Extreme FPS problems

[OnyxAbyss]

I've been playing Fallout since the day it came out, and never had any problems.

 

About a week ago I picked up Left 4 Dead and have been playing that, and have upgraded my graphics card drivers.

 

Now I try to boot up FO3 again, and at the main menu and certain areas in the game my FPS drops to ~1 or less. I can't do anything.

 

First I did a re-install of the game. It did nothing. I tried to do another re-install. Nothing again. So I try re-installing older graphics card drivers. Still doesn't work.

 

Right now I am in the process of installing even older drivers.

 

Windows XP

8800GT

2.13ghz C2D

2gb RAM

 

Have also recently done a defrag.

[MRG]

Have you managed to fix your performance issues?

 

As you know, Fallout 3 while being DirectX 9, is still a demanding game system wise. Of course your system specs are more than fine to run this game smoothly. Try turning off AA & AF. What are your temps? Is the inside of your PC dirty? No shame in admitting if it is. :) Reinstall of Windows an option? Do other games have the same problem? I have read a few people were having problems with Fallout 3 & no-CD/DVD cracks. Are these problems pre or post patch? You might also want to change the "Render Frames Ahead" option under your video cards control panel to "0". I have also heard that this has been causing problems, though i'm not sure if it's directly related.

 

Please give us some more info.

 

-MRG

[OnyxAbyss]

Still having problems.

 

Have updated my video drivers, sound drivers, cleared temp files, turn off render frames ahead.

 

My PC is pretty clean, not spotless but nice enough. I'd really rather not re-install windows, but I may if I have to.

 

It happens bad when I open the game at the main menu and when I'm outside. Not only are the frames bad, but a little sound goes off every few seconds that sounds like a CD skipping.

[MRG]

Still having problems.

 

Have updated my video drivers, sound drivers, cleared temp files, turn off render frames ahead.

 

My PC is pretty clean, not spotless but nice enough. I'd really rather not re-install windows, but I may if I have to.

 

It happens bad when I open the game at the main menu and when I'm outside. Not only are the frames bad, but a little sound goes off every few seconds that sounds like a CD skipping.

 

Everything ran fine until you installed L4D? I have it installed as well, but had no issues after installation. Have you tried uninstalling L4D to see if that was somehow the cause? Have you tried testing your RAM to see if that's a possibility? Test one strip at a time by playing the game. Of course your performance overall will be less due to the limited RAM, but you should still be able to tell.

 

Here is a good Tweak Guide to try.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_3.html

 

Let us know how it goes.

 

-MRG

[AdamV]

Might have something to do with DirectX. Left for Dead probably has it's own version and so does Fallout and the Left For Dead version doesn't work with Fallout. Explore your Fallout3 cd and look for the DirectX installer on it and install that. May fix it

[TehReaper]

I have Left 4 Dead on Steam and Fallout 3 not on steam...

 

If you have Left 4 Dead on PC, but not for STEAM (I dunno if thats possible :blink: ), you could re-buy it on Steam.

 

But other than that? I dunno how else to help you.

[Uzibeatle]

I've been playing Fallout since the day it came out, and never had any problems.

 

About a week ago I picked up Left 4 Dead and have been playing that, and have upgraded my graphics card drivers.

 

Now I try to boot up FO3 again, and at the main menu and certain areas in the game my FPS drops to ~1 or less. I can't do anything.

 

First I did a re-install of the game. It did nothing. I tried to do another re-install. Nothing again. So I try re-installing older graphics card drivers. Still doesn't work.

 

Right now I am in the process of installing even older drivers.

 

Windows XP

8800GT

2.13ghz C2D

2gb RAM

 

Have also recently done a defrag.

 

Okay I quoted your entire post so we can start from the beginning.

IF we look at your post above we can see the problem must have something to do with the sequence of events

that led to the install of new drivers for that other game.

Okay, well here is a question for you.

 

When you upgraded the drivers did you follow the recommended procedure to totally uninstall the old nvidia drivers

and reboot the pc before installing the newer ones?

 

If your answer to that is yes, then I'm stumped for a possible chain to fix this. If your answer is no, then

you need to properly remove the old drivers first before updating.

 

As to Directx. DirectX installs should never overwrite a NEWER version of DirectX. DirectX is not that stupid to install the older version over newer, not least on any directx install I've done in recent years. So I doubt that is an issue. However,

it would not hurt to reinstall DirectX AFTER you have properly uninstalled the old Nvidia drivers and reinstalled those.

 

Getting ahead of myself here.

Oh, if none of that works, just for grins please, do a checkdisk on the drive that game is installed on, that and your boot disk.

Go to system and find Drive Management and execute it from there. A reboot may be required if doing so on system disk.