» Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:37 pm Close to a month ago, Fallout: New Vegas appeared, with one really atrociously bad feature that everyone except Bethesda will all agree on. Steam has been a worse choice than any variety of SecureROM, probably as uniformly hated as the Russian DRM that comes with a Root Kit Trojan in it, Star Force.
In spite of that tremendous liability, sizable numbers of the game have been sold, of which the majority are actually working just fine. Nevertheless, there are a great many complaints that range across the spectrum of possibilities, but seem to concentrate on game owners who are combining Geforce graphics with Windows 7. I'm not claiming to have the magic skill to answer all of the many complaints, only to make it easier for some other folks here to offer their suggestions.
Very few of the gamers making the complaints about Fallout: NV are approaching this with any plan of action to deal with their problems. Once upon a time, a sizable group of experienced gamers making regular visits to the Oblivion forums, and prior to those, to the Morrowind forums, had some excellent experience and understanding of everything found in the DxDiag Reports, and those became a standard in the hardware forums, but almost all of those old timers are now gone, it seems, and only a very few with good diagnostic skills based on the contents of that report are still here.
(I will repeat this for those who haven't seen me say it. Past the audio details that appear near the top of a DxDiag report, where it goes margin to margin without formatting, my visual correction combines with the old 19" CRT that I use in here to create a swimming alphabet soup of words and letters I cannot deal with.)
Right from the top, everyone needs to understand that neither Bethesda nor Obsidian makes any particular effort to hire their own "Hardware Geeks", and both are blissfully unconcerned about publishing practical, truthful, and useful system requirements for games. Fallout: NV is a really bad example of this, as there is only one Geforce 6n00 graphics card "series" able to handle the game, the 6800s, and two out of six of those are worthless (6800 SE, 6800 XT). The Radeon X1300 "XT" was a very late name change in the X1n00 generation, of which few were sold in that name compared to the original naming, when it was the X1600 Pro.
The rest of the X1300s are perhaps half as good as the X1600s, for the very best of them.
So, the very first thing any game player needs to do is ignore the official game warning label on the box, and stick with Mainline Gaming cards, whose names have either a "600" / "650" / "670" in them, or for recent Geforces, a "40" or "50". Higher is better, when you have the needed power supply and added spare cash to go that far (the stock, original equipment power supply isn't good enough for higher numbered, current-svcking High End parts).
Next, the only part of Fallout: NV that is 'net-enabled' is Steam, and buying the game software through that venue adds its own complications. I recommend getting the disk instead. Install Steam outside of you system's \Program Files master folder, and then set Steam to its offline mode, log off of your internet provider connection, and close various programs that do not work well with games, such as Anti-viruses from the various commercial sellers (particularly), Firewalls, PMs / TMs, and any audio and / or video enhancement features / services, like the "Aero" theme, and any kind of mouse pointer animation.
You need to be at the Administration level for the Vista & Windows 7 pair, and then you can run the game install. Here is a corrected F: NV requirements list
What are the Fallout New Vegas system requirements?
Minimum System Requirements (VGAs corrected for Obsidian stupidity):
* Windows XP/Vista/Win7
* 1GB System RAM (XP)/ 2GB System RAM (Vista)
* 2.0 Ghz Dual Core processor
* Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 256MB RAM
(NVIDIA 6800 "GS" or better/ ATI X1300XT or better)
{Added my note here, the X1600 Pro & up really, and
avoid both the Geforce 6800 SE, and the 6800 XT}
* 10 GBs of free hard drive space
Recommended System Requirements:
* Windows XP/Vista/Win7
* Intel Core 2 Duo processor (or the equivalent AMD Phenom)
* 2 GB System RAM
* Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM
(NVIDIA 8800 series, ATI 3800 series)
* 10 GBs of free hard drive space
If you don't understand those requirements, particularly the confusing Geforce graphics naming, fill in an information query blank like this for your system to discuss it with the current hardware forum residents.
Retail or Digital: Retail CD / Retail DVD / Direct (Vendor name)
Processor Manufacturer: AMD / Intel
Processor Type: Athlon 64 / X2 / Phenom, or Intel Core / count of cores
Processor Speed: * ?.? *Ghz (or AMD Performance Number)
Operating System / Service Pack: WindowsXP with SP # ?
System RAM:* ? ? *GBs (or MBs, if less than 1024)
Video (GPU) Manufacturer: ATI / Nvidia (only those are supported)
Video Card Model: (examples) Radeon x1650 Pro / Geforce 7600 GT
Video Card onboard RAM: *???* MBs
Video Card Driver Version: Catalyst ?.? / Nforce ??.?? (use numbers, not
the word latest)
Power Supply Make, Model, and 12 volt amperage
Sound Card Manufacturer:
Sound Card Model:
Sound Card Driver Version: ?.?? (again, numbers please)
Problem Description: Explain your problem here
(To be expanded below)
_________________
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Various of the PC components require a piece of software called a "Driver" that makes the connection between Windows and the hardware devices, such as Audio Processors, Network Interface Cards, and especially Video Graphics cards. For a fairly new computer, the newest drivers are usually best, and you need to explore the 'Net to collect those, and then install them in the PC. Older machines that are still capable of running the games sometimes need an "in between" driver, newer than when the PC was brand new, while not actually the very newest available. You need to seek game-aware geeks' advice in this regard about an older high performance PC.
After the install has been completed, run the first test of the game with the AV still off, no 'Net connection, no bevy of background processes running, and see what happens. If the test ran nicely, but the next day you find the second run does not, it's the background processes you'll want to work on. The games we are dealing with here in the Fallout Community are more demanding of resources than many other games are. Such things as IM / PM processes cause tons of problems (Xfire is a frequent cause of difficulty). Several popular AV programs have pro- active procedures that cause games to stutter, stop, and generally misbehave.
Microsoft has several pages' worth of advice on their web sites about how to use the "Clean Boot" startup to deal with gaming trouble (different pages for each of their OSes):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;331796
Just since Fallout 3 was brand new, the popularity of various "Social" internet sites has exploded, and many game players think nothing of having Browser windows/ Tabs for Facebook, MySpace, & Twitter all active in the background at the same time, all of the time. None of the several games that Bethesda has used the Gamebryo engine to design were intended to run in competition with sites such as those. Those are only the tip of a truly huge iceberg of luxuries that gadget-happy people are loading in their PCs every time they start up.
I constantly see that game players have over 2 GBs of programs and services loaded, running in the background, which is twice as much as should be there.
Proper use of the Clean Boot procedures can identify the programs and services that are conflicting with the game. Black Viper's web site can assist regarding Windows' own excesses.
Before starting still another message thread about the same old problem, check the FAQs on the official support pages, and run searches in here to see about any work-arounds that other gamers are suggesting, while we wait on permanent fixes, if your problem is with the game, rather than a background process.
To describe your problem, I'm going to quote a friend and Community Director from another developer, Chris Priestley, and his description
3. Problem Details
a. When it comes to problem details, think about the five basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Okay, so “Who?” doesn’t really apply here, but the others do.
b. What? What is the nature problem that you’re seeing?
c. When? When does the problem occur? Every time you engage in a particular action or only after so many hours of play?
d. Where? Where does the problem occur? Is the problem localized to a particular planet or does it occur everywhere?
e. Why? As much as possible, can you isolate the problem to a specific set of steps?
If you follow these guidelines, and provide the requested information when posting, it will increase the likelihood that someone will be able to help you diagnose the problem and find a solution.
Please report issues, after checking these steps, in new threads.
P. S. Please use every day business style paragraph breaks, punctuation, and spelling.
a. When it comes to problem details, think about the five basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Okay, so “Who?” doesn’t really apply here, but the others do.
b. What? What is the nature problem that you’re seeing?
c. When? When does the problem occur? Every time you engage in a particular action or only after so many hours of play?
d. Where? Where does the problem occur? Is the problem localized to a particular planet or does it occur everywhere?
e. Why? As much as possible, can you isolate the problem to a specific set of steps?
If you follow these guidelines, and provide the requested information when posting, it will increase the likelihood that someone will be able to help you diagnose the problem and find a solution.
Please report issues, after checking these steps, in new threads.
P. S. Please use every day business style paragraph breaks, punctuation, and spelling.
I'm trying to decide now whether to edit the primary pages of the Oblivion unofficial trouble shooting guide to the extent that those apply here, and add them to the thread (I have decided that I will include the material that Bethesda has pinned in the Fallout 3 hardware forum, to the extent that it is general advice).
Good Luck,
Gorath
