The Definitive(ish) Guide to Getting a Consistent/Smooth Framerate

[mikjames]

TLDR: Getting lots of stutter with good hardware?
Install these in the following order:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1822/ (or set shadow distance to medium if installing the required script extender is too much bother for you)
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1204
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25714
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26286
Set god rays to low, medium, or off if you don't like the added effects, or give this a try: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15211
Don't forget to adjust draw distance settings in the advanced launcher tab.
If none of this provides a playable experience, or you really want to open up a can of worms, read this: https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/fallout-4-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
Keep in mind the Nvidia guide is somewhat out of date, only provides average framerates, and doesn't account for the performance differences of specific settings in the wilderness vs dense cities.

The long version/my Fallout 4 performance journey and life story:

My specs:
Core I5 2500 3.3 (Yeah I know it's the weak link, my 4670k is out of order :( )
Gtx 1070 stock
16gb ram
Samsung 860 1tb SSD

So I've followed the trail of breadcrumbs from other frustrated users (rightfully so), and I've determined there are a few tweaks that make a difference and others that don't seem to do anything. The first line of thinking seems to be that the game's built in vsync is broken in some way (probably true), and a couple solutions are floating around. 1) Run in borderless window which bypasses the games built in vsync system, but also negatively impacts performance. 2) Set ifpsclamp to 58 or 61 in the Fallout 4 ini. I tried both of these solutions and found that both presented a similar problem. If your hardware isn't top of the line, you're either going to have a low framerate in borderless window, or slow motion physics due to ifpsclamp when your system dips below the specified framerate.

At this point I realized there are 2 issues at play here, the game is un-optimized and requires very carefully selected settings, and cranking up some of those settings seems to create more stuttering as well as a performance hit. So i did some more searching and determined a few settings that users primarily have issues with, shadow distance (and shadow res to a lesser degree), the ultra texture pack, and some people have reported issues with god rays.

The shadows appear to have a massive impact in cities. In the past Bethesda had very few shadow casters enabled in game, while in Fallout 4 they have enabled more shadow casters and didn't really do much to optimize the system for current hardware. You could take the lazy route (like me) and just set shadow distance as low as you can bear (medium looks okay to me) and balancing it against the lowest shadow res you can bear (high for me), or you can try this mod to get the best of both worlds: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1822/
The idea is to get a longer shadow draw in the wilds where it will make a difference to visual quality without negatively impacting performance, and a shorter shadow distance in cities where there many shadow casters and limited visibility. It really is that simple, and it's something Bethesda should have implemented in house.

The texture's have been terribly un-optimized since launch, with higher resolutions used where they don't need to be, creating a jarring discrepancy between high quality and low quality textures in game, which is arguably harder on the eyes than a lower overall resolution. Luckily the modding community has been hard at work here as well. For basic optimizations this is worth a try: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1204 Or if you hate having more free time and keeping your sanity, you could also try this one: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/978 The installation process for the second one is needlessly time consuming, but it has been updated more recently and may or may not be more comprehensive. Another option is to overwrite many of the vanilla textures entirely: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25714 Being the lazy user of Nexus Mod Manager that I am, I highly recommend first installing the simpler of the 2 vanilla texture optimizers, and then installing one of the Vivid Fallout packs on top of that, this ensures many of the vanilla textures are replaced with performance friendly versions, and any that aren't replaced are likely to be optimized.

So after all this I set the following:
Nvidia Control Panel:
Vsync: On
Triple Buffering: On
Pre-rendered frames: 1

Game Launcher:
Res: 1080p
Textures: High
Shadow Res: High
Shadow distance: Medium (I'll probably install the dynamic shadow distance mod eventually)
Godrays: Medium (Experiment with this one, medium to me looks way better than off, but it's down to personal taste and performance impact)
Object draw 75-100%
Ai draw 50-75%
Grass draw 75-100%
Item draw 50-75%
Experiment with these based on your playstyle and hardware. Static objects and grass distance are more noticeable to me, while item draw controls smaller objects that are less noticeable. The key is to balance for your hardware, with a weak cpu ai distance and grass physics may put more strain on your cpu, while static objects and item draw may be far less taxing on the cpu. Fallout 4's engine doesn't come anywhere near full utilization of a quad core, providing a mere 35% improvement over a dual core, so don't expect the world from your whizbang top o the line 12 core I9 or Zen Threadripper. For Fallout 4 you'd be better off burning all that extra money for warmth or using it as toilet paper, after you've bought a quad core with the highest possible per core clock.

Finally I disabled ifpsclamp, and didn't bother with borderless windowed, because there is now no obvious difference with either of these settings, they just mess with the physics speed and needlessly drop performance. If either of these settings actually make any difference for you AFTER you have taken the time to properly optimize this heaping wreck of an engine for your machine, I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect they are just band aids that don't actually fix all of the problems and introduce other problems.

This is what happens when a game is released with lots of bell and whistles that aren't optimized with current techniques for current hardware, don't expect to max everything out with Ultra settings and the Bethesda texture pack, even with bleeding edge hardware. The shadow rendering system exponentially decreases performance in dense areas, with little visual benefit, and the high res texture pack doesn't fix the underlying discrepancies in texture resolution, while ballooning memory requirements for little visual benefit. The reason the game stutters at 60fps, is because it isn't a consistent 60 fps, that's just the average frame rate you see. Your minimum framerate is probably 20 at best, with spikes well above 60 fps, with all this occuring within 1 second of rendering, your eyes see a stuttering mess.

I'd like this to serve as an all in one place for performance solutions, so if you think of something I overlooked feel free to throw it out there, so I can test it and add it to the guide. None of this info is guranteed to work for you and I do enough tech support at work, I'm not here to hold anyone's hand/keep it civil :)

[MTV]

Here is some performance mods you can check out if you haven't already.

No Godrays whilst keeping volumetric lights: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26621

Far Away Area Reform: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20713

Boston FPS Fix: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/26286

[Kapteeni Moukku]

This is what i have used for better godray volumetric light performance.
Ultra Quality God Rays Performance Fix https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15211
The performance hit is even smaller if you limit tesselation factor to 6 or 8 in driver settings.

[hawkeye]

Here is an article from gamers nexus about performance. It includes links to other articles.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference

The nvidia website has detailed info on the visual and performance impact for each FO4 graphical setting. Google each setting or use the main link -

https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/fallout-4-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

[ronr42]

OP, just FYI. Shadows in this game run off your CPU, not GPU. You might want to edit that part of your thread.

[Penguin]

I haven't played this game in 3 years. Is the performance still god-awful horrible? I remember even setting the resolution to 1920x1080 and all settings medium was still getting barely 30 fps with an i7 and 980 Ti.

[lakupupu]

can there be a tl:dr? just saying, thats a big wall of text but amazinf that u got this info
when entering/leaving power armor i get a big freeze and when browsing power armor upgrades i also get freezes, ill try doing the stuff in this thread

[bunny de fluff]

tl:dr version : go get better optimized texture mods to improve performance

[mikjames]

Originally posted by ronr42:

OP, just FYI. Shadows in this game run off your CPU, not GPU. You might want to edit that part of your thread.

Interesting, do you have a source for that? Not doubting the info, this is a Bethesda game after all. I'll be editing the op from time to time as more tweaks and mods pop up. I don't have time to test them all but I'll probably divide things into a "must have" section and a "nice to have" section.

I would have suspected that shadow rendering is a mix of cpu and gpu based computations, newer rendering techniques may place most of the strain on the gpu rather than the cpu, but historically the cpu still needs to play a role in the end result. Either way it doesn't really change the end result, shadow rendering is inefficient in densely shadowed areas, and the only fix is to either lower shadow distance and/or shadow res, or install a mod that offers dynamic shadow distance rendering.

[mikjames]

Originally posted by crag💯🎼🤔👌😎🔫:

can there be a tl:dr? just saying, thats a big wall of text but amazinf that u got this info
when entering/leaving power armor i get a big freeze and when browsing power armor upgrades i also get freezes, ill try doing the stuff in this thread

Sure, but as you might have guessed, I suck at being concise. I'm all for delegating/crowd sourcing, I'm sure someone not too lazy to read it will eventually capture everything within 1 paragraph, at which point I'll add it to the op.

[mikjames]

Originally posted by bunny de fluff:

tl:dr version : go get better optimized texture mods to improve performance

...and workaround the shadow rendering problem, and workaround the godray problem, and set reasonable expectations for this heaping wreck of a game engine :)

[mikjames]

Originally posted by A Penguin:

I haven't played this game in 3 years. Is the performance still god-awful horrible? I remember even setting the resolution to 1920x1080 and all settings medium was still getting barely 30 fps with an i7 and 980 Ti.

Yes Though perhaps not as bad as it was at launch.

[mikjames]

Originally posted by hawkeye:

Here is an article from gamers nexus about performance. It includes links to other articles.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference

The nvidia website has detailed info on the visual and performance impact for each FO4 graphical setting. Google each setting or use the main link -

https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/fallout-4-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide

Interesting, it appears I was mistaken in that the new and improved 64 bit engine does in fact make some use of more than 2 cores, providing a ~35% improvement moving from 2 to 4 cores, and ~25% improvement moving from 4 to 6 cores. It's not quite enough to reccommend a six core for Fallout 4 alone, as the 4 ghz quad still manages to slightly edge out the six core at 3.5 ghz, but at least Bethesda has finally entered the 21st century in regards to core utilization. I'll update the op with this info :)

[ronr42]

OP, I can't quote a source other than this forum. It's been known since the game released that shadows run off your CPU. Where that info originally came from I either can't remember or I never knew in the first place.

[mikjames]

Originally posted by ronr42:

OP, I can't quote a source other than this forum. It's been known since the game released that shadows run off your CPU. Where that info originally came from I either can't remember or I never knew in the first place.

Right, I'm not doubting it, but the question is to what degree? Back in the before times everything ran off the cpu. As gpu technology and rendering techniques developed, more of that load has shifted to the gpu, current rendering techniques may very well have shifted the load almost entirely off the cpu.

Fallout 4's engine is likely using outdated rendering techniques, and taxing the cpu more than is necesarry to calculate shadows, but the cpu is still going to be involved in some stage of the rendering pipeline, the question is to what degree.

So the statement "shadows are calculated on the cpu" probably isn't incorrect, but to say "shadows are calculated and rendered entirely via the cpu" probably is incorrect. The cpu does far more than just calculating ai and physics, and what we know as graphics cards these days have a lot more than a traditional gpu chip on board.

[VaderDFXB]

Shadows running of the CPU explains why my FPS in city areas is junk. I suppose I could test dropping some settings to see if that helps. I'm sick of Bethesda being incompetent with their game engines, it's infuriating sometimes.