Massive lag on startup

[NCRSoleSurvivor]

Hi, I'm in the middle of my TTW playthrough, and recently, I've encountered a problem that just suddenly appeared right out of the blue. I loaded my game one day and found it suffering massive lag, like, the frame rate is unplayable, it is practically 1 frame per 2 seconds. Not only that the audio isn't playing. Loading the main menu was fine, but upon loading my save, everything just went to s***.

 

I had no idea what caused this and tried whatever I could to rectify the issue, deleted mods in my data folder, tweaked the ini files. Nothing worked, the problem still persisted.

 

Without any other option, I uninstalled New Vegas and installed it again, but for whatever reason, the problem is still here, even on a freshly new installed vanilla game, the problem is still there.

 

At this point I have no idea what to do, New Vegas is unplayable at this point and reinstalling it doesn't fix the problem. This is the first time it's ever come up for me, and I have a high-end PC so there is no way my specs could be causing any of this, I usually get a decent 30 to 50 fps in regular gameplay.

 

If anyone knows the issue and knows how to fix the problem, please let me know as I would really like to get back to my TTW playthrough which I thankfully backed up.

Edited September 4, 2019 by Killerband4256

[dubiousintent]

In general, if you haven't changed anything about your game and it suddenly stops working correctly you need to look to other causes: such as software updates to Windows, programming libraries such as ".Net", or hardware drivers. Older games eventually get dropped from product testing. It is also possible you are having problems with your hard drive. It never hurts to run "chkdsk" and an anti-virus scan.

FYI: If you recently had a Windows system update, you only have 10 days to revert to the previous version if you decide to choose that option.

* If you are suddenly having a "slowdown" or lag; or a lack of sound; or problems getting NVSE to load, or really anything new unexpectedly, please see the 'Issue: NVSE - fails to load after update KB4058043 to Win10 FCU (v1709)' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide. This may be due to an on-going series of Windows Updates for the "Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities".

* Related to the NVSR problem, for problems AFTER a save game is loaded see also 'Issue: Incomplete save game load' in the "Troubleshooting" guide.

-Dubious-

[NCRSoleSurvivor]

I found out the problem. For some reason my audio tool; Sonic Studio 3, causes the issue. Every time I load the game with the tool running in the background, the entire game lags like hell. But if I load a game with the tool closed, the game runs fine. I don't know WHY it is the cause of it, nor do I know how it's just only started to affect it now, but from here on out, I'll be playing the game without it running until I can find out how to fix it.

 

Thanks for attempting to help. Should I run into an error similar to this again, I'll be sure to take the advice you wrote out for me.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Killerband4256

[dubiousintent]

Thanks for reporting back on your solution.

 

I'm not familiar with that tool, but from the description I found online it appears to be acting much like an "overlay" in that it is intercepting the game sound to massage it (balancing volume control, etc). Which means it has to monitor the game audio output in real time. In most games, sound is sort of "send it to the OS and do something else until the OS says it is done playing that sound". Such dynamic monitoring was not contemplated when the game was designed and it's soaking up CPU cycles causing the lag. It is entirely possible that a recent change implemented in a Win10 system update or the SS3 driver is behind the problem, until SS3 catches up.

 

-Dubious-

[FiftyTifty]

My Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro has similar software, where it can replace DirectSound with OpenAL, simulate 3D positioning, normalize volume, and a feature called crystalizer to make audio just sound way better. Never had any problem like this, but then I am on Windows 7.