Why is Skyrim chewing through my VRAM?

[Plywood]

Hi, recently I did a clean install of Skyrim and after installing all the nice neccessities (high resolution textures, ENB preset) I ran into a few issues.


First and foremost I appear to be getting massive stutters (sometimes up to 10s) when loading a new area or spinning around extremely quickly, I did the only natural thing to do and loaded up Skyrim Performance Manager to get to the bottom of the issue and found that Skyrim was eating ALL of my VRAM, yet all as I'm running is HD textures and ENB.

Why is that? and is there a way to fix it? screenshot included.

http://oi61.tinypic.com/4uuikw.jpg

[Uriel24]

Memory is supposed to be used i believe. That's why people buy graphics with a lot of VRAM.
What's in your enblocal.ini?

[Plywood]

Everything from my ENBLocal.ini pasted below:

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=false
InitProxyFunctions=true
ProxyLibrary=other_d3d9.dll

[GLOBAL]
UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=false
UseDefferedRendering=true
ForceFakeVideocard=false
IgnoreCreationKit=true

[PERFORMANCE]
SpeedHack=true
EnableOcclusionCulling=true

[MULTIHEAD]
ForceVideoAdapterIndex=false
VideoAdapterIndex=0

[MEMORY]
ExpandSystemMemoryX64=true
ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true
DisableDriverMemoryManager=false
DisablePreloadToVRAM=false
EnableUnsafeMemoryHacks=false
ReservedMemorySizeMb=256
VideoMemorySizeMb=3072
EnableCompression=true
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=true

[WINDOW]
ForceBorderless=false
ForceBorderlessFullscreen=false

[ENGINE]
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=true
MaxAnisotropy=16
EnableVSync=false
AddDisplaySuperSamplingResolutions=false
VSyncSkipNumFrames=0
ForceLodBias=false
LodBias=0.0

[LIMITER]
WaitBusyRenderer=false
EnableFPSLimit=false
FPSLimit=60.0

[INPUT]
//shift
KeyCombination=16
//f12
KeyUseEffect=123
//home
KeyFPSLimit=36
//num / 106
KeyShowFPS=106
//f11
KeyScreenshot=122
//enter
KeyEditor=13
//not assigned
KeyFreeVRAM=0

[ADAPTIVEQUALITY]
Enable=true
Quality=1
DesiredFPS=20.0

[FIX]
FixPhysics=true
FixGameBugs=true
FixParallaxBugs=true
FixAliasedTextures=true
IgnoreLoadingScreen=true
IgnoreInventory=true
FixSsaoWaterTransparency=true
FixSsaoHairTransparency=true
FixTintGamma=true
RemoveBlur=false
FixSubSurfaceScattering=true
FixSkyReflection=true
FixCursorVisibility=true
[ANTIALIASING]
EnableEdgeAA=true
EnableSubPixelAA=false
EnableTemporalAA=false
EnableTransparencyAA=false

The only other thing I could think is causing such horrible stutter and mini freezes is my incredibly slow 4 year old 5400 RPM HDD.

[Uriel24]

Looks pretty much ok to me.
Are you running any kind of memory freeing software? Those memory load drops from your screenshot look kinda suspicious.

[Plywood]

Memory freeing software? only thing I run remotely related to memory are ENBoost and Shesons Memory Patch.

Other than that I don't think I have any other Memory focused programs on my computer.


As I said, I have an old Samsung 5400RPM HDD that could just be thrashing when I try to load the HD textures, so it's either that which is causing the micro freezes or it is the memory drops.

[Uriel24]

How much RAM do you have? Are you running on x64 OS?
HDD might be a bottleneck ofcourse. Especially an old one. I have one 5400 hdd that overheats without active cooling and provides stutters and freezes. Works ok with cooling though. Cost me a couple weeks to find out.

[Plywood]

Yeah, I'm running 8GB of RAM atm on a 64-bit W7 Ultimate install.

This problem isn't exclusive to Skyrim, In some other high end games I get the same symptoms which is why it makes me think it's the HDD.

[ENBSeries]

If the issue is gone after area is loaded, it's hdd/os/antivirus/hdd driver. Try
ReservedMemorySizeMb=512
VideoMemorySizeMb=4500
EnableCompression=false
AutodetectVideoMemorySize=false

[Plywood]

Thanks Boris, I will try those settings out once I get to my desktop.

It does smooth itself out if I wait in the same spot long enough (assumedly for the area to be fully loaded), but then develops in the next area, Trees and Grass also pop in much later than they should on Ugrids 5, even failing to pop in after I've walked past them.

[odineado]

but then develops in the next area, Trees and Grass also pop in much later than they should on Ugrids 5, even failing to pop in after I've walked past them.

I have this issue as well while I ride a horse. Grasses would come out much slower than they should. One time I even stayed in that area for 10 seconds until the grasses came out.
If anyone knows what the cause is I'd be appreciated to know.