Fallout 4 Random Frame Drops

[Soulreaper005]

I've been playing fallout 4 a lot since it came out. I love the game, but i have a problem. While I'm in buildings or near large buildings I get LARGE and noticeable frame drops. Sometimes I will go frop 60 FPS to 45, then to 30, then to 25. It is almost unbearable at times. With the specs I have in my computer I should have NO problem what so ever running Fallout 4 on Ultra settings, which I do. I have also tried it on ALL other settings and that has not solved the problem. I have an intel core-i7 6700k, EVGA Hybrid GTX 980Ti, 16Gb of DDR4 Memory. Before you suggest this like everyone does, i HAVE ALREADY CHECKED MY DRIVERS. I have uninstalled and installed my drivers and they are up to date. Some things i have seen online is someone said that since they had the download-pre-launch and got the first day patch, instead of downloading the whole thing at one time. So since I had the encrypted version and then downloaded the patch that fixed it on launch, i have read that that mya have corrupted the game. Is this true? if so and i reinstall the game, can i keep my save without my save being corrupted?

 

[PeppermintFangs]

This seems to be a common issues and unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, with no solution. I originally thought it was an issue with AMD, but perhaps not. Seems Fallout 4 is not well optimized yet.

At this point the only thing you can do, and the fallout community can do, is keep looking for an answer and hope there's a patch to fix these appalling frame rate problems.

 

[ajhockey3]

Its a bethesda game, Don't have the greastest launch date performance. In my testing Fallout 4 is a console port, The game was really made for consoles, This is evident in anything not 16:9 makes the game glitch out

 

[Soulreaper005]

Ok, its not TOOOO game breaking as i already have 40 hours in game

 

[balamindin]

I've been playing fallout 4 a lot since it came out. I love the game, but i have a problem. While I'm in buildings or near large buildings I get LARGE and noticeable frame drops. Sometimes I will go frop 60 FPS to 45, then to 30, then to 25. It is almost unbearable at times. With the specs I have in my computer I should have NO problem what so ever running Fallout 4 on Ultra settings, which I do. I have also tried it on ALL other settings and that has not solved the problem. I have an intel core-i7 6700k, EVGA Hybrid GTX 980Ti, 16Gb of DDR4 Memory. Before you suggest this like everyone does, i HAVE ALREADY CHECKED MY DRIVERS. I have uninstalled and installed my drivers and they are up to date. Some things i have seen online is someone said that since they had the download-pre-launch and got the first day patch, instead of downloading the whole thing at one time. So since I had the encrypted version and then downloaded the patch that fixed it on launch, i have read that that mya have corrupted the game. Is this true? if so and i reinstall the game, can i keep my save without my save being corrupted?

I was in the same boat as you. I started playing it at everything Ultra and it worked fine until I reached the outer area of the Diamond City. To my horror, FPS started fluctuating to as low as 45!!! I looked around online and as most people suggested, validated my game files in Steam but the problem persisted.

I tried a few more possible fixes but after about an hour, I gave up and just went with Geforce Experience's Optimise config and that brought the FPS back up to steady 60. You should give that a go. What it did was turning down a few of the settings to Medium. I can't remember what they are exactly (at work atm) but they included God Ray, Building Distance and Object Fade. In real terms, I don't think it made the graphics look worse or better - it just ensures the steady fps and smooth running but it's extremely frustrating that this is happening at all considering the fact that my CPU and GPU usage are under 50% most of the time!

I guess Bethesda doesn't let us down with their game as well as its bugs (and lack of good hardware optimisation).

 

[James Mason]

Check out this reddit post, disabling v-sync and then caping the FPS helped me and my i7/980ti system a lot. (You HAVE to cap the FPS, the game speed is based on your FPS and running to high FPS makes the game run to fast)
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s6ile/disable_vsync_for_zero_input_lag_and_limit_fps/

 

[sharndowg]

Getting the same problem. I had a constant 60 fps everywhere in wasteland on ultra, but when I entered the city area I'm cut down to 25-45fps too. Been looking around web for a fix but to no avail (yet). Going to give this a go, Thanks James. Might just possibly need to roll back some graphics settings for the meantime.

 

[balamindin]

Check out this reddit post, disabling v-sync and then caping the FPS helped me and my i7/980ti system a lot. (You HAVE to cap the FPS, the game speed is based on your FPS and running to high FPS makes the game run to fast)

Thanks, man. The instructions at that link seem to work for me. I now get steady 59-60 fps regardless of where I'm at. My config is as follows.

16:9 Widescreen, 1920x1080, TAA (Best Quality), 16 Samples, Borderless & Windowed Mode.
Texture Quality, Shadow Quality, Decal Quality, Lighting Quality are all Ultra.
Shadow Distance and Godrays Quality are Medium.
Depth of Field - Bokeh (Best Quality), Ambient Occlusion - SSAO (High)
Screen Space Reflections, Wetness, Rain Occlusion, Motion Blur and Lens Flare are all checked.
Object Fade, Actor Fade, Grass Fade and Item Fade are all maxed.
Distant Object Detail - Ultra, Object Detail Fade - High

 

[jjb8675309]

There optimizations that you can make, trust me, its not your hardware. The game is poorly optimized and a lot of the frame-time latency, drops, and stutter are unavoidable. Don't worry once we all play through the game once it will be optimized. This is par for the course of any major game release, remember how crappy gtaV was when first launched? A coulpe months later it runs flawlessly at max.

 

[Soulreaper005]

Thanks guys

 

[Embidd]

I'm sure you have found a fix for this by now, but if you haven't you should give PCGamingWiki.com a try. It lists a bunch of different programs like ENB and Shadow Boost, that really make a difference in the area you're talking about. I was getting 60FPS on Ultra until I got to the area around Diamond City, then I was frame drops as low as 30FPS. Now, I get a constant 59FPS with very few dips into the mid 50s.

I basically followed what PCGamingWiki suggested, along with disabling in-game VSync and letting ENB lock my framerate at 59fps (because at 60 I got horrible screen tearing). I also lowered Object Detail Fade and Actor Fade a bit.

In the end I think that Shadow Boost made the most improvement, while disabling Vsync and locking my FPS to 59 through ENB was just to get rid of that horrible mouse stutter.

Here are some links to the sites I used:

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fallout_4 (PCGamingWiki)
http://bit.ly/1NvrQg7 (Gameranx tweak guide, some of these suggestions are helpful)
http://enbdev.com/download_mod_fallout4.htm (ENB website)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcPBFX15nrPhcoPtvk_rwqIjW_PtAs23J (Explanations of ENB videos)
http://www.dev-c.com/fallout4/shadowboost/ (Shadow Boost)

 

[Hard Line]

I have performed an experiment trying to find out just where the issue lies.

I believe I have found that the cause of frame drops and stutter is that the game has no barriers to what should be rendered in some areas. This is causing the gpu to render everything in a city/settlement whether you can see it or not. (Think objects and lighting along with shadows inside buildings or behind them that you can't see are being rendered anyway.)

This explains the high frametimes I have seen ( I am seeing wildly fluctuating frametimes from 10 all the way to 80ms ( and this is a frequent 80ms and sometimes even higher.) this is indicative of what I stated above that it is trying to render the entire scene and not just the visible scene)

 

[smaddeus]

Its a bethesda game, Don't have the greastest launch date performance. In my testing Fallout 4 is a console port, The game was really made for consoles, This is evident in anything not 16:9 makes the game glitch out

Bethesda themselves said it was a game made for PC in the first place, and they will stick to that policy that PC is priority, just like F3 and NV were made for PC firstly. I kind of believe them, no reason not to, no dev has lied about which platform they prefer to make games for.

Check out this reddit post, disabling v-sync and then caping the FPS helped me and my i7/980ti system a lot. (You HAVE to cap the FPS, the game speed is based on your FPS and running to high FPS makes the game run to fast)
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s6ile/disable_vsync_for_zero_input_lag_and_limit_fps/

If not mistaken, v-synch is basically partially a frame rate cap... because of the way v-synch works, and if you turn it off it actually increases fps, not decreases, so for your theory to work either you wrote it incorrectly, or something else.

 

[ChrisWKuiper]

So someone has probably already answered this thread somewhere, but I just fixed it for myself so I thought I would share.

I was having the exact same problem, FPS dips to around 40 in sunny areas with lots of shadows, notably the Diamond city marketplace during the day and Goodneighbor, and I have a SUPER high end PC with a i7 6700k and dual 980ti's in SLI at 4k, so I knew it was an optimization issue somewhere. Turns out it is totally the god ray setting and the shadow setting. Turn that shit to medium, and it looks EXACTLY the same as ultra, and you don't get those stupid fps dips anymore. If you are still getting fps dips to like 50 or 55 or something, then turn the shadow render distance to 3 quarters, and that should keep you at 60 FPS all the time.