Sub-par Oblivion performance with 1950XT

[VanTheMan]

I just started the game. Everything was fine and looked great in the sewers, but once I got outside and started wandering around where there was a lot of grass and stuff, it slowed down a lot. I don't know what my FPS were, but it felt like they were below 15 because it was not smooth at all. I have Catalyst 7.1 installed, video settings sliders maxed, Bloom and 6xAA. I have an Athlon 64 3200+ and 2x512 of Corsair XMS Platinum PC3200. I checked to make sure the card is ramping up for 3D mode and it is. What's the deal? I thought the 1950XT was supposed to eat up Oblivion with settings maxed. Any suggestions on tweaks or anything to get me running smooth?

 

[akshayt]

1)What Res?
2)You only have 1GB RAM.
3)You haven't oced the CPU at all
4)You aren't telling the FPS so it may be difficult to know the real problem
5)The card is only 256MB
6)You are using 6xAA

Any one or more of the reasons can be the cause

 

[VanTheMan]

1280x1024 I could only estimate the FPS because I don't have FRAPS or anything to measure with, but I know it's choppy. I guess I'll try turning AA off to see if that makes a difference.

 

[MichaelD]

Howdy. I see your install went well.

Akshayt hit it on the head. Oblivion is a BEAST of a game and is very intensive on the entire system; CPU/memory/videocard.

Due to your 1GB of memory (it just isn't enough anymore for GAMERS) and 256MB card, you can't hold enough data/textures, so the game will have to read from the HD more often which always slows things down.

I'll say that turning off AA will help a great deal.



SIDE NOTE:
How do you display FPS in Oblivion?

 

[40sTheme]

4xAA is more than sufficient for Oblivion. Turn some of the sliders down. Turn Shadow Filtering off, huge performance increase, no noticeable IQ loss unless you're ULTRA nitpicky. Turn Self Shadows + Shadows on Grass OFF. They are totally pointless. Turn grass distance down to 50%. Huge performance increase will be seen.

 

[Zenoth]

Shadow Filtering is a killer for GPU's (and even CPU's to some extent), turn it Off if you have it On (even if set at "Low"). But it surprises me that the game isn't smooth without HDR On, you say that Bloom is On (so HDR must be Off by default). Something might be wrong in the settings, I doubt it's actually the card itself. Maybe try a few benchmarks to make sure. If you have Counter-Strike: Source or Half-Life 2: Lost Coast you can always try their respective Video Stress Test, I use them regularly (not just on my system), you could report back to me, tell me what were the in-game settings, and tell me what were you scores and I'd be able to tell you if they were "right" for your card.

 

[VanTheMan]

Yeah, the install went great MichaelD! I ran DC, reinstalled DX and didn't run into any problems with nvidia/ATI driver conflicts. I'm reading a couple Oblivion tweak guides, so I'll try tweaking some settings. I guess I was hoping for too much when I was thinking I'd just be able to get a 1950XT and run Oblivion maxed out. I'm still better off than I would have been with my 7600GT. Thanks for the advice guys!

Edit: I forgot to ask... any suggestions on good mods to install? I've looked at a few lists, but I'd like to get some ATer's opinions.

 

[MichaelD]

You're very welcome; I'm happy to help.

You have a really nice videocard and a decent CPU; but Oblivion is the 800-pound Gorilla of videogames.

You literally need a 3+GHz CPU and a 8800GTX to get good perfomance with everything maxxed.

I have a C2D @ 3.2GHz/2GB ram (at 800MHz) and a 7900GTO (stock speed ATM) and I cannot max out the settings, no WAY.

I play with AA off, b/c I like lots of details. I need to check my settings. BBL.

 

[VanTheMan]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
Shadow Filtering is a killer for GPU's (and even CPU's to some extent), turn it Off if you have it On (even if set at "Low"). But it surprises me that the game isn't smooth without HDR On, you say that Bloom is On (so HDR must be Off by default). Something might be wrong in the settings, I doubt it's actually the card itself. Maybe try a few benchmarks to make sure. If you have Counter-Strike: Source or Half-Life 2: Lost Coast you can always try their respective Video Stress Test, I use them regularly (not just on my system), you could report back to me, tell me what were the in-game settings, and tell me what were you scores and I'd be able to tell you if they were "right" for your card.

I don't have CSS or HL2: LC, but thanks for the offer. Apparently VSync was on and, according to a tweak guide I read, that can cause some crap so I turned it off. I went with Bloom instead of HDR because I hate jaggies, so I wanted AA on. I guess we can't use HDR+AA anymore, right? I remember reading before that ATI cards could do it, but I don't see an option.

 

[morgash]

O MY GOD!!! AKSHAYT is LEARNING!!!! holy hell everyone run for the hills armageddon is sure to be here soon! lol, nice going akshayt, after so many people dissing you, you finally NAIL one. Couldn,t have explained his problems better myself. Now let's hope you continue on your current journey to enlightenment.

morgash

 

[imported_Wolfkin]

To show FPS in Oblivion - press the key left of number 1 on your keyboard, this should bring up a cursor at the bottom left of the screen and hide your stats.
Type in TDT and then press enter and the framerat should be in the top right corner.
To hide the framerate again just enter TDT again.

Oblivion is very heavy on your whole system and you need a very fast CPU to run it properly.

Myself I run on 1280x960, everything but shadows max, both shadows slider at 50%, HDR on.
4xAA and 8xAF high quality set in drivers.

With my CPU running at 2400mhz (3800+ speed) I get an average of 28-35 fps and drop down as low as 17 fps in a few places.

System specs in sig. Driver Catalyst 7.1

 

[akshayt]

Before doing anything else I would say use FRAPS, that would tell whtether the problems lies in the FPS or somwhere else(eg: image tearing in my case)

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan
I went with Bloom instead of HDR because I hate jaggies, so I wanted AA on. I guess we can't use HDR+AA anymore, right? I remember reading before that ATI cards could do it, but I don't see an option.

You can use HDR+AA on x1k cards, you just have to force AA in the control panel and use the HDR option within Oblivion. Also, I recommend getting the LOD textures mods for Oblivion, because the default outdoor distance textures look like crap. To improve performance, set the grass distance slider about halfway - it makes a big difference.

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan

Originally posted by: Zenoth
Shadow Filtering is a killer for GPU's (and even CPU's to some extent), turn it Off if you have it On (even if set at "Low"). But it surprises me that the game isn't smooth without HDR On, you say that Bloom is On (so HDR must be Off by default). Something might be wrong in the settings, I doubt it's actually the card itself. Maybe try a few benchmarks to make sure. If you have Counter-Strike: Source or Half-Life 2: Lost Coast you can always try their respective Video Stress Test, I use them regularly (not just on my system), you could report back to me, tell me what were the in-game settings, and tell me what were you scores and I'd be able to tell you if they were "right" for your card.

I don't have CSS or HL2: LC, but thanks for the offer. Apparently VSync was on and, according to a tweak guide I read, that can cause some crap so I turned it off. I went with Bloom instead of HDR because I hate jaggies, so I wanted AA on. I guess we can't use HDR+AA anymore, right? I remember reading before that ATI cards could do it, but I don't see an option.

The Radeon 1950XT can do HDR+AA, and not seeing an "option" for it is to be expected.

If you want to enable AA with HDR all you have to do is, first, disable Bloom, then enable HDR (only one at a time can be enabled). But you'll have to force Anti-Aliasing via Catalyst Control Center (or the Control Panel, or ATi Tray Tools, depending on what you're using with the drivers for the settings).

 

[VanTheMan]

Oh duh. I didn't even think about forcing AA in CCC, even though I looked right at that setting a bunch of times. I turned Vsync, grass shadows, self shadows and shadow filtering off and AA down to 4x and it runs nicely with the sliders maxed. After I install the patch and mod or two, I'm going to try HDR+AA and see what it's like. Maybe I'll go ahead and OC my processor a bit as well.

 

[imported_Wolfkin]

Also in CCC, make sure you have V-sync set to either "always off" or "off unless application specifies"

 

[Eurasianman]

Catalyst 7.1 blows. Use the previous one.

For FPS, hit the "~" key and type "TDT" as is. Should display FPS in top right corner. I have no idea why some of you can't run it... my computer runs it just fine at 1440x900 @ max settings... yea, I get around 30 FPS outside, but that to me isnt' bad.

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ stock
2 Gig of DDR2 800
ATI X1900XT 512 GDDR3
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
Seagate Barracuda 160 GB SATA 2
Samsung SyncMaster 940 BW 19" WS

The basics for my computer that allow me to run it. Any other questions?

Get another gig and get a better CPU.

My AMD Athlon 64 Socket 754 New Castle 2.2 GHz w/ 2 gig's of DDR400 and an nVidia 6800 ran it a bit choppy at 1024x768 at medium settings.

XBOX 360 runs it nicely =P

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: Eurasianman
Catalyst 7.1 blows. Use the previous one.

Cat 7.1 are great IMO...

 

[40sTheme]

Good mods for Oblivion:
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul v1.3
Natural Environments
Improved Facial Textures and IArgonianFT
Beautiful People
Phinix's Waterfix
Qarl's Textures
And get the Oblivion Mod Manager for all this junk. Makes it much much easier.

 

[imported_Wolfkin]

Originally posted by: gersson

Originally posted by: Eurasianman
Catalyst 7.1 blows. Use the previous one.

Cat 7.1 are great IMO...

Same here, no problems, games work great, some games are faster and some same as before but none are slower.

 

[TheRealMrGrey]

I just wanted to say that this thread was really helpful. I have the exact same card, and have been playing Oblivion on ultra high at 1280x1024. The only things that aren't on or maxed for my setup are:

Self Shadows Off
Grass Shadows Off
Grass distance slider bar in middle
Shadow slider bars in middle

I am getting >30fps almost everywhere. If I go off into the middle of the forest, with all the foliage etc, my frames can drop down to the low 20s, but I really had to try hard to get them to drop to less than 20fps (ie went into a bunch of ferns fighting an imp and throwing spells everywhere), and even then it was only 19fps. Note, my system has 2GB RAM whereas the instigator of this thread only had 1GB.

I haven't been using AA since I didn't know you could force it with HDR. I've gone and turned it on, it is now at 2xAA/4xAF, but I haven't really seen any performance difference. I've found in a lot of games the jump between no AA and 2xAA is a bit bigger than going to higher levels of AA, so I tend not to use higher than 2xAA for performance reasons.

I think some people tend to overtalk their setup and say they are playing with "everything maxed" when they really mean "ultra high". I've said "everything maxed" before when talking with friends, but what I really mean is "almost everything maxed". Compared to my old 9600xt, that is everything maxed!

Thanks again to those who contributed to this thread. If you are reading this and considering an x1950xt for play with Oblivion, go get it! (assuming you are going to play at 1280x1024, which is just fine for me) I think the last time I checked newegg they were down to $220 (after rebate). Seriously, I don't think I've ever conciously noticed lag. And I'm not overclocking either.

Good Oblivion patch: there is one where you level half as fast. I don't have it yet, but I'm going to get it. The monsters scale way quicker as you increase in lvl than the stuff you find to use against them. In most games going up in lvl is a good thing, but in Oblivion it is bad because the monsters can get too tough before you have the right equipment to deal with them.

 

[akshayt]

If you are reducing so many settings, I would actually prefer to call it High and not U High as you are reducing important things like shadows which are usually the most intensive.

For example in FEAR, while a 6600GT maybe able to play the game at max settings at 1280x1024 or atmost a 7600GS/6800GS, just enabling High Shadows + Soft Shadows will need a 1900xt for a smooth gaming experience, and all the difference is removing the shadows!

 

[TheRealMrGrey]

Originally posted by: akshayt
If you are reducing so many settings, I would actually prefer to call it High and not U High as you are reducing important things like shadows which are usually the most intensive.

Point taken, but I was using the term "ultra high" because when you first install Oblivion it configures your graphics settings and asks you to select a general settings category (ie low, high, ultra high), and then sets your default video settings based on that. The "ultra high" default settngs do not have everything on or turned up, I had to turn things up further from there.

 

[VanTheMan]

Man, this is starting to frustrate me to no end. It seems like I suddenly started getting crappy FPS. I had a few mods installed (only ones that should have affected performance were OOO, Natural Environments and Qarl's) and I was getting decent FPS. Since I started suddenly getting bad (usually <23) FPS, I uninstalled all the mods except OOO and I turned off all my AA and AF, but I'm still getting pretty much the same FPS. Also, whether I'm using Qarl's or vanilla Oblivion textures, it seems like I get a whole lot of little stutters while I'm walking, but the FPS indicator doesn't decrease. It makes the game feel really choppy. I really want to start playing and enjoying it, but I can't with the current situation! Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

 

[VanTheMan]

I tried turning all the sliders down (except view distance) and everything off except distant lands/objects. My FPS went up quite a bit, but while I was walking I still got that stutter thing whenever a new NPC/object would fade into view. It's like the game just hangs for a second. I'm still trying to figure out why it ran so well before and now it seems to be doing much worse. Could it have something to do with the mods I installed? I scanned my computer with Ad-Aware and Spybot, but they only found like 3 tracking cookies.