Need help with Oblivion please

[inferna]

Hi guys, greetings. I hope you guys are not fed up with Oblivion-related questions yet, I've tried looking for answers and found some people with almost similar problems, but I can't seem to find a clear answer to my problem. Been tweaking Oblivion for almost a month now, and although I must say my Oblivion runs much better now, the one problem I'm having never seem to dissappear.

My problem is simply:Towns. Just towns. I have no problems whatsoever outdoors, in dungeons, inside Oblivion gates, I always get 50+ FPS even when fighting 3 or more monsters/bandits in dense grass. But once I step into towns my FPS drops to 30s and low 20s, Bravil being the worst. NPCs seem to be causing this. I found some people also experienced the same issue, but they also get FPS drops when encountering enemies outside towns, I don't. Everything runs well for me as long as it is not inside towns. I'm using Streamline and Oblivion Stutter Remover mod now and they help a lot to ease pain in towns. I don't have a high-end computer but I think my PC is actually quite sufficient to run Oblivion in max settings without needing to use performance-enhancing mods. I'm running Oblivion at 1440 X 900, 4X AA, no AF, HDR, my PC specs are:

- Intel C2D E7500 2,93 GHz
- Vid card XFX HD 4850 512 Mb
- Mainboard Biostar TP45D2-A7
- 2 Gigs DDR2 Kingston PC 6400
- Windows XP Home SP3
- Corsair 550 VX PSU

What I've done/tried so far :

- Updated BIOS to latest version
- Installed all motherboard drivers
- Updated video card driver to latest Catalyst
- Patched Oblivion to latest version
- Reinstalled Oblivion
- Running Oblivion without any mods
- Defragging hard drive
- Reinstalled Windows
- Different resolutions (my old monitor can't go higher than 1440 X 900, but town performance is almost the same at any res)
- Disabling sound hardware acceleration as some people suggested it would help, well it didn't
- Tried all the memory, loading, multithreading and other tweaks from the Oblivion Tweak Guide
- Disabling AA, disabling HDR

I currently have 3 games installed, Oblivion, Left 4 Dead and Crysis, Both Crysis and L4D runs fine with no problems at all.

Please help, I'm running out of ideas. Thanks in advance.

 

[Via]

I wish I could help, but I didn't have that problem.

Ironically, that reminds me a lot of Morrowind. Everything was be smooth as glass in the wilderness, but entering towns (especially Balmora) would immediately drop the fps into the teens, or even single digits.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Is it only when your camera is focused on a bunch of NPCs at the same time, or does it occur any time you're around multiple NPCs? For example, can you point your camera directly at the sky or ground (while in the middle of a town) and see if FPS increases significantly?

 

[Martimus]

It may be that your CPU is the bottleneck in towns, as that is where most of the AI is taking place (all the NPC characters figuring out where to go, what to do, and how to react with the other NPC characters they run into, or you for that matter).

 

[EvilComputer92]

The towns always bring any computer to 20fps. I'm running a Core 2 at 3.55 Ghz and a GTX 275 and I still get around 15 to 25fps in towns, and its the worst in the imperial city.

Oblivion is just badly optimized, even with Streamline and Stutter Remover.

 

[inferna]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Is it only when your camera is focused on a bunch of NPCs at the same time, or does it occur any time you're around multiple NPCs? For example, can you point your camera directly at the sky or ground (while in the middle of a town) and see if FPS increases significantly?

Yes, I can point at the sky and get a major FPS boost This game is so weird

 

[Mike Gayner]

Originally posted by: EvilComputer92
The towns always bring any computer to 20fps. I'm running a Core 2 at 3.55 Ghz and a GTX 275 and I still get around 15 to 25fps in towns, and its the worst in the imperial city.

Oblivion is just badly optimized, even with Streamline and Stutter Remover.

PEBKAC TBH. I'm running e6600 and 8800gt and it runs fine in the cities.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

Originally posted by: inferna

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Is it only when your camera is focused on a bunch of NPCs at the same time, or does it occur any time you're around multiple NPCs? For example, can you point your camera directly at the sky or ground (while in the middle of a town) and see if FPS increases significantly?

Yes, I can point at the sky and get a major FPS boost This game is so weird

Yep, it's the NPCs. Not only does your processor start processing all of their pathfinding and stuff when they come on-screen, but IIRC Oblivion's NPCs also have an unnecessarily high polygon count. This was one of the reasons I stopped playing the game, besides the unavoidable crashes.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Originally posted by: EvilComputer92
The towns always bring any computer to 20fps. I'm running a Core 2 at 3.55 Ghz and a GTX 275 and I still get around 15 to 25fps in towns, and its the worst in the imperial city.

Oblivion is just badly optimized, even with Streamline and Stutter Remover.

Not mine.

 

[inferna]

So, there's no cure? Sigh what a waste, such beautiful towns I wonder how some people can actually get good performance in towns

 

[Gothgar]

here is some cure

Uninstall it, throw the disc away and forget about it forever, that game blew chunks

Probably the worst RPG I ever played.

 

[KeypoX]

hmm i think i had better performance on single core wit x800?

 

[inferna]

Originally posted by: Gothgar
here is some cure

Uninstall it, throw the disc away and forget about it forever, that game blew chunks

Probably the worst RPG I ever played.

lol will do. Thanks for the replies anyway guys, guess I just have to avoid towns like the plague now

 

[CurseTheSky]

Towns seem to run pretty smoothly for me, and they still did before I upgraded (previously ran E8400 @ stock, 4GB DDR2, and 680i motherboard). I'm not sure how it works, but it seems to me that NPC's pathing and AI would be calculated regardless of whether or not you're looking at them (perhaps within a certain radius, so it doesn't have to calculate the entire town at once... but with that game, who knows). The fact that you're getting an FPS boost by looking at the sky tells me it's a graphics slowdown, not CPU.

Try turning the graphics settings down to horrible levels (800x600, 0xAA, 0xAF, all details on low or off, vertical sync off) and see if you can still notice the problem. For example, if you're normally running around with 100-200 FPS and drop down to 30-60 when you enter a town, even at those low settings, something fishy is going on. Most importantly, don't load any add-ons.

If you STILL notice the problem, uninstall Oblivion, manually clean out any remaining folders (C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion, C:\Users\<User Account Name>\Documents\My Games\Oblivion, and C:\Users\<User Account Name>\AppData\Local\Oblivion or similar, depending on your OS), and perhaps even run a registry cleaner to make sure it's truly gone. Then, reinstall the game, start a new game, and see what you're FPS is in a town. If it's improved, then install the official patches ONLY and try again. If you're still good, slowly install mods, starting with the big ones (like OOO) and test periodically.

Oblivion may not be the most fun or optimized game in the world, and admittedly it's one of the few (along with Fallout 3, surprise surprise) that's given me numerous crash-to-desktops in the past several years, but it's far from a bad game.

 

[inferna]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Towns seem to run pretty smoothly for me, and they still did before I upgraded (previously ran E8400 @ stock, 4GB DDR2, and 680i motherboard). I'm not sure how it works, but it seems to me that NPC's pathing and AI would be calculated regardless of whether or not you're looking at them (perhaps within a certain radius, so it doesn't have to calculate the entire town at once... but with that game, who knows). The fact that you're getting an FPS boost by looking at the sky tells me it's a graphics slowdown, not CPU.

Try turning the graphics settings down to horrible levels (800x600, 0xAA, 0xAF, all details on low or off, vertical sync off) and see if you can still notice the problem. For example, if you're normally running around with 100-200 FPS and drop down to 30-60 when you enter a town, even at those low settings, something fishy is going on. Most importantly, don't load any add-ons.

If you STILL notice the problem, uninstall Oblivion, manually clean out any remaining folders (C:\Program Files (x86)\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion, C:\Users\<User Account Name>\Documents\My Games\Oblivion, and C:\Users\<User Account Name>\AppData\Local\Oblivion or similar, depending on your OS), and perhaps even run a registry cleaner to make sure it's truly gone. Then, reinstall the game, start a new game, and see what you're FPS is in a town. If it's improved, then install the official patches ONLY and try again. If you're still good, slowly install mods, starting with the big ones (like OOO) and test periodically.

Oblivion may not be the most fun or optimized game in the world, and admittedly it's one of the few (along with Fallout 3, surprise surprise) that's given me numerous crash-to-desktops in the past several years, but it's far from a bad game.

Ok, tried 800x600 no AF, no add-ons. FPS in towns is almost exactly the same as 1440x900, low 20s-30s. I'm not sure if reinstalling would help since I've already tried that. I've even tried reinstalling Windows. Seems like Oblivion just hates my PC somehow lol

 

[inferna]

Actually I found out that there are 3 settings that really slow me down in towns. Actor, object, and item fade. If I lower these 3 sliders to minimum my FPS skyrockets. Lowering only 1 or 2 of them won't help much. I don't know, it just doesn't seem right, a few crates, banners, and some people speaking in front of my character can drop FPS like crazy while enemies in wilderness and dungeons don't cause any FPS drop whatsoever

 

[Scooby Doo]

Also have you tried purging cell buffer (pcb) from the console?