Should I be getting 30-40 FPS with this Rig?

[Bridger]

I was looking for input to find out if I currently have an issue with my computer. I've got a fresh install of Oblivion (no mods, not even unofficial patches) patched to the latest version (from steam). With an Athlon X3 3.0ghz, nVidia GTX 275, and 4gigs of ram I can get 50+ FPS at Max settings in many modern games (L4D2, DoW2), but I recently ran a Fraps benchmark in the waterfront district of the Imperial city using "ultra high" settings in the oblivion launcher (also no vsync and HDR enabled at 1650x1040). I was barely holding at around 30-40 FPS, with noticeable drops into the 20s in certain areas. I was hoping to add some graphical mods like qarl's texture pack and Unique Landscapes, but I'm thinking now I'll have to lower my settings if I install those mods.

 

My question: Is this FPS normal or do people with similar systems/settings get better results? I haven't dusted out my computer in a while, that is going to be my next step to see if it's overheating somewhat. I just feel like a game as old as oblivion with a PC this powerful should run a little better, but maybe oblivion was just that intensive when it came out?

[Eiries]

That sounds accurate. I was getting similar results with a 3.6 GHz Dual Core, Nvidia 9800 GX2, and 4 gigs of ram. Not that 40 is bad, cause its not by any means. To be honest, Oblivion can be very picky about what hardware you have, regardless of how nice the numbers sound.

 

Indoors will run great, outdoor environments will go anywhere from 35 all the way down to 5 depending on how much you dilly-dally. I still happily used QTP (Redimized and Further Reduced, mind you), Better Cities and UL. Better Cities got pretty rough sometimes though. My rig hated Cheydinhal.

 

Here is QTP Redimized and Further Reduced if you want nice visuals without devastating your FPS.

[Bridger]

That sounds accurate. I was getting similar results with a 3.6 GHz Dual Core, Nvidia 9800 GX2, and 4 gigs of ram. Not that 40 is bad, cause its not by any means. To be honest, Oblivion can be very picky about what hardware you have, regardless of how nice the numbers sound.

 

Indoors will run great, outdoor environments will go anywhere from 35 all the way down to 5 depending on how much you dilly-dally. I still happily used QTP (Redimized and Further Reduced, mind you), Better Cities and UL. Better Cities got pretty rough sometimes though. My rig hated Cheydinhal.

 

Here is QTP Redimized and Further Reduced if you want nice visuals without devastating your FPS.

 

Nice, thanks for the link :)

[MotoSxorpio]

You could also go Vanilla textures with Really Detailed Normal Maps mod. It looks fantastic, uses Vanilla sized textures so can be used with say....Vibrant or MTGR or Bomrets.

[GetOutOfBox]

I have a Radeon 6870 1GB (almost 1GHZ GPU clock, 1.2GHZ memory clock), a Phenom 2 X4, 4GB of DDR2-800 RAM, a Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card (dedicated sound card alleviates the feet-sound-causing-lag issue a lot of people have), an SSD for my OS (Windows 7), an SSD for Oblivion, a hard drive dedicated to the page file, a 1TB drive for storage. Despite all of this, I still only get around 25-30 FPS, though admittedly I have heavily modded Oblivion (Animated Windows and Chimneys, OBGE /w SSAO, SSIL, Bokeh DoF. QTP3, Hi-Res plant textures, Better Cities and RAEVWD), still Crysis runs much better than Oblivion, even on a tweaked Ultra-High setting with 4x AA, 8x AF and Rygels HD texture pack.

 

The thing that makes Oblivion so laggy even on amazing rigs is the CPU. Oblivion barely makes use of the extra core in a dual core processor, let alone tri/quad-cores. Therefore the clock rate per core is more important than the amount of cores. Since the reccomened CPU for Oblivion was a 3GHZ Pentium 4, if you want to run Oblivion with lots of mods you should aim for a 3.8GHZ CPU, or even overclock to 4.2GHZ if you can.

[ArmeniusLOD]

Oblivion is very CPU-bound. Oblivion will only use about 15-20% of my GPU while using 70-80% of one core on my CPU. Increasing the speed of your processor will definitely help. Watch your graphic card's VRAM usage when using a lot of texture mods because if your GPU runs out of memory it then starts thrashing the swap file, which will then cause horrible hitching. I tried running QTP3 Redimized, Bomret's color maps, and Qarl's normal maps with Better Cities on a 768 MB video card and I ran out of VRAM. Going from 2048 to 1024 textures decreased VRAM usage enough to be playable, and the game still looks great.

 

The thing that makes Oblivion so laggy even on amazing rigs is the CPU. Oblivion barely makes use of the extra core in a dual core processor, let alone tri/quad-cores. Therefore the clock rate per core is more important than the amount of cores. Since the reccomened CPU for Oblivion was a 3GHZ Pentium 4, if you want to run Oblivion with lots of mods you should aim for a 3.8GHZ CPU, or even overclock to 4.2GHZ if you can.

Keep in mind that the Pentium 4 has a much longer pipeline than modern processors. A 3 GHz Pentium 4 would be the equivalent of about a 2.2-2.3 GHz Core i7. This is just a generality because other things in the architecture will dictate a processor's throughput. Still, the faster the processor the better the game will run.

 

The fact still remains that this is an older engine that was developed to run optimally on current generation consoles.

[MotoSxorpio]

Yes, the AI are very CPU intensive. I get 35 fps average on my old opteron 185, 9800gt, 2gb memory, onboard sound. All the above, GetOutOfTheBox, except OBGEv2...I use ScreenEffects with OBGEv1. Using OSR helps to even out that CPU load pretty well, and definately helps with the Memory Heap replacer.

[GetOutOfBox]

Yes, the AI are very CPU intensive. I get 35 fps average on my old opteron 185, 9800gt, 2gb memory, onboard sound. All the above, GetOutOfTheBox, except OBGEv2...I use ScreenEffects with OBGEv1. Using OSR helps to even out that CPU load pretty well, and definately helps with the Memory Heap replacer.

 

Why do you use OBGEv1? OBGEv2 is no more performance intensive as long as you disable the extra shaders, and in fact has performance improvements/bugfixes :P

[NamenlosX]

30-40 is plenty and is enough to play comfortably.

 

I can get decent performance on ultra-high (no v-sync, HDR enabled, no AA - my build can't handle AA that well :S - and no grass, simply because it's annoying in my opinion) with this build:

3GB RAM

AMD Athlon II P340 Dual Core Processor - 2.20GHz

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250

 

Your performance in comparison to more modern games might be related to the fact that Oblivion's graphics tend to lean towards dynamic foliage, very far graphics (the awesome views, for instance), and various other dynamic things.

[MotoSxorpio]

OBGEv1 to v2, do I need the shaderlist and plugin, or just the shaderlist?