Poor FPS

[doveman]

Hi

 

I've fully patched Oblivion and I'm using OBMM with quite a few mods installed and OBSE to load it. It's playable at the start inside, although it's only using about 30% of my GPU. I was getting about 60fps but it was V-SYNC'd with RadeonPro to that anyway. Once I get outside, it drops to 25-30fps (still only using about 30% of my GPU) depending on where I'm looking. If I look up at the sky or down at the ground it goes up to about 60fps (even with V-SYNC disabled) but I obviously can't walk around looking at the ground ;)

 

My system is an Athlon II X4 630 with 4GB DDR2 and a Powercolor 6950 2GB (shader unlocked). I'm running at 1280x720 and have most of the settings on Max in Oblivion, except for AA which is off (and forced to 4x in RadeonPro, along with AF16 and V-Sync, but I did try disabling all of those). EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'm running Win7 64 Ultimate and Cat 11.8. Only got the onboard Realtek sound but it seems OK.

 

I've attached the OMOD report from OBMM but I'm not sure that reflects all the ESP/ESMs I can see, so I've uploaded some screenshots of the list as well.

 

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/7770/obmmp1.th.png

 

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8493/obmmp2.th.png

 

I've attached my RadeonPro profile for Oblivion as well.

Edited September 28, 2011 by doveman

[bben46]

Consider yourself lucky. The console versions are locked at 30FPS.

 

Check this site for fine tuning suggestions. http://www.tweakguides.com/

 

Be sure to Tweak your system first, then video card and finally the game. :thumbsup:

 

Note. Just because you have a high power system don't expect a game that was made for an operating system 2 operating system versions and 32 bits less behind. Some of the things that Beth did to make the game work better on WinXP x86 (32 bit) will not help on Win7. And the game does not take any advantage of the things needed to run better on a 64 bit system. There is very little multi core support, so back off a little on those maxed out settings 60FPS all of the time is not needed. If you can keep it over 30 it will look and play great.

 

Onboard sound can slow you down though. It is stealing clock cycles from your CPU and ram from your system ram. - try disabling the sounds in the Oblivion.ini to see if it has any affect. - just turning the volume down will not work.

[doveman]

Not sure I'd describe being unable to play the game due to jerkiness "lucky". I reckon console owners are lucky if it just works and they get a smooth 30fps. My mate played it on his 360 and I've been telling him how much better it will look on my PC with my powerful graphics card and I feel pretty stupid right now :wallbash:

 

Anyway, I'll try disabling the sound and reducing the graphics settings to see if I can get a playable FPS and then have a look at the tweaks, thanks.

[doveman]

It seems that I have to disable "Distant Buildings" and then I get 50-60fps, although it still stutters like it's loading every 10 feet or so, but maybe I'll find something in the tweakguide that'll help with that.

 

It's OK with "Distant Trees" on. At first I thought it was going to be "Water reflections" as disabling that pushed the fps up to 35-40, but it seemed strange as I was getting lower fps looking just to the left of the entrance to the sewer I'd come out of, when no water was in view. With "Distant Buildings" disabled it's fine with "Water reflections" on, which is a relief as it looks awful with it off and really ruins the atmosphere. I'm not really sure why having "Distant Buildings" should cause the fps to drop to 22-25 when looking at this area, as there's no buildings in view either, but that's what did the trick!

 

I did try disabling the sound first, but that didn't make any difference.

[bben46]

You might also look at 'Oblivion stutter remover' http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23208

 

As far as I can see what it mostly does is cap the FPS at whatever you choose.

 

One of the problems is that you notice sudden changes in FPS a lot more than you will notice a constant lower FPS.

 

FYI, TV & Movies are also capped at close to a constant 30 fps and most people think they look better than computer video. - Mostly because so much computer video is low resolution.

 

Here is an explanation of frame rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

[doveman]

Thanks, I'll have a look at that, although RadeonPro has a "Double V-Sync" option which would cap it to 30fps anyway.

 

I'm not happy having "Distant Buildings" disabled. As it says in the tweakguide, this removes landmarks which are useful as points of reference, so I'll have to see if there's something else I can do to improve things which will allow me to re-enable this.

 

Some of the tweakguide recommendations have actually decreased my FPS so I'll have to reverse them and see which is responsible. I'm thinking it might be the bUseWaterReflections settings as I'm currently near a lot of water and even when it's not in view the water settings seem to make a difference.

[doveman]

Hmm, I can't seem to get OSR to load.

 

I've extracted it (OSR_4-1-24_RC-23208-1) to the data/obse/plugins folder and tried starting obse_loader.exe both with RadeonPro and directly, but as you can see from the log below, it loads the other plugins in that folder but not OSR!

 

I've also tried turning down/off all the other in-game settings, but the only one that makes much difference is "Distant Buildings" (and to a lesser extent "Water Reflections" but it looks terrible with that disabled. Changing the bUseWaterReflections (except for the main one) to 0 in oblivion.ini hasn't made any difference either).

 

I also disabled Catalyst AI and Surface Format Optimisation in RadeonPro, as I remembered they both made a big difference to The Witcher, but they haven't helped with Oblivion :(

 

OBSE: initialize (version = 20.6 010201A0)
oblivion root = D:\Games\Oblivionb\
plugin directory = D:\Games\Oblivionb\Data\OBSE\Plugins\
checking plugin D:\Games\Oblivionb\Data\OBSE\Plugins\\obge.dll
SetOpcodeBase 00002100
RegisterCommand GetAvailableGraphicsMemory (2100)
RegisterCommand GetScreenWidth (2101)
RegisterCommand GetScreenHeight (2102)
RegisterCommand LoadShader (2103)
RegisterCommand ApplyFullscreenShader (2104)
RegisterCommand RemoveFullscreenShader (2105)
RegisterCommand SetShaderInt (2106)
RegisterCommand SetShaderFloat (2107)
RegisterCommand SetShaderVector (2108)
RegisterCommand SetShaderTexture (2109)
RegisterCommand ForceGraphicsReset (210A)
RegisterCommand LoadTexture (210B)
RegisterCommand FreeTexture (210C)
RegisterCommand CreateHUDElement (210D)
RegisterCommand SetHUDElementTexture (210E)
RegisterCommand SetHUDElementColour (210F)
RegisterCommand SetHUDElementPosition (2110)
RegisterCommand SetHUDElementScale (2111)
RegisterCommand SetHUDElementRotation (2112)
RegisterCommand PurgeManagedTextures (2113)
plugin D:\Games\Oblivionb\Data\OBSE\Plugins\\obge.dll (00000001 obge 00000001) loaded correctly
checking plugin D:\Games\Oblivionb\Data\OBSE\Plugins\\OBSE_Elys_Pluggy.dll

[roquefort]

"..it still stutters like it's loading every 10 feet or so.."

 

That seems to be a fairly common problem unrelated to FPS issues or vid-card power (try doing a Google search), and all sorts of remedies have been proposed which work for some people but not others. When I had it (after updating the drivers!), removing the Radeon drivers & switching to Omega drivers fixed it -- others find that the stutter-remover does the trick instead. But do all the tweakguide stuff first by all means.

[doveman]

"..it still stutters like it's loading every 10 feet or so.."

 

That seems to be a fairly common problem unrelated to FPS issues or vid-card power (try doing a Google search), and all sorts of remedies have been proposed which work for some people but not others. When I had it (after updating the drivers!), removing the Radeon drivers & switching to Omega drivers fixed it -- others find that the stutter-remover does the trick instead. But do all the tweakguide stuff first by all means.

 

I don't really want to use the Omega drivers in case they cause problems for other games (especially Battlefield 3).

 

I'd love to try the stutter-remover but as I said, it won't load for some reason.