Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Redimized wtih OBMM

[ladlon]

Ya, that seems to be the case these days... games utilizing the GPU mostly, and making CPU power almost unimportant (unless there is tons of enemy AI to crunch or something).

 

My fps is fine, and everything is generally smooth. I tend not to have my resolution cranked. What I think I'm seeing a lot of, too, is LOD(?) popup (...low res textures being replaced by higher ones), along with the usual 'magical grass growing as I walk forward. Nothing terrible... I just don't remember it being like that before, so if I can improve it, that would be great. I'll check out those tweeks and stuff.

 

I know that BOSS said something about the Knights expansion requiring some sort of cleanup... but looking into what it meant, I found some article about a cleanup program/procedure, I got (once again) warnings that it might mess things up... which, once again, made me turn and run away.

 

Okay, I got to go. It's my turn to feed the penguins.

[ladlon]

Hello again, guys... I had another question relating to what we were talking about earlier here.

 

Although my framerate is good (as it was before), I'm getting a fair amount of stuttering while moving forward (seeming from things getting loaded in, I would imagine).

 

I'm now looking at the Tweek Guide that was offered here, but I have one concern... I'm running the GOTY edition of Oblivion, so whenever I see any mods intended to improve performance, I never know if they are redundant (or worse yet, counterproductive), as I am assuming that the core program of Oblivion has been patched/improved in the GOTY version (compared to regular Oblivion).

 

Could anyone recommend any mods/init tweeks that I would still need? I just don't want to start tweeking/modding things that don't need to be (since the developers did it already in this updated version).

 

I know I was previously (non-GOTY) using things like the LOD patches, but I don't know if they are relevant (or even safe) wtih the GOTY version.

 

Main thing for me is just the stuttering when moving forward. Otherwise, the frame rate is fine (...but, of course, I would never say no to a fps boost!).

 

Hope you can help... Thanks again!

 

(I should point out that the stuttering is really only when I am riding a horse.. so I'm assuming that the horse is moving faster than the computer can process the incoming scenery and/or textures?)

Edited June 30, 2011 by ladlon

[Striker879]

I don't know of many performance tweaks that were made with the GotY edition other than thiose that Koroush outlines in his guide (that guide has been updated to reflect the GotY). The meat of the stuttering tweaks are outlined on page 9 of the guide (second page of the advanced tweaks). Back when my SLI rig was still functional I all but eliminated stuttering with the Memory, Loading and Multithreading tweaks and Cell Visibility/Loading variables sections (my single 8800GTS 640Mb isn't up to the task alone). I tweaked the grass and tree variables some, but still would have the grass growing before me as I moved. I stuck with the setting Koroush recommended for the most part, as I didn't really notice much improvement when going further than his recommendations.

[ladlon]

Interesting... I'll look further into the tweek guide. I've only just started going through it today, but I was worried it might be 'obsolete' as far as GOTY. Good to hear it's been updated since.

 

I did a few of the init file tweeks I found both in there and in the Oblivion wiki, and I think it helped a bit.

 

I altered the mingrasssize, bforcefulllod, and threads attributes, as well as turning on (changing 0 to a 1) for busethreadedblood, and usethreadedmorpher. There were several other attributes they said to change, but they don't apepar in the init file. Do I just type those in?

 

Sounds like the cell one might help. I was going to alter that one, but I wasn't sure what to change it to. Interior was 3 and exterior was somewhere between 20-30, I think. It would really probably just be the exterior I'd need to change, but I have no idea what it should be changed to.

 

My graphics card has a gig of ram, so I figure (if it isn't already) Oblivion should be configured to buffer in more stuff while I'm standing around. I'm just not sure how to do that. I guess the cell thing is one of the relevant attributes?

 

One other thing I'm curious about regarding this... If I have the Qual's Redimized Textures (3) installed, do my regular texture size settings have any effect (or by changing them, am I resorting back to the regular textures)? I was on large textures before, but just switched it to medium to see if that helped... but am wondering ow that affects (if at all) my modded (Qual) texutures.

 

Thanks for your ongoing help, Striker879!

[ladlon]

Cool, you're right. The advanced section not only has tweeks that sound relevant to my situation, but they conveniently tell me exactly what to set it at! Nice!

 

I've set the interior/exterior cell thing to what they said. I can't find the iPreloadSizeLimit attribute, though.

 

Weird... It's silky smooth (always was) when I'm on foot (even running)... But when galopping on a horse, I get a micro stutter on each cycle of the horse animation... Not a showstopper by any means. Just kind of breaks the flow, and is mildly annoying.

 

Is there something with the gallop itself, or is it just that the travel speed is going beyond the CPU capabilty?

 

Weird too, as the video card should be able to handle it fine... so I'm suspecting that some elements of the draw up are not being handled by the GPU. Then again, maybe it's a 'loading from drive' bottleneck (although it is a clean, uncluttered drive (O/S and a few games cleanly installed, and nothing else).

 

CPU is an intel dual core. Graphics card is a GeForce GTX 460 (1 gig RAM).

 

I'll keep reading and tweeking. Just let me know if I'm supposed to add in any code that the guides indicate, which don't appear in my init file. Does it matter where I put them, or are the groupings merely for organization (easy to find)?

[Striker879]

I think your RAM has more effect than GPU memory size (with modern day video cards anyway). I only have 2Gb of RAM myself so I have uInterior Cell Buffer=16,uExterior Cell Buffer=102 and iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600. I find the easiest way to find anything in oblivion.ini is use Notepads 'Find' from the Edit menu (just make sure you relocate the cursor to the beginning of the file before each search). To the best of my knowledge you should already have all the settings that Koroush suggests tweaking.

[ladlon]

I'm in the same boat... 2 gigs of RAM (1 gig of GPU RAM), so maybe I'll try the settings you mention.

 

Yep, I've been wearing out the Find feature in notepad. Can't find that preload attribute. Seems like a few things are 'missing'. Maybe they removed them in the GOTY version???

I tried just adding the preload attribute in myself. No smoke or explosions, so I think it worked.

 

I just figured out how to display the frame rate... Started off at 60-70fps... but after a while (approaching a city, and being on a horse), it would drop to 30 (fluctuating all over the place). Seems the frame rate is fine overall anyway... just micro stutters.

 

Trying a few things, like reducing the grass.

[Striker879]

I forgot to mention about the horse related stuttering. I believe this is an artifact of the horse skeleton. On my own machine I don't recall seeing it before I installed fore's NoMaaM Animation Replacer with the BBBed horseback animation, but I do recall fore commenting on a post long long ago something about it. Perhaps he'll see this post and jump in with an explanation. If you put the missing entries in the same section as Koroush has them in his tweak guide you should be good. I just find it strange that you'd have some missing ... I don't recall having any MIA entries.

[ladlon]

I forgot to mention about the horse related stuttering. I believe this is an artifact of the horse skeleton. On my own machine I don't recall seeing it before I installed fore's NoMaaM Animation Replacer with the BBBed horseback animation, but I do recall fore commenting on a post long long ago something about it. Perhaps he'll see this post and jump in with an explanation.

 

That could very well be it. Everything else seems smooth.

 

Just so many variables here... strain from shadows, number of objects, buffer sizes, etc... made even more confusing by the fact that I'm not clear on which ones are more likely to cause stutter.

 

The 'fade in' draw-in I'm getting (grass) is fine... Sure, it would be great to have it visible to the horizon, but it's at least not distracting or bad looking. The LOD swapping(?) (things like buildings suddenly popping to a different version) is a bit more concerning, though. Just looks sloppy (because it is sudden, and doesn't have that nice fade in that at least helps it a bit).

 

 

If you put the missing entries in the same section as Koroush has them in his tweak guide you should be good. I just find it strange that you'd have some missing ... I don't recall having any MIA entries.

 

Ya, I'm funny like that... ;)

 

There's only one init file, right? Hrmm... Who knows what is happening. There seem to be sections that are empty... You have some bracketed titles, but nothing underneath them.

 

 

I suddenly have a desire for yogurt....

[Striker879]

The one you edit is called oblivion.ini and will be located in the same location (My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) as your save files. The one located in your game install Oblivion folder is called oblivion_default.ini and is the file that the game uses to recreate an ini with default values (useful as a troubleshooting tool).

 

Teasing me with the luxuries available in your institution will only get me drooling.