Improving Morrowind Performance?

[DREWxBLOOD]

Anyone have any links or suggestions on getting my Morrowind frames up? My specs are above their recommended but the game still runs like crap. I thought it was tearing, but now I'm thinking it's really just extremely low fps. First off, how do I test that, and secondly, anyone have any tweaks to the ini file to get that speed up a bit? My guess is that in the outdoors area of the first town I'm pulling maybe 15 frames. So pretty unplayable. Any help is appreciated.

 

[JellyBaby]

Nothing short of a top-of-the-line processor and video card will run Morrowind decently while still allowing you to turn up the options. A fast hard drive is a good idea, too, as the world isn't seemless and does require loading in new areas.

 

[zzzz]

you should get the safe disk crack.

 

[Rand]

Seems a number of people are reporting that the SafeDisk2 protection used on the Morrowind CD causes significantly decreased performance, so you may want to try one of the many CD cracks so you can run Morrowind w/out the CD.

 

[Bucksnort]

Nearly everyone is experiencing this problem due to the memory leaks and other issues that should have been tested out before this game was released. A patch is the only thing that will drastically improve it. Hopefully it wont take too long.

 

[CubicZirconia]

What resolution do you run the game at? Hopefully you're not running it above 1024x768.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

I've tried it at every resolution under 1600 and it hasn't really run much differently. Pretty weird that I'd get similar performance at all resolutions .

 

[Gnollguy]

Originally posted by: DREWxBLOOD
I've tried it at every resolution under 1600 and it hasn't really run much differently. Pretty weird that I'd get similar performance at all resolutions .

Nah, that just indicates that the bottleneck is somewhere other than the video card. I sadly don't have Morrowind yet, and won't get it until after finals are over, but your issue doesn't actually appear to be all video. I have done some reading, and I have seen that the game is a memory monster. It has a pretty decent caching system so that you don't have to deal with load lag as much, but it will chew up all the available memory doing so. I think the there is some info on the Bethsoft boards (http://www.elderscrolls.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php) that mention some .ini tweaks to adjust that. What OS you running it under, if it is 9X/ME you might want to check your vcache settings. As others have said, SafeDisc2 can cause some loading issues with some drives so cracking it so you don't need the CD could very well be worth a shot. Do you notice that your HDD or CD are getting hit a lot?

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

I have several INI tweaks enabled and the safedisk crack installed. I'm not complaining...my speeds seem pretty on par with what I've seen from most other people. OK, well I AM complaining, but not about my system, but just the game's performance in general.

 

[thraashman]

my Morrowind keeps locking up. I mean completely freezing on me. I have an older sound card (the troubleshooting says a non direct x 8.1 compatible soudn card could be a problem) but I turned off hardware rendering. Could it be that my video card isn't all that good, it's a ATI Rage Fury Pro. my system itself is a Athlon 1.3 gHz w/ 256 DDR, so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm running with low video options, so I'd think it'd at least run without locking. But I get maybe 5 minutes into the game and it locks on me.