Requirements for High Settings?

[Tomlong54210]

Thanks for that! I'll give it a try. If I already installed the unoptimized textures manually by just extracting them to the data folder, can I still make an OMOD of the redimized version or do I have to extract and overwrite the old textures?

Create an OMOD of QTP3R. The OMOD should overwrite all of the original's files.

[David Brasher]

Laptops are weak. If you want great graphics and performance, you might need a desktop.

[chaospearl]

I just KNEW somebody was going to say that, hehe.

 

I'm a hardcore laptop girl myself. I played Oblivion heavily modded on my Lenovo ThinkPad for nearly a year. FPS was terrible, between 5 and 25 most of the time (usually towards the lower end) but not unplayable. And it was definitely the CPU that slowed me down, not the graphics. My laptop is a 2.1Ghz Core2Duo with NVidia Quadro NVS 140m video. I wasn't running any texture packs or enhancements, and I used a couple performance-enhancing mods such as LowPolyGrass and the De-Parallaxer. I was able to keep graphics set on High and could play using HDR or Bloom without a noticable difference. As well, playing with the graphics sliders did almost nothing to improve FPS because the graphics weren't the issue.

 

I had a lot of quest mods and other script-heavy things installed and that's what was killing me. My FPS jumped from an average of 12 to an average of 15 just by removing three particular mods -- Windfall, Integration, and Cybiades. I got another FPS boost when I ditched Tears of the Fiend and Lost Spires. However I still wasn't able to run some of the mods I most wanted to (Better Cities, Unique Landscapes) without my FPS crawling at 5 - 8 or worse.

 

I wasn't able to afford a new laptop with the kind of specs I'd need to play at a reasonable framerate without sacrificing mods, so I ended up building myself a killer gaming desktop instead. The laptop is still my primary machine for everything except playing games. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd want a new laptop powerful enough to run modded Oblivion at 30+ FPS... but since cash doesn't grow on money trees, the desktop was a more logical choice. I did fight against it for quite awhile since I haven't owned nor used a desktop computer for 10 years. I'm happy with the decision, though, and I've probably extended the life of my poor laptop by a good deal since I'm not forcing it to struggle with 300+ mods for 6 hours a day.