Fallout 4 PC Performance Thread

Sometimes I get stuck in the loading screen on my first load. By sometimes I mean it's a 50% chance. Only way around it is to restart. Is this a known issue?
 
Just to let people know: setting fDirectionalDeadzone to 0 in Fallout4.ini will break VATS if you're using a gamepad.

It's one of those tweaks from Skyrim some people like to throw around in some places.
 
This was pretty much already kinda' known, but I did a test anyway. Shadow distance is indeed fucked. There's at least a 10fps difference between High and Medium even in enclosed areas in the city. FPS counter was all over the place (~50fps) in this little area on High. FPS counter was locked at 60fps on Medium.

This is at 1080p w/ TAA. Everything else on Ultra except for Godrays on Medium. Also, Shadow Quality on High, which I may be able to boost up to Ultra now.

Single 980ti SC+ stock
i7 3770 stock
16GB 1600mhz RAM
SSD

Comparison. Ignore the .jpg compression.

PJ5SKXE.jpg


KOGw4OZ.jpg
 
This was pretty much already kinda' known, but I did a test anyway. Shadow distance is indeed fucked. There's at least a 10fps difference between High and Medium even in enclosed areas in the city. FPS counter was all over the place (~50fps) in this little area on High. FPS counter was locked at 60fps on Medium.

This is at 1080p w/ TAA. Everything else on Ultra except for Godrays on Medium. Also, Shadow Quality on High, which I may be able to boost up to Ultra now.

Single 980ti SC+ stock
i7 3770 stock
16GB 1600mhz RAM
SSD

Comparison. Ignore the .jpg compression.

The high value for Shadow Distance is 14000 in the ini file, where as medium is only 3000, so that explains the difference in performance I think. I tried it at medium but the shadows disappear too close for my liking so I raised it a little to 4500.
 
Does anyone know how to change/disable the weather? For the past several days my game has been stuck in that blown out nuclear radiation look. There's no color besides shades of green. It basically looks like permanent night vision. It doesn't matter if I'm inside or outside, it's always that blown out light green shade. It's burning my retinas and I miss seeing color and shadows. Don't know if it's a bug or what. Before this happened the weather would cycle but now no matter where I go: weather, weather never changes. HELP!

I wonder if it isn't this night vision bug, the fix should be in this reddit post.

If that's not what you're experiencing, you can try to force different weather conditions in the console, mainly the "fw ID" command, where ID is a code from the table on that link.
 
The high value for Shadow Distance is 14000 in the ini file, where as medium is only 3000, so that explains the difference in performance I think. I tried it at medium but the shadows disappear too close for my liking so I raised it a little to 4500.

Oh, nice. Where is this located, exactly?
 
Hey so I'm trying to disable godrays but it keeps turning them to Low even if I choose off. Can I edit this in the .ini or something?
 
Can someone link me to the FPS clamp fix? I'm getting a solid 60 according to FRAPS but it constantly feels stuttery. I'm on a GTX 670.
 
Oh, nice. Where is this located, exactly?
Fallout4Prefs.ini located in your Documents\My Games\Fallout4 directory.

These two lines:
Code:
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000
fShadowDistance=3000.0000

edit: It should be noted that the higher you put the number, the more quality you begin to lose in the shadows. High shadow settings fixes this quality issue by increasing the shadow splits from 2 to 3 (which is the REAL fps killer).

This line for anybody who is curious:
Code:
iDirShadowSplits=2

needless to say, dropping that to 1 causes a significant loss of shadow quality.
 
Oh, nice. Where is this located, exactly?

980 Ti/4770k here.

I can confirm that lowering shadow distance to Medium is the only way to fix the bottlenecks in those problem areas. I tried lowering every other setting, even Godrays, and it did nothing to improve the framerate. The FPS isn't the only that is dropping in those areas, mind you. The GPU usage also drops, and refuses to raise; I'll be getting 46 fps in certain areas, and only 50% GPU usage for instance.

Good thing is, you can set shadow quality/distance to Ultra in the launcher, and then paste the below Medium values over the Ultra values in the Fallout4Prefs.ini:

Code:
fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000
 
Fallout4Prefs.ini located in your Documents\My Games\Fallout4 directory.

These two lines:
Code:
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000
fShadowDistance=3000.0000

Good thing is, you can set shadow quality/distance to Ultra, and then paste the below Medium values over the Ultra values in the Fallout4Prefs.ini:

Code:
fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000


Greatly appreciated! About to test.
 
980 Ti/4770k here.

I can confirm that lowering shadow distance to Medium is the only way to fix the bottlenecks in those problem areas. I tried lowering every other setting, even Godrays, and it did nothing to improve the framerate. The FPS isn't the only that is dropping in those areas, mind you. The GPU usage also drops, and refuses to raise; I'll be getting 46 fps in certain areas, and only 50% GPU usage for instance.

Good thing is, you can set shadow quality/distance to Ultra in the launcher, and then paste the below Medium values over the Ultra values in the Fallout4Prefs.ini:

Code:
fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000
Changing the distance alters more than those two lines of code. In fact, I did some testing, and changing iDirShadowSplits from 3 (high quality) to 2 (medium quality) has a pretty big impact on fps when shadow distance is high.

I was able to use 14000 shadow distance (high quality) with 2 shadow splits (medium quality) and still get good fps, but the quality of the shadows were horrible past a certain distance.
 
Changing the distance alters more than those two lines of code. In fact, I did some testing, and changing iDirShadowSplits from 3 (high quality) to 2 (medium quality) has a pretty big impact on fps when shadow distance is high.

I was able to use 14000 shadow distance (high quality) with 2 shadow splits (medium quality) and still get good fps, but the quality of the shadows were horrible past a certain distance.

No doubt. What I'm saying is, in my testing on a relatively high-end system, is that those two lines were the only thing that made the difference in problem scenes for me. In only changing those two line, I can then keep Ultra detail shadows in all ways, but for the distance, as opposed to setting them to Medium in the launcher and losing shadow quality globally.

For those with weaker systems, more adjustments (as you suggested) will be necessary.

And honestly, since there are so few problem areas on my system, I haven't tried much beyond this with the shadow settings, and have simply settled with Ultra everything. It stays at 60 fps 99% of the time, with the only drops happening during key scenes in the larger city areas. Seeing as in every instance of these drops, neither my CPU or GPU are being fully utilized, it is an engine issue that will have to be addressed directly by the devs. These ini tweaks are ultimately a stop gap.
 
No doubt. What I'm saying is, in my testing on a relatively high-end system, is that those two lines were the only thing that made the difference in problem scenes for me. In only changing those two line, I can then keep Ultra detail shadows in all ways, but for the distance, as opposed to setting them to Medium in the launcher and losing shadow quality globally.

For those with weaker systems, more adjustments (as you suggested) will be necessary.

And honestly, since there are so few problem areas on my system, I haven't tried much beyond this with the shadow settings, and have simply settled with Ultra everything. It stays at 60 fps 99% of the time, with the only drops happening during key scenes in the larger city areas. Seeing as in every instance of these drops, neither my CPU or GPU are being fully utilized, it is an engine issue that will have to be addressed directly by the devs. These ini tweaks are ultimately a stop gap.

Alright, just making sure I did this right. I changed Shadow Quality and Distance to Ultra via the launcher, launched the game, quit, and then set:

fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000

That's all I really need to do, correct? Seems to have worked amazingly. Locked 60fps in the dense cities (so far).
Thanks to the both of you. Crucial tweak more people should know about.
 
Alright, just making sure I did this right. I changed Shadow Quality and Distance to Ultra via the launcher, launched the game, quit, and then set:

fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000

That's all I really need to do, correct? Seems to have worked amazingly. Locked 60fps in the dense cities (so far).
Thanks to the both of you. Crucial tweak more people should know about.

If you're gettng a locked 60fps then that's fine. At that low distance though the shadow distance cut off can be a bit jarring at times so you might want to increase the values a bit, but you may then have to adjust the iDirShadowSplits that KCroxtonJr mentioned.
 
Getting a weird issue where my game is capped at 30fps but fluctuates wildly between 30 to 27 just walking around. It doesn't matter what settings I use (dropped it to like 720p at low details) it's the same.

So there is a lock happening somewhere but don't know how. I'm not running any software to cap framerate (I usually use rtss but turned it off to test the issue).... I'm stumped.
 
Alright, just making sure I did this right. I changed Shadow Quality and Distance to Ultra via the launcher, launched the game, quit, and then set:

fShadowDistance=3000.0000
fDirShadowDistance=3000.0000

That's all I really need to do, correct? Seems to have worked amazingly. Locked 60fps in the dense cities (so far).
Thanks to the both of you. Crucial tweak more people should know about.

Yes, that's correct. Again though, I haven't messed with it much beyond that, and it's possible you could increase the distance further, and retain the performance benefit in affected scenes.

Just as a warning though, while dropping the shadow distance to Medium levels isn't terribly noticeable most of the time, when you get some long distance views, the shadow coverage is almost non-existent when compared to High or Ultra.

Ultra Shadow Distance vs. Tweaked (no difference in the short range; disregard the slight shadow shift due to ToD):
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151041

Ultra Shadow Distance vs. Tweaked (now you start to see it):
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/151038

I myself reverted to the default Ultra shadow distance because I'm not encountering the issue enough to care. That, and seeing as it isn't my setup to blame in these instances, but an apparent in-engine bottleneck, the devs are gonna have to address this; again, these ini tweaks are workarounds, not true fixes.
 
Soo, how do you figure out imagespace effect/modifier codes? There's rimod 00094636 and rimod 002041B6 to remove two scope effects, but my friend has permanent blur type filter on his screen. It got stuck after doing a certain quest that happened to have that effect for, well, reasons.

I only figured out that you can turn all imagespace effects of by using sisme 0, but that's hardly a good fix because it really turns all such effects off, permanently (or until you turn them on but then the blur comes back too). Loading a previous save isn't a possibility and he's tried all the usual sleep/doctor/etc. in-game features already.
 
I wonder if it isn't this night vision bug, the fix should be in this reddit post.

If that's not what you're experiencing, you can try to force different weather conditions in the console, mainly the "fw ID" command, where ID is a code from the table on that link.

THAT'S IT!!! Thank you! It was driving me crazy. I'm bummed I wasted so much time playing all these mission with night vision. I'll probably go back to some of those locations just to see what they look like in color with contrast.
 
980 Ti/4770k here.

I can confirm that lowering shadow distance to Medium is the only way to fix the bottlenecks in those problem areas. I tried lowering every other setting, even Godrays, and it did nothing to improve the framerate. The FPS isn't the only that is dropping in those areas, mind you. The GPU usage also drops, and refuses to raise; I'll be getting 46 fps in certain areas, and only 50% GPU usage for instance.

Same problem here, i doubled the shadow distance in the ini file and get like 35 fps in some places in the city. GPU usage stays around 40-50 % on my 980ti. Maybe we can hope for a patch, or it's an engine problem they can't fix.
 
I feel like I should get better FPS with my system:

770 GTX 2 GB
I5 4590
8 GB RAM
Windows 10
Temperatures are normal.

Playing on 1920x1080 (Borderless Fullscreen) with Shadow Distance and Quality on Medium and God Rays low/off, view distance lowered a bit too. I'm getting mostly 60 FPS anywhere not in the city. It's horrible in the city and interiors though. Goes down to ~45 FPS often and yesterday I even had 20 FPS once in a Medical Bay Center. Drops make it almost unplayable. What can I do? Any tips? My system should not have these problems with these settings
 
I only get 50fps and lower near the corvega plant and on top of it; only in specific directions. I locked the fps at 75-78fps via Nvidia inspector. Everything on ultra except for Godrays on medium, DoF on normal and motion blur is off.

I haven't wondered around too much, but only going to the previously mentioned place (Lexington is fine and the plant/around it are not that bad actually) dropped the framerate below 60fps; I had an instance where many feral ghouls in some city behind the plant caused the framerate to drop to 42fps. I get 78fps locked in most open areas and mid-sized settlements/cities; occasional drops to 60-70fps, and rarely below 60fps.

I have an overclocked CPU (i7 4770k at 4.2 GHz), GPU (Gtx 780 at 1100mHz Core clock) and RAM (16 GB with XMP profile at 1886mHz with 10 or 11 CAS latency I think). I can overclock the RAM more but I have to mess around with Voltage.
 
Overclocked my ram to 2000 from 1600. I must say these ram I got are a looot better than I thought. Put them under primr95 for 2 hours, no errors. Memtest, no errors.
Framerate went up.
 
I think I figured out why there's more performance issues than the game warrants!

The game renders an entire second terrain, textured, below the ground so you can't fall through. It's only present outdoors.


I discovered it when I fell through the landscape.

Any chance a mod could get rid of this?
 
I've messed with a bunch of stuff to get a pretty good framerate but I'm still having big issues in large city areas like the financial district. Every time I turn a corner there's around a 50% chance that the framerate will drop to about 1-3 fps which is essentially the game freezing and it will last around 5-10 seconds everytime.

It's making that entire area nearly unplayable for me and its super annoying. Godrays are off and all the shadow distance and quality settings are on the lowest options. What the heck is going on here?
 
Honestly, this is one of those games (well, pretty much all Bethesda games) where I max the settings and deal with whatever FPS I get. Trying to get a steady 60 for a game like this is maddening and you end up playing around with settings and .ini's more than playing the actual game. lol
 
I have a massive amount of RAM, so I tried running the game off a RAM disk with DimmDrive. I thought with the background streaming of assets that happens in an open world game that maybe I/O blocking was causing a framerate dip. While loading times were reduced (not eliminated but cut by maybe half) I never noticed a measurable FPS increase. Just reporting.

Yes, I had the entire Fallout 4 install running on a RAM disk. Sadly, no joy on FPS. If loading times are really bumming you out though, have at it. And hell, I bet there are little gains on pop-in time and the like as well.

But you have to be able to fit the entire 27 gig game into RAM. It really didn't like me selectively loading some of the game into RAM disks and leaving the rest on my SSD. (DimmDrive uses symlinks to forward I/O calls to the RAM disk in this case). Ah wlel.
 
I don't know if it's already been mentioned but the new beta AMD driver released a couple of days ago massively improves performance in my experience and for others from what I've seen.
 
I don't know if it's already been mentioned but the new beta AMD driver released a couple of days ago massively improves performance in my experience and for others from what I've seen.

Sadly, it didn't really give me massive improvements in framerates that I was expecting. Only gains about 2-5 fps outdoors. But overall the game has become smoother, so I won't complain I guess.
 
I have a massive amount of RAM, so I tried running the game off a RAM disk with DimmDrive. I thought with the background streaming of assets that happens in an open world game that maybe I/O blocking was causing a framerate dip. While loading times were reduced (not eliminated but cut by maybe half) I never noticed a measurable FPS increase. Just reporting.

Yes, I had the entire Fallout 4 install running on a RAM disk. Sadly, no joy on FPS. If loading times are really bumming you out though, have at it. And hell, I bet there are little gains on pop-in time and the like as well.

But you have to be able to fit the entire 27 gig game into RAM. It really didn't like me selectively loading some of the game into RAM disks and leaving the rest on my SSD. (DimmDrive uses symlinks to forward I/O calls to the RAM disk in this case). Ah wlel.
I always thought ramdisk will not improve FPS since newer games are pretty good at streaming or at worse preload.
 
I always thought ramdisk will not improve FPS since newer games are pretty good at streaming or at worse preload.
They probably are, but I figured it was worth a shot nonetheless. Gamebryo is getting on in years. Thought I'd rule out whether the game I/O-bound; it's not. It's not CPU-bound either. This thing is really bottlenecked at GPU power and memory speed.
 
They probably are, but I figured it was worth a shot nonetheless. Gamebryo is getting on in years. Thought I'd rule out whether the game I/O-bound; it's not. It's not CPU-bound either. This thing is really bottlenecked at GPU power and memory speed.

I think it is CPU bound. The scenes that plummet frames will plummet frames at 640x480, too.
 
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