Unexplainable bad performance

[SkyyDX]

Hello guys,

my Oblivion is really plagued by bad performance lately, mostly outside and I have no idea what causes it... My FPS are running between 7-18 and when I enable tdt in console these three cue count levels or whatever they are called are jumping around like crazy when I run around outside. Mostly along with heavy ultra short stuttering and loading messages. It's worst in the IC Waterfront, the FPS drop to 5 and the game hangs sometimes for a minute while turning around. However if I'm far away from the IC it gets almost fluid again... Insides are all fine and perfectly fluid, so is the Worldspace of Amaterasu no Yume and inside all cities.

 

First my PC specs:

 

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate

CPU: AMD Phenom x4 9850 Black Edition @ 2.5ghz

RAM: 3.5GB DRR2 @ 800mhz

GPU: ATI RADEON HD4850 512mb

Sound: OnBoard Realtek HD Audio

Swap File: 5GB

 

Oblivion is installed onto an external USB HDD, however no other big game like Crysis or GTA suffer from this.

 

This should be more then enough to run Oblivion more then maxed out and all other games are running fine.

 

Settings:

All maxed out

Maximum Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering forced in Catalyst Control Center (even if I disable these, there's hardly a performance boost and like said insides run fine)

 

Installed Mods:

 

Budoka - Asian Race.esp
77_Umpa_Animation.esp
actors_in_charge.esp
AdenseEpicDungeon.esp
Akatosh Mount By Saiden Storm.esp
AliveWaters - Koi Addon.esp
AliveWaters - Slaughterfish Addon.esp
AliveWaters.esp
Amaterasu no Yume.esp
Ani's Persocoms.esp
Apachii_Goddess_Store.esp
arme - excalibur.esp
Atmospheric Loading Screens - Random Quotes.esp
AW_Wings.esp
BasicInstinct.esp
blade_shrine.esp
Chocolate Elves.esp
cloudcity mod V1.1.esp
Colourwheels Sexy Regal Uniforms.esp
ColourWheels_Sexy_casual_wear.esp
Colourwheels_sexy_school_uniforms.esp
Colourwheels_Sexy_Sweetclothes.esp
ColourWheel_Uniforms_v1.5.esp
Dark Jungle.esp
DeadlyReflex 5 - Combat Moves.esp
Distant Chapel Bells.esp
DLCFrostcrag.esp
DLCHorseArmor.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCOrrery.esp
DLCShiveringIsles.esp
DLCSpellTomes.esp
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
Dragon Claw Sword And Shield.esp
Elves Of Lineage II.esp
Enhanced Water v2.0 HD.esp
Extended Imperial City.esp
Fix Moon and Night realm.esp
Fix name world.esp
FlyingCameraMod.esp
GoddessArmor_Exnem.esp
GreatForestMarket.esp
Harvest [Flora] - Shivering Isles.esp
Harvest [Flora].esp
HentaiChinaDress.esp
Hentai_AthenaArmour.esp
Hentai_HentaiUniform.esp
Hiyoko_Store.esp
HorseCombatMaster.esm
IDKRRR_C_race.esp
IlluminationWithin.esp
Im Garten Kosh 1_0.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Arboretum.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Elven Gardens.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Green Emperor Way.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Market.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Prison.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Talos Plaza.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Temple.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - The Arcane University.esp
ImpeREAL City Unique Districts - Waterfront.esp
Interiors part 2.esp
Isle of the Blessed.esp
IWR-Lights.esp
Knights.esp
LetThePeopleDrink.esp
MagicShield.esp
MHSNKirin.esp
Milewood.esp
Moon and Night Interiors Part 1.esp
Moon and Night realm.esm
Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Vegetation_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Water_by_Max_Tael.esp
Natural_Weather_HDR_2.1.2_coloroverride.esp
Natural_Weather_HDR_by_Max_Tael.esp
No psychic guards v1.2.esp
Oblivion Cats v0.2b.esp
Oblivion.esm
personality_idles2.esp
Rainbows.esp
Rim_Elm-5033.esp
Rise Of A Samurai.esp
Saldaea.esp
SkyCastle.esp
Snow Dragon Temple v1.0.esp
Solace.esp
SPB Witch Outfit.esp
Streamline 3.1.esp
Sunlit Interiors 1.31.esp
Sunrise home.esp
TFU IC Arena.esp
TFU Imperial City.esp
ThroneOfUtopia.esp
To Feed an Empire - Wickmere Farm.esp
UFF Seifuku.esp
ULFallenLeafEverglade.esp
wat_foxtail.esp
wat_iw.esp
weather inside [seasons] v1.2.esp
weather inside [silent seasons] v1.2.esp
xulAncientRedwoods.esp
xulAncientYews.esp
xulArriusCreek.esp
xulBeachesOfCyrodiilLostCoast.esp
xulBravilBarrowfields.esp
xulChorrolHinterland.esp
xulCloudtopMountains.esp
xulColovianHighlands_EV.esp
xuldarkforest.esp
XulEntiusGorge.esp
xulFallenleafEverglade.esp
xulImperialIsle.esp
xulLushWoodlands.esp
xulPantherRiver.esp
xulRiverEthe.esp
xulRollingHills_EV.esp
xulStendarrValley.esp
xulTheHeath.esp
Younger Hotter NPC's v1.0.esp
_Ren_BeautyPack_full.esp
_Ren_BeautyPack_full_anime_voice.esp
Exnems Body Mod

 

 

Well things I tried so far are turning all settings to minimum, which didn't helped against the stuttering, modifying the Oblivion.ini with the help of tweakguides for optimized Multi Core and large RAM usage which helped quite a bit and disabling mods/plugins which I thought could have caused the issue. I also rebuild me LOD with a tool.

 

If I look at my performance monitor on my keyboard during gameplay, neither my RAM nor CPU usage is nearly at maximum capacity.

 

I don't really know what to try anymore and I have finally made Oblivion and my chara how I want it to be so a reinstall would hurt badly so any suggestions and ideas are welcomed and thanks for help in advance!

[bben46]

I would suspect the transfer rate of the USB would cause slow down. I don't think I have seen Oblivion played from a usb drive before.

[roquefort]

I run most of my games from a USB drive (including Oblivion & Bioshock), and the FPS is fine, considering I don't have a state of the art setup. Of course if the OP's equipment is top-notch and all settings are maxed, then I suppose that (i.e. the USB drive) could possibly be an issue. The extremely poor FPS reported suggests other causes though, IMHO.

[SkyyDX]

Well thanks for the replies, I'm currently transferring my Oblivion to a internal SATA drive to see if it makes a difference, will report back.

 

Unfortunately moving to a internal SATA drive didn't made any noticeable difference, the only thing I noticed because my SATA drive is louder, Oblivion is accessing my drive like crazy. Also I visited the IC Arboretum and was shocked, when I faced the center my FPS dropped to 3 and Oblivion turned into a slidshow. What helped was removing the Extended Imperial City mod which doubles the population and when I removed all mods affecting the Arboretum my game was almost 100% fluid. However this of course didn't solved my problems in the Waterfront nor outside. It seems like whenever something large is added or modded the Engine craps out...

[bben46]

Try turning streamline off. The 3.1 version is a beta and little buggy. With your system you shouldn't need it. As it works by constantly changing the video settings to maintain a higher fps, I could see it doing a lot of swapping.

 

I hope the mod list you posted isn't the actual load order because it is mostly in alphabetical order With Oblivion.esm near the middle. A true load order, easily obtained from OBMM will tell us more.

[SkyyDX]

Thanks about the tip with Streamline, however I did only install it because I had these problems in the first place, it was like that before I installed it too. About the load order, to be honest, I just grabbed the mod list out of Oblivions own plugins.txt, I never installed OBMM because I feared it would mess with my mods/install.... would OBMM/a different load order help and would it cause any mess ups if I install OBMM now?

[bben46]

OBMM works entirely outside of Oblivion. When you run OBMM, it shows you the current load order. Then allows you to set the load order how ever you want then saves it in the proper place in the Oblivion files when you either exit or use the Launch Oblivion function. in either case, OBMM exits before Oblivion starts. After that you don't even need to start OBMM first. The load order will stay until you install a new mod. You do not have to use the OMOD function to use OBMM. It will work just fine with normal .esp files. Although the OMOD format does have some advantages.

 

It could be a load order problem if you have never changed it. With the number of mods you have, I would recommend looking at BOSS. Another program that changes load order. But this one sets it by a list made by the author. I recommend using OBMM to do the first one, then save that load order, run BOSS. Then look at what you have using OBMM - there are usually a few mods at the bottom that BOSS cant place properly. You can move them using OBMM. BOSS ignores the settings you make in the load order and sets them by it's own rules. But it only runs when you tell it to.

 

You don't say if you are using OBSE, some of the mods you have require it. Unlike OBMM, it must be launched before Oblivion every time. The OBSE launcher launches Oblivion after it loads. OBMM will also launch OBSE first automatically if you use it's 'Launch Oblivion' function.

 

I have never tried running Oblivion from a USB, I will have to test it to see how well it works.

[roquefort]

"Oblivion is accessing my drive like crazy."

 

That surely shouldn't be happening. Is there definitely nothing else running in the background and clogging up your RAM?

 

So far as USB v. internal drives are potentially an issue, i could imagine that slow disk access would cause the game to hitch for a few moments during (for example) loading a new area into RAM, but not slow the normal running of the game, unless there isn't enough installed RAM of course.

[SkyyDX]

Thanks for all the support guys!

 

My results aren't really positive, I installed OBMM and moved the Oblivion main files to the top in the load order and then gave BOSS a go. Whilst it left out some mods, it did it's job. Back ingame I hardly noticed any difference though... what gave me a little thinking was the Waterfront. As I mentioned before it runs the worst of all areas and whenever I go out to the Waterfront from the IC the game loads for about 30-40 seconds but when I exit the IC elsewhere it's 10 seconds max. Another thing that seemed interesting, I have the mod "Isle of the Blessed" installed. It puts a portal in the Waterfront which leads to a complete separated worldspace with forests,sea and population. My FPS here are moving between 150 and 50, depends on what I'm looking at with the exception if the game needs to load new data it drops to 20 for a second.

 

I really wonder what differs here so much from the normal worldspace.

About OBSE, yeah I forget to mention it but I always launch Oblivion through the OBSE loader.

 

I also have a question regarding OBMM. The conflict detector shows a few red mods but it shows not what mod conflicts with what, is there any way to find this out?

 

@roquefort:

As I mentioned before I moved Oblivion to an internal SATA drive which made no difference at all. I'm also positive that it's not a RAM isuuse, I have a Logitech G15 Keyboard, it has a extra display attached which displays various information including RAM usage and whilst playing Oblivion the overall usage moves between 65-75%.

 

To be honest I'm really clueless but I appreciate all the help.

[nosisab]

Try disabling the sound and music at the Oblivion.ini file. The Onboard sound system (and for Realtek I can say from experience) is responsible for severe stuttering and FPS down. I couldn't find any workaround to this on the Internet and had to reactivate my old Audigy.

 

What matters here is the Onboard Sound will aways be a load for the system, and you have a machine worth a good discrete sound card.

 

If you care to understand some technicals details to support my worlds it's as follow.

 

The onboard sound uses the CPU for almost all it's work, on a 4 core CPU like yours this may seems a minor issue, but remember than albeit Oblivion can use more than one core it isn't optimized to it. But this is not the worst thing...

 

The sound system uses IRQs to perform it's hardware interruption requests (hence the name), and in this case the hardware being interrupted is the own CPU, and this is the main cause of that severe stuttering and FPS loss.

 

To media players these things are almost transparent and the movie flows smooth, but games are a totally different animal, using the CPU (and GPU too, but it's not the problem here, as you noted when reducing the graphics quality didn't help) at it's peak.

 

hope this help.

 

Edit PS: The suggestion of disabling the sound and music is for test reasons of course :) I never meant you should play this way.