Fps drop/Stutter south of Goodspring.

[imm0dium]

Hey all.

 

Getting FPS issues when walking south of Goodsprings. This is with or without mods. When walking along the road towards the T junction I get a very noticeable stutter/FPS drop. When I get to the Junction it stops. When I go SE of Jean Sky Diving it happens again and stops when I hit Primm. Any idea what could be causing this issue? When it happens I stop moving and let the area load to see if thats the issue but it still stutters. When I install the Tick Fix mod the game is butter smooth but when I enter these areas the stutter is very noticeable.

 

System Specs are:

 

CPU: I7-8700

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

Ram: 16GB

 

Thanks in advance.

[gnarly1]

Have you tested it running only the recommended engine- and game-fixing mods/utilities? You can find them listed under the Utilities and Bug Fixes sections of the Viva New Vegas documentation.

[imm0dium]

Have you tested it running only the recommended engine- and game-fixing mods/utilities? You can find them listed under the Utilities and Bug Fixes sections of the Viva New Vegas documentation.

Yes I have Gnarly1. It still persists. I remember playing a modded version of FNV early 2020 and having this issue and can't for the life of me remember what I did to fix it. I'm thinking it had something to do with an adding an ENB .dll file. Not sure though.

 

Thanks anyway.

[imm0dium]

I decided to start a new game (no biggie, I'm starting a new play through and deciding what mods to use) and the stutter wasn't there. I'm guessing it had something to do with loading a save with mods that I disabled.

[imm0dium]

Actually the stutter reappeared. Whenever I start a new game the stutter isn't there. When I save and load the stutter starts. Is it an issue with how FNV is saving the game?

[dubiousintent]

* If you are suddenly having a "slowdown" or lag; or a lack of sound; or problems getting NVSE to load, or really anything new unexpectedly, please see the 'Issue: NVSE - fails to load after update KB4058043 to Win10 FCU (v1709)' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide. This may be due to an on-going series of Windows Updates for the "Meltdown and Spectre Vulnerabilities".

* 'Issue: Lag or "micro stutters" even with "New Vegas Stutter Remover" installed (or not)'. In particular "Cause-4" regarding video card settings. The latest video drivers may not be the best suited to an older game like FNV. All vendors drop testing of old games at some point. Backwards compatibility is never guaranteed, much less "optimization".
Also, "Cause-7" regarding "Superfetch" and "File search indexing". Windows updates will often reset these back on.

Re: Stuttering or "micro-stutters". All visual stuttering or "frame rate" problems are caused by the video stream having to wait for the "art assets" required to render the display OR the game writing something to disk (such as a save game file or logging). Mostly these are due to the hard disk drive being orders of magnitude slower than VRAM, with System RAM (e.g. "ENBoost") and "solid state drives" (SSDs) being in-between. There are and will always be situations where the higher FPS will drop as you decide to head in a direction the game did not anticipate and "pre-load" into video memory.

Keep in mind that this game was designed for older PC and XBox console systems, and it is now possible for your new "latest and greatest" gaming machine to be faster than it can handle. There are internal design choices that cannot be overcome. This is especially true if you are attempting to run at a "frame rate" higher than 60FPS which can introduce unanticipated problems. (If you haven't already, try locking your video card to 60FPS for FNV.) The "video pipeline" has always been prone to problems.

The following are "mitigations" that have been found to help some people.

The mod FNV Mod Limit Fix has revealed that the "140 plugin limit" existed was because the game was opening 3 file handles for each plugin. The game has a hard coded limit of 512 maximum handles that could be opened at once, AND IT NEVER LETS THEM GO until it closes. (Potentially this applies to ALL files it opens.) This fix simply bumps that up to 2048 to allow for more room for file handles. This obviously has a potential impact upon any file related issues and makes it worth a try for that reason alone.

 

Please see the following entries under the 'Solutions to Performance problems' section in the wiki Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide if you haven't already.
* 'Issue: "Full screen mode" exhibits CTDs and stutters or micro-stutters'
* 'Issue: Lag or "micro stutters" even with "New Vegas Stutter Remover" installed'
* 'Issue: Win10 Screen tearing in "Borderless Windowed Mode"'
* 'Issue: CTD without warning, "Out of Memory error", or stops responding after the Main Menu' for other settings that can indirectly affect micro-stutter.
* There are also some NVSR configuration suggestions under the 'Issue: Game in slow motion' and entries. (These will not help with the "Tick Fix" alternative mod, but the author of NVSR now has a suggested configuration for Win10 linked there.)
* The 'Issue: What's with these Solid Green billboard signs in the distance (LOD)?' entry under the 'Solutions to Mesh (Red "!" icon) or Texture (solid color) problems' section can also help if your problems started after you installed VWD/LOD texture packages.
* If you are using CASM or some similar "auto-save" mod to manage your save game files (recommended), try increasing the "time between saves" set in the "save frequency"; and reducing the number of occasions it saves to the minimum (e.g. disable most "Autosave Events" in CASM) and see how that impacts the game seeming to freeze temporarily.
* If you have "NVSE logging" enabled (see the 'Checklist Item #4' entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide), disable it until actually needed.
(Reading from or writing to disk for any reason is the slowest thing the game does.)

The size of your image files also has an impact. Larger/higher resolution is not always "better". Please see the wiki "Display resolution versus Image Size" article.

The 'Issue: What INI edits seem to be most beneficial to performance' entry of the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide) may also be some help. However, the above mitigations are more likely to have a fundamental beneficial effect with or without any INI adjustments, so consider them as the last resort.

 

As you can see, there are a number of things that can underlie your problem. If one of these doesn't fix it, I would be interested to hear about any eventual solution that does.

-Dubious-

[imm0dium]

Have you tested it running only the recommended engine- and game-fixing mods/utilities? You can find them listed under the Utilities and Bug Fixes sections of the Viva New Vegas documentation.

As you can see, there are a number of things that can underlie your problem. If one of these doesn't fix it, I would be interested to hear about any eventual solution that does.

 

-Dubious-

 

I noticed I didn't install One Tweak as I thought because I played exclusive full screen it wouldn't be necessary. I was wrong. Installed it, edited Fallout.ini for windowed mode and it worked. Stutter is gone from that area now.

 

So if anyone has the same issue try playing in borderless windowed mode using One Tweak and not full screen.

Edited February 12, 2021 by imm0dium