Trouble Shooting Oblivion Framerate Issues~

[eric31415]

While some types of mod conflicts can cause loss of FPS, your issue probably has more to do with the fact that Oblivion is 5 years old and doesn't take full advantage of all the latest tech. Here are some of the main problems and what you can do about them;

 

CPU usage - Oblivion will only run on 1 processor core, even if you have 4. While the game will let you move some things to a second core (ini settings) they are pretty minimal. If you like to see a lot of blood in combat, this may gain you a little boost, as blood decals are one of these.

 

RAM usage - This is the big one. Oblivion caps itself at only using 2gb RAM. This is especially an issue with laptops, when you hit the cap and start writing back to hard drive. Laptop memory is usually much slower than a nice card for desktop. Fortunately there are a couple ways around this. First, IF you have a 64 bit OS and at least 4gb RAM, you can lift the cap to 4gb (link below). This worked wonders for me. Second, you can use a USB flash drive as an extra fast memory cache via Ready Boost. A single 8gb device should do the trick, but spend the extra money and get the fastest device you can.

 

Shaders - Oblivion doesn't recognise shader packages newer than 3 and uses 2 as it's default. The fix; first find out what shader package your GPU is using. Then open Oblivion/Data/Shaders, make a backup of shader package 2 then delete the original. Rename the appropriate package to 2. Your game will now be forced to use the corract shaders. You won't see a lot of performance gain here, but the game will look better.

 

My link

[MichikoUnknownFox]

I'm also testing out a theory the last few days. I'll make a full post when I've fully tested it, for the benefit of others. But I noticed that the more mods I add, no matter how compatible they are or how well I fix conflicts via Wrye Bash and other tools, the lower my FPS gets.

 

Just like you, I've benchmarked my system while playing Oblivion and noticed that my system isn't even under full load yet (using only 400+ MB out of 1024 MB VRAM, even with QTP3, my other system resources are not under heavy load yet; I use more when running work-based applications).

 

I found this strange because on my older, slower machine I had 220+ mods excluding things that didn't have .esp files, and my FPS didn't drop below what it would be in vanilla anyway (in fact it went up more because of the mesh optimizers and Streamline), a playable level of 13-25 FPS @ 800x600 and lowest settings. But on this newer machine that runs modern games easily with 30+ FPS and high settings (lots more if I remove things like shadows and AA), Oblivion drops to a snail's pace in certain areas like the Waterfront district (5-9 FPS), interiors with lots of items (9-15 FPS) and certain forest trails (about 10 FPS). With vanilla, these same areas are 30 FPS or better, using the same graphics settings (tested by BAIN uninstalling mods, playing, then reinstalling). And these are similar mods to what my old machine used to run, even less than those in fact.

 

Right now it's too early for me to put up a strong connection between the major cause of lag and number of mods. But my theory right now has to do with antivirus programs. I'm telling you now in case it helps you immediately, and you inadvertently help me test the theory as well.

 

Walls of text:

 

 

See, I noticed something. My antivirus (Avira) is active in the background, just like for most sane people that have computers connected to the internet. It's not doing a background full system scan or anything. It's just sitting there with its AntiVir Guard (in AVG it's called the "Resident Shield"). I didn't notice at first what that was supposed to do. I've been using Avira and AVG for years and years, and I didn't really know what they were for. I figure it's the program that checks background files for viruses and other threats, and does things like auto-check flash disks and files I try to run. After a little research though, it's a crude yet somewhat accurate assessment. But I learned something while reading up on them. These programs will check every file access as each file is being called and loaded into memory. Each and every file. Unless (!) they're inside an archive.

 

I'm starting to think this is why my FPS actually dropped significantly after I installed optimized meshes (Operation Optimization, among other reduced mesh polygon mods). Meanwhile, in Vanilla, these same files that are actually unoptimized don't cause me quite as much lag. Because they're drawn not from the data/meshes folders, but rather from the BSA file directly and therefore skipped by my AntiVir Guard (or more accurately, the AntiVir Guard will only check the BSA once, on first access when you load the game up, and ignore it until you unload it from memory, which is effectively after the game anyway).

 

But why would it cause lag? Wouldn't it cause lag just once, when each tiny file is accessed, then after a while of staring into the scenery, smoothen out as the antivirus finishes checking everything? I have a quad core processor! Wouldn't the antivirus use some of the other cores, since Oblivion is only using one of those anyway?

 

I don't know. I don't claim to know how it all works either. But at this point, with the game barely playable in any 16:10 resolution for me (even the lowest one, which looks hideous but actually has the same FPS because it wasn't my GPU's fault to begin with), I was willing to try anything.

 

So I added my Oblivion folder to the exceptions list, and, for good measure, added Oblivion and OBSE to the list of exempted processes. And suddenly my lag disappeared. I'm back to 20+ FPS in the Waterfront, 30-110+ (?!) FPS indoors and 30-60 FPS in forests. This is with full max settings (except AA, which causes anomalies for me, and view distance; those are default values) and QTP3.

 

:unsure:

 

 

 

But, not having fully tested it yet, don't expect miracles, and don't hold me accountable if nothing happens. Like I said, it's just a theory.

 

have about 50+ mods to add and see if my FPS drops at all. But like I said, it's just a theory. You're free to test it too if you want. It's not recommended to turn off your antivirus completely, but making it not check your Oblivion folder might help.

[NArroo]

Hm, I have 2 Gigs of 400 MHz DDR3 RAM, is that good? Besides that Mr. Eric, I already have your suggestions, but thanks!

 

Unknown, I've heard that Antiviruses actually can impact performance because they scan files as they are read. I can't test to see if my antivirus is the problem at the moment. You see, I tried a no DVD crack, and it put something on my system that kept trying to access sites. Anyways, I used Avast and Maleware bytes to vanquish it, but I do want to see if it's really gone. Thus I'll need to wait for 1/2 a day and see if Avast's protection goes off again.

 

You know. It might be possible that a particular mod invokes Avast's scanning in such a way as to cause severe FPS drops.

 

Hm, if only Oblivion had better new GPU support.

[MarkInMKUK]

A couple of points which haven't yet been covered.

 

(1) Oblivion is a single core game. Dual/quad core processors will make very little improvement at the same clock speed, and if they are lower clock speed will run worse than a fast single core.

 

(2) Defrag using a decent defrag program - I use Defraggler. Made a noticeable improvement over Windows own defrag.

 

(3) Swap/page file - if you have more than one HDD, move it to the most used partition on your least-used drive. That may help as it's not trying to mix swap file access with data file access on the same physical drive, with the drive heads going nuts trying to do both simultaneously.

 

(4) RAM Spec - if you can fit more RAM, do - it reduces the need to use the swap file. Then try the 3GB patch for Oblivion to allow it to USE memory above 2GB. Your mileage may vary - some people say it helps, others don't. To use more than 3.5GB you'll need a 64-bit Operating system.

 

(5) If you have an on-board sound card, add the "Quiet feet" mod, or tick the "silent feet" option in Wrye Bash. Amazing how much it can help. Souldn't make much difference with a separate card.

 

(6) If you installed Streamline, remove it. It helps a lot on low-end systems by making framerate consistent. However, it nobbles high-end systems if they EVER get a frame rate drop. Once it's removed, delete the Oblivion.ini file, and restart the game to remake it, then re-do all the other changes.

 

Note on antivirus: Oblivion accesses dozens of files all the time when running. OBSE will also access files frequently. Most (good) antiviruses have "on-access" scanning and they will scan EVERY data file, EVERY time it is accessed. I set my own antivirus to exclude the Oblivion and OBSE processes from that scan, and got a massive jump in fps (I do, of course, scan ALL the data and process files overnight - it's only the on-access for those specific programs which I nobbled).

 

Also check for "funnies" if you have ffdshow installed - the latest version seems to be fine, but earlier ones generated huge numbers of orphaned processes as every creature seemed to create its own sound process, chewing up memory. On win7 this shows up as hundreds of the same icon in the system tray IF you temporarily set it to "show all notifications and icons, always".

Edited June 10, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[NArroo]

Also, anyone else notice that the "let there be darkness" mod causes a strong framerate hit?

[MotoSxorpio]

http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=intro_to_mods