[Evaa]

Hey guys, I'm still very much a noob to PC gaming, having been a console gamer since the PS1 days and not playing anything on PC since the OG Warcraft games before they became the MMO money-grabbing machine.

I recently got my first PC for gaming (or editing photos for my job, depending on who I'm talking to ) It was my buddy's old system he bought as a starter sometime last year. He's getting deployed and wanted to get rid of it before he left...so I bought it. The main components are:

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 Mobo

AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz which I have overclocked to 4.6 GHz since acquiring it. Highest I found I could go with maintaining stability with the cooling system I have currently

AMD Radeon R9 390 8GB GPU

8GB DDR3 1600

I also added a 960GB Crucial M500 SSD as my system/games drive to help with speed. I know it's not the greatest PC for gaming, but after comparing it to the recommended specs of the games I'd be playing, it surpassed the majority of them.

But I'm still having problems with Fallout 4. My FPS issues are in the areas everyone seems to be having them (Boston ruins, Diamond City, Corvega, etc.) I can run a silky 60FPS all day if I'm running through the less populated areas of the map, but when I go into one of the 'hot zones', my FPS usually drops at least to the mid 40s, sometimes even into the low 30s. I'm running on Ultra, as recommended when I booted up the game, but I manually turned off God Rays and set Shadow Distance to medium. It's helped a little bit, but not much at all. Even down to Normal settings for everything and GR off, the drops are still there.

Am I being too optimistic about how my system should be running this game? I mean I know I'm not running top of the line or anything, but I assumed based on my setup vs my specs, that I wouldn't have to set the settings to low to get a smooth, constant FPS. Am I mistaken, is my hardware much worse than I thought it was? Or is this a problem more with the game itself, as I've seen many others with the same problems.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm just looking for a little clarification. I appreciate any help.

[Quick Draw]

Check your GPU temperature and fan speed. Is it overheat? Monitor your GPU usage. At areas where frame drop, whats your GPU usage, clock speed, memory speed?

This is another post regarding AMD GPU down throttle or not running at maximum power.

[dell]

The game could definitely use some optimization. Especially in those "hot zones".