Are these framerates normal?

[FiftyTifty]

Edit: Forgot to post my specs.

 

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE @ 3.4GHz stock

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB GDDR5, 13.11 drivers

RAM: 8GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz

 

I've once again given Oblivion another chance at staying on my hard drive, after having researched various solutions to FPS problems.

 

This time, however, I went ahead and noted down the performance I recieve with stock Oblivion (no updates, no DLC), Oblivion + updates, Oblivion + Updates + Unofficial patch.

 

Surprisingly, my framerate is the same no matter the setup. Even when music and sound is disabled, the resolution reduced to 640x480 and all settings (except shadows and NPC draw distance) reduced to the minimum allowed, it's the same as with the resolution @ 1280x1024 and all the settings jacked up to the highest.

 

With shadows enabled and the slider maxed, I lose between 10-20 fps, both minimum and maximum. Shadow filtering has no impact on performance.

 

Asigning Oblivion to two cores rather than the default four makes no difference.

 

Here are my results; if folks could take a look through and voice if they have similar framerates at these points in the game, that'd be fabulous. Would like to know if Oblivion is just wierd for me, or if it's like that for everybody.

 

 

At start: 60 when away from bars | 80 when at bars

Two guards and Emporer appear: 45

Secret exit opens: 35

Following trio: 115-45

Mythic dawn attackers + trio in sight: 28

Mythic dawn attackers in sight, dead + trio in sight: 35

Mythic dawn attackers not in sight, dead + trio in sight: 45

Cave wall collapse: 82

Fighting rat: 82

Rat dead: 85

Torch equipped, dead rat in sight: 60

Travelling through cave, killing rats with torch equipped: 90-45

Travelling through cave, killing rats without torch equipped: 115-55

Goblin shaman + goblins + rat pen, in sight: 80

Goblin Shaman + goblins + rat pen, in sight, torch equipped: 45

Reunited with trio, mythic dawn attackers in sight: 40

Reunited with trio, mythic dawn attackers in sight, torch equipped: 32

Sewers, several rats and goblins: 115-85

Sewers, several rats and goblins, torch equipped: 90-65

Exit sewer, looking at island + ruins: 55

Exit sewer, looking at island + ruins, torch equpped: 52

Sewer exit to Imperial City Market entrance: 55

Sewer exit to Imperial City Market entrance, torch equpped: 52



[[Torch doesn't seem to matter much when outside, couple of FPS loss]]



Enter Imperial City Market, viewing straight ahead, five NPCs rendered: 53

Enter Imperial City Market, viewing straight ahead, five NPCs rendered, torch equipped: 47

Stand infront of Imperial Garden Doors, viewing most of IMC, five NPCs rendered: 53

 

Stand infront of Imperial Garden Doors, viewing most of IMC, five NPCs rendered, torch equipped: 47

Wait 1 hour, time now 10:40AM, seven NPCs rendered: 45

10:40AM, Seven NPCs rendered, torch equipped: 42

12:43AM, nine NPCs rendered: 28

12:43AM, Nine NPCs rendered, torch equipped: 25

 

 

I've found that if I reduce the NPC draw distance to the point that I'm only seeing a couple of characters at any given time, my framerate is at a dandy 40-60, even in the imperial city market. But then I'm only seeing two or three characters. And pop-in is just...Eugh.

Edited December 5, 2013 by FiftyTifty

[UltharSeramis]

Hi,

 

I would say most of your frame-rates are excellent. I never have such high rates. The real problem with the frame-rates in Oblivion is, that it can only use 1 or 2 cpu-cores (after all it's quite an old game) and most things in Oblivion are calculated by the cpu, even things that could be calculated much faster on a graphics-card. So I don't think that there is any possibility to increase your fps any further.

 

Greatings, Ulthar

[FiftyTifty]

Blimey. So seeing 30fps with just nine NPCs is the norm?

 

OH THE HUMANITY!

 

Guess I'll lay off the NPC additions. Thanks.

[Striker879]

Are you getting laggy or jumpy gameplay at 30 fps? I don't generally even notice anything until I dip down into the teens.

[FiftyTifty]

It's not being stuck at 30fps that bothers me per say, it's that with each character that appears (creatures, oddly enough, don't throttle the framerate anywhere near as much), the framerate worsens. And having the threshold at 30 fps with just nine characters...Well, the framerate is guaranteed to go into the teens when I happen upon a bandit camp, or when a bunch of NPCs are wandering around, no?

 

Ugh. And I was going to punt in a bunch of NPCs to compensate for the rather low number of them. *Sniffle*.

[Striker879]

Turn off "tdt" in the console and play. This is not an online FPS where he who has the best frame rate wins.

[FiftyTifty]

You misunderstand. I was wondering if the game is as erratic in terms of framerates, for others, as it is for me. Yeah, I'll probably grit my teeth and bare with it, but...I so dearly dislike the dreadful performance; surely it can't be like this for everyone? I did find quite a few posts of people detailing how they have "60+fps @ Max settings", with an 8800GT for example.

 

Anyway, on the topic of FPS, what's yours like?

[Striker879]

Back when my SLI was still alive I generally saw 40s to 50s in most areas dropping to mid 20s at times (generally associated with lots of NPCs and AI packages/scripts firing). I wasn't running maxed settings though. Trees, grass and draw distance were down about 1/4 from max and a few settings were at or near max. My 8800GTSs died one at a time and I was forced back to a single 9800GT I originally got to use as a dedicated PhysX card alongside the SLI (which was never implemented beyond testing as I haven't any games it really helps).

 

With my 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo and the 9800GT I've toned back on settings a bit more and usually see high to mid 30s to mid 40s dropping to low 20s or high teens with NPCs etc. Some script heavy mods (e.g. Emma's excellent Maple Cottage) I'll drop to single digits for a few seconds while the assets load from the BSA and scripts fire and then it returns to normal.

 

During normal game play most of my pauses and stutters are associated with hard drive access (OS and games are on two different RAID 0 Raptor setups, but hard disks remain the slowest part of PCs after DVD/BluRay drives). I know most of the areas it's likely to happen ... it's all just part of the experience for me now. I seldom turn FPS on in the console (though I recently started using SMAA Injector so I was running for a bit with FPS displayed). Perhaps I'm lucky that I've never been a real competitive gamer, constantly checking FPS (even in Quake Doom and games of that ilk).

 

I knew before even starting up Oblivion for the first time that it was a hardware beast ... for years after it's release it was one of the toughest hardware benchmarks. It eventually fell out of use as a benchmark simply because the game was so old, not because hardware came along that ate the game for breakfast. Then trends in hardware made a sea change (from GHz is king to multi-cores rule) and things swung around again to the point where Oblivion could easily bring hardware to it's knees, but by then the reviewers and benchmarkers had moved on to other games and benchmarks. As you're finding today, Oblivion especially modded is a hardware hog.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Striker879