Lagging on my new system

[BReal]

Okay so last week I finally updated my system, I bought Radeon HD4850 1Gb, 4gb of RAM and Phenom II X4 955 just to play the game with atleast High settings and a good ( 40ish ) framerate, but for my surprise, the game has low framerate even on the lowest settings ( while on the videos people get 60fps with ~same rig and ultra settings ). So my question is, wtf is wrong?

I've been thinking it might be my harddrive as it is quite old ( 3 years IIRC ). Also, it might be the Catalyst, but I haven't tested it yet.

 

Halp?

[evilneko]

Hmm, not sure. I get good performance at high settings on my Phenom 9750/Radeon HD 2400 XT box AND my T3200-based laptop, both much less beefy systems than yours. Both have XP Professional SP3.

 

On my desktop, the video card's my weakest link, but my hard drive's also a cheapo. Hell I even run boring old Catalyst drivers. Heck, maybe that's it -- try an older version of your drivers if you can, or try Omega drivers instead.

 

Edit: See, I told you my drivers were old. :D

 

[mechine]

Old drivers?

 

 

Come on we can do better than that.

 

 

There's tons of folks using old drivers.

 

 

Kind of stupid if you ask me.

 

 

You get more problems from using old drivers than new ones.

 

 

Besides the new drivers have better tools.

 

 

 

I always use the new ones, but with everything I try to stay at least a month behind.

 

 

After a month you figure the bugs are worked out

 

 

So Breal there's better stuff we can offer ya.

 

 

 

For one, I've noticed that by turning off fallout 3's AA and AF setting (performance)

 

then making my grapics cards force whatever AA an AF setting I want

 

in the form of the grapics card overriding any aplication setting (global)

 

This little trick gave much better texture renders while also running smoother.

 

I haven't tried it but it may work for Vsync too.

 

 

 

 

DirectX an Open GL should be updated, which I try to download them from the

 

original creators, not sure about Open GL but DirectX is from Microsoft

 

an I think the latest version of direct X is called something like

 

end user something or another maybe 8Mb of upgrade.

 

 

 

Read this old tweek guide

 

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html

 

 

 

Water reflections an shadows should be set to medium or low, maybe max shadows 3

These kind of settings use the most performance, and if you don't use mods then you

should be able to just turn all the settings up.

 

 

After using mods it taxes the system a bit.

 

 

If you use a low resolution then you'll probably want to download texture packs

but then if you make fallout run in 1600x1200 or so you won't need texture packs

Generally textures are given a rating in pixel count, high being slow fps

low being for performance.

 

 

There's some performance based mods out there like no blur on hit effect

or MMM's no dead body flies, and even a draw distance one.

Tweeking works better than these.

 

 

Tweeking would be the in game options, the default fallout 3 launcher options

and then the fallout.ini notepad file hidden in my documents\games\fallout3

 

 

Programs running in the background will grind you FPS down to a halt

specially ones that spike the CPU with 100% duty. Turn all that crap off

if you can.

 

I just formated my hard drives in order to run on a clean install, after only

about 6 months of surfing.

 

Install fallout 3 in it's own folder on the hard drive.

 

You don't want a lot of stuff on the desktop.

A few Gb of junk on the desktop (which just puts it in the c:\documents and settings\username\desktop file)

Will almost certainly cause crashes upon fallout exit, in the transfer from the fallout 3 shell to the windows

desktop shell. Pretty much all games will tell you to make the desktop only have the minimum stuff

a hand ful of shortcuts, so long as there is no actual data you could put a bunch of shortcuts on the desktop.

 

I don't have a background or screensaver for the matter. The motherboard turns stuff off, and if I wana screensave

I just open properties an preview one.

 

 

I run the system files on C:\ then run games on D:\

 

 

If you are running a single grapics card using the fake patch workaround/hack

isn't out of the question, I still vote the later patches.

 

 

Using FO3edit's master update always helps.

 

 

There's a purge Cell buffers mod out there, that worked great in oblivion

they say for fallout 3 too, I'm about to try it now.

 

 

There's also a lot of system tweeks to get into with running PC games.

 

 

Certianly many Vista tweeks.

 

 

 

I use the last retail copy of XP home, SP3, A old Pentium 4 550 HT CPU, PNY 8800 GT's in SLI, 2Gb supertalent over clocked DDR2 RAM,

Old Raptor, Old Segate, Either a sound blaster PCI card or the realtek onboard sound, ASUS P5N-D mother board, 1600x1200 native res

7.1 gigaworks speakers, crappy ergo keyboard, Razor Diamondback. I've been thru the bios settings a few times, been thru the grapics

card settings a few times, Tweeked Fallout's setitngs a few times. Pretty much been learning game computers for 5 years. And yet

it's still a task to get fallout 3 to work well sometimes.

[evilneko]

I don't update drivers unless there is a specific problem I'm having. That's why my drivers are so old -- they work. Bugs? What bugs? Ain't seen 'em.

[theLeeHarvey]

Like Evil here, I tend to subscribe to the notion that, "If it ain't broke, Don't fix it." I have only broken that rule once and it caused a shitstorm of problems for me. Once you get your game sorted out, don't mess with it unless you absolutely have to or you may very well be sorry for taking the trouble to install an update.

[BReal]

Well my biggest "WTF" is that people are getting better FPS on older rigs, and still I won't get even near that kind of performance when turning settings to lowest ( which pisses me off ). Atm I'm going to try install the game in C:/Fallout 3 and I wish it works ( running Vista here ). Also, older drivers didn't have any impact, updating didn't have any impact so, I am really confused. I also tried World in Conflict with very high settings and I got average of ~25 FPS. Ain't sure if it's good but I'm starting to think that there might be something wrong with the parts.

 

Anyway, I'll tell how this worked out :)

 

EDIT: Yep, no use. I'm still getting only 20 - 35 FPS at your birthday ._.'

[mechine]

Noobs...

 

 

 

 

Please....

 

 

 

 

What also comes with drivers is new tools, that's how we got stuff like 16XQ AA,

better user interface, better discriptions, and then the driver stuff too,

I've never updated a driver and it not work better than the last.

 

 

but I mean if you wana buy the best grapics card on the market

then run the thing with software which is outdated, sure go ahead

you can roll back to windows 3.1 as well because we all liked how well it worked

 

 

 

pfft, the hardware doesn't do that much, drivers an driver updates

Are the Boss

 

 

You can have a totally awesome grapix card, with a crappy driver

And it still works like junk

 

However if you had a crappy grapix card, with a killer driver

it would work great

 

 

 

 

you know I've never told myself, Hey I'm going to not update my direct X driver

or, man what's wrong with Open GL 1.0, bah why bother updating it

Can you imagine some noob saying hey you know I'm not going to make the

switch between direct X 9.1 and direct X 10, it's just not broken yet.

 

 

 

Dorks, I could understand not updating a Game patch

 

Hardware drivers are different than patches, and also very important.

Didn't you read anything about running a gaming computer?

 

 

 

 

Breal, quit messing around and read the http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html

 

did you enter into the grapical user interface for the grapix card

and set up the global settings, this is where I force AA an AF

An turn off Fallouts AA an AF settings in the launcher

 

 

 

You put in new parts, did you update your windows, update your drivers

for everything, not just the PCI-E stuff.

 

Did you go into your BIOS an change stuff, or at least check if it needed it

 

An example is overclocked RAM, you have to go inside an set it from auto

to the factory overclock the RAMS maker said

 

Or like SLI, is activated in BIOS or Even PCI settings, on if you should use the PCI

for grapics or the PCI-E, there's tons of stuff in there.

 

 

4GB of RAM won't work for Windows XP, I think the most you can have is 3Gb

 

Check your clock speed on the CPU, Check the voltage on the RAM an also the CPU

Always use the settings the manufacturer said

 

 

Where did you install Fallout

 

 

Are you using Vista or XP

 

Did you update XP all the way to current, even the stupid updates from windows update

on a note you don't have to have windows update turned on, There is a link you click on

inside there that checks for updates, and avoids the windows live update pitfalls.

 

 

Did you patch Fallout 3, which patch, did you use the right versions of stuff like FOSE

for support for your patch version

 

 

Do you have any mods loaded into your fallout install, if so what is the list.

 

 

Do you have programs running in the background, you know anitvirus doesn't catch all of them

sometimes they are hidden deep in the system files. A good way to get rid of all that stuff.

Is to format your hard drives, which deletes everything on your computer, where you reinstall

windows, drivers, software, and everything else, called a clean install, and it's really nice

hard work though, I didn't do it this last time, but you can backup your pictures, songs, other stuff on CD.

 

 

 

Go thru an tweek windows, turn off the services you don't need, uninstall the software you don't need

there are even Windows tweek how to sites/posts

 

 

Defrag your hard drives, error check, Run things in realtime priority if you can figure out a way how.

 

 

Update your Direct X from 9.0 to 9.1 (I think it's called Direct X end user something)

 

Update your Open GL 3.0-3.1 or whatever

 

 

Each hardware part in the computer has a driver, mother boards, hard drives, CPU

Every thing, which all get updated version that work better, despite the old driver

not being "broke" freaking red neck computer noobs...

[BReal]

Okay here's the deal:

 

1. I bought: Motherboard, RAM, Processor and Video Card.

2. Installed them

3. Moved from XP to Vista

4. Updated everything I could

5. Installed Fallout 3, no mods, just patched it

 

6. Started working out to actually get the game working as you might think it should work. >_>

 

I have DirectX 10, newest one I think

Catalyst, newest one

the CPU however doesn't have anysort of drivers to be found in the internet and quite surprisingly it shows that the driver is from 2006

 

Yes, I did try to use Ati's AA and AF, this had maybe slight boost but yet it was soooo minimal :\

 

Anyway, I'm going to do the BIOS thingie ( nubz here :D ) and if that doesn't help, heck, then I'll just format my hard drive and see what that does :S

[JimboUK]

I don't update drivers unless there is a specific problem I'm having. That's why my drivers are so old -- they work. Bugs? What bugs? Ain't seen 'em.

 

Same here, I read the driver release notes and if there isn't anything in there that applies to me then I don't bother.

 

 

Okay here's the deal:

 

1. I bought: Motherboard, RAM, Processor and Video Card.

2. Installed them

3. Moved from XP to Vista

4. Updated everything I could

5. Installed Fallout 3, no mods, just patched it

 

6. Started working out to actually get the game working as you might think it should work. >_>

 

I have DirectX 10, newest one I think

Catalyst, newest one

the CPU however doesn't have anysort of drivers to be found in the internet and quite surprisingly it shows that the driver is from 2006

 

Yes, I did try to use Ati's AA and AF, this had maybe slight boost but yet it was soooo minimal :\

 

Anyway, I'm going to do the BIOS thingie ( nubz here :D ) and if that doesn't help, heck, then I'll just format my hard drive and see what that does :S

 

Is it only Fallout that's running badly?

[BReal]

Everything WAS :)

 

mechine, will you have my babies? Updating the BIOS worked and the game plays like charm now <3

 

Kudos!