Fallout: New Vegas Tweak Guide | GeForce - Nvidia

If you're unfamiliar with the Fallout series of games, the quirky premise is that America effectively became culturally stuck in the 1950's 'Atomic Age', right up to a devastating nuclear war which occurs in the early 21st century. Fallout: New Vegas begins in the late 23rd century, shortly after the events of Fallout 3, allowing you to once again enter this bizarre alternate reality and explore the post-apocalyptic wasteland surrounding and including Las Vegas, now known as New Vegas. In terms of genre, Fallout: New Vegas can best be described as a cross between an adventure game, a role-playing game, and a first person shooter, having elements of all three.

If you've played Fallout 3, then the simplest description of Fallout: New Vegas is that it is more of the same goodness, but with RPG enhancements including a better companion management system, Hardcore mode which places greater emphasis on strategy and realism, and a Reputation System that means your actions now have more consequences. Add to that new enemies and new weapons, a large open game world to explore and a great deal of freedom to play your character any way you wish, and the result is a game guaranteed to provide you with countless hours of enjoyment.

The game's official minimum requirements are shown below:

• Processor: Dual core 2.0GHz CPU
• Memory: 2GB
• Hard Drive: At least 10 GB of free space
• Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 6 Series (or equivalent) or higher
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
• Peripherals: Keyboard & mouse or Windows compatible gamepad
• OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7

The requirements are quite modest because Fallout: New Vegas is based on a game engine which has been around for many years, most notably used in Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Basically, if your system can run Fallout 3 then you should be able to run Fallout: New Vegas at similar visual quality.

What follows are full descriptions for all of Fallout: New Vegas' in-game settings, including screenshot comparisons to highlight the impact on image quality of changing the most significant settings. Performance information is also provided, although bear in mind that the precise impact on your particular system depends on your specific hardware combination and your other game and system-wide settings. The aim here is to give you enough information so that you can make an informed choice as to the settings you enable or disable to obtain the precise balance of visual quality and performance that is acceptable to you.

General System Optimization

Almost as important as any in-game setting is the way your Windows installation is configured. A great many problems and performance issues - particularly stuttering and crashes in Fallout: New Vegas - can be traced directly to sub-optimal settings in Windows and out-of-date or badly configured drivers. For this reason it is recommended that you download the relevant version of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (TGTC) and take the time to optimize your Windows installation correctly. At the very least make sure to update your graphics drivers to the latest available version.

Performance Measurement

To successfully conduct any tweaking in Fallout: New Vegas, you will need some way of objectively measuring your performance in Frames Per Second (FPS). The quickest and easiest way to measure your FPS in any game is to use the free FRAPS utility. Download, install and launch FRAPS before starting up Fallout: New Vegas. You will now see a yellow FPS counter displayed in the corner of your screen. Pay attention to the FPS figure, particularly during graphically intense scenes, such as during explosions and in crowded areas - if it dips into the low double or single digits for example, this is a good indication that you need to adjust various settings until your minimum FPS is consistently above 25-30.