Many armor mods destroy my FPS

[maxtro]

I'm running a (now it's a) low end laptop, dual-core 2 Ghz, 2 gigs ram, Radeon X1200 (Memory Size 384 MB, Core Clock in MHz 400 MHz, Memory Clock in MHz 200 MHz)

 

In game I'm getting ~15 FPS when running around at low settings at 640 X 480. It ain't pretty but it's playable.

 

The issue is that many of the armor replacer mods cause my FPS to crash to basically 1 or 2 in the over-world when a certain piece of armor is equipped. In the menu screen with a naked character I can get 30 FPS but when I put on an offending piece of gear, everything just crawls.

 

It's not every piece of custom armor, it almost seems random which ones cause the trouble.

 

Is there anything I can do to improve performance with equipment that lowers my FPS?

[BFG99]

Looking at your specs, my guess is that you're running into trouble due to the low graphics card memory. Many mods assume you have at least 512 MB, and oftentimes 1 GB, of graphic card memory. Try an experiment - when you get to a situation where you're only getting 1 or 2 FPS, go into your graphics settings and turn off View Distant Buildings/Trees/etc., and shorten the viewable distance. If your FPS suddenly picks up again, with the armor still on screen, that's the problem.

 

From the description it's likely your graphics card is having trouble trying to draw too many "meshes" (the 3D skeletons of the armor). The reason why certain armors are worse than others is due to the complexity of that armor - i.e. how much memory it takes to draw it. Between that modded armor and the surrounding landscape + buildings + etc. on your screen, there's probably more than 384 MB worth of geometry on the screen, so your card is having to constantly swap stuff in and out of its memory to draw it all.

 

My best recommendation would be to use a tool called PyFFI. It's designed to minimize the amount of space the meshes take up, and it'll work on virtually any mesh. Basically what it does is eliminate the "trash" from the meshes (the extra pieces that aren't really needed and just waste memory). You'll likely get at least a modest speed increase just by using it.

 

Unfortunately, PyFFI is not the most intuitive of tools. In addition to PyFFI, you will need to install Python 2.7 (I think its website is Python.org). And you may want to consider using a tool such as the PyFFI Automator, available on TESNexus, which basically gives you a GUI for PyFFI.

 

One other word of warning - if you use PyFFI, be sure not to let it change any helm, hair, hood, tongue, or teeth meshes! PyFFI will "break" these if you do.

[Tomlong54210]

You have to watch out for the High Rez armor mods, and PyFFI will not help with that. It will only help with the high-poly amors. Check the mods' descriptions for relevant identifiers when possible.

[maxtro]

Sigh, PyFFI didn't help at all. I tried three mods that replace the glass cuirass and each of them dropped my FPS when that piece was equipped. I ran PyFFI on all, no effect.

 

It's weird how the replacement armor is actually less complex than the original and yet it causes a massive performance drop.

[Tomlong54210]

Sigh, PyFFI didn't help at all. I tried three mods that replace the glass cuirass and each of them dropped my FPS when that piece was equipped. I ran PyFFI on all, no effect.

 

It's weird how the replacement armor is actually less complex than the original and yet it causes a massive performance drop.

As I said, PyFFI helps with Hi-Polygon (meshes), not high rez (textures). Just because the replacement looks less complex, does not mean it is. You would have to look that the files sizes and probably even the actual structure of the files, in the case of meshes.

[BFG99]

Yeah, what Tomlong said. If PyFFI didn't help much then it's likely either (a) the armor was too complex polygon-wise for PyFFI to do much good, or (b) high res textures maxxing out your 384MB graphics memory.

 

Have you looked for lower resolution versions of the armor mods that you have installed? Or have you tried turning your textures to low/medium in the Graphics settings? If lower resolution versions aren't available you could always build them yourself by reducing the resolution on the textures that came with the mod. After all, a 512x512 texture takes 1/4 as much memory as a (pretty typical) 1024x1024 one.

 

There's also a third possibility, and the fact you mentioned Glass armor clued me into this. Some graphics cards really struggle with things such as multiple lighting sources and reflection/refraction. Glass armor obviously has tons of that. There may be mods out there that disable that behavior, that would vastly improve your performance.

 

EDIT: Also be sure you have the latest driver for your graphics card. I've been impressed at how much better my card is at running Oblivion now that I've updated its driver.

 

EDIT 2: Have you considered trying Oldblivion? I've never tried it but I've heard it can work wonders. I don't think you'd have much to lose in trying it.

 

EDIT 3: There's a number of other tweaks you can make that might also help. I'm guessing that the bottleneck is the constant swapping between the 384 MB graphics memory and your hard drive. I think that if you disable hard drive caching in Oblivion.ini, for example, that will force all of the resources to your RAM instead. I think that 2 GM of RAM would be sufficient for doing that, especially if you disable all but the most basic Windows services first, but you'll have to try it. Or you can try any of the following mods designed to optimize Oblivion in other areas: Oblivion Stutter Remover, Streamline 3.1, HRMN's Oblivion Script Optimization, kuertee's Cleanup, etc.

[Tomlong54210]

Oldblivion is for cards that do not support certain feature by which the game is normally supported. It will not help here. With only 384MB RAM, installing HighRez anything, is generally not a good idea.

 

 

Edit: Tweaks cannot make a texture file smaller than it is without replacing the texture file. If the mod does not offer alternatives, either re-save all of the texture files at a smaller resolution with DXT1 compression yourself, or skip the mod...

[UncleRoe]

Yeah i have this issue to. The game runs well but is choppy on more graphic lit areas. For example, i can move easily with no chopping around dungeons because most of the fx used is spaced lighting. Moving around the world is a pain because of the trees and grass but i usually just toggle the grass textures and pull back on the tree distances. Also i've downloaded some awesome armor in the past that absolutly beats down my fps. All of the armors i am interested in are usually to high poly for my pc. (using a similar card to yours. ATI x1250..and this card is bottom of the barrel..matter of fact it's below the bottom of the barrel,looking up into the sky waving at the barrel.) It's hard to skim for mods that fit my cards requirements but they are out there. Right now my main uses a low poly set of Darth Revan armor while my side char uses argent iron armor(to fit with the HGEC body replacer) which is probally as good as it's going to get for me. that is anyways..until i can scrap up 2000 bucks for a decent notebook. Might even go alienware.

[Tomlong54210]

Yeah i have this issue to. The game runs well but is choppy on more graphic lit areas. For example, i can move easily with no chopping around dungeons because most of the fx used is spaced lighting. Moving around the world is a pain because of the trees and grass but i usually just toggle the grass textures and pull back on the tree distances. Also i've downloaded some awesome armor in the past that absolutly beats down my fps. All of the armors i am interested in are usually to high poly for my pc. (using a similar card to yours. ATI x1250..and this card is bottom of the barrel..matter of fact it's below the bottom of the barrel,looking up into the sky waving at the barrel.) It's hard to skim for mods that fit my cards requirements but they are out there. Right now my main uses a low poly set of Darth Revan armor while my side char uses argent iron armor(to fit with the HGEC body replacer) which is probally as good as it's going to get for me. that is anyways..until i can scrap up 2000 bucks for a decent notebook. Might even go alienware.

Well said, good info.

 

 

Happy gaming!

- Tomlong54210