Hello all, general poor performance issues

[fenderkid8]

Hi everyone, first time poster, long time lurker here.

I would like to run Oblivion at maximum settings (preset)

however, I experience framerate dips into the 30's and below, here are my specs:

 

Phenom II x4 965 C3 revision @ 3.65 GHZ

MSi GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II (7% factory overclock, overclocked from 880 Mhz to 940 mhz and mem clock at 2150 from 2100)

Kingston DDR2 400 mhz 2x 1 GB (my weakest link)

Coolermaster GX750 750W PSU

M4N78-Pro series motherboard (AM2+, rather old)

Windows XP Service Pack 3

 

I can max out Bad company 2 and stay north of 50 fps all the time. I can run numerous other games maxed out, often exceeding 60 fps as a minimum, excluding the gamebryo engine games (fallout 3, NV, Oblivion)

I would really like to be able to max out the aforementioned as well, especially in oblivion.

I wouldn't like to sacrafice any graphical fidelity doing so.

 

Is this even possible? Thanks for reading :-)

[RitualBlack]

You shouldn't be lagging at all with oblivion if you are using a 560 and a Phenom II x4. 2 gb ram is fine for oblivion also so the only advice I could suggest is to check to make sure that your graphics card driver is ok and maybe search around to see if others have problems with the 560 and oblivion. Since the 560 is relatively new there may not be driver support which would explain the random fps drops (like amd's new cards with Witcher 2 upon release I believe). Also if you are running any texture packs they tend to be really demanding. Hopefully your problem is resolved soon.

[fenderkid8]

Thanks for your reply. I am running the 275.33 drivers, the latest for my card. You explanation seems plausible, are there any work-arounds? I notice that with fraps running I get framerates going up to 120 or so, only to dip down suddenly to 30 fps or so. I would have thought though, being New Vegas is something of a modern game, that I would experience less of this in new vegas compared to oblivion. This isn't the case. I suppose gamebryo just doesn't agree with my rig.

[MarkInMKUK]

(1) Do you have a separate sound card, or onboard? If it's onboard, get a cheap addon card and shift sound processing off the motherboard - this can be a cause of fps droop at times.

 

(2) Try the Omega gaming drivers - they gave me quite a fps boost on XP.

 

(3) Post a mod list. If you are running certain mods, such as Better cities AND Unique Landscapes AND the patches AND graphics improves - then some areas such as Anvil Waterfront will cause slowdown, period. Because Oblivion is a single-thread game, three of your four cores are unable to help with the numbercrunching, and the remaining one DOES have a limit, which certain areas and mods WILL make it hit.

[HeyYou]

If you decide to spend the money on a sound card, make sure you get one that is Hardware Accelerated, else, it won't do you any good.

 

30FPS in places like Imperial City Waterfront is actually pretty good....... the game engine doesn't deal with multiple AI packages running at once... (more than a couple NPC's in the vicinity at any one time.)

 

What kind of background processes do you have running? The more stuff that's running in the background, the less resources available for the game..... slowdowns are the result.

[fenderkid8]

My soundcard is onboard, yes. I was thinking of getting a creative soundblaster X-Fi card as listed: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129740

 

I have steam running in the background, but for obvious reasons I cannot disable it.

I have a selective startup and have disabled all the processes hogging memory, such as apple's itunes updater, google update, adobe processes etc.

Maybe I should consider adding more RAM? I notice that every 50 yards or so my game stutters and loads more scenery.

 

I'm hesitant to install the omega drivers- are they signed? The last time I installed unsigned drivers I had to do a clean reinstall, I couldn't boot into the OS even from integrated graphics in VGA startup mode.

 

Thank you for the suggestions.