Can't get decent FPS on a good rig in fallout 4.

[godeshus]

Hi everyone.

I realize there has been quite a few threads about this; Here on Tom's and elsewhere on the web.

First my specs:

I7 5820K
32GB RAM
GTX 970 Stryx
SSD Corsair Neutron XT

I get reasonably low fps especially around Boston and it's driving me crazy. I sometimes drop down to 20-25. I've been running quite a few tests and I find that the graphics options have little impact on performance in problematic areas like Boston. I've turned all settings to Low or off, loaded up the game, and the best I could get in Hanged Man's Alley was 40 fps. Changing the settings to average values gives me really poor fps.

Now, The one thing that really gets me is that I've seen comments in various places from users who say they are getting steady 60 fps at near ULTRA settings and they have way lower specs than I do.

I've tried following several tweak guides, enabling multithreading, using Mods that optimize textures...I've tried so many different things I can't even remember them all. Nothing helps.

Has anyone else heard of a similar situation, and were they able to resolve it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Hard to say without your mentioning your level of PC experience. In a case like this I would steer clear of things like mods and stick to basic troubleshooting, like running MSI Afterburner with onscreen readout enabled to see what CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM usage is while playing.

Do you have and use decent anti malware tools? Many sites now have very aggressive ads that can sometimes be infected. Also do you run background programs, or keep a careful eye on resources being used while gaming?

Have you done any troubleshooting for system file or disk problems via sfc /scannow, or CHHDSK? Also what OS are you using, if W10, is the install or update stable? Have you checked CPU/GPU temps and voltages?

Are you running an OC on CPU or GPU, and if so have you thoroughly checked for stability? Have you tried using different GPU drivers? Have you checked to make sure all cables and power cords are firmly attached?

 

[godeshus]

Thanks for your reply Frag.

I have decent PC experience. I built this rig myself. I am a 3D Modeller and am into hyper-realistic rendering for arch viz. I've dealt with a lot of issues and compatibility problems due to the number of software and plug-ins I have had to work with.

I keep my pc as clean as I can. Run anti-malware several times a week, keep background programs to a minimum however I there is always something running such as AV, mouse drivers, Nvidia Control Panel, etc. the necessary things.

I checked my ssd a few weeks ago with sfc /scannow and ran CHHDSK for unrelated trouble shooting and nothing came up. I'm using W10 for operating system and it was a clean installation (not an upgrade).

I run a stable overclock on my CPU and RAM, but not on my GPU. I haven't tried different drivers though. I need to run Nvidia drivers. I've tried alternatives but they cause too many problems with the various computer graphics software I use.

I'm beginning to think that there is no solution for me. I managed to get around 45-50 fps in boston and having fps drop in a few isolated locations. Trinity towers, hanged man's alley, where all the super mutants are right before you get to the old north church when following the freedom trail. Went to top of Corvega. These are all areas where fps tends to drop a lot.

Also, I find fps is affected by things that shouldn't even be rendered. Not sure why hanged man's alley gives me poor fps. I've built there but not a ton. If I wander from there, fps gets better, but if I turn around to look towards Hanged Man's alley, even if looking through a bunch of buildings, fps drops by 10-15.

I'm really beginning to think that it's Bethesda's engine, not myself, and that the comments I read about great performance are exaggerations.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Well I've played Fallout 4 on just a i7-950, 7970 OC at stock factory OC, and 8GB RAM, and I don't recall what FPS I average, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't dipping as low as 20-25, and certainly not low enough to cause lag or stutter. I'm also using pretty high settings at 1080p.

Same result with Automatron and Far Harbor DLC. By any chance have you tried checking integrity of game cache, or reinstalling the game?

Probably redundant to say since you're fairly tech oriented, but did you try installing the Dx and Visual Studio C++ in the redist folder?

 

[godeshus]

I have not. I may do that.

I think i've made a bit of progress though, even though it frustrates me. Using the Fallout 4 configeration Tool on Nexus, I've tweaked a few extra settings that have helped quite a bit.

I've reduced by half the distance at which the sky renders clouds. I've also reduced the distance at which shadows are rendered (lower than the medium setting allows).

I've also bumped up the speed of my ram a bit more. These things combined have helped a lot. Now in problematic areas I'm getting between 30-40 fps. It still bothers me that it is so low given my system specs, but at least it's playable and still looks good.

I've removed the game's vsync, and am using Nvidia's adaptive/half option for fallout4.exe. This gives me an fps of between 65-72 in non problematic areas. And everything is looking great there (just wandering around in wilderness/between red rocket and Concord.

I'm not too happy about overclocking my RAM though. It can handle it, but I'd rather not. It runs plenty fast for 3D work, and AFAIK any kind of overclock can lead to problems in the long run.

I'll keep tweaking settings and checking them out. Eventually I might land on a blend that works for me.

One thing I find weird though is that I get the impression the engine tries to or does render things that are completely outside the view of the player. Now I understand the engine needs to render what's beside you, so that when you move the camera it can be called up, but why would it need to try and render objects that are behind 3 buildings? This seems sub-optimal to me.

 

[godeshus]

Probably redundant to say since you're fairly tech oriented, but did you try installing the Dx and Visual Studio C++ in the redist folder?

I have not. Could you give me a bit more info on this?

 

[Frag Maniac]

Probably redundant to say since you're fairly tech oriented, but did you try installing the Dx and Visual Studio C++ in the redist folder?

I have not. Could you give me a bit more info on this?

Go to the game install directory and open the _CommonRedist folder. It has a Directx and vcredist folder. Inside the DirectX folder is a setup.exe to install the Dx files the game needs. You may already have the version of Microsoft Visual Studio C++ in the vcredist folder, but you can try the Repair option just to make sure it's not corrupt.

On the game rendering objects behind 3 buildings, that may sound aggressive compared to what some games do, but considering there are many places where you can get to high building tops in this game, it's probably to assure no one is going to find objects drawing into view as they turn around, if they are at a high vantage point.

 

[TerryLaze]

Fallout 4 runs with only 4 major threads,have you checked if intel speedstep is on? (or any other kind of power saver option)
It might be that the total CPU usage is so low that the CPU underclocks to save energy.

 

[godeshus]

Thanks Terry.

I will have a look at this. This isn't something I considered.

One thing to note however is that I have Power saving features off in Windows 10. I will look to see if there is another culprit in BIOS, however.

 

[TerryLaze]

Just play the game in windowed mode and run a utility that tells you clock speeds for all cores,if the clocks are at your overclocked clocks then it's something else.

 

[godeshus]

CPU usage seems about what I would expect. Some of my cores jump up to 80% or 90% as they take on a chunk of the work, apart from that they hover between 5% and 40%. This is regardless of FPS though. In other words, I think the CPU is doing its work just fine.

What I find really strange though is that when Frames Drop the GPU speed and Memory usage don't jump up. It's not as if FPS is going down because the Graphics card has reached the end of it's capacity. I've uploaded a screenshot to show it.

I've highlighted strange areas in Red, and normal areas in Green. You can see at the bottom that fps has dropped here to 28.6 FPS. GPU is running at 53%. Graphics Memory is at 2428MB. This doesn't seem to go much higher than this, even tough I have 4096MB on this card.

System RAM is at 9.5GB. which is nice to see. I'm glad is using what it needs out of my 32GB available, but I put it in Red because I find the FPS doesn't reflect what is being used as far as resources go.