Okay so I am having the absolute worst frame rate issues with Fallout 4 for my PC. My rates fluctuate constantly between 10-60 fps (according to FRAPS) like a see saw every second. I've played for 4 hours progressing through the game and no matter where I am this is happening. It makes the game unplayable. I've tried everything I can find on the net to fix it and no matter what settings I use or tweak it does the exact same thing. I can boot up the Witcher 3 and run max settings at a pretty steady 45 or so right now, or any other game for that matter. Super frustrated right now. I've updated every driver I can think of and run every scan I possibly can.

Here are my rig specs:

Windows 10 Home

ASUS VN247 Monitor

GeForce GTX 970

Intel i5-4690K clocked 3.9 ghz

8 GB Kingston Fury DDR3 Ram

Driver Version: 358.91

Help!

I think this is quite a common problem. On my system it frames go from 40-60 and then back down again ( i5 4460 GTX 750ti). i was thinking about buying a 970 but don't think that will solve things

I don't have this issue on my machine, so try a clean boot

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/what-is-clean-boot-state-in-windows

This is reversible.

Does it play initially at least for the first few minutes at stable frame rates? It could be an overheating video card, try blowing out the dust. (Note, take your PC outside before you do this, you will thank me later)

I'm just reinstalling the game from Steam now. Maybe something happened with the preload my PC didn't like. At any rate, I'll have to wait until it's done to try your suggestions

Oh and there have been multiple instances where it does seem to run great for a couple minutes, so the overheating card sounds probable

Having a similar problem I've tried everything (all drivers are up to date and files verified) but re-installing fallout. I'm running an AMD system so I find it hard to believe its a driver problem. The Game seems to almost freeze every second or so. I know its not a heat issue as I have had GPU-Z up and speed fan and hottest GPU got was 55c. It does it no matter the settings and even does it on the loading screen and main menu. This is also the only game that does this every other game runs smoothly. I have an open support ticket but they are as usless as [censored] on a turtle. They seem to be stalling, wonder if they are working on it?

I just upgraded my 7970 to a R9 390X and I was amazed at the amount of dust and crap on the cooler of my old card. And, I blow out the dust periodically too.

Well it's only been a couple months since I dusted it out, but I think it's probably a heat issue. Fallout may be the straw that is breaking it's back, though all other games I have run fine. My fan speed was set to only ~35% so jacking it up to 75 should make fix it if it's the issue. Just a couple more hours till I'm done reinstalling it and then we'll see!

Well I tried a clean boot and I tried cranking up my GPU fan and it still does the same thing. This is... not pleasant.

Have you tried disabling V-Sync in your GPU driver control panel?
You may also have to go into the Fallout4Prefs.ini in your "Documents/my games/Fallout4/" folder and edit the "iPresentInterval=1" line to read "iPresentInterval=0" instead. If you do have AMD you can go into the AMD Catalyst Control Panel and in Advanced mode under Performance tab is a sub-group for "Frame Limiter" enable it and set the limit to 55 or 60 fps (prefer 60 fps)

Let us know if that works.

Unfortunately if you're an NVIDIA user you're fresh out of luck and need to wait for more driver patches and more game patches to improve performance. Either that or hope that SLI and CrossfireX get better support ASAP and throw a new card into your machine. Dual R9 280x cards runs my Fallout 4 at 100 fps easily at High to Ultra settings on 1080p, there are some problems though like character faces being completely black (RGB 0,0,0) and some dynamic textures not rendering properly though.

Godrays is a resource hog, try setting that to low. Also try running in a borderless window mode.

Im also having the same issue, my fps dips to single digits and does not recover, at times even after restarting the game. The game detected ultra settings as Im running it on a fairly good system: radeon 7970ghz edition and a i7 3770k with windows 10, temps have been monitored with no overheating at all. The game may run well for 5 minutes, eventually it will crap out and not recover at all.

The game ran perfectly on ultra at 50-60 fps for the first 5 hours then it became unplayable. Ive tried almost everything just like most people but cant find a fix for this.