Fallout 3 lreeze-ups with Quad (or Triple) core processors... a solution.
John Lewis
patches through 1.0.35, the PC version of Fallout 3 will freeze-up
frequently (requiring a reboot of the game) when moving around within
a small area such as a room within a house.
Sound will continue playing but the graphics and all controls freeze
up. CTRL-ALT-DEL may bring up Task Manager, or may not... requiring a
cold-boot. This is a very nasty freeze.
I have personally verified that this freeze occurs regardless of patch
version and regardless of OS, WinXP, Vista or Win 7 beta. The Fallout
3 engine appears to have a problem with more than 2 cores. The fix for
those of us with processors having more than 2 cores is a change as
follows:-
Open up the fallout.ini file in: My Documents\My Games\Fallout3
( backup the file as a precaution....)
Find the line:
bUseThreadedAI=0
change it to:
bUseThreadedAI=1
Add another line after it and insert:
iNumHWThreads=2
This will limit the game to 2 cores and prevent the engine bug from
causing the game to freeze. I have a Q9550 and the change does
not appear to affect game performance.
I do not know who I should credit with this fix, as it seemed to have
permeated through several relays -- I found it after a tedious Google
search. I suspect an unofficial Bethsoft source.
Anyway, the fix certainly has worked for me. I have a saved game in a
house where I could guarantee the freeze within a minute of moving
around within that space. Problem now appears to be totally gone. Wish
I could say the same for the sporadic audio corruption on the
radio-stations. Roll along the next patch soon to fix both sets of
problems......
Considering the number of cores in the consoles, I wonder if the same
engine problem is responsible for some of the freezeups reported by
those communities....
John Lewis
Cavadure
I run on a quad core Vista 64 machine and have only had a few freeze
ups. Not enough to call them frequent.
Vincenzo Beretta
conclusion that Fallout 3 sucks... starting from...
...Now.
CoinSpin
<insert continuous Jeapordy theme music as we wait>
--
~ CoinSpin
Darin Johnson
> The conclusion that I draw is that Bethesda didn't test FO3 well enough. Quad
> core systems have been out for a while now, and gamers are frequently on the
> bleeding edge of hardware.
I've got a quad core, no crashes :-)
John Lewis
<da...@usa.net> wrote:
>On Feb 13, 11:45=A0am, Zaghadka <zagha...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> The conclusion that I draw is that Bethesda didn't test FO3 well enough. =
>Quad
>> core systems have been out for a while now, and gamers are frequently on =
>the
>> bleeding edge of hardware.
>
>I've got a quad core, no crashes :-
Very interesting. Any info you can give may be enlightening.
Your system ---
CPU?
Motherboard chip-set? Driver version?
Memory size ?
OS type and Rev Level? 32-bit or 64-bit ?
Audio chipset ? Driver version?
Graphics card? Driver version ?
There may be other subtle factors at work here. These freezes are
definitely specific only to indoor locations both in my case and
others for whom the fix has worked. I do not experience this type of
lockup in any other game and it seems to be totally insensitive to
the OS-type or video or audio driver variants.
John Lewis
Cavadure
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:23:07 -0800 (PST), in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Darin
>
> But you'd better check your system configuration. Are you sure you're using all
> four cores?!! :^P
I'm using all 4 cores and I've had what I describe as a few freezes.
No where near the mark I'd set for frequent.
Darin Johnson
> LOL. Then their QA is clearly on the ball.
No, but the Fallout 3 forums had some posters who were
adamant that the game was guaranteed to crash regularly
if you had quad core. I wasn't trying to be like the people
who say "I have no crashes so it must be your fault".
MetalGuru
> (BTW, my previous reply was meant 100% in humor. Of *course* he's
> using all four cores. I was being silly. I could have gone into a
> Vissini "Clearly, I cannot choose the glass in front of *you*" sketch,
> but I'm still building up my immunity to Iocane powder. <G>)
Troll! TROLL!!! Zag is a troll, ZAG IS A TROLLLLLLL!!!! La la la la
laaa!
Er... sorry, I was just experimenting with my newfound rights to invoke
the new Jonah Law decreed recently by Nostromo (who, incidentally,
sprinkles his morning cereal daily with Iocane).
Dan Lingman
@news.verizon.net:
> On systems with more than 2 cores and regardless of any current
> patches through 1.0.35, the PC version of Fallout 3 will freeze-up
> frequently (requiring a reboot of the game) when moving around within
> a small area such as a room within a house.
>
I'm running an i7 920, with a 8800 gts, 6 gig of ram, under vista 64
ultimate.
Ran into no end of issues - until I rolled back my video drivers.
178.24, and no crashes at all since then.
Dan.
John Lewis
wrote:
>To be fair, OP said "frequently... when moving... within a small area...," not
>"frequently" in general.
>
Absolutely true. I have NEVER had a freeze in the open areas or in the
large contiguous underground spaces. In my personal experience, the
Washington Monument is a great stress point for this particular crash.
Deliberately running around while in such tight areas accessed by
"door transitions" (elevators, small houses) helps speed up the
incidence. I have several saved games of such "indoor locations" from
which I can easily stimulate a crash within a minute, the only
consistency being that rapid movement finally triggers the crash.
Standing still does not and I got tired of walking around slowly
without a crash. ( I normally play in "Always Run" mode except when
sneaking) When the game does lock up, the graphics freeze can happen
anywhere in the area. Of course, in my case, the 'fallout.ini' kludge
has apparently taken care of the problem.
I don't really blame Bethsoft QA for not yet patching this bug.
Quad-core systems are still in a minority and the specific conditions
for triggering this crash are pretty narrow. Hopefully, a fix will be
in their next patch update. They still have some flaky-radio-station
audio issues, at least one of which was not fixed in the 1.0.35 update
in spite of their claims to the contrary. The "fallout.ini" changes
do not seem to have any effect on the audio problems.
John Lewis
>(BTW, my previous reply was meant 100% in humor. Of *course* he's using all
>four cores. I was being silly. I could have gone into a Vissini "Clearly, I
>cannot choose the glass in front of *you*" sketch, but I'm still building up my
>immunity to Iocane powder. <G>)
>
>--
>Zag
>
>What's the point of growing up
>if you can't be childish sometimes? ...Terrance Dicks, BBC
John Lewis
I run a nV 9800GTX+ with a Penryn Q9550 and 4Gbyte memory. No
overclock.I have tried drivers 178.24 through 181.22. I triple-boot
my machine in XP-32 SP3, Vista Ultimate 64 SP1, Win 7 beta 64. Loaded
FO3 to all configurations No change in all cases. Crashes regardless
of patch level. However, ONLY in the specific narrow circumstances
detailed below. No crashes elsewhere AT ALL.
I have NEVER had a freeze in the open areas or in the large contiguous
underground spaces. In my personal experience, the Washington
Monument is a great stress point for this particular crash.
Deliberately running around while in such tight areas accessed by
"door transitions" (elevators, small houses) helps speed up the
incidence. I have several saved games of such "indoor locations" from
which I can easily stimulate a crash within a minute, the only
consistency being that rapid movement finally triggers the crash.
Standing still does not and I got tired of walking around slowly
without a crash. ( I normally play in "Always Run" mode except when
sneaking) When the game does lock up, the graphics freeze can happen
anywhere in the area. Of course, in my case, the 'fallout.ini' kludge
has apparently taken care of the problem.
I shall remove the "fallout.ini" kludge and try 178.24 again with one
of my test-saves just to be sure....
John Lewis
>Dan.
Darin Johnson
> Absolutely true. I have NEVER had a freeze in the open areas or in the
> large contiguous underground spaces. In my personal experience, the
> Washington Monument is a great stress point for this particular crash.
I was just there last week, no crash. So it works on some
computers anyway. Which is good to know, because VATS
is still very slow to use. Though I tend to sneak everywhere.
JAB
> But the XBox 360 throws that dynamic completely off. I wouldn't expect this to
> happen in a PC-exclusive game, but for a multi-platform game, you have to ship,
> and the priorities change.
>
Absolutely look at PC exclusives like STALKER not a bug in sight.
Darin Johnson
John Lewis
<da...@usa.net> wrote:
>Hmm, just got my first lockup, Museum of History rotunda.
Video frozen ? Audio still going ? All controls frozen ?
John Lewis
CoinSpin
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:34:45 GMT, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, John Lewis
> wrote:
>
>
>> I don't really blame Bethsoft QA for not yet patching this bug.
>> Quad-core systems are still in a minority and the specific conditions
>> for triggering this crash are pretty narrow. Hopefully, a fix will be
>> in their next patch update.
>>
>
> have a quad-core CPU. Heck, it's a tri-core Xenon PPC from "Bizarro-world."
>
Well, this assumption works until you factor in that the PS3 was also
developed for, which has an even stranger configuration, giving it a
pseudo-multicore behavior (it's a multi-cell processor, 8 cores (called
SPEs), 7 enabled, 6 accessible by programmers). So there's a rather odd
6-core config to deal with as well...
> Even with stellar QA, you have to ship at some point, and I'd have to agree
> with you that the majority of the installed base isn't running quad-core
> processing, especially after taking the console market into account.
>
Yep, that's my guess as well on how things went. You have to design and
test and debug on 2 wildly different console environments plus a hugely
variable PC hardware base, and manage to get it all right and release
them into the world in a timely manner. Then when you consider that the
tri- and quad-core market is tiny (something like 5% of Intel's chip
sales are quads), you're better off designing for the largest chunk of
the PC market, which is actually the smallest chunk of the total sales
expected for the game... See, we keep getting relegated farther and
farther down the food chain here... heh
Also, something to keep in mind here - this game was based on the
Gamebryo engine, and in Bethesda's case it was prefaced heavily by their
work with Oblivion... When Oblivion was released, quad cores were
"coming soon" and nothing near a consumer product yet... There are
always updates being made to the engine and such, but sometimes the
leading edge stuff suffers, because it is too new (and potentially not
stabilized yet) to get thrown into the mix until it has matured some.
> If they had a solely PC focus, this probably wouldn't have happened. They would
> have tested the bleeding edge, and left the bugs for the legacy systems. People
> with two cores would be having problems.
>
I think a PC only game would have been much more stable across all core
configurations, since they would have had much more time, energy, and
hardware time during the debugging and tweaking period. But to not
adequately cover dual core systems (the largest segment of new processor
sales) would have been a bit of suicide on the part of Bethesda. That
said, I am sure they would have definitely had more time to refine
things for the bleeding edge stuff as well.
> But the XBox 360 throws that dynamic completely off. I wouldn't expect this to
> happen in a PC-exclusive game, but for a multi-platform game, you have to ship,
> and the priorities change.
>
> I hope, as you do, that they can fix the problem in a future patch.
>
Yep, such is the life of us PC based gamers... Consoles get good
polished products from day 1, we typically get to wait for patch after
patch before it's got the same polish for our systems.
--
~ CoinSpin