Constant micro-stuttering

[F4c2a]

((PROBLEM SOLVED))

 

It's a long shot, but I might as well ask if anyone has had the same problem and managed to fix it.

 

I've got a good comp, 4Ghz, GeForce GTX 460 1GB, 6GB ram, win7, SSD... But I experience constant micro-stuttering. It doesn't matter where and when: Outdoors, indoors, moving back and forth in the same spot (no loading new stuff) there's a constant stuttering, just enough to be noticeable.

 

I know there's a million things to try, so far I've only re-installed the game, but I'd like to know what people've been successful with?

 

Thanks.

 

EDIT: By constant micro-stuttering I mean "skipping a frame or two" a few times per second while moving - while immobile, either it doesn't happen or its too hard to perceive.

Edited February 17, 2011 by F4c2a

[Striker879]

Are you running Oblivion from the SSD? By constant do you mean e.g. once a second or every few seconds? I recommend Koroush Ghazi's Tweak Guide (http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html) and bben46 from this site has some troubleshooting resources as well. Edited February 16, 2011 by Striker879

[Ferryt]

Heheh ... actually, I broke Oblivion by following the tweakguide but getting greedy with some of the settings. I'm only now trying to find a happy medium for my high-end computer that doesn't result in the occasional stutter (about once every half minute to one minute). It's a good recommendation, though, F4c2a. I just suggest that you follow it from page one to page last ... by the numbers, and don't get greedy like I did. There are a lot of things that could be causing stutter, including installed mods -- especially installed mods that task your machine. For most of us with higher end machines the bottleneck is seldom the video card, but more likely the CPU, and the game engine isn't designed to take advantage of modern processors, so there's a point of diminishing returns there, too.

[Striker879]

Heheh ... actually, I broke Oblivion by following the tweakguide but getting greedy with some of the settings.

A good tweaking game plan (and one that Koroush recommends) is making a few tweaks at a time and then play test their results. Time consuming but ultimately worth it. His guides are also nice in that he warns if a suggestion has risks, his recommended settings tend to the conservative side. Let me guess Ferryt ... would you have been tweaking the

Multithreading Tweaks:

 

bUseThreadedBlood=1

bUseThreadedMorpher=1

bUseThreadedTempEffects=1

bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1

bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1

bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1

iNumHavokThreads=5

iThreads=9

iOpenMPLevel=10

settings in the [Memory, Loading & Multithreading Variables] section?? :laugh:

[Ferryt]

Nope. I steered away from that stuff on purpose. I was intentionally pushing the envelope, and knew that it could cause problems, just because I wanted to see how far I could go with this new machine. It's actually overpowered for Oblivion -- the problem is that Oblivion isn't capable of accessing its full range of features, which is probably the case for any medium to high end PC made in the last couple of years. That sometimes makes it a little unclear just what might work and what might totally break things.

 

And before you ask, yes, I have a backup of my default Oblivion.ini file, but I know the changes I made and I know how to fix things. I just don't want to fix anything that I don't have to fix, and a lot of the .ini settings can cause unpredictable interactions with each other, so it's very much an experimental process, once you're past Koroush's recommended settings. If I can't solve the stuttering issue I have I'll just go back to the default setting and do things the hard way, changing one setting at time. It's just so time-consuming, because some changes won't be apparent in one area of the world, but will be in another. I seem to get the worst stuttering, for instance, on Imperial Isle, and it's not quite as bad in the area around Aleswell -- possibly related, at least in part, to water reflections, but I can't test that without being somewhere else in the world which has lots of water.

 

Bottom line ... tweaking Oblivion can be as time-consuming, and sometimes as frustrating, as trying to get a bunch of mods collected, installed, and playing nicely together.

[F4c2a]

Thanks for the replies, I've read the tweak guide.

 

I'm a bit hesitant touching the .ini because I've heard no good comes out of it. Anyhow, I've got a couple other fixes to try first.

 

I shall report my findings.

 

P.S. Added micro-stuttering description in OP.

 

EDIT: Okay, I installed OBSE and Oblivion Stutter Remover (OSR) and it considerably diminished the stutter, but not without side-effects: Now my FPS or refresh rate seems to be set, because A: my gfx cards fans hardly start spinning B: standing still looking around can easily see the FPS isn't maxing out. So now I'm just wondering if I can increase the FPS somehow without getting more stutters again.

Edited February 17, 2011 by F4c2a

[Ferryt]

A couple of things. If you have any mods installed, post them. It could be a mod might be causing this.

 

Secondly, I don't know who's been telling you that "no good" can come from changing things in Oblivion.ini, but whoever it is, he's feeding you a line of bull. Indeed, quite a few simple mods you download from this site do nothing, essentially, but tweak the same things you can do manually by altering .ini settings. By getting geeky you simply have more control over the process. Stay with modifications suggested in the Tweak Guide and you'll be OK. Some of the other settings are safe to fiddle with, as well, and you can always roll back to an unmodified version just by deleting your Oblivion.ini and restarting the game. Basically, if you don't know what a setting does then don't touch it. If you do, then experiment. As far as I know nothing in Oblivion.ini can permanently damage your Oblivion install. It is, after all, an "initialization" file and Oblivion reads it every time it's run.

 

Just keep in mind that you will be modifying the one in your Application Data folder and NOT in the Oblivion install folder. Leave that one alone. If you don't know where it is you can locate it by typing "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Oblivion" into "Start>Run", although you'll have to enable the viewing of hidden files and folders to do so. I put a shortcut to that folder on my desktop so I have ready access to it.

 

Edit: Sorry, but our posts crossed. The reason your fps is capped is that OSR, by default, is doing this. It has its own .ini where you can set, or even disable, the default 30 fps cap. Experiment with that and see what happens.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ferryt

[F4c2a]

PROBLEM SOLVED!

 

...not without some drawbacks, but enough to make the game playable: Read the OSR readme, tweaked the OSR .ini max FPS first to 0 (no limit) and tested: Works great, no stutter/lag whatsoever, but mouse-input lag, or not sure if I should call it "lag" but anyhow the mouse dragged behind quite noticeably. Reduced the max cap from infinite (the 0) to 60 (my monitor refresh rate btw) and it halved the "dragging". (As I move crosshair around it takes a fraction of a second to catch up.)

 

...unless someone knows an easy fix to that, I'm gonna let it be, it's hardly an FPS game anyhow so I think I'll cope with missing a couple fireballs here and there. :)

 

THANKS A LOT TO ALL REPLIES.

 

Hints: Googling "Oblivion stutter" or "Oblivion constant stutter" gives rather nice results.

Edited February 17, 2011 by F4c2a

[InAComaDial999]

Really the stutter is caused by the 60hz problem. That is, your monitor runs at 60hz, but Oblivion wants to render at 64hz, and the resultant skipping causes the microstutter.

 

All you normally have to do to get rid of it is enable bFix64Hertz = 1 and iSchedulingResolution = 1 in the OSR ini file and leave all the other settings at 0. The other stuff OSR does can lead to problems. You definitely don't need to enable the FPS cap to get rid of microstutter.

 

And just about all the stuff the "tweak guides" tell you to do will lead to problems.

Edited February 17, 2011 by InAComaDial999

[Striker879]

From Koroush Ghazi's Tweak Guide (http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html) on the subject of mouse lag;

Mouse Sensitivity: This slider controls how sensitive the mouse is in the game. The further right the slider, the more sensitive your mouse will be to movements while playing. Note however that mouse lag - that is, the slowing down and general 'lagginess' of you mouse or crosshair while playing the game is not affected by this setting. Mouse lag is usually caused by low FPS in certain areas, so you should consider reducing some of your settings to increase your framerate. There is also a specific fix for mouse/control lag - see the 'Max Frames to Render Ahead' tweak at the end of this guide which has helped a lot of people reduce it.

and the 'Max Frames to Render Ahead'

Max Frames to Render Ahead

 

This tweak gained prominence as being the first major performance tip discovered and widely circulated for Oblivion. After much testing, and based on what I know, I can hopefully provide some genuine guidance on how this tweak works, and what setting to actually use. This is an important tweak if used correctly, you just need to be aware of what it does, as abusing it can also cause problems and reduce performance on many systems.

 

The setting in question is called 'Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames', and it is available in the Forceware Control Panel for Nvidia graphics cards, or by using RivaTuner to change the 'Prerender limit' setting which is the same thing. You can find out more about this setting as well as RivaTuner in the Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide. For ATI users, you can adjust the 'Flip Queue' setting which is the equivalent setting to the one above by installing and using ATI Tray Tools. The same values apply to both brands of cards.

 

Basically, the Gamebryo engine (discussed further below) seems to have an issue which means it can saturate your CPU and/or Video RAM with pre-rendered frames (whole screens ready to be displayed). On most systems this results in very noticeable mouse and/or keyboard lag, even when your FPS is reasonably high enough not to usually suffer from this (e.g. 25-30FPS+). By reducing the maximum number of frames to render in advance, you reduce this bottlenecking effect and hence significantly reduce or remove the mouse lag.

 

However, here's the important part: this is not a tweak for improving FPS as such. The general recommendation to set 'Max Frames to Render Ahead' (or 'Flip Queue') from its default of 3 down to 0 will actually reduce performance on many systems, particularly Dual Core or HyperThreading CPUs. Secondly, even on single core systems, you may notice reduced performance in certain areas. So on balance I strongly recommend setting this value to 2 to start with, and if you still have mouse lag, dropping it down to 1. Remember, not all mouse lag is due to this setting: in areas where you have very low FPS (i.e. below 10-15FPS), you will get lagginess - this occurs in virtually any game where your FPS drops down to the low teens or single digits. You will have to consider changing other settings to increase overall FPS.