[Guide] Increasing fallout 4 performance and optimizing game controls

[xnoobftw]

After turning on fraps for fallout 4 i realized that vsync is forced upon if you do not do anything.

After turning vsync off my fps drops went away and i'm finally having some good smooth gameplay on ultra 

 

Nvidia

With the systems running Nvidia cards, this proved to be extremely simple. The GeForce drivers allow for specific graphics settings for individual games. Within those settings, found in the Manage 3D Settings section of the Nvidia Control Panel, there is an option to disable Vertical Sync. By default, the driver lets the application control this setting, but you can override it to disable VSync.

 

AMD

To disable VSync on systems powered by AMD graphics cards, the process involves editing a single parameter found in multiple .ini files for the game. For reasons unknown to us, the AMD Catalyst driver doesn't override the game, despite having essentially the same function within the driver suite. Not only do you have to disable VSync in the driver, you will have to change iPresentInterval=1 to iPresentInterval=0 in the Fallout4_Default.ini file found in the Fallout 4 game folder (located in the Steamapps/common folder). A second file can be found in the Fallout4 subfolder called Fallout4Prefs.ini. There are two more instances of both of these files, which can be found in My Documents/My Games/Fallout4.

Changing iPresentInterval=1 to iPresentInterval=0 will disable all VSync functions within the game, but the Fallout4Prefs.ini file found in the My Games folder will be rewritten if the graphics card settings are auto-detected again. You can prevent this by making the file read-only in the properties after making the change.

Source : http://www.tomshardware.com/news/fallout-4-pc-benchmarks-vsync,30527.html

 

 

Cheers and have fun! 

BUT THERE'S A CATCH.

Turns out when you're lock picking the speed kinda matches what your current FPS is, so if your fps is wayyy up high the speed of your bobby pins are going to break really fast  

Your loading screens too! (the model of whatever is on there is going to spin really fast )

 

Warning: Just tried it, game will be sped up if you have fps>60. 

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

UPDATE

*Fix for fallout 4 the hedgehog (game speeding up when you have too many FPS)*

Limit the framerate

Make sure you've got Afterburner & RivaTuner both fully up to date after installing or the FPS limiter might not work

1) Download and install MSI Afterburner. Then launch it.

2) Open RivaTuner, located in your taskbar.

3) Add Fallout 4 by clicking this. Find where it's installed on your PC, for me it's "D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Fallout 4\fallout4.exe"

4) Use this option to limit your FPS. I've set mine to 72 as i don't seem to have any odd physics issues with it capped at that but you could try 60, maybe even 100+. Not too sure what the game has to hit before it has problems. EDIT: Make sure your "Application detection level" is set to medium or higher or it may not work! Thanks to /u/seeberger48 for noticing this.

 

Disabling mouse acceleration and evening out X and Y axis sensitivity

Disable mouse acceleration

Updated more accurate information

1) Go to your fallout4 folder in documents, mine is located in "C:\Users\Ash\Documents\My Games\Fallout4\"

2) Open Fallout4.ini with your preferred text editor.

3) Find the Controls section and at the bottom of it add the following:

bMouseAcceleration=0

And save.

4) Located in the same folder as the last .ini you will find Fallout4Prefs.ini, open it with your preferred text editor.

5) Find the Display section and at the bottom of it add the following:

bForceIgnoreSmoothness=1

And save.

6) Go to your Steam fallout4 folder (different from the one you just had open) mine is located at "D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\common\Fallout 4\Fallout4\"

7) Open Fallout4Prefs.ini with your preferred text editor and repeat step 5 for this .ini file, don't forget to save it!

Make the X&Y sensitivity even

Presumably an oversight unchanged on PC as it's more of a console benefit, the up/down look sensitivity is halved when compared to your left/right sensitivity. To fix this go back to your my games/fallout4 folder but this time open fallout4.ini, not the prefs one.

Under the controls section you should see two similar lines of code, fMouseHeadingYScale & fMouseHeadingXScale. Leave the XScale as it is, we're only interested in changing the YScale value. What you change that to depends on what aspect ratio your monitor is, see below for reference.

16:9 aspect ratio resolutions(1024×576, 1152×648, 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and 3840×2160), set the "Y" scale as so: fMouseHeadingYScale=.03738

16:10 aspect ratio resolutions(1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200 and 2560×1600), set the "Y" scale as so: fMouseHeadingYScale=.0336

4:3 aspect ratio resolutions(640×480, 800×600, 960×720, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×1080 , 1600×1200, 1856×1392, 1920×1440, and 2048×1536), set the "Y" scale as so: fMouseHeadingYScale=.028

5:4 aspect ratio resolutions(1280x1024, 2560x2048 and 5120x4096), set the "Y" scale as so: fMouseHeadingYScale=.02625

21:9 aspect ratio resolutions(2560x1080 is the most popular), set the "Y" scale as so: fMouseHeadingYScale=.042

Save the file.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s6ile/disable_vsync_for_zero_input_lag_and_limit_fps 

 

 

PS: This is a repost from myself (http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/496059-solution-for-bad-fps-drops-for-fallout-4/#entry6641354) but i felt the need to repost it as FO4 is a relatively popular game and i bet many of you all are scratching your head as to why your powerful hardware isn't performing well at this game. And oh yes i've finally placed this in the right subforum. Can a mod please delete my old post?

Edited December 1, 2015 by xnoobftw

[Dobbsjr]

Nice guide! Any idea on why this happens?

[xnoobftw]

Nice guide! Any idea on why this happens?

It's just bethesda being lazy IMO. All these could be done via software 

[Tagiau]

Nice guide! Any idea on why this happens?

Because all bethesda games are locked at 60 for a reason. The creation engine breaks physics at anything above 60. the fallout 3/nv engine does weird things. You don't need more then 60 for a game like this though.

[xnoobftw]

Because all bethesda games are locked at 60 for a reason. The creation engine breaks physics at anything above 60. the fallout 3/nv engine does weird things. You don't need more then 60 for a game like this though.

I was getting horrible dips before going through my own guide tho.... Now it's just buttery smooth gameplay

[Tagiau]

I was getting horrible dips before going through my own guide tho.... Now it's just buttery smooth gameplay

Yes the game has issues. Like shadows ruining framerate when on ultra, and looking like shit on medium. But keeping it locked at 60 makes it playable. Without the lock, it would be like playing need for speed rivals unlocked to 120.

[You_are_a_cunt]

Nais.

 

Gonna try this when I get home (national holiday and I'm stuck at work)

[xnoobftw]

Yes the game has issues. Like shadows ruining framerate when on ultra, and looking like shit on medium. But keeping it locked at 60 makes it playable. Without the lock, it would be like playing need for speed rivals unlocked to 120.

That's why there was the step of limiting the frames to around 70~ish if you have a 60hz panel

[Xenift]

Yea careful of when disabling VSync, you get horrible tearing.

 

But there there is a point in changing the frame cap with VSync enabled, to minimise stuttering. 

[xnoobftw]

Yea careful of when disabling VSync, you get horrible tearing.

 

But there there is a point in changing the frame cap with VSync enabled, to minimise stuttering. 

In this game it's more of the game speeding up to fallout 4 the hedgehog rather than tearing

And it's changing the frame cap with Vsync disabled to prevent stuttering!

[Davidgm92]

Yeah it's seems to be fine for capping about 72, but it's because the framerate is tied to the physics of the game engine as Bethesda designed it that way and haven't changed it in multiple games. It's a lazy and bay way to do things but we are stuck with it without a complete change of the engine. It sucks.