Low FPS on a decent gaming laptop

[S116103500]

Can anyone help me figure out why oblivion runs like crap on this laptop? I'm able to run plenty of other games well on medium to high settings (crysis, tf2, bfbc 2) but oblivion can barely maintain 30 fps on low settings often slowing down to 15-17 fps when in battle. I've gone through the oblivion.ini and modified the memory settings multi-threading settings and some other settings but it hasn't really made a difference. Any help would be appreciated. Dxdiag is attached.

 

edit: Also, I have the latest patch installed plus all of the expansion content (shivering isles, KotN, etc.) No mods installed.

Edited July 28, 2011 by S116103500

[ziitch]

The ini settings do nothing. Oblivion runs on a single core no matter what you tell it, so for something like a 2.2Ghz quad core processor, Oblivion can only use a fourth of that power.

 

You might also want to set view settings lower for things like trees and grass.

[S116103500]

The ini settings do nothing. Oblivion runs on a single core no matter what you tell it, so for something like a 2.2Ghz quad core processor, Oblivion can only use a fourth of that power.

 

You might also want to set view settings lower for things like trees and grass.

 

That's not exactly true because the game does increase the load on all 4 cores when its running. I've run it in windowed mode and can clearly see it uses all 4 cores to some degree on my cpu monitor. Also, it doesn't max out any of the cpu cores.

Edited July 28, 2011 by S116103500

[LordWushin]

I think it is the graphics card itself. It is considered a second class graphics card. http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6650M.43962.0.html This is what I think is the problem.

 

Also consider the possibility of de-fragging the game or hard drive and update your card too.

[S116103500]

I think it is the graphics card itself. It is considered a second class graphics card. http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6650M.43962.0.html This is what I think is the problem.

 

Also consider the possibility of de-fragging the game or hard drive and update your card too.

 

I don't get how the graphics card would play other high end newer games like crysis and battlefield bad company 2 better than oblivion. It's way beyond anything that was available in 2006 when oblivion was released.

[MarkInMKUK]

More modern games use more features of the graphics card via DirectX 10 or 11 - Oblivion can't (it's DirectX 9 based), so it doesn't perform the same as a more modern game. You have a slow processor - 2.2GHz - that WILL slow Oblivion down - quad cores may show activity - but that may be background stuff. Oblivion IS single core, so only a few sub-processes can move to other cores thanks to the OS.

 

You could try the 3GB enabler, as without it Oblivion will only use about 2GB max.

 

You have a less-than-ideal graphics card - again, not the optimum. You COULD try a forced install of DirectX 9.0C if you can find a version compatible with Windows 7 X64 - it made a difference on my 32 bit version. Also try the PYFFI patcher - it's a little complex to install, but inprove mesh efficiency for the vanilla game and that speeds things up a little.

 

You also have onboard sound - try installing the Quiet Feet MAX mod to see whether that can help. The recommendation for desktops would always be a separate card.

 

Also antivirus - is it set to "scan on file access" - if so, you need to exclude the Oblivion process from that scan as Oblivion almost continually accesses files.

 

Oh, and stick a fast USB stick into a port, and use Readyboost. That also can make a noticeable improvement.

Edited July 28, 2011 by MarkInMKUK

[eric31415]

Mark hit most of the points i was going to mention, so i only have a little to add.

 

Editing the ini can gain a good bit of performance, but most of it comes from these 3 lines;

ugridDistantTreeCount

ugridDistantCount - i set both of these to 9. This reduces the distance to which trees and land are rendered, easing the strain on your CPU. DO NOT SET LOWER THAN 5.

bMusicEnabled - set to 0. This will kill all game music, great for those of us who are stuck with onboard sound. I still miss the main menu music, but in-game i find this more realistic.

 

If you want to further explore ini edits, check out the Tweakguides.

 

If you have 4gb or greater RAM, use the 4gb patch instead. I didn't check your DXDiag because it is a download, try spoiler tags.

 

You sound like a good cantidate for Stremline. Use the 3.0 version, i know it's a beta but it's solid. If you made the ini edits i suggest above, you should set the fog distance in Streamline's ini to match (values included in SL's documentation).

 

When you add the Oblivion exe to your antivirus's list of trusted applications, make sure to add the Fraps exe and the GameBooster exe also (if you use it). I used to wonder why GameBooster caused a net loss in FPS...

 

The Ready Boost tip is excellent. I run an extra 20gb memory cache this way and saw many improvements, especially load times. Also eliminated the dreaded 2 hour crash (i play 4-5 hours a day, with a marathon 12+ once a week, and i might get CTD'd once a month... max). Note that this improves system performance in general, as an example OBMM load time went from 1.5 minutes down to under 10 seconds. You really don't need 20gb though, a really fast 8gb device should be fine.

[nosisab]

Well, I see some confuse information but mostly accurate.

 

Oblivion indeed benefits from multithread tweak, more than Fallout 3 in fact, still it is more about crowded places with plenty of AI.

 

Oblivion is an old game that pushed hard those days hardware, more modern hardware will help but can`t do much to enhance the engine itself. That's the main reason you can play some games better while having relatively bad performance with Oblivion.

 

The original sound codecs (which come with Windows), integrated sound card and the game's engine translate as "problem"

You may want to install third party codecs, like K-Lite as example (that`s almost obligatory). Long ago ffdshow which is part of k-lite was source of troubles, not anymore and it is prevented to run on most games by default.

 

Installing the mod "quiet feet" is good advice as stated by MarkInMKUK. "Streamline" should be attempted too.

 

Sometimes this game fall below 30 FPS for me too, with a more powerful desktop machine, so you should expect it too.

 

Oblivion is a RPG, it does not need the "aiming precision" like FPS games, so if runing around 24 FPS without stutter and/or lag, not a problem at all (often the stutter is related to sound instead the graphic itself, mind you).

 

The bottom line is: Do not attempt to run Oblivion at highest options, it will drain the machine`s resources faster than you can say "Ni".

Edited July 29, 2011 by nosisab

[TheRomans]

Oblivion indeed benefits from multithread tweak, more than Fallout 3 in fact, still it is more about crowded places with plenty of AI.

are you referring to these tweaked settings?:

 

Multi-core CPU tweaks

If you have a Dual/Quad core Processor or a processor with Hyper-Threading, then set these values to this:

bUseThreadedBlood=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedMorpher=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedTempEffects=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 (default 0)

bBackgroundPathing=1 (default 0)

bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1 (default 0)

iNumHavokThreads=3 (default 1)

iThreads=10 (default 3)

 

Do they indeed help?

[nosisab]

yes, the variables starting with b are boolean so they can be only true (1) or false (0)

 

the i stands for integer and for a quad core I had good results without stability issues at Oblivion with the values

 

iNumHavokThreads=5 ;(default 1)  (the number of physical cores + 1) and

iThreads=9 (default 3)

;----------- but not

; bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1 ;(default 0) -- that's unknown to me, it may be useful if accepted or cause instability

;------- instead I have 

bBackgroundCellLoads=1 ; and
iBackgroundLoadLoading=1 ; which are missing in your posted set

 

Notice they aren't normally directly graphics related but to program code logical flow... they will help mostly in heavily scripted situations like NPC crowds... but is mistaken he who believes only the graphics and textures weight in the game performance.

 

PS: Since this is Oblivion related forum, the following information is off topic but may be useful to those playing Fallout 3 too (and maybe NV):

 

Fallout 3 is sensible to multithreading and probably will crash with the above values. Is strongly advised to limit the hardware treads to max 2 even for CPUs with more cores. Refer to Tweakguides site for further information.

Edited July 29, 2011 by nosisab