ways to decrease lag?

[HunterAlpha1]

hello, i hope i am posting this in the right board.

 

i am trying to play the game on windows 8 on a HP laptop, and i am wondering if there are any ways to improve performance(especially in combat) beyond simply putting all the settings to lowest.

[prensa]

HunterAlpha1 - Hello!

 

It depends on what's causing your lag.

 

Defragmenting your hard drive is a simple but often overlooked way of helping Fallout 3 run smoother. It's a big game & it can get spread out if installed on a fragmented drive. Defragging can help bring all it's data back to a nice tight bundle that's quicker to load areas as a result.

 

Go easy on high res texture packs as they are tough on your FPS, particularly on less powerful rigs but even top end machines can struggle with too many high res textures.

 

Anti aliasing settings are another FPS killer, always try for as low of an anti aliasing setting as you can get away with. I used to play Oblivion without any anti aliasing so it would run extra smooth. If you've got a very high resolution you often don't need much anti aliasing if any at all.

 

If you have loads of memory on your machine & especially if it's a 64bit setup, you might consider making Fallout 3 Large Address aware.

 

That will let it use more memory, a simple tool to allow this can be found here:

 

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/6510

 

If your lag is micro stutters, a strange ramping of speed that feels a bit like watching a movie with a faulty film projector, then this mod can fix that:

 

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/8886

 

That allows you to set a cap on your FPS, among other things, that will allow the game to run smoother.

 

You often have to try a dew FPS cap settings before you find the ideal one for your setup.

 

I've used the slightly older FSR_4-0-7 for ages & it's very good, really helped smooth out the problem for me.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Prensa

[HunterAlpha1]

great, thanks for the advice. i'm pretty unfamiliar with this laptop(it's new but definitely not a gaming rig), so i probably shouldn't download any mods, but i'm pretty sure i can figure out how to do a scan disk and disk defrag.

 

i'll update with success or failure.

[HunterAlpha1]

well, for some reason F3 is considered by the computer as a "device with removable storage" and as such it won't let me do a disk defrag and i don't know how i can do a workaround.