Microstutter with Crossfire enabled. Perfect with Borderless Window.

[Malachor]

Hi All,

 

As the title suggests, I cannot resolve the age-old issue of Microstutter with my game with Crossfire enabled.  I have 2 x MSI 7970 Lightnings 3GB in Crossfire (not overclocked) with the latest stable (14.4) drivers.  I should point out that TESV.exe is optimised EXACTLY as pointed out in section 1.E.1.1 of S.T.E.P 2.2.9 and CCC Guide.

 

Here's what I've tried thus far:

 

• Setting an FPS limiter in enblocal.ini to 42, 59 and 60fps
• Setting Crossfire Mode in Catalyst Control Center (CCC from now on) to "Alternate Frame Rendering Friendly"
• Tried different permutations of "Wait for vertical refresh" in CCC to 'Always off, Always on, Unless Apllication Specifies" etc.

When Crossfire is on, i.e. full Window - both cards light up and Microstutter occurs.  Mainly when close to dungeon walls or interiors.  It's extremely frustrating and I can't play with that kind of jerkiness.  But, if I turn Crossfire off, or use Borderless Window (not full screen, so Crossfire is disabled by default) then the game is butter smooth and silky - perfect; but, of course I'm not getting anywhere near the kind of performance I'd get with having them both enabled.

 

I've had this issue since S.T.E.P 2.2.5 and have rebuilt my machine 4 times during that period - all with different drivers and all with drivers removed in safe mode using the AMD Driver removal utility, restart, then install new drivers; yet the issue persists.  I'm not really content to leave it "as is" and play with one card because that essentially means I bought the second card for nothing and its a complete waste of money. It's also niggling at me and I can't leave it because it's personal now

 

Has anyone else had this or know of anything I can try to resolve this? I know my hardware isn't at fault because I can play Diablo 3 for 10+ hours with Crossfire enabled with no stutter or issues of any kind.  I can also run Heaven benchmark with Crossfire enabled for hours on end - no issues. 

 

One thing I noticed too is that, with Crossfire enabled, when bringing up the game menu, there's a yellow flicker in the background, which is just awful.  With Crossfire disabled, it's not there.

 

Been banging my head against the wall with this for over a year; so it's doing my nut in! Any advice would be sincerely appreciated.  Thanks very much all :)

 

Regards

 

Malachor.

[Breems]

do not disable v sync. It helps the stuttering but you'll get more flying animals, objects in houses decide to flip out. and sometimes you have dead animals pop up next to you.Its happened to me...

Yea, that's what I meant by "other strange glitches." I'm not sure how ENB's VSync works or the benefits of using it over the game's VSync setting in the INI files, but I use it anyway along with DXTORY to eliminate stutter. If I remember correctly, the game's VSync along with DXTORY did not resolve the issue.The STEP guide also suggests using ENB's VSync, but I don't remember the guide having any explanation on that. Would any staff/experts care to weigh in on this?

[DoubleYou]

ENB vsync enables triple-buffering if I remember correctly...

[Malachor]

I have triple bufferung enabled in CCC.  Maybe I should disable this and try again (along with the other suggestions); but I haven't had time as of late with work/life responsibilities.

[DoubleYou]

Triple buffering in CCC is for OpenGL only afaik

[Malachor]

I've finally managed to fix the Micro-stutter!! Ulrika!!! It's only taken ~1.5 years

 

To anyone else having insane micro-stutter, who are running AMD 7970's (or equivalent) in Crossfire, try this - it's the ONLY thing that has fixed it for me and I've tried about 20-30 different 'fixes' over the course of my anguish.  For info I'm running Catalyst 14.4 Drivers.

 

In your enblocal.ini set the following lines as shown:

 

Under [MEMORY] set...

DisableDriverMemoryManager=true

 

Under [WINDOW] set...

ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false (Not needed because to utilise Crossfire you NEED to be running full screen)

 

Under [ENGINE] set...

EnableVSync=true (should be set at this by default if you followed S.T.E.P guidelines correctly)

 

Under [LIMITER] set...

FPSLimit=57.6 (Note I'm running 1920x1080 60Hz monitors so you may need to check your refresh rate and set a value -2.4 of maximum)

 

The horrendously annoying "wall stutter" - especially in caves and the stutter when surrounded by dense flora outside is now GONE.  Happy as Larry Game runs hell of a lot smoother too given that I now have the power of the second card at my desposal (2 x MSI Lightinings 3GB).

 

To everyone who contributed to this thread in the past - thank you.  I am sincerely grateful for your suggestions.

[Breems]

Would you mind sending over your enblocal.ini file?

 

Those specific tweaks didn't do the trick for me.

[generalmx]

From my recent research, Skyrim has what's known as the "64Hz bug" where trying to cap it to exactly 60 FPS doesn't really work. Some had have success with lowering the FPS limit below 60, and some have had success with raising it above 60 --- it depends on your monitor. If your monitor can actually do 64Hz, some have said increasing it to 64Hz fixes the microstuttering for them: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/1965654-skyrim-stuttering-2014/?p=17188104

 

Also, note the suggestion to try setting fTreeLoadDistance no higher than 40000 (on High this is 75000.0000).

 

If you absolutely cannot live with the microstutter, there's also "iFPSClamp=60" you can place in Skyrim.ini, but beware this can introduce other problems (also detailed in the same thread above).

Edited August 15, 2014 by generalmx

[Malachor]

Would you mind sending over your enblocal.ini file?

 

Those specific tweaks didn't do the trick for me.

Sure thing - I'll see if I can do it before leaving for the in-laws (to be) to inform them I've knocked their daughter up.... *gulp* (nice 5 hour drive)

 

If I can't get it across today I'll do it when I get back on Sunday :)

[Breems]

Wow, good luck with that.

[Malachor]

Hi Breems,

 

Apologies it's taken this long - the weekend away was, well, long and arduous....... plus after driving 600+ miles you tend to crash and burn for a day; so sorry for the delay!

 

Anyway, here;s my enblocal.ini

 

 

 

 

[PROXY]EnableProxyLibrary=falseInitProxyFunctions=trueProxyLibrary=other_d3d9.dll[GLOBAL]UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=trueUseDefferedRendering=falseIgnoreCreationKit=trueForceFakeVideocard=false[PERFORMANCE]SpeedHack=trueEnableOcclusionCulling=true[MULTIHEAD]ForceVideoAdapterIndex=falseVideoAdapterIndex=0[MEMORY]ExpandSystemMemoryX64=falseReduceSystemMemoryUsage=trueDisableDriverMemoryManager=trueDisablePreloadToVRAM=falseEnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=falseReservedMemorySizeMb=64VideoMemorySizeMb=EnableCompression=trueAutodetectVideoMemorySize=true[WINDOW]ForceBorderless=falseForceBorderlessFullscreen=false[ENGINE]ForceAnisotropicFiltering=falseMaxAnisotropy=16ForceLodBias=falseLodBias=0.0AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=falseEnableVSync=trueVSyncSkipNumFrames=0[LIMITER]WaitBusyRenderer=falseEnableFPSLimit=trueFPSLimit=57.6[iNPUT]//shiftKeyCombination=16//f12KeyUseEffect=123//homeKeyFPSLimit=36//num / 106KeyShowFPS=106//print screenKeyScreenshot=44//enterKeyEditor=13//f4KeyFreeVRAM=115[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]Enable=falseQuality=1DesiredFPS=20.0[ANTIALIASING]EnableEdgeAA=falseEnableTemporalAA=falseEnableSubPixelAA=falseEnableTransparencyAA=false[FIX]FixGameBugs=trueFixParallaxBugs=trueFixAliasedTextures=trueIgnoreInventory=trueFixSsaoHairTransparency=trueFixTintGamma=trueRemoveBlur=falseFixSubSurfaceScattering=trueFixSkyReflection=trueFixCursorVisibility=true 

 

 

[hishutup]

hate to burst you bubble but CF doesn't work in windowed mode... The second card never turns on and contributes. So... no CF just a single card

The only game that ever used my second card in windowed is TESO and it ran bad probably because "beta" testing

Edited August 18, 2014 by hishutup

[Malachor]

I know, hence the line earlier:

 

"Under [WINDOW] set...

ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false (Not needed because to utilise Crossfire you NEED to be running full screen)"

 

Which ensures both cards are running...

[Jaga]

Using ENB to limit framerate didn't work for me either, even using the posted ini file settings.  All I would get with limiting turned on is rather horrible microstutter when panning the camera or moving.  And the author of DXtory has publicly stated it isn't compatible with ENB, nor could I get the two to work together properly - crashing was always the end result.  In total I've been working the performance issues related to Crossfire+ENB for over two days now.

 

 

However - I believe I found a graceful solution that may work for anyone still afflicted by this micro-stutter problem with Crossfire/ENB.  The framerate limiter I ended up using, and which appears to be compatible from a functioning standpoint with ENB, is the RivaTuner Statistics Server software, distributed as an add-on package with MSI Afterburner.

 

Using that software, tagging the TESV.exe executable with Medium detection, and enabling the framerate limit to 57 yielded perfectly smooth frames both outdoor and indoor.  The microstutter that had appeared prior was completely gone.

 

Note:  my tests were with ENB versions 262/264, with iPresentInterval=0 for Skyrim, all driver Vsync turned off, and no vsync or limiting in the enblocal.ini.

 

I've verified it multiple times now - it appears to be a working and stable solution.