Fallout: New Vegas - Version Face-Off

[Dhruin]

Eurogamer has one of their Face-Off articles comparing and testing the different versions of Fallout: New Vegas. On the whole, the X360 seems to have the goods on the PS3 version and the PC version is best, although they think it needs a lot of tweaking to get it to run well (not my personal experience). A snip on the PC version:

As the technology that powers the game is basically so ancient, you won't need a particularly powerful PC to run it. A dual-core CPU along with something along the lines of a 9800GT should serve you well. However, if you do buy the PC game, you should expect to find yourself consulting enthusiast sites to get the game running decently on your setup.
Two years ago, we played Fallout 3 on a 2.4GHz Q6600 quad-core system with 2GB RAM and a 512MB NVIDIA 8800GT. Our New Vegas rig was a 3.33GHz overclocked i7 working in combination with the awesome might of an NVIDIA GTX480 and utilising 3GB RAM. And performance wasn't much better. It seems that the Gamebryo tech that powers both Oblivion and Fallout 3/New Vegas hasn't really evolved much over the years, and manually fiddling about with the game's .ini files is the only way to iron out performance kinks and get a smooth gameplay experience.

More information.

 

[hellboy1976]

My experience is that Fallout New Vegas runs the same on my 3 year old PC as Fallout 3 did 2 years ago. No tweaking required, though it does have 4GB more RAM these days.

 

[chautemoc]

Just needed the d3d9 fix is all. Maybe they got it to the same level without using it.

There is a mod to make it use 4GB of ram, but it didn't do anything for me: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35262

 

[spiraling69]

Just needed the d3d9 fix is all. Maybe they got it to the same level without using it.

There is a mod to make it use 4GB of ram, but it didn't do anything for me: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35262

Its looking like its hit and miss, for some the game runs smoothly and others its horrible. Im running an i7920 / 64bit Vista with 9GB RAM and a HD 5870 and must be getting well over 60FPS as its running silky smooth and thats without the d3d fix.

One problem I am having though is my card seems to be crashing more than usual. I'm getting the vertical grey/green lines lock-up and need to restart the system. This seems to be an ATI issue, but I'm noticing it even more with New Vegas… Nothing is perfect.

 

[Badesumofu]

I am happy with the PS3 version. I'm used to lack of AA, that's pretty standard on PS3. It has only crashed twice in 23 hours of play. Both times were after I had been playing 5 hours straight or more. Given some of the nightmares a few are having with the XBOX version, I'm not so sure it should be considered better than PS3 at this point.

 

[Zephyr]

I was running FO3 with my home-built, 8-year-old PC. It's a P4 2.4, XP Pro, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1650 Pro. Not the best looking graphics-wise, but it played well with a few tweaks and ran a bunch of Mods smoothly.

FO-NV -- I wonder...

 

[skavenhorde]

The only problem I had was with my stupid Nvidia card. It seems Nvidia was not a good choice since I can't play NWN 2 with it either. Love the 3d, hate the fact I keep getting problems with the drivers.

Anyways, after I put in that d3d9 fix it worked perfectly. Still only 2 crashes in (I believe) 30 hours of play.

 

[booboo]

I also have an Nvidia card (GTX480) and with latest drivers it runs smoothly with everything maxed at 1600x1200. I did create a driver profile for the game though, just to change the GPU power management (to "prefer max performance") to force the card to actually do some work! Otherwise there was occasional stuttering. Apparently the card was under utilized unless I made this change - so still some issues. BUT have not had 1 crash - except for the launcher crashing on start-up (a Steam issue, which I subsequently worked around). I can play the game for hours and it works fine - I have recently upgraded re-installed through, so this may mean things are more stable for me?

 

[JDR13]

Exactly what problems are you having skavenhorde? What OS?

I've yet to encounter a single issue with any game since I got my GTX 470.

 

[JemyM]

I think they should have made it possible to remap the hotkeys. I have overridden the prefs so that;
keyboard SPACE = hotkey 8 (stimpack)
keyboard INS (mapped to one of the thumb buttons on my G500) = Ammo Swap
keyboard 1 = hotkey 1 (firearm)
keyboard 2 = hotkey 3 (melee)
keyboard 3 = hotkey 4
keyboard 4 = hotkey 5
keyboard 5 = hotkey 6
keyboard 6 = hotkey 7

 

[skavenhorde]

Exactly what problems are you having skavenhorde? What OS?

I've yet to encounter a single issue with any game since I got my GTX 470.

GTX 470? Nice card. How much did that cost you? Mine is GTX 275 running on win 7 64. It was mid-range last Christmas. Couldn't find anything more powerful anywhere. Granted, I only went to a few stores, but all the real powerful cards were ATI. Not exactly sure why. I wasn't going to buy ATI since I needed an Nvidia card for the 3D Vision. Plus, I always bought Nvidia and never had any real issues.

This time around though I'm getting a few odd things going on. Like with Fallout:NV if there are too many NPCs attacking me the game would slow down to a crawl. I read it had something to do with the facial program. Seems like it uses the CPU instead of the graphics card. Not sure if that's true or not, but typing in "temo" in the console gets rid of the facial expression which helped a lot. Not enough though. I had to get that D3D9 fix. Now it runs as smooth as butter.

The NWN2 problem is annoying. I have to load old drivers if I want to play that game because the newer ones mess with the graphics.

 

[JDR13]

Interesting… I have NWN2, but it's not installed. If you want, I'll install it later to see if I have any of those glitches on my system.

I have a dual-boot setup with XP 32 bit and Win 7 64 bit. I'm guessing I should probably install that one on XP…

 

[skavenhorde]

Not sure it would matter which one you used. I asked for help awhile ago when I tried to play it and they told me to roll back my drivers. Can't remember to which version.

I just downloaded the latest drivers so maybe, just maybe, they got around to fixing it. I highly doubt it though. I think they just released the new drivers to optimize Fallout: New Vegas.

 

[darkling]

Nvidia fixed the problem with NWN and NWN2 a few driver versions ago, actually. They're slow, but they did do it.

Its looking like its hit and miss, for some the game runs smoothly and others its horrible. Im running an i7920 / 64bit Vista with 9GB RAM and a HD 5870 and must be getting well over 60FPS as its running silky smooth and thats without the d3d fix.

One problem I am having though is my card seems to be crashing more than usual. I'm getting the vertical grey/green lines lock-up and need to restart the system. This seems to be an ATI issue, but I'm noticing it even more with New Vegas… Nothing is perfect.

Use the d3dgen app for ATI cards here http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34970 to generate a DLL with your correct graphics card generation listed. I did it last night and will point out it does more than just improve performance. I didn't crash last night while playing at all (that could have been luck, though), it clears up alot of weirdness with the AA settings and generally makes the game look better while not affecting performance negatively. Check the screenshot in the link to see what I mean.

 

[booboo]

hm. I have noticed some performance issues (GTX480+i7 930) in a certain part of the New Vegas (Freetown?) - I walked into one street (with about a dozen people lounging about) and the frame rate dropped by about 50%. I think that may be related to handling AI (CPU) rather than pushing through geometry though (I've been in other places with much more geometry and it was very smooth). I have everything maxed out and have not tweaked any INI files yet. Has anyone else noticed heavy slowdown when there are many NPC's around at the the same time? I mean unique individuals, not soldiers etc who are probably sharing a single communal AI behaviour). In Camp McCarren (or whatever its called) where there are many soldiers, it was comepletely smooth…. Other than that, no crashes or issues.
On the game play side though….I'm playing on hard, which is starting to annoy me: how can someone in a leather bikini have a high DT and resist a head shot (no helmet)? Give me a break! I still have my level 1 vault jump suit as armour…and I'm level 9. All the decent armour is faction-aligned, so I sold it - and the ONLY nice (non-aligned) armour I have discovered is priced at 3500K caps. Everything seems to be resistant to my weapons (lasers, plasma, guns,….) and that combined with my shitty armour means thaty every combat is a mssion. Is it possible to switcjh back to Normal once you've started?

 

[wolfing]

hm. I have noticed some performance issues (GTX480+i7 930) in a certain part of the New Vegas (Freetown?) - I walked into one street (with about a dozen people lounging about) and the frame rate dropped by about 50%. I think that may be related to handling AI (CPU) rather than pushing through geometry though (I've been in other places with much more geometry and it was very smooth). I have everything maxed out and have not tweaked any INI files yet. Has anyone else noticed heavy slowdown when there are many NPC's around at the the same time? I mean unique individuals, not soldiers etc who are probably sharing a single communal AI behaviour). In Camp McCarren (or whatever its called) where there are many soldiers, it was comepletely smooth…. Other than that, no crashes or issues.
On the game play side though….I'm playing on hard, which is starting to annoy me: how can someone in a leather bikini have a high DT and resist a head shot (no helmet)? Give me a break! I still have my level 1 vault jump suit as armour…and I'm level 9. All the decent armour is faction-aligned, so I sold it - and the ONLY nice (non-aligned) armour I have discovered is priced at 3500K caps. Everything seems to be resistant to my weapons (lasers, plasma, guns,….) and that combined with my shitty armour means thaty every combat is a mssion. Is it possible to switcjh back to Normal once you've started?

You're playing it in hard and you're complaining that it's... hard?

 

[Maylander]

The common armor dropped by most mercenaries is actually not a faction armor. Whenever you equip a faction armor, you get a big message explaining that you just equipped one.

 

[booboo]

You're playing it in hard and you're complaining that it's… hard?

I'd actually forgotten I started it on 'hard' and wondered why I was having some trouble ;-) But no - I'm not complaining because its 'hard', I'm complaining because it's 'stupid-hard'. By all means, have more challenging encounters (e.g. deathclaws etc), but don't simply bump up the armour rating and damage resistance of EVERY two-bit opponent to make it 'hard'. That invalidates any notion of gaining power with level. I have reasonable stats in my energy weapon/gun skills, but almost every foe I encounter seems all but immune to these weapons - it's irritating and highly unbelievable (especially, as I said, if they're wearing a skimpy bikini). When every fight becomes a mission, then its simply ceases to be enjoyable. The only weapon that seems consistently good for me is the incinerator, and even there, said bikini-clad merc will happily run towards me while fully alight and taking hardly any damage at all. Maybe she has an invisible force field? Maybe she's very dexterous? But how does that help when she's on fire? Nah, sorry - doesn't work for me.

@ Maylander: the common armor people drop seem pretty crap - faction armour is the way to go! But as you said, when you put it on there are consequences - I found some brotherhood of steel armour, but I just know donning it would be a *bad* idea when walking around the NCR. Maybe I'm not noticing the good stats on random armour drops, but as yet to nothing I've seen has looked very good.

EDIT: in case people are wondering, I *am* enjoying this game - a lot - there are just a few niggles that irk me, but that's to be expected.

 

[skavenhorde]

Nvidia fixed the problem with NWN and NWN2 a few driver versions ago, actually. They're slow, but they did do it.

Awesome! Thank you. It got so frustrating that I haven't even tried to play NWN 2 with any of the latest drivers. This had to be within in the last six months because the last time I tried was about that time and had to roll back the drivers to play the game.

 

[SirJames]

Fact is a 3 year old PC, say E6600, 2gig, xp, 8800gtx, is a superior system to the directX box "360". Likewise with the ps3.

These systems only have 512mb of ram and thats shared between everything, including video ram!

So you can be pretty sure that any game with an Xbox/ps3 release, which is pretty much everything, will run on your 3 year old PC.

I don't see any reason to upgrade until the next generation of consoles comes out.