Poor Performence With Very High End Computer

[Skyburst101]

ok...lets start with the specs, and go from there :)

 

GPU: Nvidia BFG 7800GTX OC (driver version: latest...84.25 beta)

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (cool and quiet disabled from bios, and have the duel core driver installed)

PSU: 520 Watt OCZ Modstream

RAM: 2GB Corsair Twinx-2048C2PT latency 2.5-3-3-6

MB: ASUS A8N SLI Premium

Sound card: Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Music (latest drivers)

Sound System: Klipsch Promedia 4.1

Mouse: Logitech MX518

 

 

game runs at pretty fair framerates, but still somewhat choppy, and a decent slowdown outdoors with everything maxed except for shadows, which are halved, shadow filtering off, HDR on, AA off, bloom...obviously off, and these fair framerates with lots of slowdown when there is a semi-intense fight, or a decent amount of grass/distance being rendered at the EXTREME RESOLUTION OF 800x600!!!!!

 

yeah...I have to run this game at 800x600 with a nice amount of stuff halved/turned off and STILL get cruddy performence. when I did a benchmark with F.E.A.R. a few months back, I got 0% below 25fps, I think 8% below 40fps, and 92% above 40fps, and ran great with EVERYTHING maxed (excluding soft shadows)...I even had 4xAA and 16xAF on at 1024x768 :P

 

with Oblivion, I dont have AA enabled at ALL, resolution lowered, etc. and still get worse performence :P

 

and so much for Bethesda saying the game will use both cores to improve performence :( apparently people have noticed that it only runs each core at 50% which is the EQUIVALENT OF ONE CORE...I might as well have gotten a 4000+ instead and gotten a 2nd video card with the extra money. So much for that performence boost I was expecting :(

 

 

Anyone able to help me solve this problem? I have tried searching the bethesda forums, but its hard to find the threads that would be useful because it wont let me use the search feature...wont let me register on forums. I have found some threads and tips, which include downloading NVtweak and setting the render frames ahead to 0, but that didnt help. I have tried numerous things...nothing so far. I had the new graphics driver installed before i got the game...the one that was supposed to improve performence with Oblivion significantly :P so much for that.

 

 

Please help, and thank you in advance.

[Dilvish]

My system is like yours with a 10K RPM Raptor hard drive. I'm playing at 1280 x 1024 resolution which is the native resolution for my 17" LCD monitor.

When I installed the game, Oblivion automatically put the settings at ultra high quality. So far, I've been running the game at those default settings. The only change I made was to the resolution.

I haven't checked my FPS so far but the game performance is very good by my standards. I don't see any choppiness, crashes, or bugs. Load times are fast.

 

I run firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware software in the background and do defragmentation daily. I'm using XP Home SP2 and everything was freshly installed a month ago.

 

I don't know what problem you're experiencing. I don't think dual-core processors or any of the components you listed are somehow incompatible with Oblivion. I don't think the game is buggy on high-end systems. High-end systems are what Oblivion likes best.

If you think your computer is healthy, why not try uninstalling Oblivion and installing it again?

 

Edit: I also selected the Oblivion application profile in the GeForce properties. control panel/display/settings/advanced/GeForce/...

[Switch]

Have you tried rolling back to the current forceware drivers, rather than the beta? I've heard people having issues with the 84.25 beta drivers. Apart from that I'm not sure what to suggest. ^^;

[Skyburst101]

Have you tried rolling back to the current forceware drivers, rather than the beta? I've heard people having issues with the 84.25 beta drivers. Apart from that I'm not sure what to suggest. ^^;

 

I haven't tried rolling back yet :P tried a few other things and got a little improvement, but at 1280x1024 with everything maxed out near an oblivion gate(gates dont decrease performence...I think thats only older ATI/Nvidia cards) and was getting between 18 and 40fps depending where I looked...along with some hitching. If i looked at an area with lots of trees/grass, it would be less than 25fps. I guess at this point there isnt much I can do but try rolling back. the last driver i used before this one was 81.87 or 81.85...cant remember which...I have them both downloaded, but I think i rolled back to 81.85 due to lower benchmarks with the source stress test...though that may have just been an issue by valve...it was spammed on the boards, lol.

 

On the source stress test, at 1024x768, 4xAA, 16xAF, everything maxed, and with HDR on, I got 189fps...though on earlier benchmarks a few patches from valve earlier, and with the 81.85 driver I believe, I got about 192-193fps...no big whoop...cant tell the difference especially since my refresh rate is only 75Hz...

 

well, time to roll back I guess. wont kill me :) maybe i should use drivercleaner instead of uninstalling through add/remove programs menu...except that when I read the instructions, it mentioned for me to go into safe mode...last time I tried going into safe mode about 5 years back, I had to format my system...messed it up...I remember toggling safe mode and possibly other stuff in msconfig back then...then again, back then I wasnt quite as experienced with this kind of stuff as I am now. Even now though, I'm not experienced at all in overclocking, and wont even try doing it myself. Mess up even once, and I'm out a whole lot of money...I'm not a risk taker...usually.

 

 

actually, I think I'm going to try going to the 84.21 drivers

[Dilvish]

I'll be interested to see what kind of FPS performance you can reach. Please post any tweaks you come up with. What number do you consider acceptable for absolute minimum frames per second at 1280 x 1024 resolution and max. settings? 30 FPS?

[Skyburst101]

I'll be interested to see what kind of FPS performance you can reach. Please post any tweaks you come up with. What number do you consider acceptable for absolute minimum frames per second at 1280 x 1024 resolution and max. settings? 30 FPS?

 

unfortunately I'm kinda picky...I dont like fps drops that are noticable, so really, my personal ideal minimum frames per second would be the unrealistic 75 frames per second to match the refresh rate of my computer, but seeing how that is not very likely to happen with this game, a minimum of 30 frames per second while under the most stressful situations(fighting multiple guys at once outside in the rain with lots of grass and trees around) Truth be told though, while fighting, that is THE section of the game that you want higher frames per second in since its pure chaos and if your screen is jerking/hitching its hard to aim a spell etc. and hit. So in a fighting situation, I wouldnt mind around 45+ frames per second...as for the "tweaks" you want me to post, I cant say they will actually enhance performence, but thats just my experience...others have said that they got a nice boost.

 

I'll try posting links to some threads in the next few days, but dont look for an immediate link.

[Switch]

Hold on... that's what you consider slow?? Most people would kill to have framerates that good on max! :P Some people just don't know when they got it good. ;) I have to put up with 5-15 FPS in the situations you described with all on max. I sincerely doubt you'll achieve your goal of 30 FPS in all situations but, let us know if you do!

[Skyburst101]

Hold on... that's what you consider slow?? Most people would kill to have framerates that good on max! :P Some people just don't know when they got it good. ;) I have to put up with 5-15 FPS in the situations you described with all on max. I sincerely doubt you'll achieve your goal of 30 FPS in all situations but, let us know if you do!

 

I think I'm just too used to how smooth Counter Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source play...I think I'm too used to being able to put everything on max and expect smooth frame rates...when I put my computer together, it was probably in the top 95% of computers performence wise...excluding all overclockers/duel videocard, lol. Now, my cpu is slower than the FX-60, video card isnt the best anymore(X1900's/7900's/7800 512MB). The video card will be remedied when the r600 core comes out...been waiting for ATI to come out with it for about 2 years so far...supposed to come out next year I believe, (unified shaders/Dx10 capable). Oddly enough, I heard that the G80 will have unified shaders, in contrast to them saying about a year back that unified shaders wasnt the best route.

 

Anyways, back to the main topic. I think I'm just being too picky, but regardless, I hate those damn hitches, and shouldnt be getting them when turning the resolution down to 800x600, and while turning down a lot of features too. And the hitching is quite similar to what I got with my old computer with HL2 even after the patches...then again, it was an old computer(Pentium 4 2.26Ghz, 768MB RDRAM...damn old stuff, Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB)

 

I'm just guessing that when I made the huge leap in performence, I kinda felt like my computer was invincible, lol. Going from a pentium 4 with RDRAM to an AMD duel core, from the 9800 Pro to the 7800GTX...thats one huge leap in performence.

 

However, If I am the only one having problems(supposedly) and my frames per second is "godlike" to everyone, which is about 15-30 frames per second outside, 20-40 frames per ssecond in cities, and 45-120 frames per second inside, with HITCHING ALL THE TIME, why is the hardware and software technical support forum in the Bethesda main forum in complete chaos with an endless stream of performence issues with high end Nvidia cards and such? type in "7800, 7900, 7xxx, 7000" into the search engine and I'm sure that you would find a surprisingly large amount of posts regarding crappy performence. There are a few people with the 7800GTX, same amount of ram, and a WORSE CPU that have their settings maxed WITH .INI tweaks running smoothly, but those are far and few between.

 

Well, enough ranting...time to play CS: source :)

 

btw...dont believe me?

 

here's a link

 

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=308536

[Switch]

Your FPS is definitely god-like with this game. :P But, what do you mean by "hitches"? Momentary freezing, like when turning around in an area that's just loaded? That could be your RAM, I guess. You'd probably need a ridiculous amount to avoid rendering hitches (at least I think RAM helps with that, doesn't it?).

 

I'm not surprised about some NVidia cards being incompatible with this game. B&W2 was the same, but to be fair I think that was mostly the developer's fault, and a rushed release. Makes me glad I had to go for the 7800GS instead of its PCI-E counterparts.

[Skyburst101]

Your FPS is definitely god-like with this game. :P But, what do you mean by "hitches"? Momentary freezing, like when turning around in an area that's just loaded? That could be your RAM, I guess. You'd probably need a ridiculous amount to avoid rendering hitches (at least I think RAM helps with that, doesn't it?).

 

By hitches, yes, I mean momentary freezing every few seconds for the duration of approx. 1/4-1/2 a second at a time when outside, which is incredibly annoying...reminds me of the Half Life 2 hitching...dont have it on this computer, but on my old computer I did have it and it drove me crazy, especially since when it hitched there, the sounds would repeat for the duration of the hitch, then go back to normal when the hitch was over. Luckily, the sound doesnt repeat with Oblivion, so its not quite as high on the "annoying factor." I'd love to get rid of the hitching if anything. That alone would give me the illusion of getting higher frames per second :)