Fallout 4 Performance and tweaks on weak machines.

[Thaneize]

Hi nexus people,

first of all, im wrting this because i was annoyed by how Fallout was running on my PC and i was always desperate looking for help back when skyrim was new and my PC was even weaker. Now that i am more experenced and i finally found something that looks good and works good at the same time, i wanted to share it with the other people using old hardware like me. Maybe somone even more expereinced can give some advice on how to make it work even better.

 

My Specs:

 

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CPU: AMD Phenom X4 955 BE 3,4 GHz

GPU: AMD Radeon 5830 HD 800 MHz

VRAM: 1GB

RAM: 4x2GB DDR3

Conventional HDD - No SSD

 

 

 

at first my impression of Fallout 4 as a whole was a great game with nice ENB like effects but horrifying optimization, then i started modding it for performance and everything became clear. The problem is not Ambient Occlusion or Anti-Aliasing (The usual low FPS suspects) also not the shadow detail or the decals or details (to a certain point). It is only the Textures, for some stupid reason Bethesda did what what they always do, they just didnt bother to optimize the textures and left them insanely big. What if i told you that even the medium textures are from the file size 2k textures?

You've read right. On lowest Vanilla setting it just eats away my VRAM like tictacs, in Snactuary the normal usage is 1014MB VRAM and 300MB dynamic RAM, in Boston it goes even more rediculous.

 

Now, i kept the settings as they were and just downgraded the textures to be 1k with Optimized Vanilla Textures. It helped but it still was too much, i went for the next downgrade to 512 on Landscapes, 256 on thing you actually never really look at from closer then 60m (200ft) and 1k at gear and actors. You dont really see a significant change from vanilla low to 512 and also the 256 textures arent impacting, i only kept the gear and chacter textures 1k because you see them all the time from up close and 512 makes a huge difference there.

 

Now that the textures have been dealt with what i see is that the game runs smoothly but looks pretty bad. So another round of INI tweaking and restarting and closing the game over and over and i reached the current setting running well while still looking good. But before I go into the details, I want to adress a really annoying graphic effect on AMD cards, it's the GodRays.

While usually light in performance, the Godrays will always look terrible with old AMD cards and the game insits that you always have godrays on except you say no on a very special way.

 

When opening the Launcher setting under the advanced tab you have to manually disable GodRays, then go to each INI file and set "bNvGodraysEnable=0" thats especially the Fallou4_Default.INI in the main game folder (where the .exe is) and secondly the Fallout4.ini in the Documents\MyGames\Fallout4 folder.

If you change the slightest in the graphics settings, godrays will be reanabled. So that should be the last thing to tweak.

 

Okay, now here are my settings: (I used the Fallout 4 Configuration tool for some of the settings, because its easier.

 

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Resolution: 1280x720 - The biggest performance killer of all time. It only affects the looks of the game maginally.

Anti Aliasing: TAA

Anisotropic Filtering: 12x

Vsync Mode: 1

Texture Quality: Medium - doesnt really matter if you have almost all textures modded.

Shadow Quality: High

Shadow Distance: Medium

Decals Quantity: None

Lighting Quality: Ultra - Makes up the fact that Volumetric Lighting will be disabled.

GodRays Quality: Off

Depth of Field: Low - you can turn it off in the ini to get rid of the under water effect. In case you ever felt like deep sea exploring.

Ambient Occlusion: HBAO+

Rain Occlusion: On

Lens Flare: On

View Distance: Up to you, it usually eats away VRAM.

 

 

 

fallout4.ini Settings: (I will only List the ones ive changed)

 

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[Display]

bNvGodraysEnable=0 - Disables volumetric lighting

 

[Grass]

iMinGrassSize=25 - makes grass a bit less dense and therefore saves a bit performance

 

 

 

Fallout4Prefs.ini Settings:

 

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[Display]

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=1400 - (1600 is default) - makes loaded tearrin to LOD earlier after walking through therefore having less to load

fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=3600 - (4000 is default)

 

[General]

uExterior Cell Buffer=30 - (Deafult is 36) - makes the game load less cell into the buffer therefore quicker loading times when entering exteriors

 

[Particles]

iMaxDesired=500 - (Default is 750) - better perfromance when things explode

 

 

 

 

 

Thats it. I will add screenshots shortly, please leave comments on whether or not it helped you and if you know things to make it even better looking whith loosing as small performance as possible.

 

Screenshots:

 

Before:

 

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http://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/8591-1-1453063861.png

 

http://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mods/1151/images/8591-1-1453063916.png

 

 

 

 

After

 

 

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http://i.imgur.com/WFCCfhx.png

 

 

 

 

The chars are different because i screwed up my savegame during modding.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Thaneize

[zanity]

I run a 6870 (1GB) and have these observations. Godrays are just FINE and switching them off eliminates much of what makes the lighting look great. High textures are FINE with 1GB of VRAM, so long as you fix the .ini file to only use the BEST quality textures (it is the useless 'streaming' of lower rez assets that pointlessly eats up VRAM). BUT a weak CPU (like any AMD processor) will be a major problem- a 4-core i5 is MORE IMPORTANT than a 'stronger' GPU.

 

I use the radeon fix to eliminate the 'pixelated' body shadow. The ENB fix to fool the game nito thinking I have 4GB of VRAM. The .ini fix to almost always load the best textures only. Vivid texture replacement packs to lower the VRAM usuage in much of the map. And the 1.3 patch has improved performance massively. Yes the game still gets 'chocky' in the usual built up areas, but any kind of significant pause has gone, and even in the worst locations, the game is highly playable.

 

I do run at 720 x 1024 tho, but at this rez, I can use 'subtle enb' and 'true nights' and still have outstanding performance. It is a fallacy to suggest that one cannot run FO4 on high settings on an old GPU, so long as that GPU was fairly powerful in its day.

[Thaneize]

nice, altough the 6870 is stronger than the 5830. I'll test all theese suggestions on my system but i can imagine that my CPU is also a bottlenck here.

 

New Fallout4.ini edits:

[General]

bForceUpdateDiffuseOnly=0

iTextureDegradeDistance0=3200

iTextureDegradeDistance1=6000

iTextureUpgradeDistance0=2400

iTextureUpgradeDistance1=5600

New Prefs.ini edits:

[Display]

iMaxFocusShadowsDialogue=0

iMaxFocusShadows=0

 

(thanks for the hint btw and thx to "themozzie" for uploading the fix)

 

ENB and ENBoost also do a great deal, altough the texture load stuttering is higher than before, its minor and i can live with it, the new btter looks make that up. GodRays on Ultra, and the gam is running on 40 FPS mid boston.

 

New Screens

 

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http://i.imgur.com/Rgf4mEU.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/Yz3w3m6.png

 

 

EDIT: I tried to update to vivid landscapes and suddenly it no longer runs smoothly in certain areas, 26 FPS is too slow for my taste

Edited February 11, 2016 by Thaneize