Poor Performance

[mfcfbro]

So after wearing Skyrim down to the point of no return, I decided to re-install Oblivion on my machine, assuming that it should run flawlessly. I was wrong.

 

Performance isn't always an issue. Generally I will get 60+ fps in the wilderness and well over 100 fps, sometimes 300+, in interiors. The problem happens in locations like Anvil Docks, Imperial City Waterfront, or in almost all cities where my fps drops to around 20 - 25 frames. I've tried lowering all the graphical settings including disabling distant land and shadows entirely which only results in about 3 fps gain. I've toggled between shader model versions via the Oblivion.ini and RendererInfo.txt and forced the various shader packs with very minimal performance impact (1-3 fps).

What has me perplexed is after monitoring my system during gameplay via task manager/gpu-z, none of my hardware is anywhere near maxing out and all temps are in the 30-35 C range. Unless FSB throughput is the bottleneck, I have no idea.

 

CPU (Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz) - 30% max

RAM (DDR2 800MHz) - 2.5 / 5 GB

GPU (AMD Radeon r7 260x 2GB) - 21% max

HDD (2 7200rpm sata HDDs in raid 0) - 8% max

Chipset (Nforce 650i)

 

My load order is only the DLC and unofficial patches.
OBSE running with Oblivion Stutter Remover using default settings. (As they don't make much difference for me either)

Streamline doesn't benefit me either, I assume because none of the graphic settings help.

 

All drivers are most recent versions as well.

 

EDIT: All 4 cores seem to be active as they all peak at around 30%

EDIT 2: It seems that the main drop is when bUseWaterReflectionsStatic is enabled. Are the reflections rendered on the CPU? If so I'd assume I'm just SOL on that one.

 

If anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

Edited June 28, 2014 by mfcfbro