Fallout 3 and Oblivion - low FPS/laggy performance on high end machine

[CitizenKane]

Hi all,
Fallout 3 is very laggy on my new computer - According to my FPS counter I'm struggling to hit 30FPS most of the time outdoors. I figured it might just be something to do with older Bethesda games so I tried Oblivion too and in that game while I do get much higher average FPS rates (*in or arround 144 most of the time on my Asus PG279Q, I tend to get massive FPS drops (from 144 sometimes down to 10-20) any time a detailed outdoor area loads.

Interestingly if I choose default settings in the Oblivion launch screen it detects my optimal settings as 'Medium' with a resolution of 640x480, and in the Fallout 3 launch screen it detects Ultra High settings but a 1280x720 (letterbox) resolution for some reason. All other games default to Ultra High and 1440 (my native resolution).

My specs are below and I assume it is not anything to do with my hardware - by comparison I consistently get 40-50FPS on GTA V, 50-60FPS on Witcher 3, 80-90FPS on Far Cry 4 and I don't know exactly what FPS I'm getting on Fallout 4 because my FPS counter doesn't seem to work during that game, but it plays flawlessly smoothly - all games on maxed out settings at 1440p resolution.

Any ideas?

Specs:

GPU:: GTX 980 Ti Hybrid
CPU - Intel i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz
RAM - 16GB
PSU - 850w
HDD -1000GB
Motherboard - GA-797M-DS3H
Monitor - Asus ROG Swift PG279Q 165Hz IPS

 

[Carnaxus]

The detection being weird is most likely just the fact that the older games don't exactly know what to make of your newer hardware; that could actually be the whole issue in and of itself. Have you tried running them in compatibility mode for Windows 7 or older? I used to run those games on my laptop and they ran great, although not at max settings; I haven't tried to run either on my new rig, which also uses a 980Ti and even more RAM than you have.

 

[Ryzenhasrisen]

is this windows 10 you're on? Windows 10 seems to have problems running old games from windows xp and older. My windows 10 pc boots up civilization 3 at a 600x400 resolution, and gets massive lag spikes whenever anything moves, and compatibility seems to do nothing for me.
I think it's something with windows 10 that will probably be resolved in a later windows update

 

[Carnaxus]

is this windows 10 you're on? Windows 10 seems to have problems running old games from windows xp and older. My windows 10 pc boots up civilization 3 at a 600x400 resolution, and gets massive lag spikes whenever anything moves, and compatibility seems to do nothing for me.
I think it's something with windows 10 that will probably be resolved in a later windows update

Regarding Civ 3 specifically, you may need to get it on Steam; it has been updated to run on Win10, but not via the old CD's. In fact I'm not sure there's a manual download for the newest patch; I could be wrong though.

 

[Ryzenhasrisen]

is this windows 10 you're on? Windows 10 seems to have problems running old games from windows xp and older. My windows 10 pc boots up civilization 3 at a 600x400 resolution, and gets massive lag spikes whenever anything moves, and compatibility seems to do nothing for me.
I think it's something with windows 10 that will probably be resolved in a later windows update

Regarding Civ 3 specifically, you may need to get it on Steam; it has been updated to run on Win10, but not via the old CD's. In fact I'm not sure there's a manual download for the newest patch; I could be wrong though.

Thanks ill look into htat