Having FPS issues that I shouldn't be having.

[Falco2073]

Hello,

 

I'm experiencing FPS issues with my installation of Oblivion and it's dampening the experience somewhat. My specs are as follows:

 

Intel i7-4770K

Geforce 980 GTX

16GB DDR3 RAM (Can't remember specifics)

 

My machine is perfectly capable of running The Witcher 3 maxed at 60FPS, but Oblivion is struggling to even maintain 30. It seems to sit at around 30 but every few seconds it goes down as low as 15 and then back up to 30.

 

My mod list can be found here:

 

http://pastebin.com/j3s1K7e9

 

I think it may be an issue with my oblivion.ini, but I'm not really sure where to start on that front. I should also note that I have applied the 4GB patch to the Oblivion.exe, but that didn't make a difference.

 

It works completely fine in interiors (anything from 100-200+ FPS), but outside areas are stuttering constantly. I'm using Oblivion Stutter remover and Streamline but they don't seem to help at all. I've also taken a look at my GPU and CPU usage using MSI Afterburner and Windows Task Manager and neither of them reach 100% usage.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you need any more information then let me know and I will provide what I can.

 

EDIT: I'm not opposed to reinstalling, though I would appreciate some help with installation order with all my mods to prevent issues in the future and improve stability.

Edited May 25, 2015 by Falco2073

[Surilindur]

I do not have a computer that good, but I cannot play at 60 fps outside, either. Oblivion is an old game, and despite having a good computer, the game is only able to handle so much. Oblivion stuffed with mods is never going to run at 60 fps outside. Mine runs at 20-30 fps, but I have capped it at 30, so that the framerate does not jump between 30 and 60 (feels a bit smoother).

 

RAEVWD is a heavy mod, and it is the single most fps hungry mod I have installed. I tried removing everything else but that, and my fps did not really change at all. The framerate manager or Oblivion Reloaded might help, but I do not use it myself so I cannot give comments on it. Do you use Oblivion Reloaded? It also has a purge feature, and the fps impact of the visual effects is incredibly small, if noticeable at all.

 

The settings of OSR can be modified to suit your system better. That might be a fine source of fps, too, but not necessarily. MoreHeap by shadeMe could also help a bit. And there is an updated tcmalloc dll for OSR available (might help with performance, not sure) that seems to work just fine for me now that I have changed the settings a little. It crashed at first.

 

These are my specs, and the game does not use all the 'power' available in it, either. So it is definitely not your computer that is the culprit. :smile:

 

Intel i3-2120 @3.3 GHz

Asus R9 290 DC II OC

12 GB DDR3 (cannot remember specifics, either, but I think they are 1066)

Edited May 25, 2015 by PhilippePetain

[olha2]

Try using Oblivion Reloaded with its Ram disk option. this should help performance

 

also post your OSR settings.

 

also no need to reinstal the game

 

also post your oblivion.ini settings

[bben46]

Best source for ini help. http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

[Falco2073]

My oblivion.ini:

 

http://pastebin.com/wB2wYJur

 

My OSR settings:

 

http://pastebin.com/MMiiPXvH

 

I will try using a RAMDisk and see if it helps at all.

 

EDIT: Created a RAMDisk and I seem to be getting 60 in exteriors now. It would appear that the VWD LOD is missing things though, because I don't think I'm adding all the correct folders. Could someone confirm the folders I need to place on the RAMDisk? I was using DistantLOD, Meshes/Landscape and Textures/LandscapeLOD.

 

I have:

 

Z:\DistantLOD

Z:\Meshes\Landscape

Z:\Textures\LandscapeLOD

 

Is this correct?

Edited May 25, 2015 by Falco2073

[Surilindur]

Would the _far.nif files also need to be there on the ramdisk? And the textures for them. It says on the OR mod page that the meshes and textures folders from RAEVWD would also need to be placed there (if I understood it correctly). The _far.nif things are the 'distant' versions of the different meshes.

 

Or, if you use the framerate manager of OR, maybe it hides some objects to improve framerate?

Edited May 26, 2015 by PhilippePetain

[Falco2073]

Would the _far.nif files also need to be there on the ramdisk? And the textures for them. It says on the OR mod page that the meshes and textures folders from RAEVWD would also need to be placed there (if I understood it correctly). The _far.nif things are the 'distant' versions of the different meshes.

 

Or, if you use the framerate manager of OR, maybe it hides some objects to improve framerate?

 

I took it the same way as you did. The issue is that my texture and mesh folders are just shy of 4GB, assumedly because of QTP3.

 

I do use the framerate manager, but it's definitely not that hiding any objects as I turned off ramdisk mode and all of the objects came back as expected.

[Surilindur]

I meant the RAEVWD meshes and textures folders. I have something around 32GB of mods for Oblivion, so adding all meshes and textures on the ramdisk is not an option. Only the files needed for rendering objects at a distance need to be moved to ramdisk.

 

For a house, for example, there is the 'normal' mesh and 'normal' detail textures. Like for the Chorrol middle class house 01, there is a mesh and textures those are used when the house is basically next to player, like when standing next to it. Those are the 'normal' sort of mesh and textures. They are usually large and it does not make any sense to render the full detail house mesh and texture when they are somewhere in the distance. It would also kill performance. That is why there is another mesh and another set of textures used when that mesh, the Chorrol middle class house 01, for example, is rendered at a distance. The mesh used when the house is rendered at a distance is not as detailed, and the textures for it are also of lower detail, to not cause an insane performance loss.

 

So, for the example house, there is, in ...Oblivion\Data\Meshes\Architecture\Chorrol\ folder a mesh:

 

chorrolhousemiddle01.nif

 

And texture files in ...Oblivion\Data\Textures\Architecture\Chorrol\ folder.

 

To allow for the house to be rendered at a distance (without an insane performance hit), RAEVWD adds a lower detail mesh and lower resolution textures for the game to use when that mesh is rendered at a distance. So in the same folder with the actual, full detail mesh, there is a file:

 

chorrolhousemiddle01_far.nif

 

And lowres textures for it in ...Oblivion\Data\Textures\Lowres\Architecture\Chorrol\ folder.

 

When the game renders that house at a distance, it basically uses the mesh with the same name as the full detail mesh but with "_far" at the end of the name. TES4LODGen makes the files the game uses to determine what objects there are and where for rendering them in the appropriate places. The distant land mesh is made using other tools and is separate from the objects (and the object 'placement' data).

 

The Oblivion and Shivering Isles RAEVWD folders (meshes + textures) should be something around 250 MB. The RAEVWD mod meshes and textures folders contain only the lower detail meshes and textures needed for rendering the different objects at a distance. If other mods supply such files for their own custom meshes, the lower detail files (_far.nif and lowres textures) from those will also need to be placed on the ramdisk for them to be loaded and rendered. If there are no lower detail (_far) versions of the meshes available, the game will not render them at a distance - even if the files created using TES4LODGen contained the information for their places and such.

 

The OblivionReloaded.ini also seems to have the option to choose which files are loaded from ramdisk. I believe that, for the ones selected there (far nifs, lowres textures, lod files), it ignores the ones in Data folder and only looks for them on the ramdisk. If there are no files on the ramdisk to be used, the game will not render the objects missing the lower detail files at a distance.

 

Hopefully that helps a little. I am extremely bad at explaining things. And I have not yet even tried the ramdisk feature, so that does not help me explain things better, either. :D

Edited May 27, 2015 by PhilippePetain

[Falco2073]

I have managed to get the RAMDisk working, thanks for your help Philippe (and also Alenet via PM). It has definitely helped with the stuttering issues but I am still experiencing performance issues, unfortunately. From the below position, I was getting between 22 and 30FPS. I'm not bothered about the game hitting a constant 100+, I'd just like it if I can get it to a constant 30 or 60 without having to sacrifice and graphical fidelity. It may come to a point where I will have to make sacrifices though, as the frame rate is negatively affecting my experience.

 

http://i.imgur.com/b2631o7.jpg

[Surilindur]

You seem to have a mod that adds more... stuff around the Imperial City. Maybe the amount of distant objects could cause fps issues? I have had to change the following settings in Oblivion.ini to raise fps to 30. In open cities (I use the reborn version) I get around 19 fps with only RAEVWD and 25 without it, and changing the values does not affect fps in cities at all. But it might help in the wilderness.

 

uGridDistantCount=25

uGridDistantTreeRange=15

 

Or something like that.

 

 

They reduce the distance at which the land and objects are rendered. It will affect graphics quality through the objects being rendered not so far in the distance. But before testing those, I suggest you try the OR framerate manager. You can set the minimum grids for lod to 15 or 10 if you do not want it to hide too much. And the thing for actors to 10 or 15, too, or they will vanish if you have fps issues in open cities (Anvil, for example).