Micro-stuttering in Fallout: New Vegas. Assistance needed!
Micro-stuttering in Fallout: New Vegas. Assistance needed!
I'm currently playing Fallout: New Vegas (GOG) and still struggle with micro stuttering. I've tried adjusting the frame rate using Nvidia Inspector and RTSS, used triple buffering with Vsync, and even set pre-rendered frames to three times the normal rate. The improvement was minimal and the problem persists. Is this a built-in issue of the game or am I making a mistake?
Tried several mods and finally got stable performance. Had issues with NV, but now it works well. Faced more problems with Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Yes, if in doubt always use mods! And if not, you should still use them, hehe! Though I'm genuinely interested, how would you characterize this micro stuttering? What precisely counts as such?
This situation shows an incompatibility between the video card and the motherboard as detected by the Gamebryo engine. For instance, when I owned all my Gamebryo titles on a GTX 970, I moved the card to another system with the same motherboard but newer revisions and no micro stutter occurred. Switching to a 980 and later a 980 ti eliminated any stutter. However, when I upgraded to a GTX 1080, the micro stutter reappeared, so I opted for the 980 ti for Fallout 4, Skyrim SE, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Fallout 3, and Oblivion. The GTX 1080 ti was the final GPU I used on that board without any stutter.
I’m fortunate to have avoided micro stutter now, but I’m aware it could reappear with any future motherboard or GPU upgrade.
The stutter in these games can stem from three factors:
- Hard drive issues (resolved using 10,000 rpm WD Raptors).
- VRAM swapping (ENB was used to fix).
- "Large address aware" settings on older 32-bit titles like NV.
CPU performance varies: drops were in the teens with a dual-core e8400 and in the twenties with a Q9550. With an i7 2600k, they reached the 30s but less often, so no stutter was present. Now, using an i7 8086k at 5GHz, drops are in the 60s, making stutter impossible at 4k 60Hz.
The OP is likely experiencing CPU-related drops. The lowest core model they’re using for NV probably caused the issue. Only after upgrading to a Q9550 did smooth gameplay return, especially in Oblivion and Fallout 3. Using a dual-core e8400 on NV would have been problematic.