As most of us already know the PC specs have been out for Fallout 4 have been out for a while now. And my system all but meets the recommended requirements. The only area that isn't quite on par is the processing speed. My PC is running at 3.4 GHz and the recommended settings are 3.6 GHz. I'm curious to know a couple things. First, should this be a concern? I want to run the game on optimal settings and have optimal performance. Secondly, I plan on running numerous mods once they start coming out and one of the first ones I'm sure we'll all be using are texture and graphical upgrades. In doing so will this increase the recommended specs for our PCs? Should I be looking to upgrade my processing speed?

It really depends on the kinds of mods you're talking about. Mods that add a lot of NPC's for instance, can tax your CPU beyond the original game. In that case you might find your CPU wanting since it's already slightly below specs. Other mods that can tax your CPU are script heavy mods. In terms of graphics, if you plan on using ENB, which will inevitably come out, I believe the CPU usually needs to be on the higher end.

On the other hand, CPU's largely ignore texture mods. The heavy lifting for those is done by your graphics card and particularly the memory bandwidth.

I've never had a computer that fully meets all the hardware recommendations. I usually have a sub-par CPU, and because of this I've avoided those kinds of mods that are CPU heavy. On the other hand, I've always had a video card with a roomy amount of VRAM (usually two in SLI, although note this does not actually double your VRAM) and because of this I have been able to run texture mods without destroying my FPS.

EDIT: ENB is not CPU-centric. It is GPU-centric. So says Boris Vorontsov.

I purchased a Titan X Hybrid because I wanted to avoid SLI, and enjoy furry Wolves in The Witcher 3.

Fallout 4 being a 64 bit Game will eliminate the Bottleneck I fought with Skyrim, but My I-7 4770K was being affected by scripts even in 2013. I am planning on upgrading to a Motherboard that can use DDR4 RAM and have a 4 Ghz or faster Processor. "Mods" that can use/share processor use alongside what is being taken by a Game already exist.

Brad, I just upgraded my system as you can see in my SIG. So glad I did lol. If you have the cash just do it. While the Skylake isn't a huge step up. For me going from a 35xx was a huge upgrade. Just depends if you want to wait for the other skylake CPUs like Extreme or not.

It really depends entirely on the mod. System load =/= quality, and vice versa. One of the heaviest GPU load mods you can use in Skyrim is a totally-tricked-out ENB - which some people will love, and others will think is horrible. A wonderful quest mod could have no extra load at all, if it just uses normal kinds of resources. Whereas a complex mod that adds new systems (like a combat overhaul, or adding custom settlement construction) might have a high CPU/RAM load. New armor or worldspace mods could be low load or high, depending on how many polygons they use and their texture size.

Etc, etc. It really depends. Of course, from past games, you can tell what kind of mods you tend to like.

So no suggestions that will cover large mod combinations? Its all case specific? I normally run at least 100 mods and many of them are taxing in different ways.

Exceeding the recommended requirements.

A GTX980Ti or the AMD equivalent, My Titan can be exceeded in performance by running two less expensive (than My Single Titan) GPU's in SLI.

Faster RAM and Hardware, running the Game and Operating System from an SSD instead of an HDD.

Having a Power Supply capable of feeding a new component.

Is Your Case and Cooling able to remove Heat from Your PC effectively?

"Speed costs money, how fast are You willing to spend?" is a phrase I dislike from when I could see Myself having a Garage and a few projects, but it applies to any Hobby

Depending on which mods you will run, it should eventually be possible to bring even a super high end system to its knees.

Even for Skyrim, certain combinations of graphics and texture mods are used primarily for screenshots because the framerate slows to a crawl even on extreme rigs. And as others have mentioned, mods that increase spawns or add lots of scripting will be quite demanding on the CPU.

What's your CPU? When you say it is running at 3.4 GHz, is that stock clocks? Is it quad core?

Most the mods I add are graphic improvement mods so specs are always a concern.

Just adding Skyrim's official HD DLC required me to update my PC, while the game ran fine vanilla. I (would hope) that FO4 also has a free HD DLC and if they do I imagine those minimum PC specs given won't run it. An update would be needed.

Yeah, in all actuality the recommended specs are pretty high. Most people who play on pc won't even have those specs. So obviously, any mods that require you to have more resources, you'll have to upgrade your pc for. Since game makers aren't responsible for making mods they don't have any way of knowing what specs to recommend for using them.

Processor clock speed alone doesn't necessarily indicate game performance. For instance, while shopping around I realized that a Core i5-6600 (a 3.3 ghz quad core CPU) would likely match, if not outright outperform, an AMD 8350 (an 8 core 4.0 ghz CPU). Things like core efficiency, hyperthreading, etc. can have a major impact on performance. It also depends on how much multitasking the game will involve, as well as how much you as the player add in.

I am just wondering what are the limits before the game engine starts acting up. Like Skyrim had an issue with 3.2gigs of memory if memory serves (couldn't resist). I am more hopeful since they are recommending 8 gigs of memory, that the engine is capable of using far more then that. I'd *love* to be able to use most of my 32 gigs of memory. With view distance ini changes and texture replacers.. It'd be interesting.

Skyrim was a 32bit program. That was what limited the memory, even if you had a 64bit operating system. Now that the consoles are also 64bit, PC games are shifting to that as well. (Both your program, and your operating system, have to be 64bit in order to address more memory.)

But even though 64bit can theoretically access 16million terabytes of memory, both the cpu and the OS can limit that further (based on programming and resources).

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_7 Win 7 Home Basic can only see 8GB, while Win 7 Pro can see 192GB. Whee?

So far, even the games with recommended specs calling for 16GB RAM don't seem to benefit from having any more than that:

http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-Dying_Light-test-dl__ram2.jpg used at most around 8GB and http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-STAR_WARS_Battlefront_Beta-test-starwarsbattlefront_ram2.jpg used only 6GB.

Yeah but unless I am mistaken those games are not modifiable. Something like view distance, and forcing all those textures and npcs to load from a large distance... I can see that eating memory like candy. One of the things I hated in skyrim was having things pop into existence in a ring around my character. It was rather noticeable.

It's a quad core.

.2 GHz is a negligible difference. You'll still be fine for optimal settings if you indeed have a 4-series i7 (or even i5) quad paired with a high end card.

Without any mods out (or even the game for that matter), its a crapshoot on what we'd think the reqs would be. Youd for sure want to be at least optimal, but how much more to prepare is kind of an impossible question to answer right now.

It's an i7. And that's what my friend (that built my PC) told me as well. I just want to have a beast PC that can run Bethesda games at optimal settings with as many mods as I want.

That machine might not exist yet.

Modding is a lot more then just having a beast PC my friend, need to learn about load orders, merge patching etc to get the most out of modding.

I'd suggest watch Gopher on YouTube for learning the right way.

Good look...

Oh, I have. Definitely. I learned about modding in Skyrim. Gopher's videos help tremendously.

Currently I'm running around 40 mods on Skyrim including RealVision ENB, high texture graphic mods and many that add a ton of NPCs to the world.

Good man!!!