Overclocking CPU for Oblivion

[nicktheduke]

I just finalized my load order last night and I'm now trying to optimize the game as much as possible.

 

I have reduced ugriddistantcount and done a few ini tweaks. I've also used DDSOpt and PYFFI to optimize textures/meshes. But I'm still getting low framerate due to Better Cities. I know that particular mod is an FPS killer but there has to be some way to improve the situation.

 

One thought I had was that since the game engine is CPU intensive and only runs on one core, wouldn't overclocking the CPU improve performance? Has anyone tried this? Would love to hear thoughts before I go down a rabbit hole. I have a i7-4790K.

[Surilindur]

Somewhere there were some mentions of Oblivion turning unstable on overclocked systems, but I have no idea if it has any truth to it. The game is so old, and I am not sure if you can make it run any better no matter what you tried. I am not an expert by any means, but if you wish you improve performance by overclocking, you would probably need to overclock a lot to notice any difference, and I have no idea if you would actually notice any. I myself have never overclocked anything, mostly because it voids any warranty and can reduce the components' lifetime a little from what I have heard. Maybe when my current system reaches its limits one day (not for many years I hope), to squeeze a bit more lifetime out of it, assuming overclocking it does not harm any of the other components somehow. Oh well. Like I said, I am not an expert at all, but overclocking seems a bit excessive and I have no idea if it will help. It just sounds like throwing more hardware on a software-related issue... :confused:

 

Your CPU seems to be pretty good, though, on the paper at least. What is that "low framerate"? As in, is it 15-25 or lower? You could try using Oblivion Reloaded to help, it has a framerate manager that adjust object fade and LOD to maintain a target framerate. Oblivion Stutter Remover can also improve framerate by a certain amount (or murder it, depending in how you configure it). :P

[nicktheduke]

Hi Contrathetix! Thanks so much for the reply. :smile:

 

Yes. I'm getting low 10 - high 20 FPS using Better Cities. Everywhere else is around 30 - 40+

 

I'm actually using OR's framerate manager but I think I might disable it and adjust sliders myself. I often get flickering rocks and other objects in the distance because OR is constantly trying to manage FPS.

 

However, I was not aware that OSR could actually improve performance. I only thought it added stability. I've been trying to get a better understanding of OSR/moreheap's algorithm + heap size function and what is best for my system... How can you determine? It seems like most people aren't sure what they do and just take a guess... What settings can I edit in OSR's ini to improve FPS?

 

I'm asking so many questions because I am actually in the process of writing a 2016 updated guide for Oblivion modding. You can check out my thread on Bethsoft forums here: http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1601792-ultimate-oblivion-mod-guide-2016-the-next-edition/

Edited August 12, 2016 by nicktheduke

[Striker879]

Modern CPUs have some features that work against performance on an older game like Oblivion.

 

In multi-core CPUs (and actually all CPUs since the GHz wars ended) there have been an increasing number of changes to how CPUs execute tasks that have put older software at a disadvantage, with the biggest culprit being execution pipelines that try to predict what the next task or operation will be. When they guess right the CPU appears faster than clockspeed alone would predict ... when the guess is wrong the whole execution pipeline needs to flush it's contents and start over, losing a large number of CPU cycles in the process. Older CPUs had shorter execution pipelines as well and as such were trying to do less "at the same time" than modern execution pipelines.

 

This Wikipedia page will probably put you into information overload ... scroll down to the part about Parallelism for more detail around the modern optimizations of CPU execution units.

[nicktheduke]

Thanks for the info, Striker879! The fellas over at Bethsoft forums also told me I should probably avoid OC'ing for the game.

 

But would you be able to help with my questions about OSR? Will that help improve FPS?

 

I also remember using this fog mod to increase FPS: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/25052

 

However it's not compatible with weather mods... Is there any way to patch?

[Surilindur]

Recommending any settings for OSR is not something I would like to do, sorry. Maybe someone else can do it. The internal workings are something I have no idea about, and my current values are ones that seem to be relatively stable and not too lethal when it comes to framerate (as in, they seem to work, but I have no idea if they make any sense). I would just recommend trying out different values. The scheduling resolution could be toggled on/off, the spin timers or something in the critical sections could be raised a little, maybe (3000 with mode 3 was recommended somewhere - NOT BY ME, it was just "recommended" on the Internet - so go figure..). Heap numbers 6 and 1 seem to work reasonably well, and raising the heapsize for 6 too high apparently affects stability a little from what I have noticed.

 

Testing yourself is probably best, and if you are a curious type of person, it might actually be fun tinkering with the values, seeing what happens (if anything happens). :tongue: I think I have managed to sqeeze around 5 fps or something like that out of OSR. It cannot do miracles, and from what I have heard, Better Cities can eat up a lot of fps. My framerate sinks to 20 in the Market District of Imperial City and I do not even use Better Cities. I think the next thing I will do to try and improve framerate is to remove all the graphic mods from the game, and a ton of other mods, to finally be able to play the game when I have the time, and when I have finished my mod projects.

Edited August 12, 2016 by Contrathetix

[nicktheduke]

Thanks for such a thorough reply :smile:

 

I understand not recommending settings for OSR since it seems very system specific. I use heap 6 and size 768, but when I go to 1024 the game crashes. I am going to try heap 1 and play around with some of the critical sections.

 

For me the most significant improvement to FPS was PYFFI'ing the meshes. I also used the fog mod in my previous post with pretty good results, except that mod doesn't work well with other weather mods...

 

Also I've been told to try using 2 cores for Oblivion using Process Hacker (http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/) and to try unpacking cores (see here)

 

Has anyone had experience with this?

Edited August 12, 2016 by nicktheduke

[Striker879]

Sorry I don't have any hands on experience with OSR (though I do follow all OSR related discussions with great interest). My current computer is saddled with a measly 2GB of RAM and 32 bit version of WinXP (which isn't a bad thing for this game), so I can't get much benefit from most optimizations (after all is said and done my game will be limited to about 1GB RAM and that will always be the bottleneck in it's current state).

 

On the bright side I do have a nice early generation Core 2 Duo 3GHz (perhaps not as kick-ass as a late generation Pentium 4, but all those that I have in old machines are 3.2 GHz at the fastest, but the motherboards don't support any good strong modern graphics cards ... you gain on the apples and lose on the oranges type situation).

 

I've always been in the same boat as Contra regarding overclocking, too many downsides to longevity for the slight gains OCing can offer. Back when Oblivion was the game for benchmarking (aka the "but how does it run Oblivion" days) OCed rigs were generally less stable for running the vanilla game than non-OCed rigs.

 

A while back I did some beta testing for one of Emma's mods. Whenever the Better Cities subject came up in discussions she always called it "Better" Cities. Guess I'm lucky that I've never tried it so my vanilla cities are my "best" cities.

 

Other than using Enhanced Weather because it had a patch that fixed the pre-invasion Kvatch weather for the old version of Kvatch Rebuilt that I use with my MOE alt start, I really don't know much about weather mods and what it may take to make something like that compatible. I'm generally not all that fussy about when EW gives me real foggy weather for prolonged periods so I wouldn't be looking for a mod that makes it foggy all the time myself.

[nicktheduke]

Yeah I asked Vorians if they'll ever create a performance friendly version of BC, but if they haven't done it yet, I doubt they ever will. Going to play around with OSR settings later today.

 

Also -

 

I've been told to try using 2 cores for Oblivion using Process Hacker (http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/) and to try unpacking cores (see here)

 

Does anyone know about this?

Edited August 12, 2016 by nicktheduke

[Surilindur]

 

 

 

I've been told to try using 2 cores for Oblivion using Process Hacker (http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/) and to try unpacking cores (see here)

 

Does anyone know about this?

 

I do not, never looked into those things. Maybe someone else can help you. Good luck with your OSR tweaking. :thumbsup: I have already ran PyFFI on all base game + SI + QTP3 + Bomret + Elsweyr + Valenwood + AWLS + all other major sources of meshes I could find. Maybe it helps, but I have not managed to gain too much FPS from that. Excluding, of course, some custom resources like Castle Seaview ones that still murder framerate after PyFFI if there is too much of them.

 

And Striker: component longevity is indeed important to me, too (in addition to warranty). My gaming PC uses only air cooling and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner when I play some of the newer titles. But it is definitely worth it, if the temperatures remain reasonable. :P