Fallout 3 Tweaks

WhiteZero

WhiteZero

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 21, 2004
Messages
3,638
Lets consolidate any tweaks for the game here.

One I can throw up is for people with dual/quad core processors.

Find Fallout 3'd ini files (either C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\Fallout3 in Vista or somewhere in Documents and Settings for XP users)

Open up FalloutPerfs.ini and search the document for "thread"
Any setting that has "=0" after it and the word "thread" in the name, change it to "=1". This should make better use of multi-processor systems.
Also, increase iNumHavokThreads to 5 or so.
 
Thanks man, any word that these tweaks help out? have you experienced any performance gain?
 
Under the "renderinfo" file (same folder as above) I noticed a setting for SLI...Mine was set to "no" so I changed to "yes" since I use SLI.

Will post improvement, but someone else should try.
 
WhiteZero said:
Lets consolidate any tweaks for the game here.

One I can throw up is for people with dual/quad core processors.

Find Fallout 3'd ini files (either C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\Fallout3 in Vista or somewhere in Documents and Settings for XP users)

Open up FalloutPerfs.ini and search the document for "thread"
Any setting that has "=0" after it and the word "thread" in the name, change it to "=1". This should make better use of multi-processor systems.
Also, increase iNumHavokThreads to 5 or so.
Click to expand...

none of those things are in my FalloutPerfs.ini... but they are in my FALLOUT.ini in the same folder..

why the discrepancy?
 
tekmet said:
Under the "renderinfo" file (same folder as above) I noticed a setting for SLI...Mine was set to "no" so I changed to "yes" since I use SLI.

Will post improvement, but someone else should try.
Click to expand...

looks like the render info file is just a text file or atleast it is on mine.
 
sekira05 said:
none of those things are in my FalloutPerfs.ini... but they are in my FALLOUT.ini in the same folder..

why the discrepancy?
Click to expand...

In that case just try changing it in whichever ini has the settings. Both my Fallout.ini and FalloutPerfs.ini have these settings. However, FalloutPerfs.ini also had my Resolution settings, so thats why I chose it.
 
Grabbed this "tweak" from the Bethsoft forums.

Silverglade said:
The only thing I have been able to figure out is how to change the color of the HUD. You need to modify your FalloutPrefs.ini file and change uHUDColor. You'll need a hex calculator. The color is a decimal representation of the hex color in the following format RRGGBBxx. So:

FF0000xx will give you a red HUD
00FF00xx will give you a green HUD
0000FFxx will give you a blue HUD
Click to expand...
 
WhiteZero said:
Lets consolidate any tweaks for the game here.

One I can throw up is for people with dual/quad core processors.

Find Fallout 3'd ini files (either C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\Fallout3 in Vista or somewhere in Documents and Settings for XP users)

Open up FalloutPerfs.ini and search the document for "thread"
Any setting that has "=0" after it and the word "thread" in the name, change it to "=1". This should make better use of multi-processor systems.
Also, increase iNumHavokThreads to 5 or so.
Click to expand...

Tried this out and it did seem to improve performance! Turning off Vsync seems to have helped as well.
 
Thanks for the tips. Although I am wondering why they are leaving us to make ini tweaks when it's not that hard to programatically detect a multi-core cpu.
 
Anything to fix the mouse acceleration? (Forcing vsync off and reducing the number of frames rendered ahead doesn't cut it)
 
WhiteZero said:
Open up FalloutPerfs.ini and search the document for "thread"
Any setting that has "=0" after it and the word "thread" in the name, change it to "=1". This should make better use of multi-processor systems.
Also, increase iNumHavokThreads to 5 or so.
Click to expand...

HOLD ON a freaking second here.

Now, has anyone stopped to think about something like this before? This happens in most every game, someones finds a setting like this and logically changes it thinking it does something. But think about this:

Bethesda has been working on the game for years, do you really think they ACCIDENTLY forgot to set that 0 to a 1, and as a result only 1 core is taken advantage of?

And then once some random forum user says, set this to 1 and it'll go faster, Bethesda will be like: Oh crap, that's genius! why didn't we think of that?

I'm sorry but that is a PLACEBO setting, it's probably just a broken variable
 
Well, that's an interesting response to a potentially helpful post, damon.
 
Most likely those are deprecated settings. Developers will leave values like that in even if they're no longer used in order to avoid breaking other things by removing them.

As for mouse acceleration issues, try using D3DOverrider if you want to play with v-sync on. I'm using it and my mouse movement in game and in the menus is perfectly smooth and precise. D3DOverrider is included with Rivatuner, and I'm pretty sure you can find it separately as well.
 
Just backup your preferences file before screwing around with it and no harm is done if you mess it up.
 
The box does say multicore..One would think it should autodetect..Anyone confirm this??
 
It does support multi-core out of the box WITHOUT ini tweaking. I alt-tabbed to the task manager after walking around in Rivet City for a while and saw high usage on all four cores of my Q6600. I didn't have anything else running either.
 
Rivet City is one of the more CPU demanding areas, I think. Brings my game down to 35-40 FPS when viewing it from the Wasteland.
 
Guys I've been modding Morrowind & Oblivion ( heavily ) for years now.


One thing I have learned when it comes to Bethesda's INI's.

Do not use the threaded INI tweaks. If you want proof head over to the Bethesda Oblivion hardware forums. The tweak guide has been wrong for a long time and has screwed over many users. I am not saying its all bad but if you are going to tweak the threads, havok, etc settings make sure you enabled them one at a time and test to make sure it is helping and or stable. I've seen people twist themselves around trying to tweak / stabilize Oblivion for a year without success simply because they enable everything in the INI.

In fact one of the bigger breakthroughs recently was forcing Oblivion to use only one core ( improved stability and stuttering )

I currently have Fallout 3 forced to use one core as well and have had no issues. I actually don't know if this is wise with FO3 but it seems to work without issue.

I was trying to troubleshoot Crossfire not working after waiting, sleeping, or barter with a wandering merchant. Other than that no crashes and locked at 60 fps 8x AA 15x AF ( except in heavy fights )
 
Yeah, I had to load up the backup INI. Fallout didn't want to close correctly after the tweaks. Had to resort to killing the process.
 
Can anyone else confirm the 4 core utilization? This will please me greatly and will justify my Q6600 purchase!
 
fallout3nexus.com is already up and running. Just waiting for some content now.
 
1erCru said:
In fact one of the bigger breakthroughs recently was forcing Oblivion to use only one core ( improved stability and stuttering )

I currently have Fallout 3 forced to use one core as well and have had no issues. I actually don't know if this is wise with FO3 but it seems to work without issue.
Click to expand...

How are you forcing it to use just 1 core? Are you just alt+tabbing the game and setting the game exe affinity to 1 core in task manager or is this some .ini tweak?
 
In Oblivion yes I set 1 core affinity. I also set ithreads to 1 in the Oblivion INI.

In Fallout 3 I am just messing around and seeing which yields the best results.
 
1erCru said:
Guys I've been modding Morrowind & Oblivion ( heavily ) for years now.


One thing I have learned when it comes to Bethesda's INI's.

Do not use the threaded INI tweaks. If you want proof head over to the Bethesda Oblivion hardware forums. The tweak guide has been wrong for a long time and has screwed over many users. I am not saying its all bad but if you are going to tweak the threads, havok, etc settings make sure you enabled them one at a time and test to make sure it is helping and or stable. I've seen people twist themselves around trying to tweak / stabilize Oblivion for a year without success simply because they enable everything in the INI.

In fact one of the bigger breakthroughs recently was forcing Oblivion to use only one core ( improved stability and stuttering )

I currently have Fallout 3 forced to use one core as well and have had no issues. I actually don't know if this is wise with FO3 but it seems to work without issue.

I was trying to troubleshoot Crossfire not working after waiting, sleeping, or barter with a wandering merchant. Other than that no crashes and locked at 60 fps 8x AA 15x AF ( except in heavy fights )
Click to expand...

Wow, I just reset the threading stuff back to their default values and almost all of my stuttering went away.
 
1erCru said:
Guys I've been modding Morrowind & Oblivion ( heavily ) for years now.


One thing I have learned when it comes to Bethesda's INI's.

Do not use the threaded INI tweaks. If you want proof head over to the Bethesda Oblivion hardware forums. The tweak guide has been wrong for a long time and has screwed over many users. I am not saying its all bad but if you are going to tweak the threads, havok, etc settings make sure you enabled them one at a time and test to make sure it is helping and or stable. I've seen people twist themselves around trying to tweak / stabilize Oblivion for a year without success simply because they enable everything in the INI.

In fact one of the bigger breakthroughs recently was forcing Oblivion to use only one core ( improved stability and stuttering )

I currently have Fallout 3 forced to use one core as well and have had no issues. I actually don't know if this is wise with FO3 but it seems to work without issue.

I was trying to troubleshoot Crossfire not working after waiting, sleeping, or barter with a wandering merchant. Other than that no crashes and locked at 60 fps 8x AA 15x AF ( except in heavy fights )
Click to expand...
This is very interesting, as I posted that I would try multicore vs. single.

I set affinity in taskmanage. to core 0 and then took a lengthy stroll around the wasteland.

I noticed on avg. a 5 fps drop in tough spots (that is less than 8% for me) using single core vs. multi.

Sounds like all these devs saying they are developing for mulit are just pulling us along in a cart and singing songs.

That's the same thing that happened with another game famously developed for mulit...Crysis.
 
I have been running coretemp when fallout 3 has been running, and truthfully the game does not appear to be CPU bottlenecked at all. I see the temps and the load through my G15 keyboard...

I have an AMD 3800 x2 runing at 2.6ghz and neither cores have been close to max reguardless of what happens in a fire fight, or running outside in the world.

At 16x12 with 4x aa, and a 4850, outside perforance appears to be smooth also, although i might be missing lower frame rates...
 
I noticed that there are quite a lot of optimized texture packs on Fallout 3 Nexus. What is the best combined pack to get?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top