don't use laptops but have heard that it can be an issue with them).

[raubrey]

P.S. If you ran a "trial" version I would check for malware and do a clean reinstall of the game.
Second to that turn off background programs but don't disable antivirus/malware until you are sure your system is clean. Delete it via Steam and delete My Documents\My Games\Skyrim.

You can backup the saves but if there is a risk of infection I wouldn't bother.

[vlamontagne4]

nah i'm now running the steam paid version (with the dlc included)
i had uninstalled the previous version before getting this one. All in all it didn't make a lick of difference

[vlamontagne4]

@JohnDoe60: I'm running it on balanced settings. I'm translating it, cause windows is set to French, but I can confirm it is definitely not set to performance.

[raubrey]

Originally posted by vlamontagne4:

nah i'm now running the steam paid version (with the dlc included)
i had uninstalled the previous version before getting this one. All in all it didn't make a lick of difference

Nah, what? You could have had hidden malware that activated. Something has activated or gone wrong suddenly. It doesn't sound like a typical bug on an unmodded game.

[vlamontagne4]

also i just gotta say, I love how quick you guys are set on helping a poor guy out. Maybe it won't fix my issue, but the community is really out on giving a hand to the computer illiterate like myself (well, not quite illiterate, but i'm certainly in dire need of some assistance)

[vlamontagne4]

@raubrey any idea how i can figure that out?

[raubrey]

This is Win 7 but this guy is running OK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkigD2iErl0


Settings:
Resolution: 1366x768 (Native)
Antialiasing: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: Off
Detail: High

Running with the Unofficial patch and 1 mod.

[raubrey]

Originally posted by vlamontagne4:

also i just gotta say, I love how quick you guys are set on helping a poor guy out. Maybe it won't fix my issue, but the community is really out on giving a hand to the computer illiterate like myself (well, not quite illiterate, but i'm certainly in dire need of some assistance)

Kind comments are appreciated. Thank you, kindly.

@raubrey any idea how i can figure that out?

I'm sorry, figure out what?