My proc is not maxed out, I have 2 gigs of ram, and a 7600GT (granted that's not the best card for oblivion but I shouldn't have problems at 640*480...)
What's the problem?!?!?!?!?!?
What's the problem?!?!?!?!?!?
Why can't I get smooth gameplay in Oblivion?!?!?!?!?!?
- Thread starter avi85
- Start date
At 640x480 your CPU limited anyway, even with Oblivion.
So first you might want to crank it up to the resolution that your going to be playing at first.
With 2 gigs of ram there's just so much that you can tweak to get the most out of it. (and your dual core processor too)
Check this out:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=27&CIID=36546&p=1
It's a guide for a little optimizing (yes, I know they spelled it wrong, at least according to Firefox spell checker)
Go through it and eventually you'll find a section that covers performance things like how many threads and some options to help with RAM.
Just go through and set the settings for whats right for you.
Also make sure to do the most basic things when your done tweaking like turning down the settings.
So first you might want to crank it up to the resolution that your going to be playing at first.
With 2 gigs of ram there's just so much that you can tweak to get the most out of it. (and your dual core processor too)
Check this out:
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?SCID=27&CIID=36546&p=1
It's a guide for a little optimizing (yes, I know they spelled it wrong, at least according to Firefox spell checker)
Go through it and eventually you'll find a section that covers performance things like how many threads and some options to help with RAM.
Just go through and set the settings for whats right for you.
Also make sure to do the most basic things when your done tweaking like turning down the settings.
WT
Diamond Member
- Sep 21, 2000
- 4,816
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Is this only in Oblivion that you are getting low FPS ???? Try anothr game to see if its a system wide slowdown or just that game. You might have some hardware failing, as thats a sign of things going south (HD specifically) but that will show us where to look next. Also, I'd suggest scanning the PC for spyware/adware using your tool of choice (Spybot, Ewido, Windows Defender)
I don't know if this helps your issue at all but one of the facts about Oblivion is that it is constantly accessing the hard drive to decompress textures as you move around in its seamless world. For me, this has always meant that the game has a jerky feel as it pauses for a half-second to load the new information every few seconds (especially when I'm running).
If this isn't what you're describing, my apologies and good luck finding a solution!
If this isn't what you're describing, my apologies and good luck finding a solution!
If that is the case, btw, then you should be able to find instructions on the Elder Scrolls message boards for decompressing the textures. I did this and it actually helps quite a bit. Although there is still a visual jerkiness to the game as new textures are loaded, the actual pauses or 'hiccups' in the aren't nearly as bad.
I did all the performance stuff in the link mentioned by wizboy but it still has the same problem.
Dreddfunk, I couldn't find a site that explains how to decompress the shaders, do you have a link?
Beggerking, what do you mean by "...did you have your dma master turned on..."
Dreddfunk, I couldn't find a site that explains how to decompress the shaders, do you have a link?
Beggerking, what do you mean by "...did you have your dma master turned on..."
WT
Diamond Member
- Sep 21, 2000
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Quoted for emphasis ..... we have yet to determine that your PC is in fact clean. I do this for a living, so the fact that you post on Anandtech forums doesn't exclude you from the possibility that you have something on your rig that you are not aware of.
I scanned my computer with spybot, it found 29 things, all of which I fixed and the problem is still there.
It seems like it's probably the textures thing, cause I paid attention and every time that it slows down it is reading from the HD... (now if only I could figure out how to decompress the darn things...)
It seems like it's probably the textures thing, cause I paid attention and every time that it slows down it is reading from the HD... (now if only I could figure out how to decompress the darn things...)
Problem solved! I found a BSA unpacker on some site, unpacked the textures and renamed the folder to "Textures" and it worked!
Thank you all for your help it is much appreciated.
Now just one quick question, how can I make it not skip when it's loading new areas? Is it a problem of not enough HD bandwith (solution?: get a second HD and RAID them?) or is it slow seek times (solution?: get a raptor?) or is it something else completely?
Thank you all for your help it is much appreciated.
Now just one quick question, how can I make it not skip when it's loading new areas? Is it a problem of not enough HD bandwith (solution?: get a second HD and RAID them?) or is it slow seek times (solution?: get a raptor?) or is it something else completely?
avi85 -- sorry I stepped out and couldn't help your search for the BSA unpacker but I'm glad that worked!
[Edit]
Sorry, didn't see your additional question. I'm not sure that there is any great way to keep it from 'skipping' when loading new areas. I've heard of people doing a couple of things. First, you could try a faster hard drive, though I doubt that this will completely eliminate the issue. I'm not at all certain but part of what is going on when you actually load a new area is swapping out some of the stuff in the GPU memory. One of the alternatives is to alter the Oblivion.ini file to load more surrounding territory by default. The problem with this approach is that it really doesn't 'fix' the issue, it just makes it less frequent. I.e. you will still get 'loading' messages but they will be fewer and farther between at the expense of being longer.
The loading issue, I think, comes back to the GPU's memory: swap a little pretty frequently, or swap more but less often. Either way you'll have some loading issues. Since the gameworld is seamless, there is no way it all can be loaded into the GPU's memory at once.
[/Edit]
[Edit]
Sorry, didn't see your additional question. I'm not sure that there is any great way to keep it from 'skipping' when loading new areas. I've heard of people doing a couple of things. First, you could try a faster hard drive, though I doubt that this will completely eliminate the issue. I'm not at all certain but part of what is going on when you actually load a new area is swapping out some of the stuff in the GPU memory. One of the alternatives is to alter the Oblivion.ini file to load more surrounding territory by default. The problem with this approach is that it really doesn't 'fix' the issue, it just makes it less frequent. I.e. you will still get 'loading' messages but they will be fewer and farther between at the expense of being longer.
The loading issue, I think, comes back to the GPU's memory: swap a little pretty frequently, or swap more but less often. Either way you'll have some loading issues. Since the gameworld is seamless, there is no way it all can be loaded into the GPU's memory at once.
[/Edit]
Check to make sure your primary IDE channel is set to DMA mode.
Open up the device manager, expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
Right click on primary IDE channel, select properties. Click on the details tab.
Make sure both devices are set to "DMA if applicable" and the current setting is NOT PIO.
Do this on both your primary and secondary drives.
If anything is set to PIO mode:
Uninstall the channel the device is on by right clicking on the Primary or Secondary IDE channel and selecting "Uninstall." Restart your computer, windows will reinstall the IDE channel. This will reset you back to DMA mode if PIO mode had been activated.
Open up the device manager, expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.
Right click on primary IDE channel, select properties. Click on the details tab.
Make sure both devices are set to "DMA if applicable" and the current setting is NOT PIO.
Do this on both your primary and secondary drives.
If anything is set to PIO mode:
Uninstall the channel the device is on by right clicking on the Primary or Secondary IDE channel and selecting "Uninstall." Restart your computer, windows will reinstall the IDE channel. This will reset you back to DMA mode if PIO mode had been activated.
WT
Diamond Member
- Sep 21, 2000
- 4,816
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- 91
You have the exact same HD is my rig, with a similar setup other than the vid card, and I'm not getting the area loading like you are. So the HD should not be a problem. I'm assuming you have Oblivion installed on the larger of your two drives as well. Other than that ... I'm out of ideas on this one, altho you could try and turn down some settings ingame such as shadows and draw distance.
WT
Diamond Member
- Sep 21, 2000
- 4,816
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Completely seamless ... no ... but its usually nothing more than a half second pause when I am near an Oblivion gate and baddies come out, or when I go from inside to outside and there are several passersby in the street.
Coming from Half-Life 2 with its horrible load times, I am more than satisfied with Oblivion, especially comparing the environments. I guess it depends on your expectations, as I even use several Oblivion mods (Natural Environments, etc.) and haven't been bothered by the slight stutter since it isn't like an FPS where that stutter means the difference between life and death.
apoppin
Lifer
first of all .. turn OFF soft shadows
and disable grass [down ... later you can edit the file to make it short ... if it makes a difference]
no vsynch either
patch it to the latest version and update your drivers
report back
and disable grass [down ... later you can edit the file to make it short ... if it makes a difference]
no vsynch either
patch it to the latest version and update your drivers
report back
Are using the Nvidia storage drivers on the controller your hard drives are on? If so, I would recommend either using the MS ones OR going into the controller settings and disabling Read Caching and NCQ if we are talking about a SATA drive. Most benchmarks have shown these settings to have a deleterious effect on typical single-user performance and read-caching in particular seems to have poor performance with current Nvidia drivers.
I would leave write caching on as it does usually make a noticeable difference and the benchmarks and tests I have seen only indicated that the read caching was hurting performance. It sorta makes sense as it would be waiting to do the reads to do more concurrently, which would add latency.
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