IceMastaP Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 (edited) Hello all. I have been experiencing a particular issue which I have yet to resolve with Oblivion. I suspect that it is a hardware issue. I experienced this bug before I reinstalled Oblivion. I will try to describe it as best as I can and provide as much background info as I can about my software and hardware setup. The issue is rather hard to reproduce, but it seems to just happen randomly when I am outside. All of the tree canopy shadows and the water surface will start to flicker REALLY badly. Changing cells or loading saves does not fix the issue. However, if I can manage to minimize and maximize Oblivion without it crashing, it generally fixes the issue. Of course, if I just quit and restart Oblivion, this also fixes the issue. This is what leads me to believe it is a hardware/driver issue. If it was one of the mods I had installed, minimizing and maximizing the game wouldn't do anything. I should have tried to see if the bug occurred with a plain install of oblivion but I forgot to try it and now I do not feel like reinstalling everything again, haha. I am hoping somebody here will be able to point me in the right direction. Thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is the clean re-installation procedure that I did. (More or less): I uninstalled Mods, Mod tools, Shivering Isles, Oblivion, then deleted the Oblivion folder, used CCleaner to cleanup old registry stuff, cleanup junk files, then de-fragged my hard drive. I then reinstalled Oblivion + Shivering Isles, patched it, and made a copy of my clean data folder. I then installed mod tools (Wrye Bash 291, OBMM, BOSS, Tweak Oblivion, TESCS) and subtools (OBSE and it's plugins (OSR, Pluggy, Elys Uncapper, OBGE v2, Fast Exit, MenuQue)) As well as FCOM: Convergence. I tested it all out and it all worked fine. Made another backup of data folder with FCOM freshly installed and no other mods. I also installed various retexture packs with BAIN: QTP3 Redimized, Better Doors & Flora, Better Trees & Flora 1 & 2, Better Night Sky, Better Lava, Better fire, Optimised Distant Land MAX, Low Poly Grass, etc. No conflicts between the packs. Here is my Wrye Bash loadout: (Organized with BOSS) Active Mod Files: 00 Oblivion.esm 01 Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm [Version 4.5bSI] 02 Francesco's Optional New Items Add-On.esm [Version 4.5bSI] 03 Cobl Main.esm [Version 1.73] 04 Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm [Version 1.34] 05 Mart's Monster Mod.esm [Version 3.7b3p3] 06 FCOM_Convergence.esm [Version 0.9.9a7] 07 Armamentarium.esm [Version 1.35] 08 Artifacts.esm ++ HrmnsOblivionScriptOptimizationv1.0.esp 09 Cobl Races TNR.esp [Version 1.53] 0A Cobl Races TNR SI.esp [Version 1.53] 0B Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp [Version 3.2.0] 0C DLCShiveringIsles.esp 0D Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp [Version 1.4.0] 0E MOBS SI.esp [Version 1.2.2a] 0F Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Bosses.esp 10 Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Enemies.esp 11 Francesco's Optional Chance of More Enemies.esp 12 Francesco's Optional Leveled Guards.esp ++ FCOM_Francescos.esp [Version 0.9.9] ++ FCOM_FrancescosItemsAddOn.esp [Version 0.9.9] 13 FCOM_FrancescosNamedBosses.esp [Version 0.9.9] ++ Real Lava 1.3.esp 14 ImprovedSigns.esp ++ Item interchange - Extraction.esp [Version 0.76] 15 Get Wet.esp 16 Cobl Glue.esp [Version 1.73] 17 Cobl Si.esp [Version 1.63] 18 Bob's Armory Oblivion.esp 19 FCOM_BobsArmory.esp [Version 0.9.9] 1A Loth's Blunt Weapons for Npcs.esp 1B Oblivion WarCry EV.esp [Version 1.09] 1C FCOM_WarCry.esp [Version 0.9.9] 1D Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp [Version 1.34] 1E OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp [Version 1.72] 1F FCOM_Convergence.esp [Version 0.9.9] 20 FCOM_RealSwords.esp [Version 0.9.9] ++ FCOM_DiverseGuardUnity.esp [Version 0.9.9] ++ FCOM_BobsGuardUnity.esp [Version 0.9.9] ++ ArmamentariumLL4OOO.esp [Version 2.01] ++ ArmamentariumLLMagicOOO.esp [Version 1.35] ++ MMM-Cobl.esp [Version 1.73] 21 Artifacts.esp ++ Artifacts - ArmaCompleteAddon.esp [Version 1.0] ++ Item interchange - Placement for FCOM.esp [Version 0.76] 22 Cobl Races.esp [Version 1.52] ++ Cobl Filter Late MERGE ONLY.esp [Version 1.53] 23 Cobl Silent Equip Misc.esp [Version 01] 24 Bashed Patch, 0.esp Hardware: As described by dxdiag CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 Processor, MMX, 3DNow (4CPU's), ~3GhzVideo: ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB [2x Crossfire] (Total 1GB Video memory) -- Video Drivers: Version 6.14.0010.7157 (English)RAM: 4GB DDR2 RAMSound: No sound card. Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) What I have done to try and solve this/resolve the source of the issue: Walked around many times for up to 45 minutes, random crashes have occured, but usually after quite some time of exploring. Working on seeing if adding streamline 3.0 will fix the BSTask count stack. That might be what is causing some problems. I have disabled AntiAliasing in the Catalyst Control Center and set it to application settings. Many people have flickering problems with HDR + AA, but apparently that wasn't the problem for me. But I am still leaving it turned off for FPS and debugs sake. Edited February 21, 2011 by IceMastaP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MotoSxorpio Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 (edited) Hmm, looks like a nice setup. Plenty of power, memory...really all I can think is temperature with what you describe. Try checking GPU usage during these flickering events, high 90s-100% GPU usage would cause a flicker because it cause would a spike in GPU temp. My 9800GT doesn't like going beyond 60C, begins to show lines...flickering, then crash and reboot if I let it go on. But I don't use shadows, nor do I use water reflections... With water reflections enabled, one may get a tremendous hit (fps) in some locations as it renders ALL water with reflection whether visible or not. Btw, there is water below the "ground" all around IC, well...most everywhere. "TCL" in console, check under you. It is flippin everywhere. There is no way around this, apparently, as some veteran modders have tried. This could also raise GPU usage, and therefore temperature. Streamline will help if you like auto adjustsment to the QUALITY of shadows, LOD etc...Maybe not the answer, but does have "scripted" pcb and autosave which are both very nice and recommended, but likely not a solution to flickering found in Streamline. Not to say it isn't a powerful tool. :) Could possibly reduce power consumption and therefore temp, if setup with care. I have seen CPU usage raise with Streamline's complete line of features enabled, biggest hit is StreamSmooth. StreamSmooth makes adjustments on the fly, and some find the adjustments more annoying than helpful. There is an alternative to StreamSmooth... I would recommend Oblivion Stutter Remover. There are a few things it does to help things, among them a replacement for certain raw and random rendering. OSR also has Heap Replacers, highly recommended for Hi Res modding, as they are fast...and faster. I get an average increase of 20 fps with OSR, to 25-35 exterior and locked in at 60 fps interior. Makes me drool. :) I would monitor Usage and Temp, determine peaks. High Usage and high temps (jumps of 20-25 degrees or more) during play with or without OSR would make me consider adding 1 or 2 well placed case fan(s), or moving case to a cooler storage. If you hear your fans kick in to a higher gear, you shouldn't see too much temp jump. But if your fans aren't winding up and they have onboard controller, find a way to manually set fans speeds. Rivatuner has ATI compatibility, but might be left to advanced PC user. ***Be warned, you can make a brick out of a video card with improper usage of such software.*** Guessing by your mod list and tool list, you could handle it. ;) In summary, I think its a temperature problem. Edited February 21, 2011 by MOTOSXORPIO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceMastaP Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Hmm, looks like a nice setup. Plenty of power, memory...really all I can think is temperature with what you describe. ... ... In summary, I think its a temperature problem. Ah okay. Thanks for your detailed response! I currently have Oblivion Stutter Remover installed and it works great, I enabled heap replacement and it helps a bit :D. I also just installed Streamline 3.0 Open beta 4 (I have read that 3.1 is rather unstable) and I will only be using it for it's purge cell buffer utility. I just reverted to a default oblivion.ini and used TweakOblivion to add and remove profiles (last time I did this I didn't export the configuration settings) and I checked the hyper-threading tweaks as well as allowing my computer more RAM allocation which definitely reduces stuttering a whole lot. Last thing to do is monitor my temps, I will do so now and let you know how it comes out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IceMastaP Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 Okay, so I tested out Streamline 3.0 with OSR and it seems to work very well. I am only using StreamPurge and StreamSave, as well as the FOV adjuster. I get around 40 - 60 fps in the wilderness (60fps is my max in OSR), about 35 - 60 FPS in cities, and a constant 60 FPS indoors, yay! I tested out the temperatures and it turns out that only one of my video cards was being utilized with Oblivion. I am pretty sure it was because I had Catalyst AI turned off. I turned it back on and temperatures normalized on the other card. My highest temperatures were: CPU: 52C / 125F GPU1: 69C / 158FGPU2: 58C / 136F GPU2 is routinely cooler than the other simply because GPU2 vents its hot air onto the other. The one that gets blasted with hot air is generally 10C hotter than the other one. 69C may seem quite hot for some people. I don't think it is that bad, though. My old computer had a 8800GT and it loved to go up to 80C on most games. Even with water cooling it would get up to 65C. Anyways, I haven't run into the FLICKERING bug in quite a while. I think it may have been the lack of crossfire support (due to Catalyst AI being off) which led to high temps. SO, that is all. For now. Thanks again for the tips! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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