(Another) Low FPS On A Great Computer

Post by **8nothing** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 6:35 am

*I'm not exactly sure if this should be posted here; please let me know if it shouldn't*

Specs

OS: Windows 10 Home Version 1607 Build 14393.447 64 Bit

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K @ (Overclocked) 4.5 GHz/6 Cores

RAM: 16 Gigabytes DDR4

Motherboard: Asus X99-A BIOS Version 2101

GPU: NVIDIA (Gigabyte) GeForce GTX 1080 @ 8 Gigabytes GDDR5X

My OS is running on a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD with Fallout New Vegas installed on a 250 GB SSD.

I am using legitimate Steam versions of Fallout 3 GOTY and Fallout New Vegas UE.

Problem

I recently decided to re-download Fallout New Vegas and mod it to hell like I used to (116 Mods Currently). Anyway, I keep getting FPS issues. I have uGridsToLoad equal to 5 and if I increase it at all my FPS goes down below 50. I downloaded TESV Monitor and configured it to work with Fallout to see what exactly the bottleneck was. Apparently, there wasn't a bottleneck anywhere: only 30% of my CPU , 30% of my GPU, 2 Gigabytes of VRAM, and 2 Gigabytes of RAM was being used. Neither my CPU or GPU went above 65 Celsius, which isn't even near the limit. I used the latest NVSE with the new 4 Gigabyte Patcher (http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/62552/?). After using a d3d9 fix, my GPU usage went down to 20% with absolutely zero rise in FPS. I am using an ENB, but when I disabled it the FPS only increased by about 2-4.

What I've Tried

I, like stated before, have tried a d3d9 fix that tricks the game into thinking my GPU is a NVIDIA 8800GS. That didn't help my FPS at all but did reduce the load on my GPU. I have messed around using NVConfigator, and the only setting that helped was the uGridsToLoad setting. Reducing/Disabling any other settings, even shadows, did not help my FPS. I followed this guide (https://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/ttw-performance-guide) and that did not help my FPS at all either. My ENB enables "fake fullscreen", so that isn't the issue. I rolled back to an old Nvidia driver, 368.81, and that did not help at all. I have already enabled multithreading for everything except sound. I have changed my Havok and HW cores both to 6. This issue persisted when I used only about 90 mods, and I added more mods without any loss whatsoever in FPS.

Please let me know if you need more information, and thanks for helping.

Post by **RoyBatty** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 10:47 am

The game is cpu bound more than anything and it has limited multithreading. The engine was made for Pentium III era hardware (xbox 360) and was ported to PC. Heavily scripted mods will bog down FPS, so I would start looking there. Havok threads does nothing, game does not use that setting. Don't use that d3d9 perf fix, it's crap and just cripples the game.

I have an i7 4790k and a GTX980ti and get 60 fps no problem (but windows 7) so I suspect something is misconfigured somewhere or you have too many script heavy mods.

Post by **8nothing** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 11:26 am

I figured it was something else besides the usual suspects; for example removing NMC's texture pack did nothing. Is there a way to tell which mods are eating my performance without going through every possible combination? Also, why does the d3d9 fix hurt anything? I'm not using the regular fix (http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34778/?), I'm using the d3d9 generator (http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34970/?). Will both of these impact it the same way?

Post by **8nothing** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 1:01 pm

To completely rule out any graphical impact, I went through every setting in New Vegas Configator one by one, and every change besides uGridsToLoad did nothing, good or bad. The weird thing is I was getting the same performance when I set uGridsToLoad to 1 as I do with it set to 5. However, if I go above 5 my performance exponentially declines. Not sure if this is worth mentioning, but when I look straight up into the sky my fps goes up to about 100.

Post by **RoyBatty** » Sat Dec 10, 2016 8:49 pm

Configator is a bad tool, don't use it.

Yes, using the "perf fix" will actually hurt performance because it makes the game use the wrong capabilities of your graphics card.

Most of those tweaks and tools are snake oil or even harmful, and only a few of them actually work. The things that work are covered in the performance thread.

Post by **8nothing** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 1:33 am

If by thread you mean the TTW Performance Guide (https://taleoftwowastelands.com/content/ttw-performance-guide), then I've already tried everything in that, minus your "vorbis dll" because I couldn't find it. Thanks for the replies by the way, I removed the d3d9 fix without any drop in FPS. That at least declutters it a bit.

Post by **8nothing** » Sun Dec 11, 2016 9:07 am

Alright, well, thanks for the feedback. I figured that was the case, but just wanted to make sure before giving up.

Post by **Bandy** » Mon Dec 12, 2016 1:28 pm

You should never change the uGridsToLoad setting, as code in the engine expects the value to be 5 and causes problems if it's not. This isn't Skyrim.

My understanding is that even in Skyrim you really shouldn't change it, and very bad for saved game to change it back and forth, though am sure the OP wasn't doing so...

Post by **8nothing** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 1:05 pm

Yeah, I wasn't using the same save to change it. I started a new game and used the glitch to leave the vault as a baby. I did that every time I changed it. The funny thing is, I used the console command "coc Goodsprings" to see if the lag was consistent. When I'm in the Capital wasteland, my fps goes down to about 15ish when uGridsToLoad is 12. In the Mojave, it only goes down to about 30. I can get a constant 60 in the Mojave with it set to around 8, but my fps is still garbage in the Capital. I assume that's expected, or did I install wrong?

Post by **RoyBatty** » Tue Dec 13, 2016 3:59 pm

This has to do with you changing uGridsToLoad and nothing to do with TTW.