Skyrim Load Times

[DefDC]

Cliffs: Skyrim ran great on release day. Logged a ton of hours and the load times are horrible.
Ran basic fixes and tricks.
System is well over spec.

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How many people completed Skyrim on the PC? I started playing from day one, and the longer I played, the longer the load times became. They're way out of control now.

From the splash screen, to once you can start playing can take over 10 minutes. The average loading time for fast travel can be that long. If I'm lucky, and transitioning from one area, to another, and back again can still be somewhat instantaneous, so it's not EVERYTHING, just 90%. (Like entering your house, leaving, and coming back)

Some loads might only be 1-5 minutes, but it was enough for me to shelve the game when I was 3/4 of the way through.

My machine is upper-end. (As far as this game is considered)
Win7 64-bit
Quad cord AMD 970 Black,
4GB RAM
Nvidia 460GTX w/updated drivers. (Beta and stable)

It's not a hardware issue, as the game WAS fine... I've made no hardware changes.

I've read that as a the savegame file grows, performance gets weird and unstable. I can't believe I'm the only one who's played the game obsessively.

One thing that resolved the issue temporarily was running in a window. That doesn't seem to be helping now. Load times are as bad as they have ever been, basicly making the game unplayable.

I let it sit for months, waiting for patches. Once the expansion was released, I decided to give it another go. Same crap.

My savegame file is around 12meg. (I hear that's "big")

I've played around with graphic settings, window modes, and lightening my load (like dropping hundreds of keys in a chest)

I am somewhat of a crafting/loot whore. So, my house in Whiterun had tons of stuff.

I went though and sold a lot of garbage, and did some housecleaning so it's not TOO bad. Now that I think about it, my books, ingredients, and food is probably out of control. I just dump those, and haven't cleaned them yet...

Regardless, just curious anyone had similar issues and/or fixes.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Get an SSD. Its night and day difference in Skyrim. Friend was over and watched me play, went home and bought an SSD

HDs are just stupidly slow.

 

[DefDC]

I've considered that. However, it looks like something is hanging, which a SSD might not fix.
Funny, because in Morrowind and Oblivion, I collected just as much stuff...

 

[ShintaiDK]

What I know is it goes from 1-2mins to sub 0-5seconds with SSD.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I completed it on the PC about 80 hours total, I was playing off a SSD and the load times were never more than a few seconds to be honest, they might have got ever so slightly longer as the save file grew, but nothing noticeable.

If you're waiting literally minutes then something is very wrong, something like 5 minutes is effing crazy...I'd seriously consider something being faulty or some kind of crazy corruption in the save file.

Start a brand new game and test load/save speeds on a new, smaller save file and compare. I'd maybe benchmark the read/write for your hdd and see if what you're getting is expected.

I'd also recommend SSDs for gamers in general, it massively lowers the wait time for loading, it wont increase game performance but will cut down on the waiting between sections and make loading/saving painless, it also makes using apps in windows a lot faster/smoother.

 

[Madia]

I've logged in 200+ hours and the longest loading time I ever had was perhaps 10 seconds. Mostly my loading times are one to three seconds and I'm running grahpics mods to boot. I don't have an SSD and my system is good but not cutting edge (i5 750 gtx 560ti).

I'm not sure what's causing the problems with your game. I imagine you ran disk defragmentor already. You can try to check the integrity of your game. Open steam and right click on the elder scrolls in your library tab. Then click properties, the local files tab and then click verify integrity of game cache. If you think the saves are a problem, create a new folder and move all the save files there. Then try starting the game with an empty saves folder.

 

[DefDC]

I've logged in 200+ hours and the longest loading time I ever had was perhaps 10 seconds. Mostly my loading times are one to three seconds and I'm running grahpics mods to boot. I don't have an SSD and my system is good but not cutting edge (i5 750 gtx 560ti).

I'm not sure what's causing the problems with your game. I imagine you ran disk defragmentor already. You can try to check the integrity of your game. Open steam and right click on the elder scrolls in your library tab. Then click properties, the local files tab and then click verify integrity of game cache. If you think the saves are a problem, create a new folder and move all the save files there. Then try starting the game with an empty saves folder.

Good tip!

Those are two things I didn't try. I pruned all but my lastest save and quicksave. Didn't help. I haven't reinstalled or repaired the game yet.

I want an SSD, but I just don't want the hassle of reinstalling everything, but, seeing as how much I love RPGs and games with load times, I think it's in my best interest and to just get it done.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Good tip!

Those are two things I didn't try. I pruned all but my lastest save and quicksave. Didn't help. I haven't reinstalled or repaired the game yet.

I want an SSD, but I just don't want the hassle of reinstalling everything, but, seeing as how much I love RPGs and games with load times, I think it's in my best interest and to just get it done.

You can simply clone your HD to an SSD

 

[Yreka]

Def SSD..

I had my SSD drive go out mid-playthough and had to swap to a backup platter drive while I RMA'ed it.. Load time doubled easily. Still manageable, but I certainly "felt" it.

Still wasn't as bad as a console though.. Recently started a new Skyrim game on the 360 for grins as someone gave me the disk.. Holy fk-balls thats slow, even with the game installed on the HD, feels like 15min every time you zone. Unplayable for me.

 

[Dankk]

I've logged in 200+ hours and the longest loading time I ever had was perhaps 10 seconds. Mostly my loading times are one to three seconds and I'm running grahpics mods to boot. I don't have an SSD and my system is good but not cutting edge (i5 750 gtx 560ti).

Ah. I was going through this thread, thinking "It seriously takes Skyrim minutes to load on an HD for these people? Really?" But I'm glad there's other people similar to me. I too have Skyrim installed on a regular HD, and I don't think a loading screen has ever lasted more than 10 seconds. It's pretty fast.

It probably has something to do with the fact that Steam is running on its own dedicated HD, so Skyrim is installed on a different drive than the OS. Also, I keep my HD defragmented on a regular basis. Average loading time in Skyrim for me is probably 7 or 8 seconds.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I have no problem with load times, but I have not put a lot of hours in yet (maybe 24-30). My steam games are on a 4 disk hardware raid 5 (I get about 150 MB/s writes on it, around 200 MB/s reads). I think I have only had 2 instances where load times were more than 3 seconds (took maybe 30 on one of them though).

 

[waggy]

I have no issue with load times. i have roughly 200 hours in with 2 games.

 

[Mem]

I would say you have a problem somewhere,SSD is not the solution,I have Skyrim on laptop with mechanical HD and does not take long( about a minute max ),my other PC has SSD and obviously it loads faster,however your 10 mins for your game is way too long.

 

[Ferzerp]

Something is broken with your save or a mod that you have installed. When I played it off HDs, the loads were around 5 seconds or so.

 

[Red Hawk]

I played Skyrim before getting an SSD and I never had a problem with load times or lag. Yes load times are noticeable, but that's rather understandable given Skyrim's huge overworld. I still play Skyrim off my HDD, though I think my saves are stored on my SSD. I haven't noticed a difference in Skyrim load times either way.

Try disabling cloud saves in Skyrim with Steam, that might be slowing things down.

 

[Truthslayer]

Same as above, but I'll add in to check your mods (any updates available to them, any notorious ones that should be dropped)and check your load order (if using MO, both ESPs and BSAs).

 

[turn_pike]

The design of the game itself where you have a loading screen whenever you enter a building is problematic.
A town can have a dozen or so buildings and a city easily has double that. For a guy without SSD the loading can seriously deters from thoroughly exploring a city