Zathmo Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 It seems like ever since I installed my graphics mods and enb Iâve been having some stability issues, infinite loading screens and such. Iâm also getting crashes when thereâs a lot going on on-screen. I.e. I would âstress testâ by crowding Deathclaws at Quarry Junction and would use god mode to make my grenade launcher semi-auto, and you get the picture. Before graphics mods I could do this at a stable frame rate and no crashing, after loading them all on I get âFalloutNV.exe has stopped working.â Obviously this sucks, and I was wondering if I had a 1080 instead of a 970 and an i7 instead of an i5 if things would work better. I once saw a video of a guy playing modded Fallout 3 and New Vegas for 2 hours each without a crash, stutter or any issue. The frame rate stayed at 60 throughout all the gameplay and I noticed he had a 1080 and an i7. So does hardware play into the gameâs stability at all, or is my game just prone to crashing and this is all coincidence? Thanks for any help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M48A5 Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Does hardware effect stability? Absolutely! That is the reason game publishers have minimum and recommended system requirements. If you don't have the hardware, it isn't going to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubiousintent Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 (edited) While in perfect agreement about hardware's effect on stability, before you go out and replace your rig take a couple of other thoughts into consideration. FNV was published in 2010 for the Windows Vista OS and Xbox One console systems. That means 4GB of system memory max, and no more than two CPU cores. (It's a 32-bit game and it's impossible for it to use more the 4GB anyway. It's use of a second core is minimal to say the least.) The graphics pipeline was designed for smaller monitor screen resolutions (1920x1080 max) and image sizes (2048x2048 pixels) than those possible today. Almost any recent hardware is overkill for it, and that can cause it's own problems. My hardware is more than 5 years old. While I have the occasional "micro-stutter" (which I attribute to save file activity) I can play for 4 hours easily without a crash and with smooth play. (I don't bother to watch an FPS counter. I already know it's going to fluctuate, but that doesn't matter if the play moves along smoothly.) If you are using the full 4GB max of RAM for the game, and having stability issues, it's more likely because you haven't finished "tuning" the game properly. First of all you have to recognize it's age and limitations. It made compromises for "consoles" more limited memory. (That's why there is "cut content" and a default limit on the number of companions.) It's heap sizes are extremely conservative and one of the first things you need to increase. The graphics pipeline is a bottleneck. If you add graphics mods and things get worse, you have to scale back. Start by reducing your graphics image sizes to 2048x2048 max. ENB is a luxury, and not directly supported on Win10. (The author of ENB refuses to upgrade to Win10; and I happen to agree with him.) It can be made to work, but it's one of the first things I dumped after trying it on Win7. All these points are discussed in the guides in my signature. -Dubious- Edited February 21, 2018 by dubiousintent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmongo Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 By default, FNV is only going to use 2 GB of memory. It doesn't matter how much memory your PC has, it will only use 2 GB. You can double that with the 4 GB patch, but that's as far as you can go with it. It also seems like the game's texture caching system leaks memory. If you use higher resolution textures, this is going to make the problem worse. So, unfortunately, you end up being forced to make a choice between pretty graphics or long-term stability. I personally chose stability over appearance, and have my graphics option set to a medium level. It doesn't make for the prettiest game, but I can usually go an entire night of playing without having the game crash. If I crank the texture details up to their highest setting and make no other changes, the game will almost always crash three or four times a night for me. A better processor definitely won't help you. I don't know if a better graphics card will help or not. I don't know enough details about how they do their texture caching. I suspect that a better graphics card isn't going to help you much. As Dubious noted, ENB doesn't work very well on Windows 10. I intentionally downgraded one of my computers to Windows 7 and I do everything with FNV on that computer. Everything works a lot better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zathmo Posted February 22, 2018 Author Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) While in perfect agreement about hardware's effect on stability, before you go out and replace your rig take a couple of other thoughts into consideration. FNV was published in 2010 for the Windows Vista OS and Xbox One console systems. That means 4GB of system memory max, and no more than two CPU cores. (It's a 32-bit game and it's impossible for it to use more the 4GB anyway. It's use of a second core is minimal to say the least.) The graphics pipeline was designed for smaller monitor screen resolutions (1920x1080 max) and image sizes (2048x2048 pixels) than those possible today. Almost any recent hardware is overkill for it, and that can cause it's own problems. My hardware is more than 5 years old. While I have the occasional "micro-stutter" (which I attribute to save file activity) I can play for 4 hours easily without a crash and with smooth play. (I don't bother to watch an FPS counter. I already know it's going to fluctuate, but that doesn't matter if the play moves along smoothly.) If you are using the full 4GB max of RAM for the game, and having stability issues, it's more likely because you haven't finished "tuning" the game properly.  First of all you have to recognize it's age and limitations. It made compromises for "consoles" more limited memory. (That's why there is "cut content" and a default limit on the number of companions.) It's heap sizes are extremely conservative and one of the first things you need to increase.  The graphics pipeline is a bottleneck. If you add graphics mods and things get worse, you have to scale back. Start by reducing your graphics image sizes to 2048x2048 max. ENB is a luxury, and not directly supported on Win10. (The author of ENB refuses to upgrade to Win10; and I happen to agree with him.) It can be made to work, but it's one of the first things I dumped after trying it on Win7. All these points are discussed in the guides in my signature. -Dubious-So since ENB doesn't work well on Windows 10 and makes it less stable, should I be using ENBoost and remove the graphics abilities of ENB? Or should I remove ENB all together? Edited February 22, 2018 by Zathmo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dubiousintent Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 ENBoost works fine, and provides an "intermediate" level of speed buffer in the graphics pipeline. Recommended. In fairness I am not saying you can't get ENB to work on Win10. Just that if you have problems on your setup, then you are not going to get help from the developer, and will have to dig through the web for possible solutions. I've collected what I could find in the 'Solutions to Post-Processor (ENB/SweetFX et. al.) problems' section in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide. It's a question of how much effort you are prepared to expend on resolving the issues for the results. There are some things related to FNV that ENB does not work with, period. The mod Dynavision 3 incorporates (saving a plugin slot) The Imaginator which "allows you to separately control visual elements like Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Light Output, Depth-of-Field, Focus, Motion Blur and Tint all from within an easy-to-navigate PIP-BOY menu". Dynavision 3 now works with UIO instead of requiring it's own installer.This is a recommended alternative to ENB and other "post-processors". However, Dynavision has a persistent and annoying bug which frequently causes NPCs to go invisible. Some people recommend using the older "Dynavision 2" + "Imaginator" instead, but the same "invisible NPCs" bug was reported with it. A patch file to fix this issue in "Dynavision 3" was posted in mid 2016, but there are no comments regarding how effective it is. -Dubious- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Majic7 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 You could buy the GOG version for twenty dollars. It is LAA enabled and GFWL is disabled. It does make a difference. I am just finishing F3 GOG version, level 32, have the level 50 mod, only have about 12 places I haven't been to yet and not one crash ever. W10 Pro, 4790K and 980TI. Have had three freezes due to the Essential Player mod, without it I would be trouble free. I have been waiting for the Vanessa mod to be updated but what little I did do in FNV was trouble free. It is a risk but I have seen many posts on the GOG site commenting on how much more stable the GOG versions of these games are compared to the Steam version. Your card and cpu should be plenty for this game, it is almost 8 years old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uhmattbravo Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 I don't know much about hardware or how the engine handles it and haven't tried ENB or many texture replaces for FNV, but I have two computers I got out of the garbage, one is running the Steam version on 'high' graphics settings, and the other is running the GOG version on 'ultra' (or whatever) with a lot of gameplay, weapon, and armor mods. Both are stable enough that I can play pretty much all night, fall asleep with it on, pick it back up in the morning (unless my character starved to death or something) and play pretty much all the next day without crashing. NVAC helps: https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/ and you'll likely need a 4gb patch for the Steam version, but as was already pointed out, the GOG version sort of has one integrated in right out of the box.... figuratively speaking, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimboUK Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 I've upgraded several times since 2010 and I've noticed that VRAM makes a hell of a difference, it's almost like the game crashes when it runs out rather than switching to system RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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