Fallout 4 performance issues and possible solutions
Okay guys, for the last two days I was warring with Fallout 4 and trying to get it fixed. Since it literally took me two days to convince the game to work properly, I decided to make a post about it. This might interest anyone who faced the following problems: Fallout 4 crashing right at the start, Fallout 4 crashing after approximately 10 minutes of playtime, mouse lags and low fps.
I had to fix the game on two different PCs; one of them had an NVIDIA graphic card, and the other one - an AMD one. I will start with the problems the NVIDIA PC faced, since this case was less complicated.
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Problem description: 1. Unable to get to main menu // Â 2. Lags
1. The following happened: the game would launch, but it would never get past the black screen and the spinning wheel. It would not crash. It would just stay that way.
What fixed it: going to âOptionsâ and choosing both âborderlessâ and âwindowedâ. That simple.
2. The game was laggy during cut scenes and would stutter when I tried to move the mouse.
Solution found on the internet:
Go to your Desktop, right click the Nvidia Logo at the lower Right of your Desktop. Choose âSystem Settingsâ or whatever it is in your Language. Now go to â3D Settingsâ and Add Fallout.exe to your Programs.
There change âTriple Bufferâ to ON.
âMax frames render aheadâ to 1.
And finally âV-Syncâ on.
(This fixed everything for me. The game hasnât had any lags for hours now).
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This is where the real problems started. On this PC I faced every possible issue there could be. I was ready to give up when one last effort proved to have been worth the stress.
STEP 1. The game crashed right at startup and gave the message âFailed to start game (unknown error).â
Bethesda advises to use the same procedure FO3 fans had to use:Â
In the properties, tell the game to always run as Administrator
Verify the integrity of the gameâs cache
Here you can find a more elaborate explanation. I will say right away: that did nothing for me, except for the fact that the game appeared to crash a few seconds later. Also note: after telling the game to ârun as Administratorâ the NVIDIA PC stopped making any attempts at running it at all, and started to simply ask me if I want to run it.
I found the solution merely by accident:
1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 4 or any other folder your game is installed in
2. Choose the Fallout 4 Application, right click and go to properties
3. The second tab will be âcompatibilityâ. There, enable the compatibility mode. Right now my game, installed on Windows 10, is running in compatibility mode with Windows 7. Widows 8 worked too though, as far as I remember
This fixed the crashes at startup.
STEP 2. Next problem that appeared: Fallout 4 started to crash 10 minutes into the game. I wasnât even able to finish the character creation.
1. Open Steam and find Fallout 4 in your Library
2. Right click on the game and go to properties
3. In the Betas tab choose âbeta - 1.1.30 Beta Updateâ.
4. Steam will download and install it pretty quickly; after that the word [beta] will appear in the title of the game
STEP 3. Next problem that appeared: Fallout 4 stopped crashing after 10 minutes, but instead massive lags started to appear after the same amount of playtime. To put it simple, crashes were replaced by lags.
This is the problem that gave me the biggest head ache. Most of the time, I wasnât able to properly control the movement of my character: after every mouse movement there was a 2-3 second log lag, then the movements got 2-3 times quicker than normal (still interrupted by lags) and the game went back to normal until I touched the mouse again. I will describe everything that happened, because there may be other poor souls out there that found out that the usual solution does not work for them.
First of all, the usual solution:
Go to C:\Users\yourusername\Documents\My Games\Fallout4. Open Fallout4Prefs.ini and then change the following parameters:
iPresentInterval=1
to
iPresentInterval=0
bForceIgnoreSmoothness=0
to
bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1
FOR MOST PEOPLE this should be enough. Okay? Just try it. If it isnât, then here are the things you could try to do:
1. After having changed the iPresentInterval and bForceIgnoreSmoothness (which, in my case, was already set to 1), go to the folder youâve installed your game in. If you are using Steam, it should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Fallout 4
2. There, choose the folder Fallout 4 (yes, a Fallout 4 folder inside a Fallout 4 folder)
3. Open the Fallout4Prefs.ini contained there and repeat the steps that have been described above. See that the values are the same that you set in the other Fallout4Prefs.ini file
NOTE: The instructions on the internet say that you should do the same with the Fallout.ini file in the first folder. But I havenât found there any bForceIgnoreSmoothness or iPresentInterval, so after a few experiments and reappered crashes I let it be. The file looks just the way it did when I first installed Fallout now.
NOTE 2 (!): Fallout 4 might try to change its .ini files back. It can do so at every launch of the game. To avoid that:
1. Right click on the .ini file
3. And click on âRead-onlyâ
4. Do so for every .ini file you changed, no matter in what folder
That way Fallout 4 wonât be able to make any changes to the files, but neither will you. So if you decide to change something again, you will have to reverse the above mentioned process.
Like I said, for a lot of you that should be enough, and the game should work properly afterwards.
STEP 4. I did not work for me though. Fallout continued to torture me with lags, making it virtually impossible to play the game. If you still have the same issues even after the last step, try the following:
2. Choose the category âHardware and Soundâ. Then go to Devices and Printers â> Mouse. Do that or find the âMouseâ using any other route.
3. Click on the âMouseâ. A window will appear. In the tab âpointer optionsâ disable âenhance pointer precisionâ
This is a step that more or less repeats the bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1. This should affect people with Windows 8 and Windows 10, because these operational systems have the so called mouse acceleration on by default. The bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1 step tries to turn it off, but it affects only the game. Which is why you might have to disable mouse acceleration on your Windows. Warning: the mouse movement wonât be as comfortable and natural as it was before that. But this might have been the thing that finally got my game to work.Â
Thereâs one more thing I did:
1. Right click on your desktop and choose your AMDâs graphic properties.
2. Go to Power â> Switchable application settings
3. There, either in recent applications or in all applications, find Fallout 4 and set your graphic settings to âHigh performanceâ.
Iâm not sure what it did, and I donât know which of the last two steps was the breakthrough in the end. As far as I got it, the last thing makes the PC switch to your AMD graphics card from your Intel graphic adapter. But I canât be sure, really, I donât know. What I do know is: IT WORKS. I managed to play Fallout 4 for hours, without the game having any lags of any kind. It couldnât have been any better.
Another thing I did, but itâs hardly relevant, is this: in Fallout.ini (C:\Users\yourusername\Documents\My Games\Fallout4), I changed the values of these two things:
fMouseHeadingXScale=.015
fMouseHeadingYScale=.030
I did it somewhere in the middle of the process because an internet user said that it made the mouse movement even smoother. You can give it a try.
I really hope this will be useful to some of you guys. Really, after all this torment and endless pages of forum discussions, I felt like I had to make this post. Maybe it will make some lives easier. Enjoy Fallout 4, wastelanders!