Performance maximization question.

[redeyesandlonghair]

Wondering if someone happens to know, what sort of mods have the biggest hit on the game's performance? In other words, what's going to drop those FPS the quickest.

 

Obviously, everything with the phrase "high res" or "high quality".

 

I would also assume that mods that do a lot with lighting effects would do it; do darker area mods count here?

 

How about AI scripts? I have several mods that cause npc AI to do different things, and I'm wondering if the multiple scripts are causing issues. ( CombatEnhanced-Package, CTR Stealth, Responsive Kill Reactions, Stealth Kills Enabled )

 

Visual effects like double-vision, and especially blurs seem to hit the FPS pretty hard.

 

How does the game handle the information from mods anyway? Is every mod constantly loaded into memory/running in some way in the background, even if you're not actively engaging the content of that mod? Should I avoid mods that are "kind of neat" but won't really see much use due to this?

 

What are some of the things I can do to improve performance? How can I figure out which mods are having the biggest impact?

 

 

I have tweaked the .INI ( and then I downloaded the extended .ini), installed the stutter remover, use pcb regularly, and have fallout remastered at the end of my load order. Of course, everytime I did something that made a big improvement, I almost right away found some more mods that I wanted, and it went back down.

 

Also, I notice that in FOMM, all my save games are at yellow status, probably due to the fact that I keep adding and removing mods, and creating new merged patches and what not. Can this affect frame rate?

 

Looking forward to your responses.

Edited January 16, 2012 by redeyesandlonghair

[Greslin]

It all just comes down to the number of elements and objects that the game engine has to constantly recalculate, and how much data is in those objects. I'd venture that if you punch it up into FO3Edit and it's only changing around a few preexisting object references, that's only to be much less impactful than a mod that adds hundreds of new Havoc objects into the mix. And if said objects are animated (i.e., NPCs), that's even more calculation going on.

 

I'd probably start by loading FO3Edit and looking to see what the mod is adding and where. If it's merely creating a few new cells and loading them with objects, probably no big deal performance-wise (none of that stuff gets loaded until you enter the cell). But if it adds a hundred new NPCs to downtown Megaton, I'd expect it to be a performance nightmare. Beams of light are also considered Havoc objects, BTW.

 

These days I've taken to running promising downloaded mods through FO3Edit, TESSnip and GECK to examine and optimize them if possible. Too many overrides and conflicts otherwise, but performance also factors into that equation for me.

[Jeoshua]

A few tips:

Resolution - As high as you can, at least 1024x768.

AntiAliasing - OFF. Higher res has less of a hit

Anisotropic Filtering - At least 2x

Texture Quality (Video Card Settings) - +/- 0. Balanced Profile

Texture Quality (Fallout Settings) - High. Things glitch otherwise

Bloom - OFF because it looks like crap

High Dynamic Range - OFF because it has a huge performance hit.

 

Fo3edit tips:

Load up all your mods and look through them for Quests that Start Game Enabled and have a very low quest delay. Make them run 10x less frequently (if the Quest Delay is 0.01, change it to 0.1). This will make your scripts like hotkeys somewhat less responsive, but also less processor intensive. Mods that you don't expect can have these issues, and are generally not discovered because testing usually uses only that mod. A script running every hundredth of a second is not a problem... until you have 50 of them doing this, like on a heavily modded game.

 

INI Tweaks:

Stay away from the memory subsection. There is very little improvement from upping the cache or preloads, and in fact it basically just makes the game take longer on the load screens.

 

Other possibilities:

Clean-Deluxe removes a lot of objects from rendering on the GPU or being interacted with on the CPU. Lots of people have had very good results using it.

 

Fallout Stutter Remover can limit your frame rate to 30 fps, leading to a smoother experience overall. It also has a Fast Exit feature which covers up a "bug" in my own mod.

[redeyesandlonghair]

A few tips:

Resolution - As high as you can, at least 1024x768.

AntiAliasing - OFF. Higher res has less of a hit

Anisotropic Filtering - At least 2x

Texture Quality (Video Card Settings) - +/- 0. Balanced Profile

Texture Quality (Fallout Settings) - High. Things glitch otherwise

Bloom - OFF because it looks like crap

High Dynamic Range - OFF because it has a huge performance hit.

 

Strangest thing, I had bloom and HDR off. I did some stuff with my shader packets, turned on HDR, and my frame rate improved... I'm really confused as to how that's possible, but it happened. I'll try some of the other settings, and that cleaner thing. Thanks for the tips.