What beta? And it's very easy to start coming up with reasons why there's that many downloads. You start with hardware configurations, idiots and more idiots who can't properly maintain their computer. More idiots and idiots who don't know how to do their own research into fixing problems. More and more who don't know why you get a BSOD, or CTD with an error message and how to interpret it.

So when something doesn't work, and they can't figure out why. And in many cases the problem is on the users end, they'll throw a hissy fit saying: product bad! When it can be drivers, more drivers, failing hardware, hardware clogged with dust, smoke, hair, cat[censored], cat hair, spiders, dirt. I had one I did service on that was full of ants(they like the warm-electric buzz). In my 20 years working in the PC industry ~90-93% of all problems are either user related(computers loaded with crap and spyware/malware/etc), or user induced(failure to do proper maintenance, and failing hardware). The other 7% break down into bad software at the start, bad drivers, bad hardware(as in design), and poor interconnect ability with different hardware(ie fastwrites enabled on a ATI card with a AMD chipset which can cause heavy instability).

You are so right! You told 'me good. If only we would all just clean our pc's and remove the insects from our wiring we would see this game fire right up. Why didn't I think to get twenty years in the computer industry under my belt before I bought this game. Was that on the box? I'm sure it was implied. Can you point 'me in the right direction so I can learn to interpret any error messages I may get in the future please. I feel so stupid in thinking that I could just like pc games buy them and load them up and play. Thankyou for helping 'me understand what it takes to have the honor of playing a bets...errrrr...game for pc.

Same here and me too. The .dll bandaid which dumbs your puter to a level Bethesda's engine will work is more than we'll ever get from Bethesda. I can grind through the game which is more fun than griping but let me say that the people at Bethesda have no pride whatsovever releasing this peice of junk engine.

+1 for Ants in our computers being the issue. Clear out those ants people.

Don't forget those viral dust bunnies.

All this paranoia over a simple file is laughable. If your PC contracts a virus it's because you don't have proper AV or you don't read what you click.

And all the paranoia over harming your system by tampering with it is laughable.

Lighten the f*** up.

It makes sense for people to be concerned or at least curious and besides, I was initially more worried about harming myself by exposing any data on my system than I was worried about the system itself. I (and I imagine many other people) didn't know all too much about what a .dll actually does or is capable of doing before this fix popped up. I still don't really know all that much...and it doesn't help that there are still warnings against this file on a bunch of popular game related websites.

That said, I have been using the file since pretty much release day and it has improved my performance greatly without any obvious side effects but it's not as if there was never anything that could have gone wrong.

I'm not normally paranoid about player workarounds but in this case there have been a couple of people on these forums that have said that this file could lead to big trouble down the road, whatever that means. I think I was being pretty light about it. Also I posted later that I am using it and loving it.

The .dll will not harm your computer.

I have had zero other problems with this game except for the stuttering (because I maintain my computer well?) and this .dll has been the only thing to fix it.

Would like to see Obsidian comment on this issue, if we can expect to see it in a patch, etc. Seems a pretty big issue.

I'm on the brink here. See I have a 8800GT desktop and the dll works perfectly fine doing its job of increasing framerates when around NPCs.

But I recently bough a new laptop (an MSI FX400), and considering its specs (intel i5, nVidia GT325 M, win7 x64, 4GB RAM) I think it could run NV on medium with minimal framerate drops. But lo and behold, when I go near NPCs the framerate goes down to measly 15-ish framerates, and mobs of NPCs will drag it down to 5~7 FPS. Even setting it on Low setting coupled with the lowest available resolution doesn't change a thing, still abysmal performance near NPCs.

Of course, to confirm this I tried disabling the NPC heads, by going through the setting inf and setting useFaceGenHeads to 0. The game ran smoothly, so smooth in fact that I can turn it up to ultra with minimal framerate drops. But it's just stupid since NPCs now have no heads and I can't perform headshots.

Now here's where the dll comes in, it just won't work on my laptop! It's probably due to the nVidia-Intel GPU optimus thing, the game just can't run with the d3d dll.

In short, I just want to play this game on my laptop this weekend without this stupid FaceGen issue. Please make it a priority to patch this issue as it plagues both nVidia and ATi cards considering the amount of downloads from the nexus site and the claims that indeed there was a performance hit when near NPCs (but not all I think, but still a lot nonetheless).

And regarding the maintaining PC thing, yes I maintain my PC quite well, as I mod PCs too. The laptop is just newly bought so there's no issue there regarding an infected-and-whatnot PC.