Fallout 3 performance

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fornarmr

Gawd
Joined
Sep 5, 2007
Messages
552
Well I'll be damned... this game runs like a CHARM on my machine.

qx6850 @ 3.33ghz
4gb RAM
dual 8800 ultras
Vista 64

I have it on 1920x1200 Ultra settings, with EVERYTHING on full blast, including the highest AA which is 8x and the highest AF, which is 15 (weird).

I was having issues because there is a checkbox for vsync in the options before you enter the game, and regardless of whether or not it was checked my fps was capped at 60. I forced it off from the nvcp and it lifted the cap so I assume it worked. I figured I would hold judgment until I steppd out of the vault, and I did. I had around 60 fps when I was looking out into the HUGE environment and I could see really far. I went to the first town which was pretty elaborate and my fps didn't really dip one bit. I imagine I will see dips into the 40s in bigger firefights but the good thing about this game is that you'll want to use VATS a good amount so it's not like I will be running around full speed with guns flaring, which would probably hurt fps.

Just wanted to give you guys an idea of how this runs, on a machine that is about a year old. Pretty beefy cards but any new nvidia card should run this thing no problem, especially an SLI setup.

edit: also, I just turned on the SLI load graph and while it was not 100% it was pretty much almost all the way full the whole time.
 
Well it does use the same engine as Oblivion. I would be surprised if it didn't run well on modern hardware. Surprised and annoyed. Have to wait a couple days for my copy because the idiot supplier of the local game store forgot to ship my copy out with the rest of the order.
 
That reminds me... since it is the same engine as Oblivion I assume any nHancer profile for Oblivion would be similar to this. Anyone have a good nHancer profile for it?
 
Good to hear it runs well, gonna crank this baby on my 30" monitor tomorrow.

But like Derangel says, it's not that surprising, it's using the oblivion engine and appears to suffer from "not especially high res texture" syndrome, and to be perfectly blunt the shadows from the screenshots I've seen are practically non existant, not sure if thats because it's not been maxed on public showings, or if it's by design, or what, but it looks a bit...naff

Still looking foward to the game and hope it turns out alright, I can stand sub par graphics if there's a good trade off, scale I'm hoping!
 
I mean... not gonna lie, when I stepped outside for the first time it looked freakin' incredible. That's why I am in awe of why it runs so well. The textures at least so far don't seem low, but maybe it's just me.
 
Frostex said:
Good to hear it runs well, gonna crank this baby on my 30" monitor tomorrow.

But like Derangel says, it's not that surprising, it's using the oblivion engine and appears to suffer from "not especially high res texture" syndrome, and to be perfectly blunt the shadows from the screenshots I've seen are practically non existant, not sure if thats because it's not been maxed on public showings, or if it's by design, or what, but it looks a bit...naff

Still looking foward to the game and hope it turns out alright, I can stand sub par graphics if there's a good trade off, scale I'm hoping!
Click to expand...

Chances are you've only seen footage of XBox 360 or PS3 gameplay...
 
I'm getting a lot of jittery stuff going on, is my system really that outdated? Running it on High 1680x1050
 
I too can't seem to get rid of that 60 FPS cap, I have a 4870 and I just cant figure out how to do it. Any help?
 
Same here. I have a GTX 280 and Vsync or no Vsync solid 60 only. Can't get higher and never changes. Everything maxed, 4x AA, 1680x1050. Anyone know what is up with the frame cap? Drivers? Bug? Supposed to be that way (Console port issue)?
 
Fixed the vsync thing.You have to force no vsync in control panel. I get about 80+ fps (same settings as above) and rarely deviates. Another interesting note: When you force no vsync it completely fixes the mouse lag in the game. Like silk now.
 
bothaus said:
Fixed the vsync thing.You have to force no vsync in control panel. I get about 80+ fps (same settings as above) and rarely deviates. Another interesting note: When you force no vsync it completely fixes the mouse lag in the game. Like silk now.
Click to expand...

that's because vsync increases input lag by a lot. I'm seeing 60 with lows of ~30 with my crossfire setup 1080p all max 4x msaa :( FO3 must hate ATI.
 
z3r0- said:
that's because vsync increases input lag by a lot. I'm seeing 60 with lows of ~30 with my crossfire setup 1080p all max 4x msaa :( FO3 must hate ATI.
Click to expand...

Which would be funny as I recall Oblivion liking ATI cards.
 
Got my copy a day early! :D

The game seems decent so far but the game hitches. This is also happening on all resolutions and detail levels.

Almost like a microstutter, it's very noticible. Moving in the game it will go smooth then hitch slightly then go smooth again. Annoying. This is despite installing it on a Raptor

Looking at the Bethsoft forums this seems to be a common issue, but no solution has worked for me.

I may roll back my drivers as I'm using the 180.xx betas

Sound is also completely messed up in the game. I may experiment with drivers again. My footsteps sound crackly with my headphones on and radio channels are fubar. Looks like there is a problem with X-Fi Gamer and Vista. Thread here http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=893405

Great job on the QA Bethesda!
 
fornarmr said:
I mean... not gonna lie, when I stepped outside for the first time it looked freakin' incredible. That's why I am in awe of why it runs so well. The textures at least so far don't seem low, but maybe it's just me.
Click to expand...

I disagree, the textures are of a very poor quality. Textures look fine at a distance but up close they look very blurry with no clarity. Bit of a shock after the textures in Far Cry 2 and Crysis Warhead.
 
spicey said:
Got my copy a day early! :D

The game seems decent so far but the game hitches. This is also happening on all resolutions and detail levels.

Almost like a microstutter, it's very noticible. Moving in the game it will go smooth then hitch slightly then go smooth again. Annoying. This is despite installing it on a Raptor

Looking at the Bethsoft forums this seems to be a common issue, but no solution has worked for me.

I may roll back my drivers as I'm using the 180.xx betas

Sound is also completely messed up in the game. I may experiment with drivers again. My footsteps sound crackly with my headphones on and radio channels are fubar. Looks like there is a problem with X-Fi Gamer and Vista. Thread here http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=893405

Great job on the QA Bethesda!
Click to expand...

That's weird, I'm not having those issues and I'm running an X-Fi with the game installed on a Raptor. You know, since you mentioned you were having sound issues you might try disabling or uninstalling your sound card then re-running the game to see if that eliminates the stutter.

I remember a couple years back having stuttering issues in Oblivion that turned out to be related to the on-board sound card and this was the method I used. Obviously, you're not running on-board sound but if the problem is with your x-fi or its driver then this would be a good way to test.

Otherwise, you could try disabling the sound in game through the ini file then re-run it.

Good luck troubleshooting.
 
Hrm i've had to drop my res to 1680x1050 everything max with 2xaa and 16xaf to maintain playable frame rates, 2560x1600 just isn't possible without it feeling like im walkin through treacle.

Does this sound normal for a 4870 crossfire rig? Sounds like people are getting better frame rates than me with similar rigs :/
 
I am running very smooth at 1920x1200 at "ultra" settings with only AA turned off. My rig is in my sig. IF anyone with a Asus Xonar is having crashing problems try turning off the GX mode in the Xonar Audio Console, that worked for me.

Great Game so far just starting to get out into the wastes :D
 
Anyone tried running it a 5040x1050 yet? That's the res I plan on using so I'm interested to hear how it performs on a surround rig.
 
Anyone else have 15x AF as the highest option? Kinda weird that it doesn't go to 16x af
 
I'd be interested to hear what kind of performance people are getting out of GTX 260's, as I am eagerly awaiting mine to show up on Friday :D
 
Frostex said:
Hrm i've had to drop my res to 1680x1050 everything max with 2xaa and 16xaf to maintain playable frame rates, 2560x1600 just isn't possible without it feeling like im walkin through treacle.

Does this sound normal for a 4870 crossfire rig? Sounds like people are getting better frame rates than me with similar rigs :/
Click to expand...

Same deal here, but I just turned AA all the way off to keep it running smooth. It seems like it would run really good for a few minutes, but then the framerates just take a nose dive. I'm gonna run some benches on it with and without cf and see what I get. It may just be another driver issue ATI will have to address ala Farcry 2.
 
Check the advanced settings. I went Ultra High and it stuttered outside in some areas. So I went through and read all the advanced settings. I disabled transparency multisampling and water multisampling on my rig and that gave a noticeable jump in FPS.

Currently running 2x AA 15x AF at 1680x1050. With that FPS jump I should be able to bump up AA to 4x or 8x maybe.

Edit: The nice FPS boost was outside btw, inside always ran well.
 
If you are having issues with mouse response, this could the same issue Oblivion had. Go check the tweakguides.com Oblivion guide, it talks about how the "render frames ahead" causes this and if you lower it to 2 or 1 the issue goes away. I don't have the PC version of Fallout 3 so I can't be sure if it will work (pc broke down damn it) but I do remember playing Oblivion with that setting lowered to 2 and it did fix the mouse response. You can find it in the manage 3d settings section of the nvidia control panel.
 
I can't remove the frame cap/vsync either, it's stuck at 60fps. It's disabled in the game and in CCC.
 
I edited the FalloutPrefs.ini file and added a 0 to the end of this, as on Tweakguides. Game seems a little smoother

iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400 - This setting appears to determine the maximum amount (in bytes) of RAM allowed for preloading game data. The higher the value, the more chance you have of reducing stuttering. The default value equates to around 25MB (divide the setting by 1024 to get KB, then by 1024 again to get MB). For those with 1GB of system RAM, try doubling the variable to 52428800. For those with 2GB, try double again at 104857600 (100MB). You can raise these values even further to experiment, however note that raising this to a large amount doesn't force all the game data to sit in RAM, and can actually cause crashes. I suggest the maximum anyone should set this to should be around 262144000 (250MB), even for 2GB of RAM. Make sure to raise your Cell Buffer values accordingly (see above).
 
B2BigAl said:
I can't remove the frame cap/vsync either, it's stuck at 60fps. It's disabled in the game and in CCC.
Click to expand...

Same, check out the thread about mouse acceleration in this [H] forum, that will lead you to a vsync fix. Vsync really cripples smooth rendering, why there is no options in the game or config files is beyond me, even worse the default ATI CCC cannot force vsync off correctly.

*edit*

come back to correct this, the game does have vsync options if you run the fallout3launcher.exe in the install folder and select options. Not sure if it actually works or not.
 
spicey said:
Got my copy a day early! :D

The game seems decent so far but the game hitches. This is also happening on all resolutions and detail levels.

Almost like a microstutter, it's very noticible. Moving in the game it will go smooth then hitch slightly then go smooth again. Annoying. This is despite installing it on a Raptor

Looking at the Bethsoft forums this seems to be a common issue, but no solution has worked for me.

I may roll back my drivers as I'm using the 180.xx betas
Click to expand...

I found a setting last night that seemed to help me.. I was having the same issue... looking around with the mouse is smooth, but moving forwards or backwards just wasn't silky.

I ended up adding a value to the iFPSClamp line, in the ini file. I put in 60, and that seemed to immediately help. The default is 0, which I assume is no frame rate locking. Might want to give that a try?

I had this same issue in Far Cry 2 where moving is stuttery (new word!). In that game, I pull down the console and type in "gfx_maxfps 30" which helps quite a bit.

I'm using Vista Ultimate, also, as well as the 180.xx beta drivers for my GTX260.

Good luck!
 
Apparantly this is running better with crossfire disabled rather than enabled, can anyone help confirm this?
 
After playing FO3, I'm now convinced that I can wait on any upgrades. Still playing on a 3ghz C2D with a 8800GT and the game is smooth! I set it to the ultra setting and the game looks sweet. I was going to get a 2nd 8800GT for SLI but for now I'll hold off.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Now you're just showing off!!!!
Click to expand...

I wish I was! I got the TH2Go rig set up for MS FSX only to find out that such a wide "monitor" makes most video game engines joke to death. :mad: Since I've never played Oblivion, I have no idea how that engine holds up.
 
spicey I had the exact same issue you did until I did the following fix:

Edit your FALLOUT.ini (Dont forget to make a backup)

VISTA: "C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT.ini"
and change iFPSClamp=0 to iFPSClamp=60

XP: "C:\Documents and settings\[your username]\My Documents\My Games\Fallout3\FALLOUT.ini"
and change iFPSClamp=0 to iFPSClamp=60
Click to expand...

I found this at http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=893209

Good luck! Works for me so far.

edit: Oh I see reclinerhead already advised this fix. hah!
 
No credit needed. ;) I was playing about 4 hours straight last night -- I play with my 360 controller, and it just feels soooo much smoother now when moving around.

Finally found dogmeat!

However, I was playing at ultra settings (1680x1050) and had a few areas/battles where my FPSClamp setting made things go slow motion. I guess my GTX260 couldn't keep up. I bumped my details down to Very High instead of Ultra, and that fixed those areas and it was smooth again.

Far Cry 2 does the same thing to me as well... And some people in the Bethsoft thread were saying it happens with ATI cards as well. So maybe its a Vista thing?
 
I'm running 1920x1200, Ultra Settings and it seems to "chug" outside at times. Haven't check my frame rates with fraps or anything. It is a tad annoying on a 4870 x2 (not to mention with the rest of the system).
 
vsync is definately arseing this game up, if you have choppy, erratic frame rates which doesn't feel smooth, or have mouse lag then use fraps and confirm if its being capped at your refresh rate (60fps for most) and if it is, then read the mouse lag thread to find the fix to force vsync off.
 
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