Load Order - is mine optimal?

[Zerayan]

Update: Strangely enough, turning down Texture Quality from High to Medium accomplished the seemingly impossible. I was able to complete the entire Broken Steel DLC without even 1 freeze or crash. I have no idea how that setting could have such a profound impact on stability, but I'm glad it worked.

[FadingCeiling]

Bloody marvelous! Well done old chap!

 

If I'm not totally mistaken higher texture quality first of all requires more memory from your graphics card. So it could have been because you're graphics card doesn't have enough memory for the high quality textures. I am not 100% sure that this is correct so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. Thanks.

 

Also it could just be Fallout 3 gfx engine problem on it's own or a million other things. But if it helped then who cares!

[Zerayan]

Bloody marvelous! Well done old chap!

 

If I'm not totally mistaken higher texture quality first of all requires more memory from your graphics card. So it could have been because you're graphics card doesn't have enough memory for the high quality textures. I am not 100% sure that this is correct so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. Thanks.

 

Also it could just be Fallout 3 gfx engine problem on it's own or a million other things. But if it helped then who cares!

 

Well said! Though I do have one more question - are there any 'stable' mods that make it so that nothing an NPC uses degrades? I'm quite fond of the Tesla Cannon, and I thought I'd give it to Cross to wipe the floor with, but not surprising, it degrades when she uses it (and all other NPCs for that matter).

[FadingCeiling]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_followers

 

Read after combat:

_{Armor and weapons worn by companions never degrade with use.}

_{Companions have unlimited ammo for their standard weapon (With the exception of Butch), but you'll have to supply them with the appropriate ammo for any other non-default ranged weapon.}

 

I think there's a few mods that change it so that follower armor/weapon do degrade but i' not at home to check the readme's of a few mods I use (I don't like followers, never have them personally). I also don't know of any mods that stop the degradation.

[Zerayan]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_followers

 

Read after combat:

_{Armor and weapons worn by companions never degrade with use.}

_{Companions have unlimited ammo for their standard weapon (With the exception of Butch), but you'll have to supply them with the appropriate ammo for any other non-default ranged weapon.}

 

I think there's a few mods that change it so that follower armor/weapon do degrade but i' not at home to check the readme's of a few mods I use (I don't like followers, never have them personally). I also don't know of any mods that stop the degradation.

 

Well, let me know when you get a moment. Yet another thing Beth got wrong in my opinion.

[GrandsonOfSam]

Actually if dropping the graphics quality helped on the crashing issue, you could try the Tweaking It Out graphics mod, as it downgrades most of the graphics that you won't see very closely anyway. I use it in combination with the better quality graphics patches, and they work wonders.

 

If you stop crashing after dropping graphics lower, either your main or graphics memory is too low for the texture size you use, or the settings in your .ini are set too low, so even though you would have enough resources, the game just wont use them... TIO textures address that problem very well.

 

Good that the problem got solved though :)

[Zerayan]

Actually if dropping the graphics quality helped on the crashing issue, you could try the Tweaking It Out graphics mod, as it downgrades most of the graphics that you won't see very closely anyway. I use it in combination with the better quality graphics patches, and they work wonders.

 

If you stop crashing after dropping graphics lower, either your main or graphics memory is too low for the texture size you use, or the settings in your .ini are set too low, so even though you would have enough resources, the game just wont use them... TIO textures address that problem very well.

 

Good that the problem got solved though :)

 

Yeah, I'm glad it worked too because crashing every 5 minutes was getting really aggravating. My PC is quite fast - I run an Core i7 920 with 6GB DDR3 and a Velociraptor HDD. The only cause would be the graphics card, which is only a Radeon 4830, though I'm running F3 on 1024x768, which is not exactly a high resolution.

 

I modified my .ini to make use of Multithreading and other tweaks which would help with performance (as posted on Tweakguides).