Ok, I've been playing New Vegas on PC since approx. 2012. Like a lot of folks, I've never had much luck with performance. I've routinely been jealous of the visual setups I see with people using the highest resolution texture replacements and ENBs.

Six months or so ago, I decided I wanted to get back into the Mojave so I splurged a bit. I picked up a desktop with the following specs...

i7-6700, 3.4 GHz
16 GB RAM
NVIDIA GTX 1070, 8GB VRAM
250 GB SSD, 2 TB HD (The game runs from the SSD)

And to top it off, I picked up a 32 inch 4k monitor.

You would think that this is enough to overpower the game. Nope. Even using the performance friendly texture replacers I get stuttering. And that's with using NVAC, NVSR, and going through every optimization tutorial I could find for the game.

So, I am left with the thought that it may be the way my hardware is configured. I'm pretty unwashed in the ways of the Windows PC (Running Windows 10 here) and was wondering if some of you with more experience in the area could either instruct or direct me to tutorials on getting the most out of the hardware.

Thanks in advance!

Can you post your modlist so we can check if one or more mods are causing this? And if you don't already use the 4gb patch you should install it immediatly as it will improve the performance of New Vegas a lot. Do you experience these performance issues with any enb, only some or even without them?

Good idea. I'll post it tonight when I get to my desktop.

The 4gb patcher/launcher is a good call. I'm currently running the DRM free FNV from GoG, and it is already large address aware, so the 4gb launcher should be unnecessary.

However, I'm pretty sure when I used to play from Steam and used the 4gb launcher, I had better results, even with inferior hardware.

I have pretty inconsistent results regarding my game's performance with different enbs.
I have all of the major texture packs on the highest quality and run most enbs at around 60fps (note that my system is far weaker than yours, spare the processor) but some enb's just kill my performance completly, without even offering better quality. So you might want to experiment with different enbs that suit your taste and see if that helps a bit (try ENBboost if you haven't already). But what you shouldn't forget: New Vegas' engine was never known to be exactly stable or overly performant, the more mods and textures you install the worse it gets. So keeping the modlist nice and short can also help improving performance.

Quote :

FalloutNV.esm
DeadMoney.esm
HonestHearts.esm
OldWorldBlues.esm
LonesomeRoad.esm
GunRunnersArsenal.esm
ClassicPack.esm
MercenaryPack.esm
TribalPack.esm
CaravanPack.esm
Fallout3.esm
Anchorage.esm
ThePitt.esm
BrokenSteel.esm
PointLookout.esm
Zeta.esm
TaleOfTwoWastelands.esm
TTWFixes.esm
SomeguySeries.esm
TTWInteriors_Core.esm
NewVegasUncut.esm
NewVegasUncut - TTW.esm
ZionTrail.esm
TTWInteriorsProject_Combo.esm
3DNPC_FNV.esm
3DNPC_FNVGeneric.esm
3DNPC_BlueNote.esm
Kentbury Way.esm
RiversideCafe_TTW.esm
GRARG.esm
TTWInt_FollowerGoHome.esm
NewVegasUncut - TTWInteriors.esm
KhanInitiation.esp
NVWillow.esm
AWOPDeadMoney.esm
JIP Companions Command & Control.esp
JIP Realistic Weapon Overheating.esp
YUP - Gameplay Tweaks.esp
YUP - Gameplay Tweaks - TTW.esp
Unofficial Patch Plus.esp
JSawyer Ultimate.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - YGT.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - TTW.esp
JSawyer Ultimate - TTW Interiors Patch.esp
Distributed Necklaces and Chains.esp
Subtle PA Footsteps.esp
PowerArmorSize.esp
TTW_AnchorageCustomization.esp
TTW_NoKarmaDCFollowers.esp
ttw_wildwasteland.esp
TTWOptions.esp
JIP Improved Recipe Menu.esp
JokerineUsableFurniture-TTW.esp
EVE FNV - ALL DLC.esp
BartonThornTrigger.esp
The Mod Configuration Menu.esp
BLEED.esp
ZionTrail-NV.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink.esp
Delay DLC - TTW.esp
JokerineTTWGrandmaSparkleShack.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - TTWInteriors Combo Patch.esp
Ragdolls.esp
Better Burned Man.esp
TTW_Difficult_Journey.esp
ADAM - MAIN.esp
ADAM - HH.esp
ADAM - LR.esp
ADAM - NCR Patrol Armour.esp
ADAM - Nemesis Armours.esp
ADAM - Rangers on Patrol.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - TTWInteriors Core Patch.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - Willow Patch.esp
NewVegasBounties.esp
NewVegasUncut - New Vegas Bounties.esp
NewVegasKiller.esp
NewVegasUncut - NewVegasKiller.esp
NewVegasBountiesII.esp
NewVegasUncut - New Vegas Bounties II.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - NVB2 Patch.esp
TheInheritance.esp
NewVegasUncut - Inheritance.esp
Russell.esp
NewVegasUncut - Russell.esp
CheckpointGary.esp
KingOfTheRing.esp
NewVegasUncut - Someguy Series.esp
NorthRoad.esp
bzArmour.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - 3DNPC Patch.esp
Player Animations - Food & Drink - 3DNPC BlueNote Patch.esp
NoRespawnEnemies.esp
Ghost Variants Safe.esp
RCSS.esp
NCRTrooperOverhaul.esp
RealSmokes.esp
Animated Chems.esp
WeaponMods.esp
SnowGlobePerks.esp
SaveCass.esp
IMPACT.esp
TTWVaultSuitHotfix.esp
tmzLODadditions.esp
TTWLODGen.esp
MergePatch.esp
pipboy2500_edisleado.esp
DYNAVISION 3.esp
TTW Realistic Wasteland Lighting.esp
RWL - Brighter Nights.esp

109 plugins

Ok, there it is... Nothing too out of the ordinary. Also, I subbed Dynavision for an ENB and am currently just using ENBoost. However, I am not sure I have a totally clean copy of ENBoost because as I recall, just regular ENBoost is not supposed to interfere with IMODs, and when I install it, it does.

The texture replacers I am using are NMC's performance pack for most everything and the Weapon Retex project from Millennia. I am also using Breeze for males and Type 3 for females.

If i remember correctly i had some problems with TTW and mods that didn't had a patch for it. Maybe try a new game without TTW (if it is not necessary to you) and see if that helps. Additionally remove the enb you are using now completly and do a clean install of it, and/or try different enbs and see if that changes anything. I am not an expert in terms of modding but it seems to me that you are using quite some mods with scripting. Too many mods that are script intensive can have a negative impact on the performance as well.

I stumbled across this thread on another site...

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/308862-multiple-cores/

I had made the multiple threads change previously, but I wasn't aware of how to get the engine to make better use of multiple cores. Additionally, even with the engine officially being large address space aware, it still wasn't using more than 500-600 MB of memory. Changing that preload setting upped the amount of RAM New Vegas was actively using. I can already notice a difference, even in an open freeside during combat.

But, there is always room for improvement. Your comments on load order are helpful. I _do_ have a lot of scripted mods. I know I've been wanting to cut KhanInitiation.esp from my load order, if for no other reason than it irks me to have an esm with an esp extension.

I've also been considering removing the JSawyer mod. I'm using the ultimate edition so it relies entirely on scripts to implement the changes. However, I know the guy that wrote those scripts and I know his code is as clean as you can get, so I don't think that mod is responsible for a major contribution to script-jam. I'm just not a big fan of JSawyers mods to the game and have used the MCM to disable most of them. No point in keeping a mod if you have it 99% disabled no matter how expertly crafted it is.

I'm also going to do a clean enb install. I just want to use enboost so that should help.

Lastly, I want to ditch dynavision and RWL. I know I'm in the minority, but I prefer vanilla lighting. I tried ditching them, but I got the whiteout bug that RWL used to be plagued by. Essentially, at noon game time, the screen gradually turns white.

I tried disabling dynavision. No whiteout. I disabled RWL. Whiteout. How am I getting a bug that a mod notoriously caused when I disabled the mod?

Maybe you have your cores parked ? You could check to see if they are in the Resource Monitor.

That was the case for me sometime in the past but I'm using Win 7 and I don't know if Win 10 does the same things.

For the whiteout bug, check if you have mods that rely on RWL, if so disable them as well. That could fix it. As a side note, ENBs are quite tricky to set up with lighting and weather mods so make sure they are compatible.

Ok, I made some changes. I'm now getting a solid 60 in the exterior worldspace and 60 in the interiors I have tried. I do drop down to 45 at times in Freeside, but I am using Freeside Open. At the strip I'm dropping down to 35 and staying steadily in the mid 30s throughout the area. Currently, I can live with that, but I am going to do some further testing.

What all I did for posterity:

I disabled the Khan Initiation mod. It was a well designed quest, and I appreciate that it was voiced, but the sound quality was sub par. I also didn't have a strong desire to re do it in a future playthrough, so I tossed it. I also disabled the JSawyer mods. They are very well done mods, but I wasn't terribly into the changes to settings that I have grown used to over the last seven years. This may have freed up some scripting overhead.

I also ditched RWL and Dynavision. Perfectly good mods, but it seems like I needed to fuss with Dynavision constantly to adjust it to every environment. I was getting the whiteout bug, but I replaced it with Hitman's ENB and weather mod. No more whiteout bug, and the game looks amazing.

Here are the changes that I think have really made a difference.

To take advantage of my quad core system with 16 GB RAM, I did the following changes in the Big 3 ini files:

bUseThreadedAI=1
iNumHavokThreads=4
iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600

Also, per the suggestion from XxAKINCIxX, I looked into the parking issue.

I downloaded this: CPU Parking Manager

It gives a display of CPU usage and enables you to park and unpark cores on the fly without manually editing registry, which can be tedious.

It really is playing much better already. I am going to keep tinkering away to try and get more out of it, but it is pretty solid as is.

Thanks everyone!