Vault 84: Performance Benchmarks and Tips

This page is very much under construction at the moment. Tips for now:

  1. Install a bigger version of Fallout to your hard disk. Of all the performance tips, this one seems to have the biggest impact.
  2. Make other applications quit when you start Fallout (settable the first time you run the game, or from the "Options" menu when you hit Command-P during the game).
  3. Use Apple's Extension Manager or Casady & Greene's Conflict Catcher to set up a minimal set of extensions to play the game. If you try this, don't forget to enable the Game Sprockets needed for Fallout! (InputSprocket and DrawSprocket)
  4. Upgrade your Mac to one of those nice, new, zippy G3 jobs and buy a great big 7200rpm disk drive =8^).
  5. Fallout requires a minimum of 16 MB RAM and prefers 32 MB. I haven't found that increasing the preferred amount of RAM (to 40MB) improved speed all that much.

I'll be putting up some benchmark numbers soon, but here are stats on my machine (a stock PowerMacintosh 8500/120):
Processor PowerPC 604
Processor Clock Speed 120 Mhz
System RAM 64 MB
RAM allocated to MacOS 16.7 MB
RAM allocated to Fallout 40 MB
Level 2 Cache 256 K
Disk Cache 2096 K
CD-ROM speed 4X
Bus speed 40 Mhz

These are some of the load times I experienced with this setup, using a full (600MB install) on a Jaz disk:
Game startup (double-click to opening logos) 31 sec
Starting new game (close of cutscene to cave) 17 sec
Loading early savegame (completing Vault 15 and all Shady Sands quests) 45 sec
Loading late savegame (Everything complete except Military Base) 4 min, 13 sec

Back to the Vault 84 Entrance



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Edward C. Liu
edwick@macconnect.com

Fallout is Copyright 1997 Interplay Productions. Fallout is a trademark of Interplay Productions. All Rights Reserved.
This is my page. These are my opinions, but you're welcome to borrow any of them to make your own.
Last modified: December 16, 1997