Severe lag in interiors in Fallout 3 GOTY

[Deleted2303205User]

Please help!

 

I am having severe performance issues with Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition in interior areas only. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a small single-room house or a large subway station, my FPS will drop by half or more every time, often lower than 15 FPS. This is really starting to bother me. The lag is often so bad that my controls don't respond well; maneuvering in tight spaces becomes nearly impossible because I keep getting stuck on things. It also forces me to rely on VATS to fight because my FPS is so low that I can't aim properly. VATS is also incredibly laggy in these instances.

 

However, when I am in exterior areas like the wastelands or the D.C. ruins, the game run perfectly smooth with no FPS loss whatsoever, easily reaching 60. Controls respond fine. Hard drive stutters are not noticeable. My performance is excellent even when there are multiple enemies on-screen and I have pushed the detail sliders higher than the recommended settings. No VATS lag either.

 

So obviously my system is capable of running this game at high detail with a high FPS, but for some reason only in exterior areas. Why would this be?

 

A strange note, my FPS will rise considerably in areas where there are no light sources on-screen. For example, a completely dark cave will boost my performance to the level I experience when I am in the wastes at 60+ FPS. But as soon a light source of any kind is on screen the lag returns, and my FPS drops to 15 or lower.

 

Right now I'm using a clean, vanilla copy of the game (I'm not even using the DLC's until I get this resolved). I am desperate for suggestions that do not involve me buying a new computer.

 

 

 

FIXES I HAVE TRIED:

 

 

- Updated all of my video and sound drivers, with no noticeable change

- Set all detail settings to absolute lowest (small textures, no HDR or bloom, all sliders set to lowest, etc). No change in performance whatsoever.

- Tried setting the resolution from my monitor's native 1680x1050 down to 800x600. There is a slight improvement, but even at this setting, framerate in interiors is bad and combat is laggy; aiming without VATS is difficult.

- Tried running the game in compatibility mode for Windows XP, with no noticeable change in performance.

- Reinstalled the game to a custom folder, as the Program Files folder has been known to cause problems. It has not noticeably improved performance.

- Installed nHancer and Followed the tips on Arwen's guide (Here), and then tried experimenting with all of the options in different ways, but with no increase in performance.

- D3DOverrider: Tried applying all variations of settings to Fallout 3. No change in performance whatsoever. Forcing VSync off only produces screen tearing and does not improve performance. Triple buffering doesn't seem to do anything.

- Nvidia Control Panel: Tweaked it in the same way that I tried tweaking nHancer and D3DOverrider. No variation of any setting seems to make a positive impact on performance.

- Rivatuner: Same as above. Tried messing around with various settings. None of them have positively impacted performance. I did not try every setting because I don't know what half of them do. Many of them required restarts and I didn't think it was worth the time to try every one since none of the ones I tried seemed to do anything anyways.

- Installed Kruftwark's No FX Mod (Here) to remove all the smoke, fog, particles and advanced lighting effects from interior cells. There was absolutely no difference in performance.

- Installed the Unofficial Patch. This supposedly corrects many bugs and improves performance in some cases, but it made no difference for me.

- Tried replacing Windows' built-in MPEG codec with MADFilter, as the Fraunhover codec is known to cause problems with Fallout 3. This has not improved performance in any way.

- Tried using the MaximizedWindow program to run Fallout 3, as some other forum users said this can correct problems. But it did not noticeably improve performance.

- Tried using FPS Limiter and set the iFPSClamp variable in the .INI to match it at 60 FPS. This made my character move in ultra slow motion (only in interior areas) to the point where the game was unplayable.

- Went on TweakGuides.com (Here) and applied the performance and threading tweaks. Enabling all of the multi-threading options (such as bUseThreadedMorpher=1) boosted performance by about 5-10% in both the exterior and interior cells. This is the only fix I have tried that has improved things to any degree. Unfortunately my FPS in interior cells is still around 15 FPS or lower despite this.

 

 

 

GENERAL MAINTENANCE THAT I HAVE TAKEN CARE OF:

 

 

- User Account Control is off

- Data Execution Prevention has been disabled for Fallout 3

- Vista is up-to-date

- Always logged in as Administrator

- System is free of adware, spyware, malware, viruses and trojans

- Anti-virus software does not run automatic scans and therefore does not interfere with performance

- Temporary file folder is regularly cleaned

- Ran defrag immediately after installing Fallout 3, and I regularly keep my hard drive defragged

- Minimum of background processes are running at any given time

- Visual effects on Vista are all turned off for maximum performance

- My system is not overclocked in any way

- Page file is set to 4394 MB

 

 

 

Notes about my system:

 

System: ASUS G1Sn Notebook

Processor: Intel Core Duo 2 T8100 2.1 GHz

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Operating System: Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition

Video Card: Nvidia 9500m GS with 512 MB VRAM

Video Driver: NVIDIA Verde Notebook Driver Series V.260.99

Video Driver Date: 10/16/2010 (Latest version)

Audio Device: Realtek High Definition Audio

Audio Driver Date: 02/14/2008 (Latest version)

DirectX version: 11

 

 

 

As you can see I have been very thorough. I have exhausted all the fixes I could find before turning to the community for help. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Jaunty5899]

i had the same interior lag , hopefully it was fixed by disabling HighDynamicrange or HDR