Oblivion performance

[shamrock_uk]

Afternoon all,

I can't help feeling a little disappointed with Oblivion performance so I thought I'd share my experiences and see if it's just me or whether it happens to others with similar hardware. All settings are maxed and I'm using AA rather than HDR.

Generally speaking the game runs perfectly smoothly in 'normal' play (ie travelling to different places, light combat, magic) Galloping on a horse is definitely a little choppy.

Wolves for some reason give me a visible and serious performance hit.

It really does slow to a crawl when trying to escape guards across country - after five minutes of running/galloping constantly through the countryside with perhaps two guards, a few monsters and a couple of wolves chasing me we're talking perhaps 5 fps.

The above all are taking place with default .ini settings. Extending the scenery draw distance (as per the .ini tweak) does hit performance (understandably). Standing on that lake with all the vicious slaughterfish, setting ugridstoload = 10 is largely fine. 15 drops me to about 15fps and setting it to 20 brings it to about 2fps.


I'd be interested to hear whether the above symptoms are typical.

Specs:

Athlon64 X2 4400+
256MB GeForce 7900GT
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
2GB Crucial DDR RAM
Windows 2000

I only just built this thing with the intention of it being a beast of a gaming PC so am understandably a little bit miffed to experience any form of slowdown whatsoever. I'm also using the latest Nvidia drivers. Any idea what gives? TIA!

[ 04-19-2006, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Ilander]

With default "high" settings, my x800 runs the game alright...Then, I discovered the world of no grass, and I haven't looked back.

Seriously, my game runs SIGNIFICANTLY better, and all I did was turn grass distance to zero. The textures below the grass are, for the most part, quite pretty, and it doesn't hurt my feelings in the least, especially when I gain 10 frames per second out of it.

I also have AA and Bloom lighting (no HDR support over here...) turned off, but everything else is on, and maxed.

[vesselle]

p3 2.53
1 gb RAM
windows xp pro, all updates
x700 pro, 256mb w/ omega drivers
audigy sound card, old old drivers

running on high settings.
have OBMM installed with ALL the mods enabled (esp all the texture replacers: terrain, grass, armor, weapons, etc), except for ones that make beasts and baddies harder to kill.

no real problems, except slowdowns during fights with multiple enemies at one time. but they were a bit of slideshow without any mods enabled, so i'm dealing with it.

V***V

[shamrock_uk]

Why would you replace the game textures Vesselle? Are they better than the game ones?

One common thread is that you all have ATI cards, I wonder if Oblivion doesn't like Nvidia. Anyone out there with a high-end Nvidia card?

[JrKASperov]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: Generally speaking the game runs perfectly smoothly in 'normal' play (ie travelling to different places, light combat, magic) Galloping on a horse is definitely a little choppy. Wolves for some reason give me a visible and serious performance hit. It really does slow to a crawl when trying to escape guards across country - after five minutes of running/galloping constantly through the countryside with perhaps two guards, a few monsters and a couple of wolves chasing me we're talking perhaps 5 fps.

Your problem isn't your pc, it works the game quite fine. The problem is the bad programmers of Bethsoft who decided for some reason that non-human footstep sounds should be in another format which slows down your 'puter IMMENSELY if you don't have an über soundsystem. So search on TESSource a bit for a mod that removes the non-human footstep sounds, it's there, and it works.

My puter is a AMD Athlon XP 2400+
1.5 Gb RAM
Windows XP pro
GeForce 6600 (256 ram)

I run on the lowest res, no HDR or AA, no shadows except for canopy, and the rest doesn't matter. When in fights or cities, the framerate drops somewhat, sometimes enough to make it frustrating. I've seen my vidcard do 800x600, with HDR and full character shadows with 30 average FPS, so I know it isn't that which gives me problems. Any ideas? Is it the CPU?

[shamrock_uk]

Thanks JrKASperov, I'll check that out when I get home!

As for your CPU, what about calling up the system monitor and letting it run in the background? Then you could review the graph after play and see if it's been anywhere near 100%.

[JrKASperov]

Good idea, let's give it a try.

Note: It's MY CPU I'm worried about, yours is fine. It IS the sound problem, seriously. Had the same problem, just like many people on the TES forums.

[ 04-19-2006, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: JrKASperov ]

[shamrock_uk]

Hmm...well that's not it.

Link. One of the cores does get pretty close to 90% near the end, but it's not maxed and it's not a RAM shortage either. With a wolf, a man and a mudcrab chasing me on a horse it went down to about 5fps.

That makes it sounds like my graphics card, yet asides from the 512MB 7900GT and the 7900GTX versions this is about as good as you can buy. I just don't get it

I'm just hunting down your mods now [img]smile.gif[/img]

[JrKASperov]

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1999

That's the sound fix. Quiet Feet.

(I just thought I'd find it for you since I'm supposed to learn this exam [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by JrKASperov: Your problem isn't your pc, it works the game quite fine. The problem is the bad programmers of Bethsoft who decided for some reason that non-human footstep sounds should be in another format which slows down your 'puter IMMENSELY if you don't have an über soundsystem. So search on TESSource a bit for a mod that removes the non-human footstep sounds, it's there, and it works.

My hero! Smooth as silk now! That really is sloppy on Bethesda's part. I'm still using my old and faithful soundblaster live which I guess it the reason. I didn't see the point in shelling out for an uber sound system when it sounds nice, does EAX and I only have two speakers!

Humph, whoever heard of a soundcard as the performance bottleneck?

Many thanks once again!

Edit: Good luck with the exam!

[ 04-19-2006, 04:14 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]