FPS drops despite new, decent machine

[ArcticZero]

Here are my new specs:

 

i7 930 @ 4ghz

Radeon HD5970

6GB Dominator GT's

X-Fi Xtremegamer

WD Blue 500GB

 

Given the above specs, I play Oblivion pretty smoothly at max, with some AA forced through a RadeonPro profile. However I still experience FPS drops on certain areas (Weye, cities, waterfront, Imperial Capital, etc.) despite none of my resources being maxed out at all. None of my cores hit 50%, and my GPU cores never go above 30% in these areas. RAM usage is pretty low, and my HDD isn't thrashing either, so it's not that. My Oblivion.ini is still the same as from my previous build (Q6600, 6GB DDR2-800, same GPU). Removing my forced AA doesn't help either, other than reducing my GPU load while FPS stays the same.

 

So yeah, I notice none of my components being overly stressed, yet I get FPS drops. What could the problem be? :(

[Hickory]

This is nothing at all to do with your rig. It's an Oblivion limitation -- Oblivion is an old game and was designed to run on old/er system. In a heavily modded game (particularly Overhauls, BC, RAEVWD, Quarls or any other high quality texture replacers, even body/armour etc.) you are going to get FPS drops in certain areas no matter how good your system is.

[Reaverdude]

Here is a great guide I used to optimize Oblivion for my newer machines. Tweaks include making memory more efficient and taking advantage of multiple cores:

 

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1081188-guide-how-to-smooth-pc-oblivion-fps/

 

 

Hope that helps.