Look, my first few hours with Fallout 76 were marred with technical problems, ranging from lack of mouse and keyboard support to no native support for my preferred ultra-wide resolution, but what really prevented me from playing Bethesda’s latest title was a consistently low framerate.
From the moment I first fired up Fallout 76, I was getting at most 20 FPS, even in the menus. No matter what graphics preset or resolution I chose, I never saw anything resembling a playable level of performance. But my PC is powerful enough to run even a poorly optimized game like Fallout 76. It has a top of the line CPU, an Nvidia GTX 1080, and I’m pushing it all through a beautiful G-Sync enabled monitor that cost more than I’m willing to admit. So what’s wrong with this game?
After several hours of research through various Fallout 76 forums and subreddits, I noticed a common solution that helped some people with similar issues: change your monitor’s display refresh rate back to 60Hz.
I won’t speculate on what the particular cause of the problem in Bethesda’s game engine is, but it appears that in many cases, monitors with a refresh rate higher than 60Hz, or monitors with G-Sync enabled, render Fallout 76 incapable of producing more than 20 frames per second. At least initially. In my case, I was able to disable G-Sync, launch Fallout 76, and later re-enable G-Sync and still maintain the maximum of 60 FPS that Fallout 76 is capable of. Your mileage may vary.
How to Disable G-Sync
If you have a G-Sync enabled monitor and are getting much less than the anticipated performance in Fallout 76, try disabling G-Sync before launching the game. To do so, right-click on the Nvidia icon in your system tray and open the Nvidia Control Panel.
Visit the “Set up G-SYNC” menu entry and uncheck the Enable G-SYNC checkbox. Click Apply and wait a few moments, then fire up Fallout 76. If your situation is similar to mine, you will now be able to enjoy a more reasonable experience. Feel free to try enabling G-Sync again after you’ve quit the game, and you may even be fortunate enough to keep your improved frames per second.
Good luck!
