Fallout 4 is a great game and I really enjoyed playing it on console. Now with a new computer, I have the freedom to do much more with my game and before I start putting time into this game, I want the best settings for my graphics card that will give me 60fps with at the max 10% of the time frames dropping.
I have been first testing my graphics settings while indoors. I will be doing all of this initial testing at Corvega Assembly Factory. Its very simple how I started this testing. I set all the setting to the absolute max and ran around the factory, noting all of the problem areas that caused fps dips. Here are my current settings:
Ambient Occlusion is the biggest culprit for fps drops; For smooth game play using an R9 390, turn this off. Lens Flare causes fps drops in front of lights, Screen Space reflections cause fps drops around water on the floor and some other areas. Depth of field causes fps drops when moving back and forth past objects close up (like a post of hanging chain) Antialiasing created a noticable frame drop when set to TAA, no noticable drop on FXAA. Antisotropic filtering also had a noticeable fps drop at x16, at x4 there was no noticeable performance difference from being off.
Changing these settings did not effect performance indoors so I left them all at max.
At this point my fps was much more steady at 60fps but there were still problem areas.
Problem #1: The particle system
I don't know what Bethesda was doing when they coded their particle engine, but it is supper draining. From fire, smoke and dust, this particle system has a huge impact on the fps for my R9 390. I even noticed fps drops around 5-10 when I limited the max particles on screen to 50 when moving past steam. To turn this off go into your fallout4prefs.ini file and edit this line from 750 to 0 to turn the particle off essentially.
Now that I have set all of these settings, I start walking around the factory watching my fps. Aside from the micro stutters every now and then, its really constant and smooth, UNTIL I GET HERE and my fps drops down to 30fps, WTF? At this point im trying to firgure out whats causing this.
This is where I need your help now, This drop in fps is present until the end of the second set of stairs. I have tried all the menu settings but there isnt an individual setting that helps fix this. Sure if I set everything to low ill get 60fps, but there would still be an issue there. Iaso went in my amd settings and tried testing different things from turning off tessellations ect, and nothing would improve this fps drop Let me know your ideas! Hopefully we can get to the wonderful constant 60 fps that we desire.