Sharp Fps Drop

[LimaBeanMage]

I'm running into a weird fps/performance issue while playing. For some odd reason, no matter where I am and at seemingly random intervals, my fps drops from 60+ to 7 and below. It happens at any point whether I'm running something heavy on the screen like an outdoor battle or just sitting in a completely cleared out dungeon staring at the wall.

 

At first I thought it was my performance capability but then I put everything to the smallest values I can have them at but my fps still drops and then shoots back up. Like I mentioned above it happens even in areas where there is nothing to display other than a wall on the lowest settings.

 

My basic specs are:

 

P4 3.0ghz

1.0 GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra

XP SP2

[batesmotel34]

I'm running into a weird fps/performance issue while playing. For some odd reason, no matter where I am and at seemingly random intervals, my fps drops from 60+ to 7 and below. It happens at any point whether I'm running something heavy on the screen like an outdoor battle or just sitting in a completely cleared out dungeon staring at the wall.

 

At first I thought it was my performance capability but then I put everything to the smallest values I can have them at but my fps still drops and then shoots back up. Like I mentioned above it happens even in areas where there is nothing to display other than a wall on the lowest settings.

It sounds like you have something that runs in the background periodically on your computer and the FPS Rate probably drops when that kicks off. Possible things to check would be anti-virus software, the Windows indexing service or something similar.

[LimaBeanMage]

I thought about that at first but then again I already have Norton 05 and a few other programs to keep my system clean. If it were something running in the background then, logically, it would also affect everything else I do. Though, that doesn't seem to be the case as it's only with oblivion do I run into this problem. Even Half Life 2 runs with near max settings without any trouble at all.

[sleaaels]

I run an athalon 64 3ghz, 1 gig ram, x800pro (agp) and i can run most on max, just no anti alias, no LOD, no char shading and no tree shading. and still in certain places it gets choppy, like in bravil. I think the "recommended requirements" is actually higher then its written, Oblivion is the mother of all pc requirements (HL2 is small time compared to Oblivion). Theres a website out there that give you your settings when you give them your specs. but if that is so my pc should be able to run on a higher option then it is now.

I have macafee running in the back ground, have you tried disabling your norton to see if it runs smoother?

The only other thing is updating your driver (but somehow i'm sure you've done that already). Check "Processes" in "Task Manager" this should kind of give you a clue to whats a burdern on your pc.

your pc stats are are around the same lvl. if not slightly better then mine, at 1024 res. (lol have you defrag your pc lately:)).

[Russki Bear]

If you aren't on the internet then there is not a great need to run AV software. Norton IS is terrible IMO, too much crap installed that doesn't really do much more than a simple, good, free firewall (Sygate, there are others) and AVG Free Edition (and there are other free AVs out there too).

AVG has a very nice email scanner that is fine for most email programs out there (I use Thunderbird).

 

AV scanners read each file as it comes off the disk and takes up memory. TES4 uses a lot of RAM, and running background stuff like an AV means

 

a. It has less RAM so must swap sooner

b. The resident scanner will read and analyse any file accessed before the game gets it, making the game wait

c. Will occasionally use processor resources at inopportune times

 

Other games may not use as much system memory, being perhaps more reliant on graphics card memory instead. The little pauses, IMO, are System->Video mem transfers and the bigger ones are memory swaps.

 

I would at least try running it without Nortons active, but good luck getting that pr*ck of an application completely out of memory. Perhaps setup two user IDs, the one you have and a clean one for games?

 

Russki Bear