So over the past year, anytime I play Fallout 3 I have the 'Wasteland Patrols' mod active. What this mod does is it adds patrols of Slavers, Raiders, BOS, Enclave, Mutants, etc. to random parts of the wasteland, and you can fine tune the settings via console commands whether these are frequent encounters or infrequent encounters. I have the settings to a level where encounters are extremely frequent. Going from Megaton to the Super Duper Mart on foot will yield at least 2-3 battles in my path between NPCs and other NPCs, or NPCs against my group. The thing is, there are other battles going on too, away from where I am at that time (behind me, to the left, etc), because there are spawn points all over the wasteland. It's not quite one of those 'Zombie mods' where 1000s of NPCs spawn, but it's enough to the point that the wasteland is never boring. To top it off, this is combined with MMMF3's Increased Spawns and it wasteland spawns option, as well as MTC Travelers and BoS DC ruins patrols. There is a LOT of activity in the wasteland with these settings.

Now, earlier this year I couldn't enjoy this to the fullest because the game would frequently lock up or slide show due to the amount of actors. Crashes would also be frequent. I was using a single core 2.8ghz, 3 GB, 9800 GT machine. I upgraded to a quad core 3.2ghz, 4 GB, and kept the 9800GT. The performance was a LOT better and the game is playable with that mod combination now, although there are still performance problems. There are still 2-3 second freezes and crashes when I am loading up a portion of the wasteland where there's a lot of activity (i.e. the mutant fort near rivet city has 1.) the mutants 2.) a MTC travelers spawn 3.) 2 different Wasteland Patrols mod spawn points from different directions) and the amount of crashes was highest around that area. Setting the system specs to low didn't help. If I joined in on the fun at that area, it would only be a matter of time until I crashed. These crashes seem to be related to the amount of NPCs in one area, because I don't get these crashes in lower volume areas, and when I disable the mod altogether, I have -zero- performance issues whatsoever.

I'm guessing that playing like this was risky, because my video card (2 years old) started artifacting last week and it's clear the GPU is dying. I'm currently waiting for a warranty replacement right now and thought about this while I'm waiting.

I can't think of anything else I would need to upgrade in order to make this mod combination play flawlessly. I have a quad core processor, max RAM for Windows XP (4GB), and my video card (before it broke down) was well beyond anything necessary for Fallout 3, yet, these issues still remain. Is there an 'actor/NPC limit' to the Gamebryo engine? A point where, if there is too many NPCs or actors in one area, the game will crash no matter what system you have? I'm asking this because if the mods I was using was bringing the game to the breaking point and harming my system hardware as a result, I want to know this so I don't make the same mistake again and make my GPU go kaput again.

Any responses or insights would be appreciated.

shouldnt be an npc problem.....i used MMM and wasteland patrols for a bit along with all sorts of graphics mods. im thinking that your 9800 is simply choking on the extra actors. it may be fine for the normal game but adding alot of actors, and MMM does just that will strain an older card like yours.

9800GT isn't exactly 'old' for a game made in 2008...I am very surprised to hear that, actually. What card do you use?

Yes there are issues with the number of actors in the game. In fact, I believe there may even be a setting in the GECK which sets a limit on how many can be processed at one time. I know there was in Oblivion at least, and you had to get a mod to go beyond that limit. And though your video card is pretty good, there are better ones out there now. A 480GT model would probably blow your 9800GT out of the water. But I wouldn't worry to much about it harming your system. I'm pretty sure that the worse that can happen is the game will just crash on you regularly.

Yes, but you're obviously pushing it far beyond what the game was designed for. And your card is old in relative terms, it's now two generations behind top of the line.

...wow. I just looked at the reviews on that card on newegg, and that looks pretty impressive. I might have to pass on it for now though seeing as though it is currently more expensive than my CPU, case, RAM, hard drive and motherboard combined Definitely something to bookmark for now. How low, price-wise, do you think that card will get in a year or so?

So I guess then, there is a way to get this to run flawlessly, and the crashes are system related as opposed to engine-related?

btw, I didn't even think of that. The recommended specs are for the vanilla game, not the mods.

How is the cooling in your tower? How old is the power supply? Both of these can cause problems and performance hits.

If the case is stock, chances are good that it doesn't have very good cooling nor quality fans and that can make a difference over time. Pushing a system when gaming creates a lot of heat, so consider purchasing and installing additional fans if the case will accommodate them, or replacing the (usually cheap-ish) stock fans with better quality fans. When's the last time you thoroughly blew the case out? Did you use a good quality thermal paste on the CPU? Are you using the stock heatsink/fan? -Upgrade it.

If your budget is an issue at this time, the cheapest/easiest way to improve heat dissipation is to remove the access/side panel and point a fan at the case. Of course, then you must beware of children/pets/accidents because the insides are exposed. You'll hear a bit more noise and it can gather more dust/pet hair.

The power supply is a corsair 650W, it is the second highest rated PSU on newegg.com. I retained that from my old system as well as the now-defunct 9800GT.

The rest, I bought last month:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129065
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136098
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134792
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130269

It's pretty much a brand new system.

ive using a 285gt for awhile now. there was a setting in oblivion and i believe also for fallout 3 which could be modded upwards. i ran oblivion with increase actors in combat mod with my 8800gt although it did slow it down alot when lots of actors were fighting at one time. my current 285 has no issues in oblivion with lots of actors fighting, although im also now using an overclocked i7 cpu so it could be because my cpu is more powerful as well.

you can pick up the 470 series cards right now for half the price of a 480 and frankly they run cooler and are still going to be a massive improvement. i was originally looking at the 480 but because of the heat and noise issues im going to wait for the die shrunk 480s or just get a 470 since they seem to run cooler. i can run metro 2033 with everything maxed on my OCd 285 just fine now, and that is the most resource intensive game that i currently have.

i learned the hard way that a good case makes a huge difference. i have an antec 1200 and i dont know why i used stock cases for as long as i did. with all my stuff overclocked, case fans set to low and and cpu fan set to silent mode and then run a stress test, my temps max out at around 70 celsius. if i turn the fans to medium which is a bit noisier but not noticably when playing games it drops quite abit probably 10 degrees or more and goes down further if i put the cpu fan to normal mode.

if only i had waited that extra month i could have used a phenom as well instead of the i7. :banghead:

I've been a fan of Antec cases for many years now. Pretty good durability in my own experience -pricey and commonly heavy though. I have doubts that cooling is an issue here for you, its just something to consider. I started along that line of thought when you said your GPU has started artifacting. Might be overheating, might just be pushing it too hard.

From that NewEgg link it shows that the case came stock with a 430w PSU. The larger PSU you installed may create a bit more heat. Still well within that case's capabilities.

According to Antec and NewEgg, that case came stock with two Tri-Speed fans (120mm / 140mm). These are set to low speed by default. Did you manually switch them to Medium or High via the switch on the leads, or are you using a 3rd party fan speed control application/device? Make sure the fans are getting 5v or when the system is under stress they won't be able to kick into High Speed when needed.


There are also places for 3 additional intake fans, all 120mm, that did not come with the case: 2 front, 1 side panel.
Did you install any fans there?

The CPU heatsink... did you use the stock one that commonly comes with a boxed CPU or did you go for a higher quality one. The stock heatsinks are too often cheap-ish. Not a good place to skimp. I'm partial to Zalman myself. They can be a bit weighty though, and some require mobo bracing.

Sorry man I thought this thread died out.

Well, I wouldn't entirely discount heat as the source of the issue. The reason I say that is because for all but one month of the 2+ years I owned that card, it was in a Dell Dimension 4700 with no extra fans - certainly nothing like what came with my case. My guess is that gaming on that computer for so long brought abuse to the card due to all the heat and that it was already on its way out by the time I got my new computer, except I didn't notice any of the damage until it started manifesting itself through the artifacts. And yeah, I put the fans on high. Both of them work great, and I even have room for a third one to install in the front of the case.

I have more questions about video cards. I noticed there's about a $200 difference between EVGA 470GTX and 480GTX cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130552

What is the huge difference between them? Would the 470 solve the performance issues I'm having? And would I need a larger PSU than my 650W corsair?

Thanks again for all the info.

Now that you mention it, since you said you use wasteland patrols, just curious as to what the global console values are in regards to the mod settings? What's your spawnchance, spawnquestinterval, etc.?