Hello wastelanders! I have been having trouble maintaining smooth FPS and have tried everything since the release of the game. I have tried unlocking the frame rate and setting a frame rate target with EVGA precision. I have gone in the ini files and turned off volumetric lighting, god rays, shadow quality and distance at the very lowest, shadow splits turned down, particle density turned way down. Tried iFPSClamp60,...gave me slow mo mode.

My specs are GTX 750 ti, i5-4570 @3.2, 16 GB RAM, Windows 10

I am not sure what is causing the game to dip so poorly and frequently to below 40 frames in many places. It seems like lighting and shadows may be the culprits but I am not sure. Inside **SPOILERS** The Institute HQ is the absolute worst. I have played many games on this rig that are as graphically intense or more so at 60 frames with no problems...

It is extremely frustrating when playing for the framerate to be fluctuating constantly and I usually cut my sessions short due to headaches because of it. I have been having an absolute blast with the game otherwise! If anyone has any suggestions on what maybe causing this or anything I can do to maintain a smooth framerate, you would be my hero!

What is your vid card?
Does it have 2 GB of VRAM or more?
If you have an onboard vid chip, is it disabled?

the game has a really big problem with the performance of distant shadows

I get tons of drops from 60 to 50, when playing on medium... which is 15.000 in the .ini

setting it on low (which you've already done ) sets the shadow distance to 3.000

almost all my 'lags' disappeared with that setting :/ I did even change the ini to 5.000 so that it looks a tiny bit better

the shadow distance is mainly the problem... my 770 should be better than a 750ti, so you can expect ever bigger frame drops

setting the fDirShadowDistance and the fShadowDistance below 3.000 to something like 1.000 could also improve the situation, but the game would look even worse :/

Your pretty much running at the minimum specs and your complaining about 40fps?

I am a bit above the minimum. I have twice as much RAM, a little better processor and card than the minimum but thanks for pointing that out to me,...like I did not know. I was asking for help and suggestions, not snide comments.

I am kinda new to PC gaming and bought this rig a few years back, so not sure...but when I look at the specs of the NVIDIA GTX 750ti it says...total available graphics memory-10183 MB dedicated video memory 2048 MB

How do I tell if i have an onboard vid chip or if it is disabled? Like I said I am kinda noob to PC gaming and I have never had problems with any game til now. I have seen folks with similar specs or less than mine saying they are not experiencing issues?

I have set the shadow distance to 1000.00 and splits in the ini files to 1 that has not seemed to help really. It also doesn't make any sense as to why I have the worst FPS drops in the Institute HQ, because there are barely any shadows being cast in there. Thanks for your response though

just get a new card every year. then you can be like Wooderson in your pic; "I get older.. they stay the same age."

A very little bit abouve. Your using an i5, and fourth gen at that. You might be able to find a lower card that will run it, but a 750ti is $100 card and not much above minimum. System memory doesn't matter for this game, so long as you have what'srequired. The min and max specs are the same. On your setup is should be playable, but you'll have to turn things down to get a decent framerate everywhere in the game

Nice! Yeah I am wondering if getting a new card would fix it though? Might need a processor too, then might as well just get a whole new PC...ugh

A new card will help a lot, you don't need a new processor, but would want a higher end card to help compensate for the CPU. A 4gb card would probably make a big differnce

Thanks for your response and suggestions. Buying a new card is not what I wanted to hear but is what I need to do.

Any nvidia card ending in ~50 is a budget card, not a gaming card. If you want to play games get a ~60 at least (preferably at least a ~70 model). I always use ~80 model cards.

You don't have to, its just a matter of how good you want it to look, and what kind of framerate you want. Your setup is capable of playing it, you just aren't going to see a steady 60fps or run on high or ultra setings

Just remember with nvidia the important thing as far as okay experiences in gaming goes is the suffix (eg ~80), not the prefix (eg 600 or 700 or 900 series). Though each series does come with the best drivers as nvidia gimp old series cards...though don't worry about that yet, it's a power user thing.