RESOLVED: FX3 Crashing or Choppy on Your Laptop?

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
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Update: This issue has been resolved by Zen in a patch so this fix should no longer be needed. Cheers to Zen for fixing it!
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So I recently fired up FX3 for the first time on my new gaming laptop and was shocked and disappointed to see a horribly choppy framerate even on an old table such as Sorcerer's Lair. The new WMS tables wouldn't even run at all, but would crash immediately on loading. I could run other very demanding games such as The Witcher 3 or Battlefield 1 without an issue on high settings, so this didn't make any sense.

A google search revealed others having this same issue with FX3 on their notebooks and even some negative Steam reviews from folks who didn't seem to know what was causing the choppiness and how to fix it.

Thankfully there is an easy solution! (As long as you have an NVIDA card)

For some reason, the game starts up with your integrated graphics instead of using your NVIDIA GPU. This is the only game I've seen do this, so it's definitely an anomaly.

To solve this:

1.) Open your NVIDIA Control Panel (access this by right clicking on the NIVIDA icon in your system tray).
2.) Click on "Manage 3D settings" on the left panel
3.) Under Global Settings, you will see a dropdown for "Preferred graphics processor". Change this to "High performance Nividia processor" (it is set to Auto Select by default).
4.) Apply and exit.

Done!

Now the game should be buttery smooth.

Here's a screenshot of the setting:

Untitled_1.png
 
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Spork98765

Member
Jul 3, 2015
363
0
Another thing to watch for with FX3 and the Bally/Williams beta is the beta is much more resource intensive than the regular branch. So you might need to lower the graphics settings to maintain 60 FPS. You'll know if you're getting bad performance even if hitting 60 FPS as the audio will sound like it is skipping, or looping poorly; like TPA on mobile circa season 1 and 2.

I had to reduce the AA, and things were awesome again.
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
Regular PBFX3, I have an i7 desktop 4GHZ with an nvidia 980 GPU and graphics were horribly choppy on my new 4K TV. Damn, so put the resolution back down to 1080P and still no difference. I've turned off the onboard GPU so I don't get the option you state above Jeff in the nvidia control panel so not sure what's up. It had been a bit of time I had tried PBFX3, in fact even my pincab mode was disabled and the code they provided me didn't work either. Not sure of the issue but still investigating...
 

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
Regular PBFX3, I have an i7 desktop 4GHZ with an nvidia 980 GPU and graphics were horribly choppy on my new 4K TV. Damn, so put the resolution back down to 1080P and still no difference. I've turned off the onboard GPU so I don't get the option you state above Jeff in the nvidia control panel so not sure what's up. It had been a bit of time I had tried PBFX3, in fact even my pincab mode was disabled and the code they provided me didn't work either. Not sure of the issue but still investigating...

That is really weird. Maybe as a test you could try re-enabling your onboard graphics, and see if it’s still somehow causing issues (I know it shouldn’t if you have it switched off in BIOS, but I guess stranger things have happened).
 

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
Another very odd thing I’ve noticed in the Nvidia 3D settings is that if I switch from “Global Settings” to “Program Settings”, I can’t get FX3 to display in the list, and it won’t even let me add it manually for some reason. I’m guessing this is why it tries to run via the onboard GPU since the nvidia driver possibly doesnt recognize it as a 3D application, but I’m not 100% sure. Can anyone else confirm that FX3 doesn’t show up in your Nvidia “Program Settings”?
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
update: so I just tried the standard Pinball FX3 on my much weaker 3screen desktop pc and it works butter smooth. This pc is running an ATI 280x GPU so it's not king kong strength here. I noticed on the 4K cab even when I select full screen mode, if I select a lower resolution it's just a small window so there's a bug somewhere here between the 4K and maybe using portrait mode. Still the graphics look super clean on the 4K pincab even when running at a lower resolution through the other modes so I suspect maybe the anti aliasing is stuck on 16X or something like that. I'm sure they will sort it out but for now, I can say playing it on my desktop, the new Williams tables look really good.


is there a way to get darker lighting on pbFX3 sort of a full nighttime mode? That's something I would solely miss, love the DX11 light show on TPA and the ability to control the room lighting, hopefully something like that comes along. In saying that, on the pincab (no cabinet mode), in portrait mode it felt like I was playing in full daytime but playing on the desktop in landscape, it does feel like you are playing at night with above average lighting. Well done, looking forward to repurchasing all the Williams tables again lol
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
Jeff: I don't really want to mess with the bios if I don't have too but if I can't figure it out I'll give it a try.
 

Fungi

Active member
Feb 20, 2012
4,888
2
Do you happen to know the specs on your laptop? It may only have 1 GPU.

It’s actually an Alienware X51 desktop, with a GeForce GT640 GPU and an i5-3450 CPU @3.10GHz

And FX3 doesn’t show up in my “program settings” either.
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
new update: it's not portrait that's the issue and same thing in landscape on the pincab pc. is anyone else running PBFX3 on a 4K screen?
 

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
It’s actually an Alienware X51 desktop, with a GeForce GT640 GPU and an i5-3450 CPU @3.10GHz

And FX3 doesn’t show up in my “program settings” either.

Looked up the X51 and it sounds like it does have onboard graphics as well as the Nvidia GPU. It’s sort of a mini desktop, eh? Does it have more than one HDMI port on the back? If so, you are plugged into the one on your GT640 and not the integrated one, right? (Sorry if that’s a dumb, question, but just want to make sure)
 

vfpcoder

Member
Jul 9, 2012
302
0
I’m having poor performance in cabinet mode on my VPCabs Vertigo. The trial “Medieval Madness” runs “OK”, but “Fish Tales” audio is choppy. “FX3” *does* show up in my “Program Settings”, but so far I haven’t found the “secret sauce” to smooth it out. I’m running “FX3” in full screen mode.

I realize this is just a Beta, but so far I much prefer the Arcooda TPA combo for these tables on my cab. I do see potential here, though ...
 

jaredmorgs

Moderator
Staff member
May 8, 2012
4,334
3
Another very odd thing I’ve noticed in the Nvidia 3D settings is that if I switch from “Global Settings” to “Program Settings”, I can’t get FX3 to display in the list, and it won’t even let me add it manually for some reason. I’m guessing this is why it tries to run via the onboard GPU since the nvidia driver possibly doesnt recognize it as a 3D application, but I’m not 100% sure. Can anyone else confirm that FX3 doesn’t show up in your Nvidia “Program Settings”?

I know a real gotcha with TPA was their DX handling meant they had four different .exe builds for the game. So if you added it to PinballArcade.exe, that was the DX9 version. PinballArcade11.exe was DX11 and if you hadn't explicitly added that .exe to the NVidia processor preferred list, it would run it off your embedded video.

Does PinFX use the same separated .exe approach?
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
solved my issue!!!

For some reason, when I switched to portrait, it reset the monitor refresh rate to 30 hz interlaced. WHATTT??? So I reset it to 60 hz and now it's silky smooth, even in 4K :) Looks damn nice but for sure, the night time view in desktop is fairly removed in portrait view in all the modes. I guess it's because the camera is closer to the table?? Really hope they allow some kind of adjustment there because it's desktop landscape view, the evening setting type lighting we get works "good enough" for me, but not in any of the portrait views. Still, what a surprising day and a nice start!
 

The loafer

Member
Oct 28, 2012
494
0
last update for the night: shadow quality was set to "medium". I set it to high and that improved the lighting more than I expected. Still not as dark as I'd like but def acceptable. The incandescent lights on junkyard REALLY look good, super job Zen!
 

Fungi

Active member
Feb 20, 2012
4,888
2
Looked up the X51 and it sounds like it does have onboard graphics as well as the Nvidia GPU. It’s sort of a mini desktop, eh? Does it have more than one HDMI port on the back? If so, you are plugged into the one on your GT640 and not the integrated one, right? (Sorry if that’s a dumb, question, but just want to make sure)

Yep, plugged into the GT640. As you said, for some reason, only FX3 defaults to the integrated.
 
Last edited:

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
I know a real gotcha with TPA was their DX handling meant they had four different .exe builds for the game. So if you added it to PinballArcade.exe, that was the DX9 version. PinballArcade11.exe was DX11 and if you hadn't explicitly added that .exe to the NVidia processor preferred list, it would run it off your embedded video.

Does PinFX use the same separated .exe approach?

Good point. I’ll have to look into it more.

solved my issue!!!

For some reason, when I switched to portrait, it reset the monitor refresh rate to 30 hz interlaced. WHATTT??? So I reset it to 60 hz and now it's silky smooth, even in 4K :) Looks damn nice but for sure, the night time view in desktop is fairly removed in portrait view in all the modes. I guess it's because the camera is closer to the table?? Really hope they allow some kind of adjustment there because it's desktop landscape view, the evening setting type lighting we get works "good enough" for me, but not in any of the portrait views. Still, what a surprising day and a nice start!

Nice! That’s great news.
 

Jeff Strong

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 19, 2012
8,144
2
Yep, plugged into the GT640. As you said, for some reason, only FX3 defaults to the integrated.

Is the integrated disabled in BIOS? If not, try that and see if it does the trick.
 
Last edited:

Spork98765

Member
Jul 3, 2015
363
0
I’m having poor performance in cabinet mode on my VPCabs Vertigo. The trial “Medieval Madness” runs “OK”, but “Fish Tales” audio is choppy. “FX3” *does* show up in my “Program Settings”, but so far I haven’t found the “secret sauce” to smooth it out. I’m running “FX3” in full screen mode.

I realize this is just a Beta, but so far I much prefer the Arcooda TPA combo for these tables on my cab. I do see potential here, though ...

Turn Anti Aliasing OFF, set shadows to LOW and see if the audio improves. It seems to be tied the the GPU performance.

Once you have it playing right you can raise the settings until you find where it glitches out.
 

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