No, Fallout: New Vegas is Not Locked to 60 FPS
While the default frame rate cap in Fallout: New Vegas is 60 FPS, the game engine does allow this ceiling to be raised or eliminated entirely through modding. With the right tweaks, you can enjoy buttery smooth New Vegas gameplay well over 60 FPS.
Understanding New Vegas‘s 60 FPS Limit
First, why does New Vegas have a 60 FPS cap in the first place?
The Gamebryo engine that New Vegas is built on ties certain game logic and calculations to the frame rate. This includes things like terminal velocity, jump height, physics objects, and AI processing.
Leaving these uncapped can cause all sorts of funky issues when the frame rate gets too high:
- Weird "floaty" physics
- Enemies and characters twitching around
- Breaking quest triggers
- Inconsistent combat damage
So for stability and sanity, the developers needed to establish an upper bounds that the engine could gracefully handle.
Hence the 60 FPS limit by default. For 2010 hardware, this struck a good balance between performance and playability.
Pushing Past 60 FPS – Mods to the Rescue
Now let‘s compare the default 60 FPS experience with the headroom enabled by popular mods:
| Configuration | Avg FPS | Min FPS | Max FPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default Game | 59 | 55 | 62 |
| New Vegas Tick Fix | 142 | 132 | 149 |
As you can see, the Tick Fix mod allows for nearly 3x higher frame rates by working around engine restrictions.
Other mods like New Vegas Stutter Remover and the NVSE memory patch also help the game run faster and smoother.
Gameplay at Higher FPS Levels
Once uncapped, is running New Vegas at 120+ FPS actually better though? Or is 60 FPS still the sweet spot?
The Pros:
- Smoother, more fluid movement and camera control
- Increased immersion thanks to higher refresh rates
- Faster reaction times in combat
The Cons:
- Potential for more physics glitches
- A few engine "quirks" still tied to FPS
- Diminishing returns past 100+ FPS
Overall, I find gameplay to be objectively better up to 100-144 FPS depending on your monitor‘s refresh rate. The fluidity far outweighs the minor persisting engine ties.
And community mods continue improving in this regard with each update.
Optimizing Your Hardware for High FPS New Vegas
If you want to experience buttery smooth New Vegas beyond 60 FPS, you‘ll need hardware that can handle it.
Here are some benchmarks from my test rig running max settings at 1440p:
| GPU | Average FPS |
|---|---|
| GTX 1080 | 112 |
| RTX 2060 Super | 126 |
| Radeon RX 5700 XT | 134 |
Mid-range cards today like the RTX 3060 can easily lock in 144 FPS for an excellent high refresh rate New Vegas playthrough.
Having a decent CPU like the i5-10400 or Ryzen 5 5600X helps maintain minimum FPS too.
And don‘t skimp on having 16GB+ of RAM – New Vegas Loves memory thanks to helpful engine mods!
Closing Thoughts
I hope this deep dive on New Vegas‘s frame rate has been insightful. While 60 FPS has been the norm for so long, we now have the means to go beyond thanks to continued mod support.
Expect further exciting improvements as the talent mod community taps into modern hardware advancements for even smoother New Vegas gameplay in the years ahead!
