New Vegas (Vanilla) - Texture Glitching/Flickering

[DustWanderer]

Hello there, fellow wanderers. I'm having a problem related to New Vegas functioning on Windows 10. Over the past few days I noticed that my New Vegas copy had some weird texture issues, which I never had before. I played New Vegas on my Windows 10 PC for the last time on November 2015, and since then I just messed around with FO4.

A few days ago I jumped back to the Mojave wasteland and discovered that my game had this weird anomaly, with textures flickering and displaying awfully over both characters and environments (see attached images).

 

 

I tried rolling back the drivers to the 2015 version, updating to the newest stable release, installing all DirectX redistributables, using compatibility mode and even reinstalling Windows 10, with no luck so far.

I made my best for the clean install to include every redistributable from DirectX9.0c since I know that Dx12 retro compatibility isn't the best one.

 

Here are my specs:

Windows 10 x64 Pro

Asus M5a99Pro R2.0

G.Skill Sniper 2133Mhz DDR3 4GB x2

XFX HD 7970 Black Edition 3gb GGDR5

AMD FX8350 B.E 4.0GHz

WD Caviar Black 1TB

Sentey 850w - 80 Power Plus Bronze

 

I have no mods installed whatsoever, I used to have UHNV and Rudy's ENB on my previous install but not now. It's also important to notice that the screens I took don't reflect how intense the flicker is, but I hope you can see the obvious effects on the game. Thank you!

[dubiousintent]

You say you don't have ENB installed now, but make sure you removed the D3D9.dll that came with the "wrapper" version from your FNV game folder.

 

Texture flickering is suggestive of overloading your graphics VRAM caching, so it has to resort to system memory which is slower. That is typically the result of too many hi-rez textures, or added graphic effects such as from ENB or SweetFX. But it shouldn't be the case with a plain vanilla install.

 

Have you "verified local files" through Steam to ensure all the vanilla files are restored? Did you remember to try renaming both the INI files in the "C:\Users\<YourAccountName>\Documents\My Games\FalloutNV" folder, and let the game rebuild them. (There might have been some unexpected changes.)

 

See the wiki article "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting Guide" for other things to check and see if anything sounds familiar.

 

If you can't get a vanilla game to function correctly, you have serious problems. The game is too old to be choking on hardware like you have. If anything, your system may be too good and the game engine's deficiencies may be showing because it can't keep up.

 

That leaves the video card as the likely suspect.

 

One possibility I saw mentioned while searching the web on this is that someone noticed their power supply unit (PSU) cable was touching their video card and causing "flickering". Moving the PSU cable so it no longer touched cleared up the problem.

 

Might also check for dust inside. Dust buildup can cause weird symptoms like those. Be sure to block fans on the CPU and such to ensure they don't turn when you try to blow out the dust. (A paperclip works fine. Don't use suction; it can pull loose components.) Uncontrolled spinning fans generate current which can fry components.

 

If none of those basic solutions work, I suggest you take the issue to the G.Skill web site and see if they have any ideas.

 

-Dubious-

[DustWanderer]

Alright, so:

-I did the steam verification, no problems at all, everything is ok (it should since its a 100% clean install)

-No d3d9.dll, I have not even tested ENB on this install because of said issues. Also I didn't download it just yet, since I re-installed Win 10 yesterday.

 

Now this may or may not be unrelated, but:

-A week ago I installed Rise Of Legends. Whenever I played it, tree textures teared badly. I modified the ROL .ini file and changed the debug shader from 0 to 1 and guess what? No more tearing. However, frames were half the number they were with the original file.

-My brother has a similar rig to mine, and it also runs on a Windows 10 install. His ROL didn't show said tearing even once.

-Newer games (F04, SOMA, GTA V, DOTA 2) show no tearing at all, no issues, no problems.

-Before formatting my PC, I removed the GPU and checked for any signs of damage. There was no dust (I usually clean my PC once every 3 months, this was 2 weeks ago) nothing out of the ordinary.

 

I was worried about the GPU, even thought that it was dying, but the newer games working properly leaves me with no idea other than Win 10 screwing the game with their updates... or IDK. I can't stress enough how strange this is to me. I swear, I played New Vegas with 0 issues just a few months ago. I can't believe how it just stopped working fine just now... Will check your link, anyways thanks for the help so far!

Edited August 18, 2016 by DustWanderer

[DustWanderer]

So I've installed Windows 7 x64 SP1 with the latest updates, and the problem still persists. I've downloaded Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and the both of them have the same issue. I've installed every DX9.0c package there is, visual c++ redistributables, latest drivers and so on.

The problem remains on both games, but once again, newer games have no issues at all. I can't find a reason, and I'm starting to doubt about some configuration on the radeon cp that I can't edit.

Could it be the gamebryo engine having major issues with the latest crimson drivers?

[RoyBatterian]

Seems like failing hardware to me. Do you get black screens randomly or see white or black specks ?

 

XFX (and PNY) is a notoriously bad manufacturer.

[DustWanderer]

Hello Roy! So far I've never ever had any black screens, anomalies or anything related. It just happened... and it's really weird because I played the game with no issues at all, not so long ago.

If anything, I'm surprised no other game has this kind of issue. Rise Of Legends was *kind of* fixed when I changed debug_shaders 0 to 1. The issue still persists...

EDIT: I also downloaded the latest Windows Updates with no improvements on the matter.