Help me run Fallout 3 smoother.

[chimpmunk]

Greetings,
I just bought Fallout 3 on steam during the week end sale and I expected it to run smoothly considering I run all source games relatively well. But when I run fallout 3 it is somewhat choppy (not gamebreaking, but annoying nonetheless).

This is my rig:
Amd Athlon 64 2,8ghz dual core (IIRC)
4gigs ram
Radeon HD2400 gpu

I know it's not the best, but I expected better results. When I play fallout 3, I sometimes get choppy movement (I'd say around 18-20fps) when I'm moving in the waste (interiors seem to be fine).
I'm already running the game at 1024x640 with no antialiasing (it's not pretty!), could lowering the draw distance help with this issue?
Or is there a good combination of settings that can help me achieve a decent looking game with a decent framerate? IE, Is it better to play a higher resolution with everything at the lowest, or a lower resolution with higher shaders, textures and anti aliasing?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Get it for the 360. No problems.

 

[Dinnesch]

You should really try playing around with the settings for yourself. While some like detailed shadows and water, others find the textures more important, or prefer to play with higher AA.
If you're too lazy to do so, the game offers low, medium, high and ultra high presets which provide an overall good balance.

 

[joule]

Have you taken a look at this guide? It's filled with great tweaks and tips that will really help with balancing out the settings for your system.

 

[Sloth]

OH MAN, YOU'RE SOOOOOO FUNNY AND HELPFUL!

But is is funny and also helpful...

Fallout 3 will never truly run smoothly on any computer known to man - it is simply that buggy...

 

[MGpet]

i have:

intel core 2 duo 2.0 ghz
4 gigs ram
vista 32 bit

i originally attempted playing with a x1950 pro, and it was too much of a buggy, slideshow mess, especially with VATS.

i upgraded to a 1gb HD4870, and it runs like a champ now @ 1920x1200, no AA, AFx15, HDR on. if you can afford the upgrade, it's worth making.

 

[Unfocused]

Have you taken a look at this guide? It's filled with great tweaks and tips that will really help with balancing out the settings for your system.

I second what joule said - take a look at that guide, it's very informative.

 

[chimpmunk]

I second what joule said - take a look at that guide, it's very informative.

Yup, it's very interesting.

Also, the game, even set at everything low, runs slightly smoother and isn't ugly as I would think.

 

[CyberPitz]

That's odd...I never really had too much of an issue with it. A couple of things turned to medium, it ran fine on high...none of this 'buggy slideshow mess'... *shrug* And I have nothing great. Low end C2D, 8800GT and 4 gigs of ram.