FPS Boost (Shadow Distance)

[SirWallyWombat]

On Ultra I had been running at a smooth 60 in most places, however towns just shrekked my framerate. Turns out, the only setting causing this was shadow distance. By lowering it from ultra to medium I boosted my fps in the region outside of Goodneighbor from 27 - 33 fps to a lovely solid 60.

The downside you ask? I can now literally see shadows coming into renderering distance down the street. Messing with the ini to find a perfect distance between medium and high is your best bet of keeping a nice framerate and hiding the rendering of shadows a bit nicer.

[76561198032638292]

Mind if I ask, what's your rig?

[SirWallyWombat]

intel i7 870 2.93 GHz (Really old cpu, I need to upgrade)
8gb Ram
GTX 970
Windows 10

I'd consider those the only really important stats, my CPU is my main issue in most, if not all cases.

[Dabiin]

i5 4670k @ 3.4 GHz
8gb ram
gtx 980 sc
win 10

and i get down to 30 fps when in the main cities. and its not even a playable frame rate, the constant drops make it very hard to play. and downgrading shadows is such a kick in the ass id rather wait until they fix the problem

[Ghan]

Also had this issue, along with my fps being limited to 48 (and dipping below it at times) with a 4790k, 16gb ram, 780ti, SSD & Win10. So no issue to run the game really. But when I got to the quest to go to the Corvega plant the fps drops to 40-50, depending on where I look. Which only seem to be a bug/issue with shadows. Because lowering shadow distance (nothing else) to Medium instead of Ultra and it works fine.

Had to unlock vsync and then limit the FPS with Afterburner to get a playable experience too. Limited it to 100 at first, 'cause that's the line that worked for me in previous Bethesda titles. Then I got stuck at terminals and crap, so dropped it to 72 and it's been fine at that.

Should also mention I use a 144hz monitor. So it really does seem the game has some issues with both vsync and shadows messing things up.

[Kingcon]

I've had the same issue, i get a solid 60 frames everywhere in the game other than central Boston, around the Boston common area, I've played with all the settings and the only one that makes a difference is shadow distance, had to set it to medium to get a stable frame rate.

Im running an i7 4790k 16gb of ram with a 980ti, which i think you'll agree is good enough to run any game at 60fps constant. Hope a patch solves this at some point. Having shadow distance on medium is horrible after spending so much money on a graphics card!

[Juez]

Same here with i5 2500 k 4,5 ghz + 970 g1 + 16 gb ddr3 2133.

[Incunabulum]

Here you go

http://dev-c.com/fallout4/shadowboost/

Dynamically adjusts shadow distance depending on your framerate. User adjustable.

It just works.

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

well yea CPU bottleneck since shadows are calculatoed on the CPU, the longer the distance the more work for the CPU. a 6700k @ around 4.7 ghz and DDR4 3000+ 15 cas overcomes this and hits 60 fps minimums with distance at ultra preset.

[siztem]

shadows notoriously strain framerate (and ultimately don't really add that much to the visuals anyway). in just about every game I play, I almost always turn them to their lowest setting, if not completely off.

[SeriousCCIE]

Metal, you are correct. Having a PC with a super duper video card will not compensate for the lack of a high end CPU to do all the computery things, like run the game. The video card just displays it.

People seem to forget that the GPU helps push graphics -- it often is not purposed to run the program. For that you need a good CPU, or fast (or plentiful) RAM etc.

I do wish, however, that Devs were forced to use really crummy hardware to test against, so they can get a feel for what its like on the bargain bin end of hardware purchases. Not everyone can afford a hex core processor and 16 GB of ram on the latest SSD with their choice of AMD or NVidia (or both) gpus.

But i rant. The CPU is still important; it still has a job to do, and this game helps prove you need a good system just as much as a good card.

[Aws3m]

this thread may be old.. but the framerater issue is still there with me.. when i go to boston, my framerate drops to 10-20 fps.. needless to say i am getting furious about it. i tried every single thing i found in forums.. shadow distance god rays turning of fps cap adaptive v sync.. NOTHINg works for me.. i am out of options. i might as well play the game on my gt840m on my laptop again.. same framerates..

my specs in case someone wonders:

i5 7500 3,4 ghz quad core
gtx 1060 gigabyte mini itx
8gb ram 2133 overclocked to 2400

also fml it's only fallout 4.. skyrim doesnt have it and i am about to try farcry 4

[sdack]

Originally posted by Aws3m:

this thread may be old.. but the framerater issue is still there with me.. when i go to boston, my framerate drops to 10-20 fps.. needless to say i am getting furious about it. i tried every single thing i found in forums.. shadow distance god rays turning of fps cap adaptive v sync.. NOTHINg works for me.. i am out of options. i might as well play the game on my gt840m on my laptop again.. same framerates..

my specs in case someone wonders:

i5 7500 3,4 ghz quad core
gtx 1060 gigabyte mini itx
8gb ram 2133 overclocked to 2400

also fml it's only fallout 4.. skyrim doesnt have it and i am about to try farcry 4

Have you tried using Nvidia Experience yet and let it optimize the game's settings?

And did you perhaps install the HD Texture Pack, because it will bring your PC down with only 8GB RAM and the GTX1060. It needs a high-end PC with a 4K display to benefit from it.

Also put Windows power management into High Performance and make sure your CPU isn't going into thermal throttling for some reason.

[Inverse Effect]

i got a 4070 and 32gbs of DDR4 3400 ram and a intel core i9-10900 set to 4.7ghz and i get fps drops from 120fps to 50fps in the city. I had to turn shadow distance down to medium to get stable fps.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by |FTG| The Inverse Effect:

i got a 4070 and 32gbs of DDR4 3400 ram and a intel core i9-10900 set to 4.7ghz and i get fps drops from 120fps to 50fps in the city. I had to turn shadow distance down to medium to get stable fps.

Comparing your graphics cards to people's posts from six to eight years ago....

[KEEPER]

i turned down the vanilla graphics settings way down to as low as it goes, then i installed a texture mod that made the game look better, it turns out something within the vanilla graphics settings always bogs down performance really bad, but lowering it down to the bottom really fixes this for me, in cities i usually get about 50 to 80fps, but i'm also using that mod that disables the havoc system in the game so my fps can go higher so that i can unlock that potential fps gain in some of the more messed up fps heavy areas of the game.

i'm also using a 970, i know it's old as ♥♥♥♥, but i figure with prices of cards now and my card still works, i might as well keep using it until it dies or the prices improve on the card i want.

anyway i would recommend getting the High FPS Physics Fix
mod that will help your game to reach higher fps gain and enable some of your fps loss to be higher in some of these areas.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/44798

also load accelerator is a good mod to speed up load screens so it won't take forever with your freaking SSD, https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283 generally an SSD speeds up load times for games, but in bethesda games because they use the havoc's physics system it also effects the load screens, and this mod essentailly disables that issue and turns up your fps during load screens to 350fps to speed up the load from vanilla 1 minute, to 5 to 10 seconds.