Extreme Slowing down with NPCs

[corvus667]

Hi,

 

I've recently re-installed my Fallout 3 GOTY edition and notice severe performance issues (FPS dropping from 30+ to 10) whenever there are more than 6 or 7 NPC in the area. I can't recall this happening while playing the game last year on the very same computer. Leading DAD from Tranquility Lane to Rivet City is a real pain aorund Andale. The RR Refurbished Vault frequently shows FPS of 5 and therefore is unplayable now.

 

Any suggestions on what I can do (except buying a new computer)?

 

Current system is: Athlon XP 2600+, 3 GB RAM, 1 GB Radeon HD 4670

 

Decreasing the graphic settings or resolution does not change anything, nor does enabling more than 2 GB RAM or using a different D3D9.dll

 

Any help is welcome.

[ninjafish]

Could be a few things technical-based:

 

1)Memory leak, which is causing your computer to only use a gig or 2 total of RAM

2)Something on your computer is taking up a massive amount of resources. I'v seen firefox hog a good 60% of my memory before so I ditched it for google chrome

3)Could be a corrupt or bad game install

4)Your motherboard... that Atholon XP 2600 is like... oh jesus. 6 years old? And it only supports Direct X8. Odds are its this one.

[corvus667]

Thanks for the ideas ninjafish.

 

1) Task manager suggests the memory is actually used

2) ...mmh, the only difference to last year is a new firewall, but it's in "Game mode". Maybe I'll try it again with my old firewall.

3) Tried a re-install to no avail. I might also try to install the non-GOTY version to test, but I wanted to play the DLCs

4) Probably the main culprit... and yes it's 7 years old (Everything I worked with was fine so far... until there came 6-7 Fallout 3 NPCs). However, I had no problems with my last playthrough. Probably I used less NPC adding mods. It's somewhat hard to imagine that a few NPCs can take up that much performance... I still use this old computer to re-calculate 3D geophysical data with very good performance. We also got some SP 3200+ unused somewhere here, maybe I'll try exchanging the cpu.

 

I guess it is the motherboard and processor, which are not sufficient for many NPCs...

 

Any other ideas how to improve NPC related performance? (If not guess I have to live with unpopulated wastelands, whcih is undesirable)

 

 

Could be a few things technical-based:

 

1)Memory leak, which is causing your computer to only use a gig or 2 total of RAM

2)Something on your computer is taking up a massive amount of resources. I'v seen firefox hog a good 60% of my memory before so I ditched it for google chrome

3)Could be a corrupt or bad game install

4)Your motherboard... that Atholon XP 2600 is like... oh jesus. 6 years old? And it only supports Direct X8. Odds are its this one.

[ninjafish]

Thanks for the ideas ninjafish.

 

1) Task manager suggests the memory is actually used

2) ...mmh, the only difference to last year is a new firewall, but it's in "Game mode". Maybe I'll try it again with my old firewall.

3) Tried a re-install to no avail. I might also try to install the non-GOTY version to test, but I wanted to play the DLCs

4) Probably the main culprit... and yes it's 7 years old (Everything I worked with was fine so far... until there came 6-7 Fallout 3 NPCs). However, I had no problems with my last playthrough. Probably I used less NPC adding mods. It's somewhat hard to imagine that a few NPCs can take up that much performance... I still use this old computer to re-calculate 3D geophysical data with very good performance. We also got some SP 3200+ unused somewhere here, maybe I'll try exchanging the cpu.

 

I guess it is the motherboard and processor, which are not sufficient for many NPCs...

 

Any other ideas how to improve NPC related performance? (If not guess I have to live with unpopulated wastelands, whcih is undesirable)

 

 

Ya it will probably have something to do with your motherboard, and im AMAZED you can even RUN Fallout 3 with Direct x8... im baffled it runs lol.

 

The only real fix I could possibly imagine is dropping textures, draw distance, and anti-aliasing down to low and off.

Other than that... you need an upgrade lol

[LadyMilla]

It also depends on the mods that you are using.

 

Do you use any body replacers with hi-res textures?

Do you use any mods (that you did not use one year ago) that add high polygon-count meshes to the game (weapons, clothes, etc.)?

 

My experience: I'm using Brisa Almodovar companion with Beware of Girl weapons and hi-res textures, and there is a momentary drop in FPS whenever I look towards her. Also, as I'm using a highly detailed body replacer, the performance drops when I switch to third-person view from first-person view.

 

On a side note: DirectX support does not depend on the motherboard, your card is a HD4670 which is perfectly capable of supporting DirectX up to 10. Your motherboard will certainly be a bottleneck in terms of performance.

[corvus667]

I'm not using Direct X 8, Direct X 9 runs just fine. The board is a A7N8X, the cpu Athlon XP 2600+ and I never got any Direct X 9 problem in any application.

 

Texture sizes have no large impact at all on my system. The fps does not change if I use high or low resolution textures at all. I even tried the highres texture pack mods for megaton and Rivet City (deleted again now) and still got fps 30+ with no or only a few NPCs. But whenever there are 6 or 7 raiders or companions it drops dramatically.

 

Yes... sounds like an upgrade... whenever some more money is available lol.

[corvus667]

It also depends on the mods that you are using.

 

Do you use any body replacers with hi-res textures?

Do you use any mods (that you did not use one year ago) that add high polygon-count meshes to the game (weapons, clothes, etc.)?

 

My experience: I'm using Brisa Almodovar companion with Beware of Girl weapons and hi-res textures, and there is a momentary drop in FPS whenever I look towards her. Also, as I'm using a highly detailed body replacer, the performance drops when I switch to third-person view from first-person view.

 

On a side note: DirectX support does not depend on the motherboard, your card is a HD4670 which is perfectly capable of supporting DirectX up to 10. Your motherboard will certainly be a bottleneck in terms of performance.

 

Thanks LadyMilla! I'll test it without high polygon-count meshes. So far my hypthesis is that it's mostly the AI that makes my performance drop (Hard to believe since the AI of Fallout 3 does not seem to be very demanding at all), because my single core can't handle it.

 

I'll also have a look for another, maybe used mainboard and CPU I can afford.