Fallout 4 Guide: Maximizing Performance and Getting a High Refresh Rate Experience

PRP dev here, adding a footnote regarding Corvega and the Financial District.
Both areas have a known bug where the draw call count is about 3K higher (at least on my aging i7-6700K/GTX 1080 dev box) than it should be due to accidental tagging of specific references like the Corvega building itself, and as a result, the meshes aren't precombined properly.
I have a lite version that fixes those two areas and the invisible wall issue outside the Boston Airport for those that need a lighter touch.
As it's probably never going to be finished, bug reports welcome and encouraged.

Brother thank you so much. That shadow boost mod just solved all my problems. you are the only person I've seen mention it after searching for fps solutions for a very long time. Much love

Thank you so much!
I was having serious frame issues to the point of the game being almost unplayable, but getting the first three mods and tweaking my settings fixed it right up!

I really like your content I'm a performance enthusiast in games and appreciate the work you put into making this video

Your channel is an absolute gem

Thanks for making this one, getting more and more ready to play Fallout 4 :- )

Really nice selection of mods. Helped out allot.

Didn't know I missed a few performance upgrades mods in the nexus. Thx for making this video m8. Also for the next video request, do a player house mod battle

Thank you for the guide! It was very helpful!

I’ve been waiting for this☕️☕️☕️

This video is incredibly informative and helpful. Thank you man ❤

thanks for testing them all. knowing which are pointless reduces my mod list

I dunno, with how bad Starfield turned out to be, i know I'll still be playing FO4 for a while. Hope you carry on making FO4 videos!

I would say "there be dragons" with relying on the High FPS Physics Fix to run at high refresh rates. You will find broken quests (Bobbi's dig will be one of them as Sonya's script will break, I think kiddie kingdom in Nuka World gets broken too as Oswalds script will break) and some physics still goes crazy, so be careful will it. Personally I use the mod just to unlock the loading screens since it massively improves the load times, but as for the ingame, it's honestly safer to keep it at 60 for now. Hopefully the upcoming Fallout 4 update Bethesda is doing will allow for a safe unlocked framerate.

Excellent video, thank you!

Thanks for making this video. I played starfield and then just wanted to play fallout 4 modded instead and this helps lol

Thank you for doing this video, and especially for bringing Shadow Boost to my attention. I run FO4 heavily modded at 1440X3440 ultra settings on a 4070ti and have generally great performance 120+ FPS, but with some areas where the frame rate would drop below 40 FPS with some terrible screen smearing of certain objects. Following your guide, and especially Shadow Boost, those lows are now 70+ with no loss of visual quality and no more smearing. And that's without resorting to upscaling. Cudos.

Nice video! I pretty much have all of these downloaded for the most part except the upscaler. Just wanted to say there is a god rays fix bat file mod. Cheers.

Thx man now i don't need another vids about performance u and this video is all what i need damn i watched alot of vids for this they did nothing noticeable.
If mods from this vid didn't help me improve fps in my game than nothing will

great guide

Have you looked at the GOG version of the game?
It might have some updated bloat removal or tweaks that the Steam version doesn't. Being DRM free 'n all.
One thing I've noticed is that the 'Weapon Debris' setting is absent from the Launcher.

bro this took literally 70% load off my gpu thank u bro i have rtx 3070 and ryzen 7 5800x3D, i was running 60fps with like 15% cpu and 99% gpu, pushing 80 Celsius constantly, now im like 10% and 25% on 60 fps straight up chilling like 60 Celsius your a life saver

Awesome guide helped me boost my FPS to where I needed it. Though, after adding the mods in Mod Organizer 2, it tanked my frames to 15-20 fps. In my case, I think the Fallout 4 Script Extender was causing this. I gave my PC a full reset and now everything is working perfectly.

I was going to ask for a Starfield optimisation settings but i remember that i actually just need to buy a new computer, thanks Todd.

Thanks buddy great video

Finally someone that knows what he's talking about.
Not like 99% of fallout community recommending usless tweaks that aren't even used by the engine, but they thought they know what the tweak does because the name sounds familiar to them[

Fallout 4 Upscaler didn't improve my game at all, but probably because of that CPU limit you were talking about (my gaming PC is like 7 years old at this point). Definitely going to give that Previsibines Repair Pack a try though; Boston Fixes doesn't seem to help me, and that area only runs about 30 FPS for me, sometimes with crashes. Going to give those bug fix mods a try too.
I have almost 300 mods installed over the coarse of like a month now, and it never ceases to amaze me at how many useful mods I can still not know about.

Feels like i learned how to optimze a lot, even XBOX players have a ton of options here

The way Fallout 4 run today im not surprise with the perfomance of Starfield.

But can this make it so that Downtown Boston is at least 30 fps so that that Raider camp in the broken highway next to Goodneighbor isn't blowing up my computer?

So for those wondering what the Fallout Priority mod is for, its for those of us who play in windows borderless. As with most systems when you play in anything that's borderless, windows does not set the game as a high priority (like in fullscreen) So it essentially increases the fps of Borderless from say 38, to 120, which is obviously a massive difference!
Why do you want to play in borderless? well for me in particular I like to watch fallout lore videos or tutorials on certain sections or playthroughs while playing and tabbing out can sometimes crash the game, so borderless is the best way to just quickly tab out and pause or play a video.

i indeed got a little fps boost with the Priority mod!
I use a i5 4670k @ 4,2 ghz and a GTX 970
using this mod + FAR + Buffout + Shadow Boost + vivid fallout + insignificant object remover and Beth.ini settings the game runs way smoother with less stutter and has sometimes over 60fps in areas where i got around 42fps before.
it really helps a ton.. the difference of 42 fps and over 60 fps is insane!

We need an updated version of this vid now w/ the next gen update! 😵‍💫

Im curious about something.
Is the same desktop setup that you use to run FO4 smoothly enough to play Starfield or will I need an upgrade?

The video I didn't know I needed. 😅

thanks so much for this

Here's hoping the "next-gen update" pulls a skyrim se level optimization over the initial release.

Cake back to drop a like. My guy, thank you. I thought my machine was a toaster.....

It is unfortunate this video came out a week or two before Optimax XD

Thanks man!!!! fak took me years to fix this game into wide screen at 100fps..... smh THANK YOU SIR.

I'm not sure if this will help on my desktop since I have about 800 mods installed but no harm in trying, I have some legacy hardware that runs Fallout just fine at high/ultra 1080p and 60fps thought a little performance improvement might help here and there. Also, do you know if these mods would make Fallout 4 use more than 4GB of VRAM at 1080p, most search results I read say that vanilla F4 just utilizes 4GB for all picture sizes but can't help but wonder if that's true or not.

Thanks!

Very cool, but doesn't work for me at all. This is because my PC, I got for free. It was from some Chicago College that was getting rid of their old PC's and getting new ones. It won't even run Fallout 3, but does run a mildly modded Fallout New Vegas, and mildly modded Elder Scrolls Oblivion decently.

with major updates, waiting for your new guide on PC performance

I think I love you.. have shared as much as I can.

And the update broke this!

I usually cut out God rays and lens flares. I just think there a bit much in general in this game. Then again if I can lock in at 60 and enjoy a largely crash free game then I'd be happy.
Then again I'm the type who uses 1 weather mod, Skyland AIO, and RW2 in slyrim and am more than happy with that on console. But some of this is still very useful to know.

are there any plans to do a video on bug fixing mods?

Do you have a modding setup guide?

I'm running a potato among potatoes - an Xbox One. Would you have any recommended modlists to aid a console cousin in upping his FPS game? 👍👍

hey can someone help everytime i try to open up the shadow boost menu or theup scaler nothing shows

This is all fine and dandy but the biggest issue by far is texture pop out and pop in with LOD textures not despawning causing clipping like everywhere you look especially in a virtibird. Even fresh installs of FO4 with no mods does this.

I love the spike of FO4 players awaiting Starfield, myself included. Never played FO4 until recently and I'm actually disappointed in myself for not playing it sooner!

I get like 40-60fps, but then again I managed to get it to work on Linux.

the soon upcoming update said something like maybe improve graphic look or something so who knows it can be fix ... eventually cuz todd

spent a lot of time trying to fix my graphics, turned out I had the perception bug with perception at -5 lol

good video

with the high fps physics mod, my loading screen get very buggy only properly loading if i give a quick alt tab

When you are using the upscaler, how do you handle the resolution settings exactly? Should I set it to 1080P in the launcher if I wanna run 1440P or should I keep it at 1440p?

@PancuroniumB At the risk of asking a 'stupid' question. Could you please list the steps to install Shadow Boost? I have scoured the web for a up-to-date guide and found none. Also, the only instruction on the Nexus page for the mod, if you can call it that is: "Install in the "data" folder of the game..." it says you can also use vortex/mo2, but I'd like to believe it's easy enough to install manually. I've already installed F4SE and the address library for F4SE Plugins with no issues. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I'm getting 220-240 FPS 😁

Really useful video, a lot of very useful information. However, I think your clearly very anti-Nvidia stance clouded your bit about the weapon debris settings. Currently Im running the game on a RTX 3070 at 1440 with weapon debris on ultra as well as Fallout 4 HD Overhaul 2k textures, NAC X, and Ultra Interior/Exterior Lighting. Steady 60 fps, only one CTD in 60 hours. (Which was a script error caused by a settlement mod).
Still, Nvidia bashing aside, very good video and a great resource. I enjoyed watching!

14:06 Fuck... Thank god we have modders haha ! I didn't see that one coming! it had me laughing loud.
I am a returned player after 4 years, and have only played 1 hour so far, because I found the game very laggy, and I found your video.
EDIT:
My low-end CPU and high-end GPU can now run the game on ultra setting with 60 fps and above. THANK YOU SO MUCH

I always found FAR is just as stuttery as vanilla and I found that hein34's newest vivid fallout lod textures are a lot better. Not saying FAR is bad or anything I just found vivid fallout better for my experience.

Even for xbox players. Thank you

I dont know if i had something set up very wrong but shadow boost screwed my whole system and modlist. Wrecked my ini. Im better off without it due to manual ini changes, manually selecting load orders. Im in a massive discord with shadowofthewind hes a legendary genius and he give tips and tricks and pointers to understand modding and precombines. My fallout 4 would not work if it wasnt for him. He does recommend shadow boost if set up right but ive tweaked my inis to compensate a little for not having that feature

Is it possible for you to enable these Mods whilst retaining the achievements on Steam? I currently have achievements that I have not unlocked and am very well capable of achieving far more than 60 FPS. Due to a plethora of bugs and issues regarding my Radeon GPU and chill framerate capping issues, I am seriously considering enabling the mods that you recommended. I am simply lost on whether it is worth it if I am not able to complete achievements. If there is a mod that allows be to keep these vanilla friendly patch fix mods on top of the ability to keep achievements using another mod add on, could you perhaps make a video on it or link a tutorial? Thank You.

is there any way to fix the pop in at longer distances? its so bad at times it just takes me out of the experience.

@Pancuronium Do any of these mods stop you from being able to get acheivements on Steam?

Is there a load order that I should follow?

Can someone help. I want to install the high fps physics fix mod. I don't know anything about modding. I've extracted the script extender into the correct folder and that seems to work but I now want to know exactly where to extract the high fps physics mod for it to work. It doesn't seem to specify exactly where to do it anywhere on the page. Can someone tell me?

At 1440p ultra settings the game only uses 9 percent of my CPU and 40 percent of my GPU and yet I get tons of frame drops and screen tearing, 12th gen i3 and an RTX 2080 Super with 32 GBs of Corsair Vengeance 3600mhz DDR4 RAM

"Ngreedia"
Sound about right.
😂

08:24 ... wait what was that about what with the sound off?

I don't understand how to install the high fps physics fix mod, idk what I'm doing wrong is there any videos on it?

I used some of the mods and now my game feels low gravity, things fall a little too slow and the character jumps too high too. I changed the jump max height to the default by command but everything else stays low gravity. Any suggestions?

ye.. but in vr, its a different beast. 4k with its 3840 × 2160 sounds like much, but thats not the case with vr.
even on "medium" resolution headset like the quest 3, its 2x 2064 + 2208, so 4128x2208px panel resolution. and that just the display hardware. in order to render the image for the headset, so that distortions etc arent visible, steam vr renders higher, by factor 1.4. meaning 4128 x 1.4 = thats 5780 x 3091 overall resolution that gpu has to push. and some headset use 2880x2800 displays. vr, can chef hardware like its nothing and vram can never be enough. hell, you can get a 4090 to sweat in skyrim with mods and have its vram full

I get screen pulsing with high fps physics fix

Haven't you tried Ultra Quality God Rays Performance Fix?
And one more thing, can someone explain to me why it's so important to hit a million FPS? Why isn't 40, for example, enough for FO4?

If you use Nexus, you could make a collection :D

Is the high fps mod gone? I can’t find it all
My character is moving so god damn fast he’s like sonic it was playing fine yesterday and now he’s super fast

W video dood

If you have the fallout community patch are these needed?

Dude you saved me 15 bucks (FO4 price), i cant stand 60fps,
finally i can get 120FPS like every other game on the planet!!!!

Brother Raisin you metal mofo. No pain no gain man. Also, doctor? Don't you have any super glue on hand? 🤘🏴‍☠️

My problem is I'm only using 25 percent of my resources to get 45 fps

It's a nearly 20 minute long video, but it doesn't show how to install the High FPS Physics Fix mod after downloading it. Really very little help.

I'm getting like 140fps on ultra settings with enb and texture mods and a bunch of other mods..running a 3060ti, is this normal? Also when I turn vsync on its even faster, I have a 144hz monitor

After all my attempts, I still get higher fps on cyberpunk.

i cant seem to get shadow boost to work for me whatsoever

this game.. you just need a Nasa computer thats all...

i press the end key and nothing happens

Will these mods disable steam achievements?

PRP + VULKAN = New world for AMD users.

What do you think "Shadow Boost" FO4 or "FPS dynamic shadows - Shadow Boost"

I downloaded some of these mods, started up a new game - now the vault door does not unlock :P

Long loading times fix sure make game load faster but after using it two days i uninstalled it because it make game crash more often than it did before. Another thing was it make brown face bug happend way too often. So sure it make loading time faster but with all other problems it brings i dont see reason to use it.

Guys if you want to buy new pc in the mid range and you don't care about rtx or dlss just get rx 6700 xt/ rx 6750 xt 12gb VRAM instead of rtx 4060 because VRAM in heavy game it really helps with the texture especially at 4k
Edit:and rx 6800 has 16gb and it can reach 400$ sometimes brand new that is only if you don't care about rtx or dlss

1. Do not use godrays, that's it. 9 years on but they are still not worth it. Funny I could actually play with them on back in the day because I was only running 1080p 60fps and didn't about GPU usage. I'm running 4k 120hz with a 3080 which is several times more power than the r9 290x I had when this game came out, but now I'm at high refresh and a much higher resolution I still see every frame of performance hit. Stable 120fps with them on vs constant drops the 90s with them even on low, no thanks. *Edit* ... but you reminded me of the upscaler mod, last time I tried I just got weird artifacting straight away. Maybe I will have better luck this time and it might let me try godrays again.

the game feels like it's running on x2 speed, everything feels fast forward on high fps, how to fix this