Poor Performence With Very High End Computer

[Banana12]

I have a similar rig to the first poster here, which is...

 

 

**

 

* My system specs: AMD X2 64-bit 4200+ Dual Core; 2Gb of DDR RAM; Diamond 6L300S0 7200rpm SATA/150 HD with 16Mb cache; GeForce N7800 'GT Top' 256MB DDR PCI.

 

* My software: Windows XP, with Service Pack 2; NVidia Drivers 8.4.2.5 beta ('Oblivion optimised') + Coolbits; Realtek AC'97 onboard audio drivers; DirectX 9.0c + February 2006 patch. " Cool'n'Quiet" BIOS = disabled.

 

* My mods installed (playing as a Woodelf archer): Beast_Tongue.esp (Beast Tongue lasts longer, has a wider spread); Natural_Wildlife.esp (exterior wildlife has more realistic behavior); Time_x2.esp (slower days and nights); TRCS Encounter 1.0 (extra random wildlife added); Attack and Hide v2.0 medium (more realistic stealth attacks); Landscape LOD Texture Replacer (better far distant textures); No More Annoying Messages 1.2; Crosshairs Size Reduction 1.1.

 

* My boot procedure: clean boot before running each game, then disable taskbar apps before launching the game, inc. antivirus. Game was installed onto a freshly-defragmented HD, C:/Oblivion.

 

**

 

I have spent most of Sunday tweaking and testing different tweaks on two test savegames. I run on 1280 x 960 which is my monitor's native rate, with bloom & 4xAA, and footstep sounds 'off' (just my preference). Monitor res and AA level didn't seem to affect my FPS (although I admit I haven't stooped to trying hauling it back down to 800 x 600, I mean, c'mon - I used to play Hexen v1.0 at that!).

 

_Here's what I found:_

 

The NVidia CoolBits "3 to 0" tweak had no effect for me. Turning on & off VSync had no effect. Disabling Cool'n'Quiet in the BIOS had no effect.

 

I probably dropped my framerate a little by adding a clutch of eye-candy boosting tweaks to the .ini file...

 

* (Better blood:)

 

fDecalLifetime=1200.0000

iMaxDecalsPerFrame=500

 

* (Pretty water:)

 

bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=1 (default 0)

bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1 (default 0)

uSurfaceFPS=15

 

* (Pretty trees, more trees & rocks in distant views:)

 

bForceFullLOD=1 (default 0)

uGridDistantTreeRange=30

fLODFadeOutMultItems=15.0000

fLODFadeOutMultObjects=15.0000

 

* (Psuedo-HDR via bloom:)

 

fAlphaAddExterior=0.3000

fAlphaAddInterior=0.7500

 

* (Better lighting and detail - much much nicer!)

 

bAllow30Shaders=1

bHighQuality20Lighting=1

 

* (Better grass - IMHO)

 

iMinGrassSize=100

fGrassEndDistance=12288.0000

fGrassStartFadeDistance=6144.0000

bGrassPointLighting=0

bDrawShaderGrass=1

iGrassDensityEvalSize=2

iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=4

 

* (Performance boosts for dual processors?)

 

uExterior Cell Buffer=100

iThreads=10

iOpenMPLevel=10

iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600

 

bUseThreadedBlood=1

bUseThreadedMorpher=1

bUseThreadedTempEffects=1

bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1

 

* (Performance boosts for HDs with 16mb+ fast cache onboard?)

 

bUseHardDriveCache=1

 

* (I halved some shadow texture resolutions, with no visible in-game effect)

 

iShadowMapResolution=256

iCanopyShadowScale=256

 

But frankly, all those eye-candy boosts didn't seem to drop the FPS much. Perhaps the performance tweaks kicked in - and each cancelled the other out? If so, then it seems like fair trade-off.

 

I use two test savegames, with various views and aspects tested:

 

1) City Isle, approaching the stables, sunset on the first day - first walking up the stables (24-44 FPS on a raw "first boot after install" .ini) , then in the stable yard with multiple horses casting shadows and one NPC with no torch lit. (21 FPS on a raw "first boot after install" .ini).

 

2) Deep in the dense Great Forest, with Martin, lots of swaying trees and grass, a bright but a little overcast morning (21 FPS on a raw "first boot after install" .ini), then looking at Martin in the grass (17 FPS on a raw "first boot after install" .ini), then with a partial-forest view out to one side (21 FPS on a raw "first boot after install" .ini).

 

I should note that inside towns I never get below 30 FPS. I also get fine FPS inside the Oblivion plane and around Oblivion gates. The main problem seems to stem not from grass & trees (I turned the grass off by accident once, and saw no FPS drop at all on my Forest savegame!) but from the amount of grids loaded at full-res.

 

The only major and noticable FPS change for me came from the...

 

uGridsToLoad=5

 

... item in the Oblivion.ini file. Each step up (7,9,11) cost me 5 FPS each time, and each step down (to 3) gave me 5 FPS. I now have it set to =3. With all my other tweaks on view distance and lighting etc, I don't notice the difference much at all -- except in those precious extra 5 FPS, which take me back up to where I would have been with the raw "first boot after install" .ini. But now the game looks a noticably better, and I have much longer draw distances. I also have the new 'better textures' mod for distant views ("Landscape LOD Texture Replacer"), which seems to help the distant views a lot but with no FPS hit.

 

Since multiple full-res grid loading is my main and obvious FPS-killer factor, I rather suspect that the CPU is the main limiting item on my system. As it was with Morrowind, in the end. I would be interested to hear what people with a similar dual-core system & card, but a better CPU, are getting for their FPS.

 

Hope this helps someone.

 

Now, if only there were a way to turn off the initial NPC greeting ('cause their mood/tone so often doesn't sync with your subsequent conversation with them).

 

Bye!

[`NoM]

Dunno if anyone of u have read the these articles.

 

Do it if u haven't...

 

http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

 

and especially..

 

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2746

 

 

I have a very high end system and i can't play with everything maxed out and get good fps.

I've got like 50-120 indoors, 30-70 in cities and 30-45 around oblivion gates (which is the most GPU stressing environment in Oblivion). I play with like 75% on all graphical settings..except for grass distance where i have 50% (grass distance is a killer of fps).

I have a dual core CPU, 2 megs of ram (excellent quality) and a Radeon 1900XTX.

 

Hopefully some of your questions might get answered after you've read the articles....just don't expect to get good performance in Oblivion with every setting maxed out...

 

/NoM

[Russki Bear]

Just for comparo:

 

Athlon 64 3700+

2GB DDR400 Corsair CL2.5

XFX 7800GT (factory oc)

SB Audigy

DFI LanParty UT nForce4 ultra

21" CRT

 

Running:

WinXP SP2

Oblivion @ 1280*1024

Bloom

Full Actor draw, 60% grass

~half for items and objects.

 

Ini tweaks:

Grass size=90

iOpenThreads(?) = 20

All threaded options enabled.

 

Mods:

Oscuro's Overhaul.

Various smaller ones.

 

Environment:

16-18 running threads.

Some good services to have on manual start:

THEMES!!!

ICS/WF

Indexing

Help and Support

 

Performance:

 

Okay. ~25-30FPS in forest and it doesn't go much below that.

A few little stutters and the occasional 1-2 second freeze.

 

Comment about multiprocessing, consider as a possible explanation of below expected performance:

 

Not the panacae the hype suggests. It is useful but not a silver bullet. Oblivion does indeed thread a lot of stuff and it can help offload the smaller items from the major threads, like physics, AI and rendering.

However, I feel these smaller threads may not be as processor intensive, so a single core might only have to give it attention 1/1000th of the time an intense thread might require.

Hence, it improves things, but not as much as people expect.

Why?

Because while it can thread off some functions, the major threads are not broken down into smaller threads to a great extent.