Flashing Spots of Colors while using ENB in Skyrim SE/FO4

[Seifah]

Hi.

Since I got a new rig, whenever I'm using ENB in Bethesda games I get these flashing spots of color, followed by a consuming darkness which eventually covers the entire screen. Se Youtube-link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYtqNZXs_kU

I've understood, from googling around a bit, that it has to do with the game being unable to handle multi-threaded GPU processes and that inputting the argument "-force-gfx-direct" or "-force-d3d9" when running the game can solve the issue.

Here's my problem: How to I do this?

I'm running Skyrim through Mod Organizer 2 and as such the application launcher has an "argument-field" which should be able to take in such an argument. However, I am unable to make it work.

Please help!

[ENBSeries]

First of all, those arguments are purely speculation and not exist in the game. Second, if you have this in both games with fallout4 and sse versions of the mod, then you should not use overclocking of videocard. It's easy to check by reducing frequencies of vram and gpu a lot in afterburner application and if this problem will reduce or go away, then you have faulty videocard or overclocked too much (or very bad cooling). You can also try to check this by forcing fps limiter to something very low, like 10 fps (in editor window for enblocal.ini) and if problem will disappear or number of spots will be rare - again it's hardware fault. For all other cases it's "crapware" running, like geforce experience, freestyle, overlays, screen capturing software and so on (but they usually give different kind of bugs, so chance is low).

[Seifah]

Thank you for your reply. I will investigate as per your advice.

I just find it suspicious that several others have had the exact issue (first flashing spots of color, then the expanding blackness) in other games like Subnautica etc and they got rid of it by using these arguments (apparently in steam).

Anyways, I'll get back if I make progress. Thanks again.

[ENBSeries]

Those dots are wrong pixels rendered and bloom effect show them very well. Sometime people reported this before when were not hardware issue but some mods installed incompatible, but i did workarounds in Skyrim. But in Fallout4 this was never reported yet. Btw, there is OCCT test, you can try it to run. May help to check videocard fault (but this really depends from various factors). It can be your PSU having bad power instead of videocard, hard to say without oscilloscope or various tests like rebooting or shut off computer when playing games, etc.

[Seifah]

Thank you again.

There are definitely something serious going on here, perhaps more than one issue.

Stop me if you feel that this is out of your area. I'm gonna try it since you obviously have great knowledge.
There seem to be an driver-related issue for me.
If I remove graphics drivers completely, reboot and then reinstall graphics drivers (and DO NOT reboot again) then everything seems to work rather fine. If, however, I reboot after that, then all of a sudden I get the color spots, 3D Mark crashes, MSI Kombustor crashes etc.
How is it possible that it all goes to hell if I reboot, and everything is fine as long as the drivers are newly installed?
ps. I don't use GeForce Experience or any of that.


Bless you!

[ENBSeries]

Could be that after reboot higher gpu/vram clocks or voltage applied. I remember my gf8600gt was fried because in some drivers too high setting were applied and i was not the only one victim. First of all you should make sure that problem not come from other software, could be driver conflict, was popular between Creative sound cards and Nvidia devices, Asus motherboard also can be pain in the ass about compatibility (sometime can be fixed from bios). Try at first when install drivers without reboot check frequencies and voltages of videocard when some heavy 3d application running, then after reboot check those values again. If i remember Everest (Aida64), OCCT, maybe Afterburner too display voltages and frequencies. If you do see difference, it's driver apply bad setting for your videocard. To check PSU problem (it's one of the main reasons for bugs and people rarely care of this), before reboot after driver install run very heavy tests of GPU (from OCCT for example) and CPU both at same time, see how much voltage drops by 12v lines (information also available in applications), that number must not be different more than +-5%, but normally it's around +-1% for good PSU. Also if you had AMD card installed on that system (without clearly reinstall OS), then it could be the reason too, i had this myself around 10 years ago and no matter what files i search about AMD drivers and delete them, new NVidia card started to act bad after few minutes in game (triangles on the screen center and colorful dots), so i fixed by format C and install again. Maybe this issue do not exist any more, i don't know. Maybe i was not lucky somehow, but i prefer to think that it's specially made bug by AMD, because heard complains on the forums that after people migrated to NVidia they regret cause of problems. Anyway, you can even get videocard from friend to test, but that's closer to end of testing.

[Seifah]

Thank you! I seems to be an old overclocking setting that I wasn't even aware of. So the GPU was overclocked without my knowledge.
I hope must issues are resolved now.

Thank you again for your help!