PSA - nVidia drivers newer than v442.92 will crash Fallout 4

[msalaba]

Maybe put a PSA on the wiki for nVidia users. Currently nVidia drivers newer than v442.92 do not play nice with the Fallout 4 game engine. It is also worth noting that I experienced W10 updating my video driver last patch Tuesday. I was constantly crashing in the Concord area. After rolling back to v442.92, the problems went away.
There are scattered bits about this in the posts on the Buffout 4 Nexus page. There also is some info on this at the bottom of this page:

Buffout 4 FAQs

wiki.fireundubh.com

Maybe put a sticky on the help forum? Some of the reported issues might be related to this.

 

[bugEncounterer]

Thanks a million for this, constant crashing was killing me! Knew I shouldn't have updated my drivers.

Dang, you posted this last week and by the sound of it, you had the latest drivers as of 2022... this problem is still not fixed? I'm just sitting here wondering when I will be allowed to update my drivers again some day... maybe when I stop playing FO4 for good.

 

[callmeishmael]

No problems with mobile 3080 with newest drivers.

 

[UndercoverHat]

I'm running an aging 750 Ti with 511.65 drivers (Feb 1, 2022), and no issues beyond the expected Bethesda stuff. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I update through the nVidia GeForce Experience app.

 

[callmeishmael]

I'm running an aging 750 Ti with 511.65 drivers (Feb 1, 2022), and no issues beyond the expected Bethesda stuff. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I update through the nVidia GeForce Experience app.

One of the best parts of running older games is that they're fine with older hardware.

 

[ElanaLoaded]

I run a 3071MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. Update drivers thru GetForce exp as well. I just refuse updates until driver is a few month old - and bugs weeded out.

 

[John Knapp]

I have one of the affected cards. Tried running one of the newer drivers a couple months ago but still have the same problem and had to revert back to old (but good) driver.

 

[GuardianMF]

Some people are reporting less crashes when limiting their fps to 60 (through the ini file for High FPS Physics users). Might be worth a try for those who need updated drivers due to newer games or software

 

[msalaba]

Some people are reporting less crashes when limiting their fps to 60 (through the ini file for High FPS Physics users).

I would suspect this is due to the Papyrus VM being linked to fps. When you increase fps beyond 60, (the game engine expects 60 fps) more time is given to the VM at the cost of time for all other game systems. I do not know if High FPS Fix addresses this.

I forgot I updated to the latest game ready driver for another game. (GTX 1070) I was able to wander all over the Commonwealth with no crashes. (played for a few hours) There may be some truth to the rumor that this issue was fixed. IIRC, it was an early 5xx driver where I crashed every time I entered Concord.

 

[pra]

Happens to me as well with a GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER. Here, the symptom is CTD either right on game load, or on cell change.

I think I've seen this thread before, since I do have a 442.92-desktop-win10-64bit-international-nsd-whql.exe lying around. Have also an installer for 471.11, that version also does NOT work.

Seems like F4 has an expiration date. Not a literal date, but it's coming.


Edit: Thanks to @Otellino, it seems to work for me now. In Fallout4Prefs.ini, do the following changes under [NVFlex]:

bNVFlexEnable=0
iQuality=0
bNVFlexInstanceDebris=0
bNVFlexDrawDebris=0

The last two were actually set to 1 for me, changing them to 0 seems to have stopped the crashes.

TBF, I have no clue what these settings actually turned off, but the game still looks the same, but runs with an up-to-date driver.

 

[msalaba]

I have no clue what these settings actually turned off

Buffout 4 FAQs

wiki.fireundubh.com

This is supposed to do the same thing.

Weapon Debris Crash Fix

Fixed crashes caused by Weapon Debris settingИсправление вылетов при включенной настройке 'Осколки от выстрелов'

www.nexusmods.com