Fallout 4 Benchmarked

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Baumy15

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NVidia ae killing older GPUs, I remember reading TH reviews on the 780Ti and 290X and the 290X manages to get 10FPSmore on 1080P with ultra godrays, isn't this a NVidia title? I'm disliking NVidia more and more, but am still leaning towards a second hand 780Ti, a 290X runs to hot for me.
 


That's obvious. God Rays is a GameWorks feature, and it's Nvidia-only, so the 780Ti suffers in performance needing to render the rays.
The 290X, on the other hand, will not have God Rays working at all, and is freed from the extra workload. Result: better framerates.

Also, I am guessing this game is VRAM-hungry. Look at the disparity between the 980Ti and Fury X. The cards perform nearly the same in most games, but here the Fury X is significantly slower.
 

Baumy15

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Thanks for summing that up I thought it actually used those features. I do learn more everyday. Thanks again
 


The god rays are tessellated to heck, which benefits the tessellation-optimized Maxwell architecture in the 900 series and harms performance with AMD cards as well as older Nvidia cards.
 

blppt

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"That's obvious. God Rays is a GameWorks feature, and it's Nvidia-only, so the 780Ti suffers in performance needing to render the rays.
The 290X, on the other hand, will not have God Rays working at all, and is freed from the extra workload. Result: better framerates."

AFAIK, gameworks will be enabled for both AMD and Nvidia cards. Its just that being a Nvidia-creation, they will tailor it to leverage the abundance of horsepower of their newest cards. AMD probably manages the levels of tesselation in their post-launch FO4 driver, resulting in better performance than what we were getting from the drivers available at launch. Also, if memory serves, while the latest Nvidia 9xx/Titan X cards rule all for tesselation, the 7xx series fall behind the AMD 2xx series equivalents for heavy tesselation. Thus why the 780ti now falls to the 290x in this tesselation heavy benchmark.

"Also, I am guessing this game is VRAM-hungry. Look at the disparity between the 980Ti and Fury X. The cards perform nearly the same in most games, but here the Fury X is significantly slower."

I dont think it is---somebody did a bench at 4k, and only rarely did the game show more than 3GB VRAM usage.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2177-fallout-4-pc-video-card-fps-benchmark-all-resolutions
 

mamasan2000

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Nah, Godrays work with 290x as well. Just not worth turning it on, on any hardware IMHO.
 

BulkZerker

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Thanks for summing that up I thought it actually used those features. I do learn more everyday. Thanks again

Don't take any of what he said as correct. AMD cards can do just about everything a nvidia card can do when it comes to gaming. AMD renders them. But nVidia made the code specifically to run on their hardware. AMD has to find a workaround. That kind of thing has been going on for... When did nVidia buy out Ageia? 2004... 11 years now.
 
Does using the following like previous titles help?

ifpsclamp=60

It wasn't until I got my GTX680 + i7-3770K rig that I discovered that this fix made my game butter smooth, though you do NOT want to drop below 60FPS (and having a non-60Hz monitor is probably problematic unless it's asynchronous).

I decided to replay Fallout NV and save F4 for another year or two since I'd expected the game to launch buggy, get patched, then finally get the best experience with a new GPU and MODS (possibly a GSYNC monitor and 60FPS clamp).
 
Bethesda's pattern is to release the Elder Scrolls game as the flagship showcase for their latest game engine. Then they release the Fallout game afterwards on that same game engine. So Fallout 3 is based on the Oblivion engine, and Fallout 4 is based on the Skyrim engine. Keep that in mind, and the state of the graphics shouldn't come as a mystery. It takes them so long to produce one of these massive games, that the technology tends to drop a little bit behind the current state of gaming graphics.
 


Sort of, though the game engine and component updates to that are a lot more complicated since Gamebryo started with Morrowind.

Just look a F3/NV and how many issues still existed in Skyrim to see there's a lot of core code still there in the Creation engine.

As for not being a mystery, I disagree somewhat. A lot of people think they should have dropped the Creation engine completely as it's a buggy mess. They could have brought over their assets into another engine like Unreal 3. Some work yes, but then it's a lot of work to keep fixing the leaky roof and plumbing issues of their current engine.

And there have been better looking games several YEARS before they even started on Fallout 4 (which was 2009).

Finally, I'm baffled how you screw something up like causing major stutter at 60Hz that's fixed by one line of code in the config file (ifpsclamp) that then makes a game really smooth. Sure, you need the GPU to not drop below 60FPS but seriously they couldn't figure out how to get VSYNC to properly work like almost every other game had?

Don't get me wrong, I love their games once I fix most of the issues with unofficial patches. I just think there's things they could have, no SHOULD have done differently.

I guess hindsight counts for a lot. Skyrim for example wasn't even out yet.
 

MagusALL

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OK so how is my i7-3770k @ 4.2Ghz with SLI MSI GTX 780's with 3GB VRAM going to do? Apparently the 970 (GK204) is leaps and bounds ahead of a 780 which is a lesser Titan (GK110b) which confuses me although I realize that they developed it (970) for gaming only and removed the FP stuff. I just figured my SLI 780 rig combined with an i7 Ivy Bridge would have been good for a decent amount of time playing on highest settings. I'm about to sell everything. I have two 970's that just would not give me a display no matter what I did so I am not going to waste my time trying to get that to work let alone SLI them so I think what I am going to do is get myself a MSI GTX 980ti Lightning, throw it on a nice MSI board and pair it on the X99 chipset with a i7-5930k and h20 it to 4.2Ghz+. That should be able to get me better results unless someone says otherwise (that the SLI 970's/780's will perform similar/better.) Who wants to buy my parts haha. BTW Witcher III and Assassins Creed Syndicate worked without a hitch with all settings maxed save for one or two stupid settings like hairworks or too much AA. I'm only on a 1920x1200 screen anyhow. Waiting to get my hands on a G-Sync 21:9 34"ish monitor for less than $700. Hopefully my CPU and GPU and OMG RAM will be good enough or else I'm giving up and buying a console. jk
 

blppt

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CPU should be fine. I also wouldnt think the 3GB would become an issue unless you run everything maxed out @ 4k, which you aren't. See the gamersnexus link above---only rarely at 4k did VRAM usage exceed 3GB, and average was lower than 3.

The 970 beats the 780 so badly because of the heavy tesselation, which is one thing Nvidia's latest do much better than their 7xx series.

I'm thinking overall that FO4 will run quite well on your system, since the first Bethesda patch and Nvidia's driver tweaks are available now. On my Intel/Nvidia box (4790K stock and 2 Titan Blacks (780ti with 6GB)) its very smooth, even with God Rays at "ultra". 1080p. And thats maxed settings.

 

kinno

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Was expecting a detail CPU+ram benchmark instead it should be pretty obvious by now how most gpu run the game any way.CPU like I5 4460 can barely get 45 fps in most urban area with r9 380 due to cpu bottlenecking to hell at anything above medium shadow distance.

A comparison between 8x 16x 32x and 64 tesselation for AMD GPU is a huge plus.
 

razamatraz

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I'm kind of wondering why you overclock the $500 processor, but left the $150 processor at stock speeds. FX-8350s generally OC pretty well. I'm not going to claim that it's not an outdated CPU at this point but at least give it 4.6 GHz for these tests. I'm running mine with a GTX980 and after working around the strange FPS locks and glitches can easily get 80+ in 1080p all Ultra....still have to turn my monitor refresh down to 100 or I get stuck every time I use a terminal in game though,
 
FX 9590 + 16GB of DDR3 1866 and a BIOS modded G1 GTX 970. Good experiences so far. I find turning all the gameworks FX crap off really helps stability. And on High I stay pegged at 60FPS 90% of the time, with a few dips into the 50s in downtown boston.

Fallout 3 was still better from a gameplay and story standpoint. Better atmosphere and setting for a lone wanderer I think.

New Vegas was a steaming pile of shit. I know there's a lot of NV fanboys out there. But this isn't a unique failure for Obsidian. Any RPG where I can go kill Caesar and his forces yet the world is not affected AT ALL and half the quests are fetch-boy or messenger-boy quests is NOT my idea of a quality RPG. As a fan of the franchise and genre since Wasteland, Fallout 3 was the last true Fallout RPG for me. Slapping on more guns and GTA5 / Minecraft / Farmville mobile gaming short attention spam (not a type-O, google pun) content has ruined much of the game.
 

BobCharlie

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You don't need to touch the .ini file in the Steam folder. Only the one in the game-created My Games folder. IF you even open the launcher settings after ini editing something off that isn't able to be set in the slider area, it defaults. You can rename the game's Fallout4.exe to Fallout4Launcher. exe and you'll avoid any accidental resets of .ini values, plus it'll load directly to the game. You CAN disable vsync + remove the game's hard cap with the .ini adjustment, but you need to run a software FPS limiter. I'm using EVGA Precision X 16's FPS limiter and set it's value to 61 FPS and nearly 150 hours later, haven't had any issues and game stays around 60 FPS (GTX 970 MSI Gaming 4g, 8350 @ 4.4Ghz). I noticed camera controls smoothed out greatly doing this.

The article doesn't seem to mention if the test was pre/post patch. Pre-patch, game ran solid at 60 with 100% default settings of Ultra with High God Rays @1920 x 1080. Heavily intense panoramic scenes like looking at a city in the distance from atop a highway overpass, saw mid/upper 40's.

Post-patch, FPS started tanking horribly. Now mid 50's to 60 was norm outdoors, with lower 30's on same panoramic setting. And this was AFTER lowering shadows and God Rays to high (had been playing with GR at ultra) as well as shadow distance. Really intense areas saw some high 20's. This was with most current video driver too. And I'm running k-boost with mild OC, and PSU is 1000w EVGA Gold. Also increased grass to 35 to make that less demanding. Toggling grass (TG) OFF altogether might help lower end systems greatly and easy to do in console and easily reversed.

While game is playable, it definitely needs to be fixed back to pre-patch performance levels. Still have an issue with extremely slow texture fill rates on objects immediately near the character where it seems to load a Low texture setting 1st, then slowly changes to Ultra, and is very distracting. Was worse with day-one patch.

Also, if you have an original Fallout4.exe from before the patches (I saved mine prior to opting in to the BETA patches), remove the patched launcher and .exe to safe place, then make a copy of pre-patch .exe. Rename pre-patch Fallout4.exe to Fallout4Launcher.exe, and put it in the game's folder where the originals were. You'll get some of the pre-patch performance back. Surprisingly, it IS compatible with post-patch saves and game doesn't gripe about version numbers like Skyrim did. Make SURE to have back-up saves before trying this just in case something changes. Steam also won't overwrite this. To be safe and prevent unwanted overwrites, start steam in offline mode or disconnect your modem cable (steam acts differently with cable unconnected vs. blocking in firewall). But again, I've yet to have this change since manually opting in to the 3 BETA patches. And yes, they did change something with the pre-/post .exe as their sizes are different.
 

corei7xrocks

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What fixed all bugs for me. May also help those who think their frame rates are low given their cards.

I am running twin EVGA GTX 980 Ti FTW's on the Acer Predator 2560x1440 g-sync monitor. From the start I had nothing but problems which many attributed to FPS being too high (around 140 with ultra settings). However I limited refresh rates and tried about 10 fixes I found online for problems such as freezing, not being able to leave terminals, not being able to pick up objects, slow movement and other problems (not all at once but I experienced them all). Non of the fixes worked and I tried every one I could find. It then occurred to me that I had already started a game when I tried a fix of moving to the beta of the game; it did not occur to me at the time that when you start a game specific files related to your system and game settings are created, files which would not be altered by upgrading to the beta version after a game was started. So I totally deleted the game, re-installed and then installed the Beta version before starting a game. This time the beta was reflected in the initial creation files and I no longer experience any of the problems I had before, which made the game pretty much unplayable. I am even leaving the refresh rate at 144 and having no issues whatsoever. While I lost saved games it was worth it. Frankly I enjoyed replaying the early parts of the game again without constant issues. Case of night and day. I am not sure that this will work for everyone as by trying every fix in the book I likely caused the problems to become worse but I do believe the Beta fixed a lot of issues and it simply makes sense that many of those fixes are not going to work if the beta is not installed when a new game is started. Maybe just stating the obvious but I am 55 and have been gaming since monochrome monitors and word based games; and yet it still did not occur to me that those initial setup files would not be changed until a new game was started. Can't say this will work for everyone but it did for me. I mention not just because of problems but many mention they think their FPS are low given their card, it is very possible the beta may help. My frame rates are frankly pretty high in this game but after the clean install with the beta version they actually are even higher. I have purchased games before where game patches along with driver updates have come close to doubling frame rates. Hope this may help someone. Unfortunately you will loose all game saves to date but for me it changed the game from barely playable to great. By the way question, does anyone with a g-sync monitor who has played this game see any benefit?
 

beegmouse

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Interesting that they didn't touch on how RAM speed can cripple performance in this game. A fast Rig with 1333 or 1600 will see an FPS Cap below 60
 

beaulieu80

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I hate those type of post, Because they do not talk about FAN noise. Who wnats to plpay a game with such fan noise that you have the cramp the speaker like crazy even with GtX 970 and i7 6700k
 

darkone999

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I like great visuals but in truth fun and game play come first...Of course I am a product of the 60s and remember when a good text based game on the vic-20 or commodore 64 was all the rage in the early 80s had to go to the arcade for those great side scrolling graphics...

Old Man
 

mlee 2500

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Pleased to see that it's not earth-shatteringly better on PC than PS4.

Fallout 4 is one of the few games I got for my console/TV instead of my PC (sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and FPS...makes the girlfriend happier too, since I'm more "present").

Load times I'm sure are longer than they would be on my PC, but it will take a few years for PS4 to get crufty enough that it's graphics seem extremely dated.
 

Non-Euclidean

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...the game is boring as Sunday Night Church. 7 hours into it, I had a wonderful variance of "clear the raiders" missions to enjoy...and too many hours played for a Steam refund.

If I sound butthurt, it's because I am...Fallout 3 was one of my favorite games, and Fallout New Vegas was an incredible addition to the franchise.

That is easy to stop. Do not turn in your last settlement assistance missions (talk to guy) after completing. That helped pre Castle, not sure after but I think so. Then work on side quests...
 
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