Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 4.0 GHz
ATI HD 5870 OC'd to 931/3000
8 gigs of DDR2 RAM

and this game just grinds to a HALT in firefights. I'm not sure what exactly you did to the engine, but this is rather unacceptable - even for Bethesda standards.

Has bethesda ever releaced a game WITHOUT tons of bugs and abandoned us completly after 4 to 6 months?
No. And they never will UNTIL they get off this gamebryo engine. Its unfixable, unpatchable, unplayeable.
Wait until a non paid modder fixes what bethesda can't do.

"We tried to make the game look as good as possible in the gamebryo engine"
Then 2 weeks after pc releace we get a quality mod that blows their work to shame. Fellout for FO3 for example no performance hit whatsoever. Or texture replacement.
This was done by a non trained and non paid modder usually by him/her self.
Its laughable how bad this game is.


PS. Use whatever driver for nvidia or ati 2 months after fallout 3. It helps alot.
Also disable water.

Having the same issue, framerate is fine until I get into a firefight. At which point, the framerate goes from 60+ to less than 10.