Ugridstoload 7

[anstand]

Is it safe to set this to 7 or does it really destroy one's save game after hours of play?

[Runnerblank]

Only if you try to change it back.
If you have to change it back, you have to start a new game/go back to a save before you increased it.

[RoyBatty]

There a mod which can protect your saves from changing it.

I tried uGrids 7, and it just screwed up loading cells really bad.

[chucksteel]

I tried it and it worked nice for about five min of play then crash. This was a constant thing every attempt to play with it I could guarantee a crash. I stopped using it. 

[JaxFirehart]

You need a hell of a system to be able to play very long without crashing. I could usually do an hour but that was with NO MODS. The more mods you have, the less room FNV has for loading cells.

[Drewkey]

I regularly play with Ugrids set to 7 with no stability issues whatsoever,but I play on a 4gb GTX770 card at 4040x1024. I have never found a mod to bring it down safely (for new vegas, there is one for skyrim) but there is a procedure:

Go into an interior cell, whilst game still open amend all your ini to new uGridsToLoad value (Don't forget that you need also set "uExterior Cell Buffer" to (Ugrids + 1) ^ 2 which is 64 for Ugrids 7,  alt=tab back into the game and go to the console and type refreshini, then save your game which is now at the new level.

You only need to do this when going down in Ugrids.

I've played for a couple of hundred hours at ugrids 7 with no issues, I would not recommend going any higher though and I would suggest that you need at least 3Gb of Vram to do it safely with high res texture packs, also you will need the usual suspects to aid stability NVAC, NVSR (Correctly configured), ENBoost (Or some other ENB correctly configured).

Thing to remember with increasing ugrids is that whilst it does improve visual fidelity going from 5 to 7 it nearly doubles the processing load on your system and there is an increased risk of something going wrong as the game was not written and tested with any ugrids other than 5 in mind. It is a risk that you can minimise but you cannot eliminate, you just have to decide if it's worth it for you... I kniow that it is for me. 

  

[anstand]

hello there!

My new system will look like this

i7-4770k

8 gb ddr3 1600

256 gb ssd

780gtx superclocked ACX 3GB

or

Gainward GeForce GTX 780 Phantom 6GB

So I suspect, that performance wise, there will be no problems. I am already using NVAC and NVSR (might want to share your config?) and had no crashes with my current rig:

q6600 @ 3ghz

4 gb ddr2 800 mhz

560ti

but you really could feel the freezes while playing Fallout New Vegas with ugrid 7 (no texture packs). Game's running fine for 5 minutes but then it really gets sluggish (probably because my VRAM is too low? or my cpu just too weak).

Definitely want to play with ugrid 7, since going back to five is such an incredible atmosphere killer after having played it on 7!

Nice to hear that it is not completely impossible since you already geared up a lot of hours in FNV with ugrid 7!

[Drewkey]

Sorry Anstand, I must have missed your reply. Your new machine looks like it should do the trick, just make sure that you have a 64bit OS so that you can use that ram. 

I run the game off a Raid array of SSD (>1Gb/sec throughput) which helps speed up things, I would recommend ENBoost as it removes the need for the program to cache the textures within it's address space with negligible performance impact.

I do run CASM which causes occasional freezes whilst saving but have not noticed any freezes otherwise, guess I must be lucky.

As far as VRAM goes, I would say that correctly set up you would never use more than 2Gb in New Vegas, even with TTW no matter what texture packs you used.  I'm using a combination of NMC & Ojo Bueno (Both at highest res) + a fair few others and I rarely go above 1.5Gb Vram usage and I've never noticed it getting to 2.Gb... Now Skyrim, thats a different matter i have got to over 3Gb in that.

My NVSR config is attached for what it's worth.