Fallout 4 PC Performance Thread

The game forces borderless windowed mode (not normal windowed mode, so that case is odd).Go to my games/fallout4 and look for Fallout4Prefs.ini. Every time the game loads up it changes this value: bBorderless=.
All you have to do is make sure bBorderless=0 and bFull Screen=1, then change the file's properties to read-only.

Didn't seem to work.

Edit: I think we figured it out. His native resolution is 1360x768. Not 1280x768. Somehow if it was set to 1280x768 it would lock out of full screen.
 
I've got a PS4 and an iMac running Boot Camp for gaming with a 3.1ghz I7, 16gb RAM, 2gb GT750M. Anyone know which will run the game better? I've got the PS4 version already but could flip it easily and make my money back if I could run it better even with the modest Mac setup...
 
So I fixed my issue (driver reinstall).

I've managed to find the ideal settings for me to lock it at 30fps at 4K (only early so things could very well change) with a 3570k/970 combo.

Installed the enhanced wasteland sweet fx 'mod' as well.... It's actually looking.....beautiful.

yep that mod is very nice
 
Followed this guide http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/31572/article/fallout-4-guide-settings-to-turn-on-or-off-for-best-performance/

And ignored the bit about God rays, set God rays to low.

Also turned down my AA. Everything is ultra except lighting is at high. I didn't completely kneecap the draw distances, just moved down the sliders a bit on the ones they recommended.

Now running stable 60fps at 4k with 980 ti.

well yea... you have a 980ti

Game does not run at 4k 60 fps ultra even with a 980 ti, so I posted a guide that helped get me there. Guide is also useful for other gpus I would imagine.
 
I've been getting some pretty crazy long load times. At first I though the game was just getting stuck in the loading screens but it turns out it's just taking about 5 minutes any time it has to load.

It's on a HDD but load times still shouldn't be this long right?

GTX 970
i7 3930k
8gb ram

Also having pretty big stutters in game whenever I do anything like take out a weapon or look at my pip boy. It pauses for like 2 seconds and a lot of audio is delayed.
 
The game forces borderless windowed mode (not normal windowed mode, so that case is odd).Go to my games/fallout4 and look for Fallout4Prefs.ini. Every time the game loads up it changes this value: bBorderless=.
All you have to do is make sure bBorderless=0 and bFull Screen=1, then change the file's properties to read-only.

Alt-Enter doesn't work?
 
4790k @4.5 ghz
16gb ddr3 1866 oc'd ram
gtx 980ti oc'd (5% I believe)
Samsung Evo 850 ssd

I've hit the point where I can no longer ignore ultra setting god rays sometimes pulling my 60 fps down to as low as 35 fps. I did the right thing and lowered them down to high. I know there isn't much difference in quality between even medium and ultra, but it's the principle of the thing or some jazz like that. I just really didn't want to touch any settings with them all being at max.

My PC is still relatively new, month and a half old maybe, so I guess I'm still in that phase where I just want to run everything at max settings whilst my pc can be considered beastly. Yes I know it isn't a 5k or 6k series processor Smokey level extreme build, but it's still a beast in my eyes. :(

For reference, my last PC was a prebuilt:

Amd athlon x2-215 @ 2.7ghz (Had a Phenom X4 9 something or rather for 2 years but it died on me and I said fuck it to replacing it, so I just tossed the old chip back in there.)
4gb ddr3
Radeon 5670 512MB

Don't get me wrong. The machine did its job and did it well. While I was stuck with things like witcher 2 and far cry 3 at between 25 and 40 fps, it performed beyond expectations and besides the processor dying on me, everything else has and still is continuing to run after some 6 or 7 odd years without a break down and nary a software problem. For a pre-built with some parts swapped out, it was a diamond in the rough.
 
Actually, changing shadow distance from high to medium is a big performance increase.

The reason why is more than just the render distance, it also lowers the shadow splits from 3 down to 2, making the game only have to render 2 different shadow resolutions rather than 3. You can actually keep the high shadow distance (14000) and change the splits to 2, and your performance will increase quite a bit from standard high quality shadows (shadows take a pretty big hit in quality though).

Keeping shadow distance on high with 3 splits causes some pretty huge FPS drops in certain areas, for seemingly no reason. You can literally look at one spot and drop 10+ frames, then look a foot away and everything will be fine.

well, yes.
Shadow quality's decrease is hardly noticeable vs distance, which is why i recommend it instead.
Also, the person in question lowered it to high, which does zilch.
 
2x GTX 980ti
i7 4790k stock speed.
16GB DDR3
Nvidia driver 358.91

Wow, this is badly optimized. There are points were the game just stays stuck on 34fps no matter what happens on screen while still utilizing my GPU at 99% usage.

The SLI profile also doesn't seem to do anything in Fallout 4. One GPU gets all the work, 90~99% usage, while the other just sits there not even hitting 15% usage.
 
I did some comparisons of fShadowDistance and fDirShadowDistance settings in the inis. I've been running at 3000, which is the Medium preset, to keep a constant 60FPS in every location. 14000 is the High preset, FYI.

3000 (Medium)
5000 (Custom)
9000 (Custom)

Interesting how some details in the foreground are kept on both 3000 and 9000 but disappear on 5000, but objects like part of the wall on the far side of the grey building to the centre-right, only appear at higher settings. Shadow resolution appears higher to me at short distances but at the Medium setting but there's also some slight variance in play as well. I guess this is obvious stuff for people who know the technicalities of how these things work, but I thought it was kinda fun to look at different settings.

Yet to test how well 5000 and 9000 run.
 
Well, I hit Diamond City for the first time and while I got some drops, I'm more than happy with the drops not really affecting any gameplay for me. All in all, not that bad for a GTX 570 and Phenom II X4 955BE at 1080p on mostly medium settings. And it still looks really great in some places.
 
Shadow distance is the killer. I'm getting a locked 60 everywhere at 1080p on a 970/2600k@4.5 with shadow distance on medium and God rays on medium. If I use the batman aa bits I can go up to high on god rays, but still don't get nearly good enough sli scaling. With a proper profile I'll be down sampling no problem.
 
Finally got my game running at a really consistent 60 (i5 3570k, Gigabyte 7970).

Here's what I did:

- Updated to latest edition of Windows 10 (a big update came out on 12th Nov)
- Updated BIOS (likely did nothing)
- Ran Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstalled latest beta AMD drivers
- Overclocked CPU from 3.4GHz to 4.4GHz
- Re-seated my two 4GB sticks to use dual-channel instead of single
- Overclocked memory from 1,600MHz to 1,800MHz
- Moved the game to my SSD (much better load times if nothing else)
- Added iNumHWThreads & high CPU priority through Fallout 4 Config Tool
- Reverted back the FOV: 70 3rd; 80 1st
- Switched back from borderless windowed to fullscreen

Graphics settings

ZhK9skC.png


Really, really happy with the graphical fidelity/performance ratio. SO much better than before.

--

Also, for those wanting to remove the skill videos on startup, add these to Fallout4.ini under [General]:

fChancesToPlayAlternateIntro=0
uMainMenuDelayBeforeAllowSkip=0
 
Also, for those wanting to remove the skill videos on startup, add these to Fallout4.ini under [General]:

fChancesToPlayAlternateIntro=0
uMainMenuDelayBeforeAllowSkip=0

Ooh, this is a nice one. That delay was bugging me, haha. Thanks for posting it!
 
I feel like Skyrim had this same issue, but I hate how when you click on something, you're not actually clicking that thing until you sort of rub the mouse cursor on it a little bit. Like inventory items, if you quickly move the cursor over an inventory item, and click, the game doesn't always register that the mouse is over it. You have to move the mouse back and forth a little bit first.

Why is this still an issue? Is there some sort of fix for this?
 
So I was thinking about upping my ugrids to 7 but I keep reading how it could mess up my save file. I'm already 40 hours in so that would be a disaster. Any thoughts on this?
 
I'm not sure. Where do I see if they are?
Go to Documents=>My Games=>Fallout4 and then right click and check the properties for the ini files titled "Fallout4" "fallout4Custom" and "Fallout4Perfs" and see if Read only is checked on the lower left, if so uncheck them and save for each ini and you should keep your changes next time you try edit 'em...
 
The game just stopped loading my save files? It just loads forever, no matter what file I pick.

Been having the same problem. I can't even start a new game.

It seems like for me it's not actually loading forever it just takes a really long time (5+ minutes). I've asked about it on here and the bethesda forums didn't get any responses.

Have you tried restarting steam and verifying the game cache?

If you can load a new game try starting a new game then loading your save from in the game.
 
Been having the same problem. I can't even start a new game.

It seems like for me it's not actually loading forever it just takes a really long time (5+ minutes). I've asked about it on here and the bethesda forums didn't get any responses.

Have you tried restarting steam and verifying the game cache?

If you can load a new game try starting a new game then loading your save from in the game.

I let it load for several minutes and nothing happened. Task manager says 0% disk usage from Fallout 4 also.

I'll try starting new and loading.
 
It seems my last 3 or 4 saves are just fucked. Loaded from a save a few hours earlier and it worked fine. Welp.

It seems like autosaves and quicksaves tend to corrupt more often than manual saves. At least from what I've heard. It could just seem like that because people use manual saves less often.

But possibly turning off autosaves and only using manual saves might help.
 
Finally got my game running at a really consistent 60 (i5 3570k, Gigabyte 7970).

Here's what I did:

- Updated to latest edition of Windows 10 (a big update came out on 12th Nov)
- Updated BIOS (likely did nothing)
- Ran Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstalled latest beta AMD drivers
- Overclocked CPU from 3.4GHz to 4.4GHz
- Re-seated my two 4GB sticks to use dual-channel instead of single
- Overclocked memory from 1,600MHz to 1,800MHz
- Moved the game to my SSD (much better load times if nothing else)
- Added iNumHWThreads & high CPU priority through Fallout 4 Config Tool
- Reverted back the FOV: 70 3rd; 80 1st
- Switched back from borderless windowed to fullscreen

Graphics settings

ZhK9skC.png


Really, really happy with the graphical fidelity/performance ratio. SO much better than before.

--

Also, for those wanting to remove the skill videos on startup, add these to Fallout4.ini under [General]:

fChancesToPlayAlternateIntro=0
uMainMenuDelayBeforeAllowSkip=0

Set AF to 16x, doesn't cost any fps.
 
OC'd my ram from 1600 to 1866 and I definitely had an improvement in performance. I'm sure there's something to this ram speed and minimum performance talk.
 
OC'd my ram from 1600 to 1866 and I definitely had an improvement in performance. I'm sure there's something to this ram speed and minimum performance talk.

I think the game has utter shit memory management.
It uses like 2GB of frame buffer and rarely goes above 5GB of main memory.
It might be constantly swapping data around unnecessarily.

I wish the game would load up and make use of as much memory as I have.
I've seen games do this before. Like AC Unity for example.
 
Even after the drivers update and all the clamp settings still getting that damned 980gtx bug with the odd slow motion. So tired.
 
Finally got my game running at a really consistent 60 (i5 3570k, Gigabyte 7970).

Here's what I did:

- Updated to latest edition of Windows 10 (a big update came out on 12th Nov)
- Updated BIOS (likely did nothing)
- Ran Display Driver Uninstaller and reinstalled latest beta AMD drivers
- Overclocked CPU from 3.4GHz to 4.4GHz
- Re-seated my two 4GB sticks to use dual-channel instead of single
- Overclocked memory from 1,600MHz to 1,800MHz
- Moved the game to my SSD (much better load times if nothing else)
- Added iNumHWThreads & high CPU priority through Fallout 4 Config Tool
- Reverted back the FOV: 70 3rd; 80 1st
- Switched back from borderless windowed to fullscreen

Graphics settings

ZhK9skC.png


Really, really happy with the graphical fidelity/performance ratio. SO much better than before.

--

Also, for those wanting to remove the skill videos on startup, add these to Fallout4.ini under [General]:

fChancesToPlayAlternateIntro=0
uMainMenuDelayBeforeAllowSkip=0

Thanks for this
 
Actually, changing shadow distance from high to medium is a big performance increase.

The reason why is more than just the render distance, it also lowers the shadow splits from 3 down to 2, making the game only have to render 2 different shadow resolutions rather than 3. You can actually keep the high shadow distance (14000) and change the splits to 2, and your performance will increase quite a bit from standard high quality shadows (shadows take a pretty big hit in quality though).

Keeping shadow distance on high with 3 splits causes some pretty huge FPS drops in certain areas, for seemingly no reason. You can literally look at one spot and drop 10+ frames, then look a foot away and everything will be fine.

Yeah, I noticed that when I had huge fps drops and played around with the graphic settings a bit.

With Shadow distance on high:

Ge5lGXF.jpg


bWd20oU.jpg


V6elr64.jpg


Makes no sense at all to me. With them on medium it only drops to like 55-60.


Also this:

I look to the south and get over 72 fps (I set the fps limit to 72, it's actually more than that)
jK0sgKt.jpg


I turn around 180° and suddenly it drops to around 30.
x1xH4mN.jpg


What I don't understand is why I don't get 30 fps in the first picture as well if shadow distance is the limiting factor. I mean, I'm looking at the distance where there are a lot of shadows.
 
Core i5 4690K
16GB
Radeon R9 390X

Playing at 1080P with everything auto-detected to ultra, I am getting mostly stable frame rates but for the occasional fire fight (most are fine), and weirdly some outdoor yet busy environment areas.
 
Yeah, I noticed that when I had huge fps drops and played around with the graphic settings a bit.

What I don't understand is why I don't get 30 fps in the first picture as well if shadow distance is the limiting factor. I mean, I'm looking at the distance where there are a lot of shadows.

Yeah, this has been discussed before. There are some spots in the game that are bizarrely very demanding.
Dunno because of the many objects on those area, or just badly developed game in generall.
 
does anyone have a full INI guide?

I want to try to turn all my settings to max, without using the build in launcher

Stuff like which values give godrays, and what number is max? etc etc.
 
Yeah I haven't seen too many people talk about this issue, but it seems to be more and more lately. I posted on Beth forums which I got a few people replying saying they have the same issue, even someone saying the problem exists on consoles as well.

I updated my original post and bumped the topic at the Beth forums, and linked your video in the original post, hope you don't mind.

I also sent the issue to their tech support, but all they did was send some bullshit copy paste reply giving me links to solutions for common issues, and then saying post on the forums if you need to.

I did this also. There is also a feedback link, it's worth reporting it there too.

Can you link me your Bethesda thread post?

http://help.bethesda.net/app/fallout_feedback

Also made my own post on the Bethesda forum -

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1551614-massive-freezing-bug-when-using-3rd-person-view/

I am having a huge issue that is making the game unplayable in the way that I like to play, namely in third person view.

When holding a weapon in third person, any slight movement of your character (either with a small push of the left stick on controller or pressing left/right with slow walk on on keyboard) causes camera/aiming movement to freeze for a moment. This means a constant stuttering and freezing while playing that essentially renders third person unplayable for combat!

I have confirmed with other players on Reddit and Neogaf that this is also happening to them. I am way over the minimum spec so this is not a framerate issue but very clearly some bug that pauses camera movement during slow character movement.

I REALLY hope there is a fix for this as it is making the game impossible to enjoy right now. I have spent 15 hours trying to fix this issue and it appears that only a patch from Bethesda will fix it.

I have made a video to show the issue here -

youtube.com/watch?v=1CcTnsIb4RA

I am crouching in the video but happens the same when stood up -

0-10 - Shows that it does not happen with weapon put away

10-20 Showing the freeze. Note at all time the right stick is pushed so that the camera should constantly move, but whenever the left stick is pushed it freezes for a moment.

20-30 Shows how extreme it can be while playing. In this example I am HOLDING the right stick all the way to the right, it should spin constantly, however it freezes every time the left stick is moved!

35-40 Shows how it does not happen if you push the left stick all the way so your character moves fast.

I then proceed to show the same issue going the opposite direction.

The issue is also present with mouse and keyboard when CAPS is on to lock walking/slow movement.

Thanks
 
Has anyone been able to nail down some specs for running it at Med-High?

I built my first budget PC earlier this year and I'm still unsure how far I can push it before just buying it on console.
 
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