Frame rate issues

[Carrolj2]

Ok I'm looking for a little help with a problem I'm having with my frame rate in Fallout. When I first start a game after I have booted up my computer, I have an awesome frame rate and everything moves really smoothly. However, if I'm wandering the wastes, my frame rate starts to noticibly lag after I've moved about a hundred feet (give or take a few). The longer I play, the worse my fps gets. I'm no computer expert (obviously), though I'm trying to learn. It seems to me like some kind of memory issue, but I'm not sure. I have 2G RAM, Radeon HD 2600 Pro video card, Pentium 4 3.4 GHz CPU

 

Does anyone know what could be causing this? I've been wanting to upgrade my computer for a while now, and I think it's about time I did something. If anyone has any recommendations on what I can/should improve in order to get a better Fallout experience, please feel free to share. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks for your help all :thanks:

[muppetsoup]

I think you are probably right. I would use something like msconfig to disable everything that runs on startup and see if the issue goes away. If it does, re-enable the items one at a time and see where it comes back.

[Carrolj2]

At the risk of sounding like a moron.... : Where do I run MSconfig from?

[phoneyLogic]

How to run this you can find ...

 

for XP here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353/en-us

for Vista here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135/en-us

 

and another one:

http://logitech-en-amr.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...faqid=228#vista

[mechine]

LOLZ!

 

I use a P4 550 HT too.

 

Ha ha ha we're like in the windows 3.1 looking in on the duel an quad CPU's

like a bum looks in a window at hot food.

 

 

You can read the read me for fallout, it pretty much breaks down the grapix settings

both in game an out of game

 

In vanilla without patches even, max settings FPS were steady unlike some games.

After mods there are moments of FPS lag.

 

We seem to take the easy fix which is just to quit running for a second to let the system catch up.

We don't really know if that's what you have or a slow over all game ruining FPS degrade over time.

 

You could shut down the Windows shell along with a bunch of un-needed stuff for a offline game like fallout.

There's a few good shareware programs that do this.

 

Then there are always upgrades to buy, but then updated drivers an tweeked game settings is free.

 

 

I use the P4 550 HT CPU, PNY SLI 8800 GT's, ASUS P5N-D, Super talent DDR2 800 OC RAMRAM 2Gb, Segate an raptor drives

with 2-3Gb page files on each, 20 inch dell ultrasharp in 1600X1200, 7.1 sound, The last copy of windows XP SP3 (kidding) XP FTW!

 

It's not much, but a better build than the last, still even there are times when Fallout just lags in FPS an I have to wait a moment.

But then there are area's where 20 npc's are fighting 20 npc's with me trying to walk in the middle where I have to turn on

bullet time just to keep it from bombing down to 3FPS. However this is rare, most of the time it's just the system catching up lag

Which is far less worse than some games that have this issue the whole time it's running.

 

I vote drivers, settings, tweeks, and performance enhancing mods.

More information about your puter an fallout never hurts either.

 

 

It's not much, this mother board has over clock AI that can be applyed to the ram an cpu

I kept the stock clock of the P4 because the gains were not enough to be worth the risk

I did have to set the CPU's core voltage to Intel specs, as well as set the RAM to it's

factory overclock an voltage. They do stuff like this in benchmarking number crunching

in computer mags, usually they keep pushing it over the limit though. Which is where

the factory specs came in. It wasn't much but the mother board got it wrong when I first built it.

 

Besides messing with settings, The first install of fallout 3 once I started modding it didn't work well at all.

 

I started over an used a seprate folder from program files with just the second patch, and cleaner mod installs.

It worked great dispite everyone saying how bad the second patch is. I ended up with 75 mod plug ins.

It worked most of the time, some crashes here an there, an laggy frame rates. However it was 10 times

better than the first install, and modding.

 

Now I'm working on a the third install on the second hard drive in the hope of making it more clean

an seprate from the system files, probably not much, but niether is moving it out of program files.

New to the mod game, both times I ended up with a end result that wasn't what I wanted really

too much stuff I didnt' want in there, an learning how to use tools. I know the second install helpped

a whole lot, so I'm just saying if you have only built one fallout world that a reinstall would help.

We'll see how it turns out the third.

 

The point being the best way to go about it would be a clean install, then slowly add stuff until a problem

comes up, add stuff, test test, add stuff, to avoid ending up in a FUBAR wasteland.

At the very least it's going to be a better end result from learning more stuff about fallout an mods

 

Bethesda would know more about any issues with your Grapics card, sometimes there have been games

I've had to input wierd codes just to fix a tiny glitch with a card type.

 

You can always search for tweeks, an read bunches of puter gamer mags.