Struggling with FPS

[LewsTherin]

Heya it's me again, this time with a performance related topic.

 

I've managed to complete a F&L install and everything seems working, though i'm still in goodspring so who knows what can happen next.

 

I know that retexture mods are very resource-eaters, but I thought that with my rig i should've handled them safely. I also know that AI-heavy places in game (such as goodsprings) are hard to handle, but still I couldn't imagine that they were SO hard to handle.  Anyway... Here's some info:

 

I don't run ENB (luckily at this point  ), just dynavision which I always loved

 

My rig is this: barebone notebook based on clevo HM170 model

 

CPU: i7 @2.40Hgz

Ram: 8GB DDR3

GPU: radeon 8970M 4GB (basically a 8950 for desktop, more or less)

the game is installed on a samsung EVO SSD

 

The problems start expecially in outside areas of goodsprings, where i get the amazing amount of 17/23 FPS (with AA set to 2 and aniso set to 8). Inside buildings it's ok, i get near 55/60 FPS and it's good. Outside town I also get ~45/50 FPS which is not a bad number at all.... I wonder though what happens if I reach another AI dense area, will FPS drop again to awful ~20?

 

I found a cool thread here where a guy had the same problems, but with a weaker GPU than mine. From that thread I managed to find a way to use shaders 3.0, which let me gain a good ~5 FPS raise in outside areas of goodspring. That's not bad at all, but I'm sure that there is a way to improve performance further.

 

For example, in that same thread I read that enabling multithreadedAI should not be harmful and could help improve things a bit.

 

So, are there more ways to raise my FPS, and where in falloutprefs.ini must I put the multithreadedAI=1 line?

Edited June 12, 2015 by LewsTherin

[oqhansoloqo]

Did you install the crossbow mod?  I hear that kills FPS in Goodsprings area, but I believe EssArrBee is aware of some FNVEdits that can fix that issue (if that's what your problem is).

[LewsTherin]

Yes I have the crossbow mod, but i haven't it in the inventory... Does it matter? Didn't think about that though...

[oqhansoloqo]

Yeah, I'm not sure about what triggers what (I forgot - it's been a while since I discussed this with EssArrBee).  Do a search for "crossbow" in F&L's main discussion forum to find the posts about it.  It's possible that this may be causing your FPS issues.

[Audley]

If you have the crossbow mod installed in any way shape or form, it will most likely dip your FPS by around 20 or so and cause massive stuttering; regardless of whether it's in your inventory or not. Though strangely enough, this doesn't happen to everyone. However, it is probably your number one issue at the moment. 

 

A few other tips/tricks for performance:

 

1. Be careful about using Dynavision's dynamic depth of field. I don't know about others, but for me it destroys performance.
2. Try turning full scene water reflections off. That has caused me performance issues even in areas without water. 
3. Remove the grass and lighting tweaks that EssArrBee recommends in his guide. He says they don't impact performance much if at all, but I swear they cause my game to stutter even more than usual.
4. Turn off the games V-Sync and turn off the Stutter Remover's FPS management function. Then, go into your graphics cards control panel and force Adaptive V-sync for New Vegas and the 4GB launcher (this one is huge for me).

I hope these help you some.

[LewsTherin]

Thank you, I'll surely try out that, besides adaptive vsync which is not present in amd cards IIRC. Can't find it in my video control parent

Edited June 12, 2015 by LewsTherin

[Audley]

Thank you, I'll surely try out that, besides adaptive vsync which is not present in amd cards IIRC. Can't find it in my video control parent

Ah. I didn't realize that AMD did not have an Adaptive V-Sync equivalent. Which is a shame because I use it ALL the time. Still, I would force your card to enable standard V-Sync over the games version of V-Sync. Or maybe it is fine for you, but for me it is extremely choppy and causes me stutters. But if it is fine for you I suppose then don't worry about it. :)

[LewsTherin]

Should I also force AA and Anisotropic filters? Right now I have AA off and aniso at 8. Since I don't use any ENB or ENBoost, i could try using adaptive AA which maybe is less taxing than pure multisampling AA..

 

edit: apparently adaptive AA could cause problems, I found a skyrim thread where it is stated that some textures become invisible with Adaptive is on, unless relative meshes are extracted. Nvm...

 

Regarding Vsync, should I activate also triple buffering?

Edited June 13, 2015 by LewsTherin

[Audley]

Should I also force AA and Anisotropic filters? Right now I have AA off and aniso at 8. Since I don't use any ENB or ENBoost, i could try using adaptive AA which maybe is less taxing than pure multisampling AA..

 

edit: apparently adaptive AA could cause problems, I found a skyrim thread where it is stated that some textures become invisible with Adaptive is on, unless relative meshes are extracted. Nvm...

 

Regarding Vsync, should I activate also triple buffering?

I would let the game hand AA and AF. Triple Buffering I think is more of a preference than anything else. I use it personally because it removes some of the input lag caused by V-Sync. I suggest you turn it on and play without for a while, and then turn it off if you notice any issues.