Oblivion frame rate issues

[Jester22]

Long time lurker, first time poster. =)

So I?ve bought myself a nifty OCed Galaxy 8800gt 512mb viddie card a couple of weeks ago, in hopes that I can FINALLY run Oblivion at decent rates. Well, apparently, I still can?t.

Now, I have an AMD 64 x2 3800+ running at 2.35ghz (couldn?t get it any higher), 2 gigs o? DDR ram and windows XP home.

I think my cpu is the primary cause of this problem, but let?s see what you guys think, Lord knows you all would have a better understanding of this issue than me. Here?s the problem:

So I?m running around the dungeons, collecting l00ts and shiny things. I run into a couple of not so friendly NPCs, they emit a fearsome high pitched battle cry and engage; and suddenly my frames drop. And I mean they DROP, like a frightfully bad case of diarrhea.

I get a somewhat constant 60ish FPS while in the dungeons, but ?sometimes? when I get into a battle, my rates drop to 10-15 and stay at that point constantly, until my foe has been taken care of. This problem may occur with as little as a single opponent npc in my ?field of vision?, even if they were behind a wall just around the corner. If I were to turn around and look in the opposite direction of where they are, my fps would climb back up to 30-60.

I?m using the OOO v1.32 mod, if anyone?s familiar with it, it may raise the strain on my cpu due to better AI. I keep an eye on my cpu and ram usage as I play, and only about 1 gig of ram is used along with 80% of one core and 50% of the other. I?ve tweaked my Oblivion.ini to include more functions for both cores, I?ve tried the cpu script optimization mod to no real benifit. Everything has been patched and updated except that I haven?t gotten around to installing service pack 2 yet, I don?t think that?s a big deal, I?ll do so later tonight at home.

I get around 30-40 fps in the outdoors, as long as there are no NPCs or beasties hanging around. Everything is set to maximum and my card seems to handle it quite well, which is at least a big improvement over my x800gt. But in most cities, my frames would drop to 15-20. I?m assuming it?s because of all the NPCs trotting around, going about their business of broken conversations, asking for booze money and walking into walls.

But I thought my cpu would be good enough to run this game without such issues. I could understand if I was in a suspenseful battle with 5+ opponents, but just 1? Common!

Any advice/tips/cookies would be greatly appreciated!

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Is the game fully patched?
Have you tried using a different driver?
Is your HD defragged?
Do you still get the stutters when your CPU is at stock?
Have you tried the game unmodded?

 

[Marty502]

Aren't you forcing any performance draining settings like AA or AF?

My CPU is a bit faster than yours, my GPU is a snail compared to yours, and I have pretty good performance in Oblivion at a 1280x960 resolution with HDR. Any decently clocked X2 should be enough for Oblivion, there's something odd going on in your computer.

Trying to overclock that CPU a bit further wouldn't hurt though... ever taken the time to read a proper guide on the subject? If not, you should. Absolutely worth it.

And by the way, welcome to the forums.

 

[shortylickens]

I have almost the exact same system as you except a much faster CPU. I dont get major slowdowns during big battles but it is noticeable.
I dont think its a hardware issue so much as a limitation with the engine. They didnt put all their effort into making major battles easily playable. The patches have done a lot to fix performance in the game, but this is something they havent made perfect yet.

If its an issue for you try taking down the video settings, but I think your CPU is the bottleneck. Its more of a scripting issue and thats the CPU's job.

 

[Noema]

Are you running HDR+AA? That puts a really big strain on the GPU, even on stuff like my 8800GTS.

 

[Jester22]

Thanks for the responses everyone, I think I?ve discovered what the problem is. =)

Now I feel kind of stupid for not having realized it earlier. The main issue I was having was that sometimes when in combat with just a single opponent, my FPS had a chance of dropping into the low teens (10-15). Apparently the issue occurs when an opponent has a ?cloak? (ie: chameleon spell / perma-cloak) my frames would plummet. So I had to go into my Oblivion.ini to disable that feature (I remember having done the same thing when I had my x800gt).

Now I?m happy to report that I no longer suffer from that problem. But cloaked enemies now look really odd, kind of like a dark translucent shadowy figure. Still, I don?t mind, this game?s too great to be put off by something so trivial.

Unfortunately I still get around 15-25 fps in towns, which I still find strange. So I?m going to go through GundamSonicZeroX?s list to see if I missed something:

Is the game fully patched?
Yeppers. woot 1/1 so far
Have you tried using a different driver?
I don?t recall, but I think I tried the driver that game with the cd as well, but right now I?m back to using the latest one from the NVIDIA site.
Is your HD defragged?
Yep, I made sure to do this because I don?t have that fancy Raid going for me, and I can hear my hdds struggling to run at times. =p
Do you still get the stutters when your CPU is at stock?
Yep, in fact it was around 10-15 fps I would get in towns. Now at least I?m doing a bit better, much to my surprise I may add. I thought a dual core 2.0ghz should have been sufficient? oh well.
Have you tried the game unmodded?
Umm, I am pretty sure I ran through it for 10 minutes before installing any mods, to ensure everything was installed properly. I do recall having the same issues (15-25 fps) when in contact with uncloaked NPCs.

Thanks for the welcome Marty502, I?ll go over what you recommended as well: =)

I?m forcing 4x AA and 8x AF (this is to the best of my knowledge, I?m at work atm). And I?m running HDR. It looks great btw. =)
I?m pretty sure my viddie card is doing pretty well, considering how in the outdoors my FPS is higher than in towns. Which I?m happy to see, I was kind of alarmed that it may have been the card which was holding me back.

I did try to increase the frequency on my CPU even further, however, no matter how many volts I give it, no matter what setting I try, the thing refuses to go beyond 2.35ghz. If I tried 2.4ghz for example, when starting my comp, it won?t even display a screen. It just sits there, I?m assuming it?s not POSTing, I?m not sure however, because I don?t have a speaker on the mobo, so it makes no beeps even when it does POST. =/

I do recall running at 2.5ghz just fine months ago, but one day when starting up the comp, it wouldn?t display anything on the screen. So I replaced the cpu with another x2 3800+ (I had bought two, don?t ask why?) and I was able to go back to the BIOS and reset to stock speeds just to be safe. Now I?ve put that old CPU back in, just to see if it was ok, and it?s running pretty well so far.

I do have to agree with you on this one shortylickens. Oblivion may not be as optimized as one may have hoped. But that?s where the ?oblivion script optimizer? mod comes into play, you may even want to look into it yourself if you run into some issue in large battles. It may help. I have tried to decrease my video settings, but my frames barely rise from it. So I?m going to have to assume it is the cpu, as strange as it may be.

If anyone?s familiar with the Imperial Docks area, near the shack that?s sold for $2,000, with all the water and a couple of large ships; that area is probably the worst for me, I can never get more than 15fps there. Strange. Oh well, this is game is far too great for me to be worried about these small problems. Otherwise I wouldn?t have spend over 250 hours playing it. =)

The only thing I?m wondering is if the issue I was having with ?cloaked?/chameleon units dropping my frames was due to the CPU struggling or the video card? I hope it?s the cpu, otherwise I really over estimated the power of this card. Or it could be drivers, maybe newer ones will solve the problem.

 

[Capitalizt]

Your processor is the bottleneck. It can't handle half of what the 8800GT is throwing at it.

Do yourself a huge favor and upgrade to this one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819103771

 

[EarthwormJim]

I see you're forcing AA, do you by chance have Antialiasing transparency enabled? That caused me to have some frame rate issues.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Jester22
Long time lurker, first time poster. =)

So I?ve bought myself a nifty OCed Galaxy 8800gt 512mb viddie card a couple of weeks ago, in hopes that I can FINALLY run Oblivion at decent rates. Well, apparently, I still can?t.

Now, I have an AMD 64 x2 3800+ running at 2.35ghz (couldn?t get it any higher), 2 gigs o? DDR ram and windows XP home.

I think my cpu is the primary cause of this problem, but let?s see what you guys think, Lord knows you all would have a better understanding of this issue than me. Here?s the problem:

So I?m running around the dungeons, collecting l00ts and shiny things. I run into a couple of not so friendly NPCs, they emit a fearsome high pitched battle cry and engage; and suddenly my frames drop. And I mean they DROP, like a frightfully bad case of diarrhea.

I get a somewhat constant 60ish FPS while in the dungeons, but ?sometimes? when I get into a battle, my rates drop to 10-15 and stay at that point constantly, until my foe has been taken care of. This problem may occur with as little as a single opponent npc in my ?field of vision?, even if they were behind a wall just around the corner. If I were to turn around and look in the opposite direction of where they are, my fps would climb back up to 30-60.

I?m using the OOO v1.32 mod, if anyone?s familiar with it, it may raise the strain on my cpu due to better AI. I keep an eye on my cpu and ram usage as I play, and only about 1 gig of ram is used along with 80% of one core and 50% of the other. I?ve tweaked my Oblivion.ini to include more functions for both cores, I?ve tried the cpu script optimization mod to no real benifit. Everything has been patched and updated except that I haven?t gotten around to installing service pack 2 yet, I don?t think that?s a big deal, I?ll do so later tonight at home.

I get around 30-40 fps in the outdoors, as long as there are no NPCs or beasties hanging around. Everything is set to maximum and my card seems to handle it quite well, which is at least a big improvement over my x800gt. But in most cities, my frames would drop to 15-20. I?m assuming it?s because of all the NPCs trotting around, going about their business of broken conversations, asking for booze money and walking into walls.

But I thought my cpu would be good enough to run this game without such issues. I could understand if I was in a suspenseful battle with 5+ opponents, but just 1? Common!

Any advice/tips/cookies would be greatly appreciated!

I played with Oblivion and the expansion with my humble 3800+x2 and 7800GT at 1680x1050 res which ran fine,I disabled HDR and used bloom ,AA I left off however it was playable at 2x,play with the Oblivion settings, it only took me 5 minutes or so to get it running sweet.

 

[Jester22]

Thanks everyone for your info and suggestions. =)

It?s inspired me to put aside half an hour to go back into the oblivion.ini settings and tweak everything once again. As I had done back when I first got my x800gt (which wasn?t all that long ago?). I?m also going to read that ?windows xp tweak guide? that I had always wanted to go through, but could never get myself to do so. Curse my supernatural laziness!

But it?s all worth it to get Oblivion running smoothly. I?ll boil a pot o? joe and have at it!

There must be some kind of driver or optimization issue with my cpu though, there just has to be. I?m positive I?ve already installed the dual core optimizer by AMD. I?ll scan through their site once again to see if I had overlooked any potentially useful drivers. My Bios is up to date, as are my motherboard drivers? I think? otherwise they were installed through the CD. Which should still be ok, but I?ll try to update those.

I still haven?t gotten around to SP2 yet. I?ve read (a long time ago) that it could potentially make things worse for older games, so I?ll be cautious when installing. But that could solve the problem, though I doubt it.

Lastly I had run a 3DMark06 full system test thingie?

The Video card tests went extremely well. However, the CPU portion down right failed with a capitol P. I was shocked at what I was seeing, total lag, 1-3 seconds per frame change. It left a really horrible taste in my mouth; kind of like how when you?re asleep and some kind of rodent goes #2 in your mouth, so like that, but with an aftertaste. Blech! So much for powernaps in the back alley. Really wish I was packing gum that day.

Anyways, I?m going to google around to see what could be causing that CPU test phailure. Hopefully the way to resolve the problem won?t be to ?bye teh n00 hardwarez lolololo?

Wish me luck! =)

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: Jester22
I still haven?t gotten around to SP2 yet.

Didn't Oblivion ask for SP2 during the install? I remember FEAR (which came out before Oblivion) asked for SP2 when I didn't have it installed.

However, the CPU portion down right failed with a capitol P. I was shocked at what I was seeing, total lag, 1-3 seconds per frame change.

That test is just plain brutal. I have an Opty 165 overclocked to 2.7 GHz and I still can't seem to break 4 FPS.

 

[jjzelinski]

Originally posted by: GundamSonicZeroX

Originally posted by: Jester22
I still haven?t gotten around to SP2 yet.

Didn't Oblivion ask for SP2 during the install? I remember FEAR (which came out before Oblivion) asked for SP2 when I didn't have it installed.

However, the CPU portion down right failed with a capitol P. I was shocked at what I was seeing, total lag, 1-3 seconds per frame change.

That test is just plain brutal. I have an Opty 165 overclocked to 2.7 GHz and I still can't seem to break 4 FPS.

If he's downloaded the latest dx (waaay past sp2 heyday) then maybe that's all he'd need.

 

[Captante]

Seems strange ... I ran Oblivion on an A64 3200+ oc'ed 2.4ghz with an X1900XTX, 1280x1024 resolution with HDR/AA enabled & never had any trouble at all, in fact upgrading to an Opteron 170 @ 2.6ghz made very little difference in Oblivion or any other game.

Its safe to say somthing is wrong with your setup that has nothing to do with hardware ... I suggest you start by getting XP up to date by installing SP2, all relevent patchs & updates plus the newest version of Direct X then report back.

 

[lozina]

I've got problems running Oblivion too, mostly in exterior cells (outside). I get alot of stuttering, the loading are text seems too come up too often and takes too long and it crashes to desktop often. However I never have these problems in any interior cell.

I have:
Intel core 2 duo E6750
3.25 Gb crucial RAM
ASUS p5K-E mobo
eVGA geForce 8800 GT
windows xp sp2 32bit
seagate 750 Gb sata hd

It really seems like my old PC which replaced this, which had an AMD XP 3200+ had better performance on exterior cells. it really pisses me ff sometimes. The thing my old system had maybe better than my current one is it had a SCSI hard drive.

 

[Build it Myself]

update your OOO, there's a 1.41 version out now I believe, there were some bug fixes up to that point.

...I guess nobody's asked, but what graphics card are you using?

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: Build it Myself
update your OOO, there's a 1.41 version out now I believe, there were some bug fixes up to that point.

...I guess nobody's asked, but what graphics card are you using?

Quoted from the OP:

Originally posted by: Jester22


So I?ve bought myself a nifty OCed Galaxy 8800gt 512mb viddie card a couple of weeks ago, in hopes that I can FINALLY run Oblivion at decent rates. Well, apparently, I still can?t.

 

[Martimus]

I have the same problem on occasion in caves (only indoors, never outdoors). I found that turning down the internal shadows fixed it. (Just hitting ultra high in the load menu options brings them down to a reasonable level.) The other thing that helped was overclocking my CPU from 2.2GHz to 2.7GHz. There are definitely some pretty CPU intensive parts to this game.

Also, if you want to overclock the CPU, try following this guide. Most people who get such low overclocks are just forgeting to lower the HTT multiplier (from 5x to 4x). This will let you get much higher speeds and remain stable.