Extremely random FPS drops in the wilderness

[󠁳⁧⁧ vee]

Hey,

I have been modding this game for a while now and it's been running very smoothly with no crashes. However, I seem to get random fps drops out in the wilderness. It can drop from 100 to 60 (sometimes even lower) by looking at a bush or a certain area and this mostly happens in grassy and forested areas. Boston, Lexington and other towns run very smooth so it made me believe it had something to do with my previous grass overhaul mod. I removed that while keeping all other mods active and it didn't help.

Now I've done a clean re-install of the game and added some Mods back which absolutely should not mess with the forested areas yet the problem still remains. Is this just normal behavior for Fallout 4 or is something else going on?

Load Order: https://pastebin.com/4bxpRAad (please let me know if you see anything wrong, missing, or out of place)

Specs:

RTX 3080
i9-9900k
32GB DDR4 3200MHz
Game Running on an SSD

Video showcasing the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21aC9q4_SlM
The lowest I saw my FPS hit was 53. Dropping from 100 to 53 just by looking at a small spot in the forest makes no sense to me. This happens in forested areas all over the game.

[wtiger27]

Most people would never notice a drop down to 53 fps. I wouldn't, Besides, the game was not meant to be played beyond 60 fps anyway.

You might enjoy the game more if you turned off your fps counter.

[󠁳⁧⁧ vee]

Originally posted by wtiger27:

Most people would never notice a drop down to 53 fps. I wouldn't, Besides, the game was not meant to be played beyond 60 fps anyway.

You might enjoy the game more if you turned off your fps counter.

I have a mod that makes playing the game at higher frames possible without issues, so of course I prefer that over playing at locked 60.
I just find it weird hearing people talking about how downtown Boston kills the framerate while I never dip below 100 there which is what I have locked it to. Why would my frames randomly drop in the middle of nowhere like that? It doesn't make sense.

And yeah, I can feel the frames dropping to 50, easily. Even from 60 to 50 there is a noticeable difference for me. That's exactly the reason I turned my fps counter on.
I have seen it drop to 40 just by looking in a certain direction, like into a hill or open field. At that point it becomes extremely difficult to aim and hit targets.

[Zekiran]

"
You might enjoy the game more if you turned off your fps counter."

^^^^^^

That.

There are spots in the game which simply slog down to a crawl. (in before the obligatory arrival of but it works fine on MY rig that's nice dear move the hell along)

Cap the game at 60 since that's what the game requires to run properly as the developers made it.

It's not necessarily the forest but the loading of cells and their contents, that may be doing this. Since 'forest' is a pretty broad range of locations around the map, that may mean you're coming close to several cells at once and thus it's trying to figure out what to do with them before you arrive.

[󠁳⁧⁧ vee]

Originally posted by Zekiran:

"
You might enjoy the game more if you turned off your fps counter."

^^^^^^

That.

There are spots in the game which simply slog down to a crawl. (in before the obligatory arrival of but it works fine on MY rig that's nice dear move the hell along)

Cap the game at 60 since that's what the game requires to run properly as the developers made it.

It's not necessarily the forest but the loading of cells and their contents, that may be doing this. Since 'forest' is a pretty broad range of locations around the map, that may mean you're coming close to several cells at once and thus it's trying to figure out what to do with them before you arrive.

Yeah, this is what I've been thinking. It's not like I'll put the game down and stop playing, I just wanted some answers :)

I'll lock it to 60 again and try some more.

[Zekiran]

I have to grit my teeth and brave it out whenever I go up to Croup Manor.

That place. It's on the border of like at least 3 cells - the water, the mainland, and its own at least. Turn your head there? OH

I


... think...



NOT.

(that's my impression of the fps drop)

[󠁳⁧⁧ vee]

Originally posted by Zekiran:

I have to grit my teeth and brave it out whenever I go up to Croup Manor.

That place. It's on the border of like at least 3 cells - the water, the mainland, and its own at least. Turn your head there? OH

I


... think...



NOT.

(that's my impression of the fps drop)

I guess I just have to live with it and grit my teeth whenever it happens. Thanks for the help, anyways! Just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with my game or mods. ^^

[hawkeye]

When doing vids it's a good idea to increase the text size of the monitoring software. Plus youtube hides the output with its overlays so moving the output to a different on-screen location could be worthwhile.

Fps is an average of snapshots taken every N milliseconds where N is set in the monitoring software. A frametime plot is more useful. For example 50 fps might be an average of 100 and 0 or just plain 50.

I haven't had close look but overall I'd say there is nothing abnormal. If the situation persists unmodded then it isn't mods. Being in the open the game can see further so it could be ini settings, broken previs or lods. But I think it's the way that you weave from side to side. You could tell from graphing the performance.

On the hardware side, the i9-9900k wasn't a great gaming cpu. It has relatively low math capability. Mods = extra math for the cpu to handle. FO4 is relatively single-threaded so those extra cpu threads won't help. And mods just add to the single-thread load. Memory speed is another area that could be an issue. Although the pc has 3200 ram, it could be slow or fast.

So I would try giving the weaving a miss to see what happens.