Fallout 4 Performance driving me nuts

[sepheronx]

Alright, let me start with system specs if I didn't update my setup in list:

Core i7 4770
16gb DDR3 1600mhz RAM
Asus GTX 1070 8gb Turbo GPU
650W EVGA BR Powersupply
Asrock Z87E ITX Motherboard updated to last bios (2.5)

All drivers up to date.

Anyway, in the game, everywhere excluding a town/city, my FPS is high. As soon as I enter near that big tower (tenpine or whatever its called) and surrounding area, FPS drops to like 26-30fps. I checked to see what is wrong by monitoring FPS, CPU and GPU usage and I found that my CPU usage is around anywhere between 20 - 60% and GPU is around 30% when the FPS drops.

I checked everywhere on google and people are more or less useless in their help telling people that a core i5 6xxx is too weak, blah blah blah. It comes down to a lot of people with zero knowledge giving advice on things they are not qualified to give advice on. Anyway, no real answers or solutions given.

Now I come here, asking you people whom I have more faith and trust in, to see if any of you guys got knowledge behind this?

I tried the following:
Playing the game with no mods
playing with shadows down to low and then off
playing with details to low
playing with sun rays down to low then off
played with decals down to low and off

No go. Same issue.

Oh, and this is at 1080p.

I disabled vsync and used the nvidia vsync (adaptive) and tried high performance under nvidia control panel. Still no go.

And before anyone asks, I tried other games to see if it is my system overall.

Killing Floor 2 with max everything and the nvidia physics for gore on, around 90fps average
Witcher 3 with hairworks at max, and max everything - ~100fps
Fallout New Vegas with graphical mods like no other - ~80fps
The Forest, max everything - ~90fps average.

So I know my system works fine.

 

[AlwaysHope]

I'm a fan of this game with rig in my "System Specs".
I get very fluid & stable game play but limited to 59FPS on my monitor with mods.

You should be getting excellent FPS with Nvidia GPU like GTX 1070 etc..
I presume game is completely up to date via steam?

 

[sepheronx]

yes.

I should add that if one does a simple search on google, lots of people with same issues with multitude of different specs.

 

[kastriot]

Game engine is very old and poorly optimised, so it not your fault one thing you can do is reduce distance for objects to minimum and it will boost your fps

 

[sepheronx]

if you read what I said, I done that. Details on low.

I set everything on low and still same thing.

I have come to the conclusion that this game is just broken and my system cant handle it based upon the configuration only because I am one of the unlucky slobs who built the PC around system specs that just does not work with Fallout 4.

 

[Mussels]

make sure you use the in game Vsync and cap it <100Hz, or you'll have a lot of issues
your system might have issues that the less demanding games dont show, so you'll need to do some proper testing here

1. with realtemp open run intelburntest for 20 passes on very high, and see if the CPU results slow down, with or without the CPU throttling in realtemp (this is to find out if the CPU *or* the VRMs are overheating)

2. honestly i'm stuck at 1, i've had no performance issues with the game that lowering a few settings wouldnt fix, even at 4k (under 100FPS/100Hz to avoid the engine bugs)

 

[AlwaysHope]

Game hungry for threads is an understatement, but considering the code is optimised for Nvidia GPUs, OP should be having no issues at 1080P even with ultra settings.

https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/fallout-4/12905

 

[Mussels]

Game hungry for threads is an understatement, but considering the code is optimised for Nvidia GPUs, OP should be having no issues at 1080P even with ultra settings.

even with a 1080 and a 4770k at 4.8ghz i couldnt run 1080p ultra smooth late game... lots of people say they can do it, but they're testing in the higher performance areas early game, lying, or happy with 30fps. This is not a game you can max out every setting.

 

[sepheronx]

make sure you use the in game Vsync and cap it <100Hz, or you'll have a lot of issues
your system might have issues that the less demanding games dont show, so you'll need to do some proper testing here

1. with realtemp open run intelburntest for 20 passes on very high, and see if the CPU results slow down, with or without the CPU throttling in realtemp (this is to find out if the CPU *or* the VRMs are overheating)

2. honestly i'm stuck at 1, i've had no performance issues with the game that lowering a few settings wouldnt fix, even at 4k (under 100FPS/100Hz to avoid the engine bugs)

I'll give this a shot when I get home from work.

When playing, according to temps monitoring program, the temps were going as high as 73 Celsius. For CPU

 

[AlwaysHope]

even with a 1080 and a 4770k at 4.8ghz i couldnt run 1080p ultra smooth late game... lots of people say they can do it, but they're testing in the higher performance areas early game, lying, or happy with 30fps. This is not a game you can max out every setting.

I agree it is poorly optimised,
When I had my older FX-8350j OC to 4.8GHz imitating FX-9590, it was just playable (subjective as that sounds)
But I do notice with 12 threaded cpu like 2600X & with XFR2 enabled, it loves to use every thread available, even up to 100% of course depending how busy the scene is ingame. But from a graphical point of view, the devs have optimised this game for Nvidia architecture gpu.
I run everything on Ultra @ 1080P except "God rays" have those on moderate.

I'll give this a shot when I get home from work.

When playing, according to temps monitoring program, the temps were going as high as 73 Celsius. For CPU

There's half the answer to your problem, that's too hot.

 

[Mussels]

oh i had to run with no anti aliasing, that one really screwed with performance. at 1440p and 4k its not really an issue, imo.

 

[sepheronx]

I agree it is poorly optimised,
When I had my older FX-8350j OC to 4.8GHz imitating FX-9590, it was just playable (subjective as that sounds)
But I do notice with 12 threaded cpu like 2600X & with XFR2 enabled, it loves to use every thread available, even up to 100% of course depending how busy the scene is ingame. But from a graphical point of view, the devs have optimised this game for Nvidia architecture gpu.
I run everything on Ultra @ 1080P except "God rays" have those on moderate.



There's half the answer to your problem, that's too hot.

It is? That doesn't seem right since max should be in the 80's before it starts throttling.

Looked it up. 4770. 70 - 70C is normal for gaming on the CPU.

oh i had to run with no anti aliasing, that one really screwed with performance. at 1440p and 4k its not really an issue, imo.

Maybe I am thinking some people may be overlooking a major issue I am trying to mention here.

I mentioned CPU and GPU utilization when FPS' drop is very low. As low as 20%.

If it was performance issues because of settings, wouldn't it show by utilizing 100% and still having the issues?

 

[AlwaysHope]

It is? That doesn't seem right since max should be in the 80's before it starts throttling.

Looked it up. 4770. 70 - 70C is normal for gaming on the CPU.

"Normal" for gaming is it?

Don't think so...

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_i7/Intel-Core i7-4770.html

72.72 C maximum operating temp.

 

[Mussels]

realtemp has the ability to see and record if it has throttled, so lets rely on accurate readings and not arguments over the various temperature sensors his CPU has

 

[sepheronx]

Now with realtemp, what do I do? I have realtemp so how do I use it in order to measure if it is throttling?

looking at old comments, I see people mentioning 4770k hitting 70-80 normally.

So I doubt its throttling. I will still test it, but if it is throttling, I think it would be noticeable on everything, especially when CPU usage hits 100%. In this case, CPU usage is hitting 30% when I reach these areas. In Witcher 3, I hit 100% CPU usage and it runs perfectly fine.

someone with better system than me, getting exact same issue:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/1727575977523249189/

 

[cucker tarlson]

Looked at your system specs an noticed you ram config is not two identical sticks. What ram are you running exactly ?

 

[sepheronx]

That is with the older system. My other system I am talking about. They are identical. Gskill Ripjaws X 2x8gb

 

[SKBARON]

Iirc, lowering the "ugridstoload" helps with performance in busy areas such as the city

 

[Vayra86]

Alright, let me start with system specs if I didn't update my setup in list:

Core i7 4770
16gb DDR3 1600mhz RAM
Asus GTX 1070 8gb Turbo GPU
650W EVGA BR Powersupply
Asrock Z87E ITX Motherboard updated to last bios (2.5)

All drivers up to date.

Anyway, in the game, everywhere excluding a town/city, my FPS is high. As soon as I enter near that big tower (tenpine or whatever its called) and surrounding area, FPS drops to like 26-30fps. I checked to see what is wrong by monitoring FPS, CPU and GPU usage and I found that my CPU usage is around anywhere between 20 - 60% and GPU is around 30% when the FPS drops.

I checked everywhere on google and people are more or less useless in their help telling people that a core i5 6xxx is too weak, blah blah blah. It comes down to a lot of people with zero knowledge giving advice on things they are not qualified to give advice on. Anyway, no real answers or solutions given.

Now I come here, asking you people whom I have more faith and trust in, to see if any of you guys got knowledge behind this?

I tried the following:
Playing the game with no mods
playing with shadows down to low and then off
playing with details to low
playing with sun rays down to low then off
played with decals down to low and off

No go. Same issue.

Oh, and this is at 1080p.

I disabled vsync and used the nvidia vsync (adaptive) and tried high performance under nvidia control panel. Still no go.

And before anyone asks, I tried other games to see if it is my system overall.

Killing Floor 2 with max everything and the nvidia physics for gore on, around 90fps average
Witcher 3 with hairworks at max, and max everything - ~100fps
Fallout New Vegas with graphical mods like no other - ~80fps
The Forest, max everything - ~90fps average.

So I know my system works fine.

Sounds like good old Fallout 4 to me. If you have updated your game, the FPS drops in town should be somewhat reduced but yes, the performance is horrible and no its not just you.

Blame Bethesda for using their archaic engine. And now imagine people are already waiting in line for Fallout 76 (which is more of the same + online components that definitely won't speed it up). Go figure

BTW CPU usage below 100% doesn't mean there isn't a 100% load on a core. Which obviously is what happens in town. Too many assets for the engine to handle with the density of that environment.

 

[sepheronx]

Just as a note, I had set in MSI afterburner to monitor CPU usage of each processor of my 4770. Core 1 is the one that is always used and it goes as high as 60% but when I am in the city and FPS drops, so does the CPU usage of Core 1, which then becomes about 33%, right around same time as my GPU does too.

I noticed everywhere else though, no issue at all. Just cities.

Was just reading people on reddit that have Core i7 7700's and same GPU as me with exact same issue. Dropping to about 25fps in boston area, depending on which direction character is looking. Same issue as me.

I know it isn't throttling or any of that. If it was, it would be showing in other demanding games were I see exact same temps in, but no slowdowns at all. It is just Fallout 4.

 

[Vayra86]

It is just Fallout 4.

Correct. Either play something else or deal with it.

 

[sepheronx]

Correct. Either play something else or deal with it.

I am dealing with it

Hence I am not excited for Fallout 76. They really need to work on their creation engine or at least replace it by now.

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah, I don't get why Bethesda gets rewarded handsomely for crappy coding on a crappy engine so long after Fallout 3. I mean its still the same shit, upscaled and 'optimized' to death.

Regardless, whatever you do, don't make the mistake of upgrading your rig just so you can cope with their laziness. I've played FO4 on both a 3570k and this 8700k and performance is still shit. I gained some FPS, but still dive royally under 60 and the game stutters and briefly hangs when there's too much activity.

 

[sepheronx]

funny enough, I went from a 3570k to a 4770. Couldn't get a 4770k or 4790k without spending nearly $400 CAD for one. But I do have a spare 4670K sitting around. Thinking maybe I should just put that in, get a good cooler, overclock it and sell the 4770 for $200 (I paid $150 for a whole system that had it in it, but everyone sells the 4770 for $250 around here).

 

[Vayra86]

funny enough, I went from a 3570k to a 4770. Couldn't get a 4770k or 4790k without spending nearly $400 CAD for one. But I do have a spare 4670K sitting around. Thinking maybe I should just put that in, get a good cooler, overclock it and sell the 4770 for $200 (I paid $150 for a whole system that had it in it, but everyone sells the 4770 for $250 around here).

Meh, the major uplift in performance for newer rigs is additional physical cores + faster DDR4. I wouldn't spend too much time on old platforms, its more of the same really. 4 physical cores at roughly the same clocks on DDR3 is just going to limit you anyway.