Fallout 4 Optimization and Performance Systems Explained

[Zzyxzz]

I think the previs/precombine optimization systems are far more of an extremely yucky, itchy, nasty compromise than a solution; Probably just there to get things going on sub-sub-par hardware (and to appease the "ZOMFG!!!! 50FPS IS UNPLAYABLE!!!!!!!1!!!!!!" crowd). I've ran without any of them on my old Radeon HD6500 and I still do so with a 1080Ti.

 

Believe it or not 50 FPS can be very bad in Fallout 4. I had the same issues. My game was at 58 fps capped(capping at 60 fps caused microstutter), it was running smooth. When I dropped down to 50 it stuttered again. It was not your usual 50 fps you know. The performance was really bad. I tried everything to get rid of these stutters. No chance.

 

And now, stutters are gone. 50 fps feel now much better than before. Why? I upgraded my CPU, from a i5-4440 + 8gb ram, unknown mhz to a R5 2600x + 3200mhz 16gb ram. Stutters were gone and the game was much more fluent, even with the same fps! Fallout 4 is very RAM and CPU depending. Your graphics card is not that important.

[SMB92]

Zzyxzz, causes vary for these symptoms, depends how your system is setup. I take it you used the fps cap instead of vsync, so possibly in your case frame times were wildly inconsistent when not at max? Not withstanding any hardware level issue (I'd expect such issues when IMC/RAM is unstable or even CPU throttling). Anyway that's a rabbit hole I won't go much further into, such a case specific thing.

 

My experience with this game, I conclude the CPU is more important overall, not just for the rendering factor but the sheer amount of data to process, particularly when modded (think, AI, Papyrus, inventory etc). Faster RAM is a help all the same (particularly for Ryzen as is known).

 

Here's a little comparison for you on the GPU front with ones I've owned, for trivial sake. With game maxed to Ultra, various high quality mods installed (note that I generally choose wisely, no 4k door knobs etc etc lol) and reasonable INI settings.

 

HD7970 1100mhz 1080P: Be happy if ever gets 30fps let alone 20. Unplayable at this setting.

Intel iGPU (8700k) 1080P: Amazingly gets up to 3-5 fps

Intel iGPU (8700k) 1440P: 1 frame per every other second or so, lmfao

RX580 Strix 1080P: very playable but hangs around the mid 40s a lot (Boston worse). Radeon enhanced sync brings mad stutter, found vsync best (144hz screen = 72fps sync for F4, locked to 60 with Riva, smoothest experience IMO).

RX580 Strix 1440P: Generally not playable, not unlike the 7970 at 1080P.

980ti 1080P Gsync: Very comfortable, except the typical trouble spots on the CPU downtown and elsewhere. Observed VRAM always maxed at 4.5 or so gig. Weird since 1080ti happily eats it's 11GB in F4 for me.

980Ti 1440P Gsync: Runs like the RX580 in 1080p, but a bit worse perhaps. Generally didn't like to play at this res with it.

1080Ti 1080P Gsync: CPU only bottleneck now, some places downtown take a dive when waiting on CPU to draw as usual.

1080ti 1440P Gsync: As above, although I expect fps to hover 60 to 100 in most places not Boston (rather than be maxed, although they still often are). Some of those fps hitting places I mentioned may sink me down to the 30s and 40s.

 

I have to imagine oldmate with the HD6500 was running some fairly low settings.

 

Anyway trivia/hardware rant over hahaha

[SKKmods]

Some FPS testing from whewn I was pushing uGridsToLoad up to 25;

 

GTX1060 6Gb Quality/uGrid/framerate: Ultra 5/72 | Ultra 9/60 | Ultra 11/60 | Ultra 15/50 in scope | Ultra 25/30 in scope

GTX 750 2Gb Quality/uGrid/framerate: Ultra 5/50 | High 9/30 | Med 11/30 | Low 15/30 in scope | Low 17/CTD

 

Using Fallout performance monitor the i7-3770 and 16Gb were never stretched with clear caps on cores/threads and memory use.

 

Scoping in will improve framerate by 5 to 10.

 

Keyboard lag/response becomes unusable below 30fps whilst the mouse remains fine.

[SMB92]

Rofl 25 grids. Most if not all the rendering is still single threaded though, worth noting (doesn't reflect accurately in total usage stat). And Lol that 750 isn't doing so badly.

 

Interesting your finding with the keyboard lag. Is that with the prerendered frame buffer (usual cause for that sort of thing) set to 0/1?

[SKKmods]

Interesting your finding with the keyboard lag. Is that with the prerendered frame buffer (usual cause for that sort of thing) set to 0/1?

 

I dont know. Only settings varied from vanilla and display quality presets were uGridsToLoad and fLODFadeOutMultActors.

[SMB92]

Fair enough. On a side note I did see some settings related to engine management at high/low fps, haven't looked much further as to what gets controlled there yet.

[wanderer3292]

 

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Thanks, this is very much appreciated. So I'm assuming I need to have my mod packed into the ba2 for the nifs to get deleted? I use mod organizer 2 so I've only tested with them as a separate mod so far. I'm still new to this aspect of modding so tools like xedit and this script are still blowing my mind.

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No, they explicitly need to not be packed when you run the script, it only works on the loose files. If you are using the CK through MO2 and ending up with the meshes in a MO2 folder and not directly in the data folder, you would have to run the .bat file through MO2.Â

Thank you so much for the clarification!

[wanderer3292]

Wanderer, glad you were able to get through those initial troubles. Crashing at generating PC has been a rare experience for me (usually something mod specific, e.g didn't like a mesh),

 

Vis on the other hand is usually always memory (RAM/page file). This process will eat memory alive. I have been told this is due to the way that it loads every texture for every processed object into memory (this may also relate to why Bethesda says they had memory concerns in making this runtime generated perhaps). Usually I grant the CK 64GB of page file and its fine, but I have been told one can remove textures from the data folder as well, and then run the generation without concern for memory.

Sounds about right, my random crashes happen during pre-vis generation.

 

How does one go about assigning a page file to the ck? I have 16gb of ram with a decent processor, and never really do anything else while I'm working in the CK.

[yarrmateys]

i'm also interested in how to make creation kit use more ram. for some reason despite having 32 gb of ram and 64 gb page file creation kit will never go above a certain threshold until crashing during previs generation. it doesn't seem to go beyond 10~ gb, and it always happen after about 196 uvd files were generated. i was able to go around it only after i cut the file up into pieces and generated previs bit by bit.

 

edit: apparently that wasn't the case. precombine nifs need to be packed into a ba2 archive before generating cdx and previs, otherwise creation kit will crash after it loads over 32 thousand of them.

 

also, here are the updated offsets for creation kit v 1.10.162.0, based on searge's findings several pages earlier:

- check 0x03893D68 for "1.10.162.0" to confirm the right version.
- at 0x0034726D change from B9 01 00 00 00 to B9 00 00 00 00
- at 0x00DCAA76 change from B9 01 00 00 00 to B9 00 00 00 00

 

don't use this modified ck for anything but precombine generation to make sure they're generated using 64 bit havok, it will crash on startup during cdx or previs generation.

Edited March 5, 2020 by yarrmateys

[niston]

For the record, I was getting around 16 to 30 fps on that radeon, with settings mostly dialled down as much as possible and no fancy whatsoever texture thingies installed at all. First played games in 320x200@50Hz interlaced, so I'm just not that fussy about the whole gfx thing I guess. Downtown was of course a bit different. When intense combat broke loose, I got <1FPS at times w/o previs/precombine mumbojumbo there.

 

But this is 2020, that Radeon is just ancient and hardware occlusion culling has been a thing for a while now. Why not support it? Oh right...