Actors causing massive FPS drop

[Swennet]

My game runs fine when no actors are on screen. But as soon as 2+ actors appear my FPS drop drastically.

 

I think it has to do something with the actor's faces as disabling them (actors heads) in the console improves my fps quite a lot. (for example, 4 NPCs drop my framerate from 60 to 18, while 4 NPCs without heads drop my framerate to ~45)

 

I also have mods, but even with all mods disabled I still get the same FPS drop.

 

I'm 100% confident that my PC can run this game with all settings maxed out.

 

Intel i7 2.67GHz

Asus Rampage II GENE

6GB RAM

ATI Radeon 6950

 

-----EDIT-----

 

I reinstalled oblivion and the NPCs were NOT dropping my fps anymore, so it has to be a mod I used that didn't get disabled (even though I unchecked all files in OBMM)

Edited August 31, 2011 by Swennet

[eric31415]

Unfortunately multiple actors on screen will always cause a drop in FPS. It's mostly from multiple AI packages running, which uses a lot of your CPU's capacity. A 2.67ghz CPU won't give you great performance with this game. I run an Intel Corei3 duo 2.4ghz dual-core, and i don't think a modded Oblivion would even be playable on anything less.

 

While we all have different standards (and expectations) of performance, i would still consider 18 FPS pretty playable. My advice is this; turn off the FPS display, and go do some exploring. See if the game actually FEELS choppy to you. I know how tempting it is to walk around watching your FPS all the time, been there myself. It's an easy way to drive yourself nuts.

 

One thing that can help a lot with Oblivion's performance in general is the 4gb Patch (note-only works with a 64 bit OS). Oblivion is designed to only use up to 2gb of RAM. This patch takes advantage of 64-bit addressing to double that cap.

[Swennet]

Thank you for your reply. I however think it does not matter what CPU I have, as my CPU runs 8 cores instad of just two. Also my game runs fine when I'm standing right next to an npc but with my back turned to him. Also note That when I disable all heads in the oblivion.ini file my game runs Much better when looking at npcs.

[nosisab]

Thank you for your reply. I however think it does not matter what CPU I have, as my CPU runs 8 cores instad of just two. Also my game runs fine when I'm standing right next to an npc but with my back turned to him. Also note That when I disable all heads in the oblivion.ini file my game runs Much better when looking at npcs.

 

Tweak guides may help you setting up your machine in a general fashion and to this game in particular.

 

Your CPU is more than enough to run that game (assuming you are not abusing the specs), so, or the machine is very badly configured or there is something very wrong with your mods.

 

About the 8 cores, it's not exactly true but whatever, that game is not optimized to use multicore albeit being able to get some performance boost when correctly configured to use multi threads (you need to enable it editing ini file).

 

PS: I would not be surprised if your problem is actually with "sound", no joking. Try installing third party codecs, K-Lite seen a good choice yet.

Edited August 31, 2011 by nosisab

[Swennet]

Thank you for your reply. I however think it does not matter what CPU I have, as my CPU runs 8 cores instad of just two. Also my game runs fine when I'm standing right next to an npc but with my back turned to him. Also note That when I disable all heads in the oblivion.ini file my game runs Much better when looking at npcs.

 

Tweak guides may help you setting up your machine in a general fashion and to this game in particular.

 

Your CPU is more than enough to run that game (assuming you are not abusing the specs), so, or the machine is very badly configured or there is something very wrong with your mods.

 

About the 8 cores, it's not exactly true but whatever, that game is not optimized to use multicore albeit being able to get some performance boost when correctly configured to use multi threads (you need to enable it editing ini file).

 

PS: I would not be surprised if your problem is actually with "sound", no joking. Try installing third party codecs, K-Lite seen a good choice yet.

 

Hey. I tried disabling the sound in the oblivion.ini config file and it didn't work. Like I said, the problem seems to disappear when 'faces' are removed from the game.

[Iv000]

It's a common problem and has nothing to do with the CPU.

I have a six core and still the FPS drops when watching at a few NPC's.

I have been searching for an answer to this too, but haven't found it yet.

[Swennet]

It's weird though because it only seems to affect the faces of the NPCs. Here's two example pictures.

 

Picture 1 - Settings below

bUseEyeEnvMapping=1

bFixFaceNormals=1

bUseFaceGenHeads=1

bFaceMipMaps=1

bFaceGenTexturing=1

 

Picture 2 - Settings below

bUseEyeEnvMapping=0

bFixFaceNormals=0

bUseFaceGenHeads=0

bFaceMipMaps=0

bFaceGenTexturing=0

 

http://www.s-hosting.nl/vi-ggIPTY.png

 

http://www.s-hosting.nl/vi-LvGcPa.png

Edited August 31, 2011 by Swennet

[eric31415]

Oblivion is an older game and was not designed to take advantage of multi-core processors. You are essentially running the game on a single core. There are a few things you can move to a second core via ini tweaks (anything that says "use threaded"), but they don't help much because these aren't the big performance kilers.

 

The only real advantage to multi-core with Oblivion is having the extra cores to handle background processes. A single core 3.2ghz CPU will run the game much better than a 2.67ghz 8-core. Hopefully Skyrim will address this problem.

 

I notice that your screens are taken at the IC Waterfront. This location has long been known as a low FPS area. Most users get 10-15 FPS here.

 

I am certain that you can get better performance, but you will have to make a lot of little tweaks. Things like the patch i linked above, performance mods, ini tweaks, ReadyBoost, shutting down background processes, etc. will all help, but there is no "magic bullet" for this, and FPS will always drop in certain areas/situations. It's the cumulative effect of all the little improvements that makes a noticible difference. The goal is to keep these drops above what FEELS acceptable to you. Oblivion is a fantastic game, just don't expect it to run like a more modern game.

Edited September 1, 2011 by eric31415

[nosisab]

Not correcting eric31415 since he is right in most he said but just pointing the multithreading increase performance in Oblivion a great deal, strangely it does not fair that well in Fallout 3, where increasing the number of HWThreads above 2 can cause instabilities and crashes. I have tested Oblivion with those values shown in tweakguides and the performance gain was expressive.

 

Imperial City in general is harsh on performance, Waterfront specially harsh because the number of concurrent NPCs, water effects and almost every kind of postprocessing. Removing the faces just relaxes a bit that strain enough to allow that performance boost, you should get better results (beheading people is not the nicer thing) reducing some post processing, again "tweakguides" may show how to deal with some variables which causes huge impact in performance and very little in actual image quality (as perceivable unless looking for it).

Edited September 1, 2011 by nosisab

[Swennet]

Hello everyone, I fixed this issue by reinstalling oblivion and staying away from any facial mods.