Settings that control CPU utilization in Fallout New Vegas?

[TennesseeTuxedo]

Interestingly enough, I can run Skyrim at a solid 60 FPS with 200+ mods, full res, and high-ultra quality yet New Vegas I can only get 30-40 FPS. Investigating it I noticed my CPU is the bottleneck, with one of my 8 cores running at near 100% utilization while my GPU doesn't even crack 50%. I've tried all the multi-threading ini tricks, CPU parking app, etc.. and while they smooth things out a bit perhaps, they don't do much for FPS, nor seem to spread the load to other cores. I've accepted this is best I am going to do with multi-threading, what I want to research next are what ini/graphics settings impact CPU? For example shadows apparently use CPU and know from Skyrim that is the one thing I had to tweak to get my 60 FPS in some of the busier areas. In Skyrim, smoke also seems to impact CPU. In both games I think scripts are very CPU impacting so that might be something to look at, perhaps avoiding script intensive mods, turning off some perks, etc...

 

What settings can be changed that should have a noticeable impact on CPU utilization?

 

 

For ref: I have an i7-2600 3.4GHz (no overclock) and a GeForce GTX 760 w 4Gb. Using stutter remover, NVSE, and 4GBFNV.

[obobski]

Try turning draw distance down. Scripts can also cause problems, as you've observed. Lots of AI stuff (e.g. tons of follower/additional NPC mods) can be problematic. amBX (if you have that) also hits frame-rates *significantly* in New Vegas, so turning it off (if you can live without it) is wise too. That said, IME Fallout New Vegas (and Fallout 3) usually end up being more demanding or worse performing than Skyrim, especially with lots of mods running.

 

Getting more technical: your system doesn't have 8 cores, it has 4 cores with HyperThreading (SMT), which presents 8 logical processors (and yes this is a significant difference). Try running without HyperThreading, or starting the application with the /affinity hook and setting the affinty mask to the first two or three logical processors, and see if that helps. IME HyperThreading is usually not a blessing for gaming.

[FMod]

First: Try removing the stutter remover. Its default settings cap the frame rate at 30 - it could be as simple as that.

 

Overclock your CPU if possible, via the Turbo setting - 4-4.2 GHz for 1-2 cores active is conservative and is a ~10% boost. Keep turbo as is for 3-4 cores unless you have aftermarket cooling.

 

HT doesn't normally hurt gaming, but sometimes the system gets it wrong, so disabling it might help.

Draw distance is a major factor in CPU load. Especially concerning Actors. It's also possible to reduce the number of simultaneously active NPC via GMST.

[TennesseeTuxedo]

Great info! Posted these q's to steam and bethesda forums and get nothing on those except wise-as s responses.

 

I tried the affinity to no avail. I'll have to dig further but when I tried it without stutter remover the performance was horrible. Dropped from the 30's into the teens, but that doesn't sound right, I don't think stutter remover improves performance per se, really slows it down to smooth it out is my understanding. Need to figure out why that happened.

 

I looked at upgrading my LGA1155 i7 2600 CPU (sandy bridge) and the best I can get without changing my motherboard is the i7 3770K (ivy bridge), but the performance gains on paper look rather modest to where it doesn't seem worth it. I have a locked processor and a Lenovo motherboard that doesn't have all the nice options like an MSI BIOS has, so overclocking doesn't seem promising. Despite all this, my i7 2600 appears to still be considered an acceptable processor for gaming and is not far behind the latest CPUs. The puzzling thing is, you see all these threads of people saying things like "I get a solid 120 FPS on fnv", what exactly are they running that would achieve such a frame rate???

 

Generally I think I am satisfied with the performance as it is. Except places like the strip, I stay in the 30-40 range with almost no stuttering ever, all while running 60 mods now including all the large textures like NMC large and ojo bueno. The Performance Of The Gods mod I think smoothed things out even more and I actually prefer the slightly less cluttered world.

 

This has given me an idea of a mod specifically to alleviate CPU. Not sure what that would be but perhaps optimizing/suspending frequently run scripts, getting rid of CPU heavy effects like smoke, shadows, etc...

[obobski]

Your poor performance is likely heavily influenced by mods. I had no problems hitting 100 FPS (or better) with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Radeon HD4870X2 (which was no slouch back when NV was a new game). amBX would take a big chunk out of that, as could some mods that introduced more NPCs, bigger textures, etc to the game. In some cases it can be a single mod that just wrecks performance for one reason or another, at that point you have to decide if the mod's content is more important than the game running well. As far as your i7 goes - CPUs have been largely stagnant for years now (ignoring advances in power efficiency, multimedia encode/decode support (e.g. QuickSync), and IGPUs - none of this is likely a factor for your usage/configuration); it should be no problem for this game, or many others. If the game runs poorly "stock" then there's something to worry about, but honestly speaking I don't think you have a problem other than running tons of mods.

[TennesseeTuxedo]

I mysteriously got a solid 60 FPS, up from 30-40! I use vsynch so it would probably be higher. I even installed a bunch of mods including large ones like a respawner, Project Brazil, both New Vegas bounties, etc... Went from 60 mods to over 80 now so you would think my FPS rate would be even a little lower if anything right?

 

It doesn't appear the improvement came after installing any latest mods, what it does appear to be is after I waited MANY days. My Ed-My-Love quest got glitched because I had been to Repconn earlier in the game and had already gotten the password which seems to prevent the Lorenzo/Followers message (3rd message) from triggering. Anyway, in the journey to get that un-glitched I ended up waiting a couple weeks in game time. I look in the upper right corner at FRAPS and astounded notice 60FPS. What could cause this? I know waiting resets stuff. To prove it I loaded a save just prior to when I did the waits and FPS was 30-40 in almost same geographic location.

 

What magic does waiting do?

[obobski]

I'm almost wondering if that quest's glitch was causing the problem, because some script/scripts were running and failing in the background, and after waiting and allowing it to "clear" that load went away. Just a guess though - would probably be hard to definitively nail things down without a step-thru debugger.

[raatorotta]

Try this tweaking guide:

 

http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/43594/t1591200-fallout-new-vegas-pc-tweak-guide/

 

There is atleast option to get more cpu cores used.