Playing Oblivion on OLD LOW END PC.

[Essoncletus]

Hey list.
I'm attempting to run Oblivion on a rather old computer, that is mainly used as an office computer. These are the system specs

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium

Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name

System Manufacturer HP-Pavilion

System Model RX885AA-ABA a6000n

System Type x64-based PC

Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, 2200 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 5.02, 3/6/2007

SMBIOS Version 2.4

Windows Directory C:\Windows

System Directory C:\Windows\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.0.6002.18005"

User Name

Time Zone Atlantic Daylight Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB

Total Physical Memory 3.87 GB

Available Physical Memory 2.42 GB

Total Virtual Memory 8.68 GB

Available Virtual Memory 6.80 GB

Page File Space 4.88 GB

Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Now for Video card info.

NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
Driver version 307.83
DirectX support 9.0c
Core clock 425 MHz
Memory data rate 1332 MHz
Memory interface 32-bit
Total available graphic s 1855 MB
Dedicated video memory 128 MB DDR1
Dystem video memory 0Mb
Shared System memory 1727 MB
Video Bios Version 5.61.32.25.02
IRQ 23
Bus FPCI

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you to all.
Not looking to Mod, just wanna have a nice gaming experience for my in between leisure time well I work in the absolute middle of no where. I do have experience with modding Skyrim/Fallout NV.
I do not have access to another computer and I am extremely bored.

[razorpony]

That integrated video card is going to be the bottleneck here.

 

I'd try the streamline mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/10400/?

 

Which also requires the script extender: http://obse.silverlock.org/

 

I know you said you're not looking to mod but with those specs you're going to need some help.

[Essoncletus]

I've looked at it.
Mainly my issue is lagging in the open world. Interiors seem to be fine but when in the wild I get hell of stutter and lag, fighting is a pain in the ass. I have found the tweak guide online and as well a mod series focusing on stability but all a few years old, so any expertise is appreciated.
Thanks. Hope to hear more helpful insight.

[Essoncletus]

Concerning Streamline, any insight into which one I should use if anyone has any knowledge in this area?

[d181sp1]

Gonna just say it, yer integrated video is terrible and it's not going to get better. Sorry. Best bet, low, low, low resolution and low game settings.

 

There is a program, might be a mod, dunno. Oldblivion. I remember back in the day reading that it was catered to getting a playable experience out of Oblivion on bad hardware. Might check that out.

 

Good luck.

[eric31415]

I have run Oblivion on a laptop with barely better specs than yours. It is doable, but takes a little work. Here are the things that I found most effective.

 

Streamline 3.1

 

Lower the render distance. Very simple edit to a couple lines in the .ini, Check the tweakguide, you are looking for uGridsToLoad and uGridDistantCount. I use values of 5 and 9 respectively. But you will also have to change the fog distance in the Streamline .ini to make it match the new view distance. I think the Streamline readme has instructions. If you use my values, the min/max fog distance for Streamline is 14000/56000.

 

Apply the 4gb patch.

 

Use the Oblivion Stutter Remover plugin for OBSE.

 

Use ReadyBoost. Should already be installed, I think Vista came with it. Uses a usb flash drive as something like a secondary ram. Helps this game immensely.

 

There are a ton more tweaks to gain performance, but 90% of that gain will come from the things listed above.

 

Hope this helps!

[bben46]

Here is a link to what I consider the best tweaking info on the net.

Do the system tweaks first. Then the video card tweaks, and finally the game tweaks.

 

System Tweaks (NOTE: The regular edition is a FREE download) http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

Graphics and Video tweaks: http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html

Oblivion Game tweaks: http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

 

I used Streamline on my first Oblivion computer - it helped a lot, but did some strange things. What it is doing is changing your video settings on the fly in order to keep your fps up - meaning you are trading eye candy for fps. Sometimes you won't be able to see very far away. Sometimes an attacker will appear very close and already attacking, and sometimes an archer will be turning you into a pincushion and you won't be able to see him at all. Buildings suddenly appear almost in arms reach. Other times you will see things further away. I recommend setting your desired FPS in streamline to the lowest value you can play comfortably with - I ended up at around 18 fps with 2G of ram, later I was able to get it up to a minimum setting of 25 fps with 3G of ram, and a better video card. I don't recommend using streamline with a computer that can get both a decent fps and decent video resolution.

[eric31415]

The newest version of Streamline allows you to tell it to selectively ignore certain things. For example, you can tell it to not affect actors. No more baddies shooting you from where you can not see. That said, the more things you let it ignore, the less effective it is. I do not let it affect actors or statics, but I do let play with things like grass and trees. I find that is where I get most of the gain anyways.

[d181sp1]

Low Poly Grass mod might be of use too.