How to improve game stability ?

[TossMan]

Hello !

 

A couple days ago I decided to give another spin to Oblivion and I reinstalled it.

 

I made sure to pick all of the mods, injectors, good OBSE plugins and such, as well as the essential mods. The problem is, no matter what MoreHeap, OSR and OR settings I chose, no matter how drastically I reduce my mod selection, no matter how much I tweak the game .ini, I always crash within 5 minutes of playing or on each big cell change if I'm in the Imperial city.

 

I browsed a dozen different sites detailing tweaks, OSR fine tuning guides and the whole but no matter what the game remains crashy and I run out of fixes to try.

 

Here's my load order :

 

 

 

Active Mod Files:
[spoiler][xml]
00  Oblivion.esm
01  All Natural Base.esm  [Version 1.3.4]
02  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm
03  CyrodiilUpgradeResourcePack.esm
04  Better Cities Resources.esm  [Version 6.0.7]
05  CURP_Controller.esm
06  DLCShiveringIsles.esp
07  Better Cities .esp  [Version 6.0.5]
08  All Natural.esp  [Version 1.35]
09  All Natural - SI.esp  [Version 1.35]
0A  All Natural - Real Lights.esp  [Version 1.3.5]
0B  OblivionReloaded.esp
++  OblivionReloadedArenaCombat.esp
++  MaleBodyReplacerV4.esp
0C  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
0D  ICEXPAND.esp  [Version 6.0.0]
0E  Kvatch Rebuilt.esp
0F  Kvatch Rebuilt Weather Patch.esp
10  TheElderCouncil.esp
11  TEC_4ERA_Dialog_Filter.esp
12  Knights.esp
13  Alternative Beginnings.esp  [Version 1.4.4]
14  MidasSpells.esp
15  1em_Vilja.esp  [Version 4.04]
16  Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp
++  1em_Vilja_OCOV2_By_jet4571.esp
17  Better Cities Full.esp  [Version 6.0.7]
18  Better Cities - IC Imperial Isle.esp  [Version 6.0.2]
19  Better Imperial City.esp  [Version 6.0.7]
1A  Better Cities Bruma - The Elder Council.esp  [Version 6.0.4]
1B  Better Cities Chorrol - Knights of the Nine.esp  [Version 6.0.7]
1C  Better Imperial City FPS Patch.esp  [Version 6.0.0]
1D  Better Cities - Leyawiin Flooded.esp  [Version 6.0.0]
**  All Natural - Indoor Weather Filter For Mods.esp  [Version 1.3.5]
1E  Bashed Patch, 0.esp
[/xml][/spoiler]

 

 

 

• The Elder Council and ICEXPAND are cleaned (both ITM and UDR), and I made sure that I used the ICEXPAND ESM provided with BC.

Here are the specs of my rig (not exactly beefy I concede) :

 

 

 

 

• CPU : AMD Phenom 9850 Quad Core @2.5 Ghz
• GPU : Sapphire nVidia GTX 560ti (1Gb VRAM)
• RAM : 6 Gb DDR2
• OS : Windows 7 SP1

 

 

 

 

Here are the pastebin of the relevant .ini files :

 

 

 

 

• oblivion.ini : http://pastebin.com/c6W6Fckk
• MoreHeap.ini : http://pastebin.com/V8fEPsdy
• OblivionReloaded.ini : http://pastebin.com/ugX0rR1S
• OblivionReloeadedEsp.ini : http://pastebin.com/AzLU0DLM
• sr_Oblivion_Stutter_Remover.ini : http://pastebin.com/xS9msrYm

 

 

 

 

Also I used to use ENBoost but disabled it because of a potential incompatiblity with OR, and the disk is fully defragmented (sadly I can't afford an SSD to run Oblivion on it), and both oblivion.exe and obse_loader.exe have the /LARGEADRESSAWARE flag on

 

Sincerely I cannot think of anything else to make the game run better. Even a crash every 20/30 minutes would be enough to let me enjoy the game.

 

If any charitable soul has any idea of what could make my install work better, his help would be greatly appreciated :)

 

 

[bevilex]

Hello,

There must be a problem somewhere, you crash too often whereas you have not installed a crazy amount of mods ...

 

- Do you use the 4GB patch ?

 

- I also recommend you to try breplaceheap = 0 in the OSR.ini

 

- You can use ENBoost with OR. Just disable the memory purger of OR.

 

- Better Cities gives a lot of stress to the engine and your system. I suggest you to remove it if everything else doesn't work.

 

edit : another thing to improve performance and stability :

 

uGridDistantTreeRange=30

uGridDistantCount=50

 

is too big. Divide by 2 these values (Vanilla values)

 

uGridDistantTreeRange=15

uGridDistantCount=25

 

You will maybe not notice the visual difference. But you will probably notice the performance improvement :wink: 15 and 25 are the best compromise between visual quality and performance with mods.

Edited September 4, 2016 by bevilex

[TossMan]

Thanks for your lightining quick answer !

 

 

I applied all of the fixes you suggested and it worked ! My crashless lifespan is now around something like ~40 minutes (didn't tested for longer durations though). Only the vicinity and cell transitions to/from cities remained crashy, pointing Better cities as the sole culprit (too bad because that's one hell of a great mod).

 

Also yes, the 4gb patch was applied from the beginning, but it seems its effects correctly displayed only once I disabled the OSR heap replacer as you told me to.

 

Thank you a lot for fixing my issue so fast !

 

P.S. : for the posterity, I forgot to install the BC - OOO patches at first. After testing them on the second run I found no direct improvement in stability (not saying that it doestn't fix anything because that's not true.)

 

Cheers.

 

edit : after more thorough testing, the game istn't that stable. 30-40 minutes of straight wilderness running do no harm to the game stability, but the game becomes extremely unstable in any situation involving human NPCs (being on roads, near settlements and cities, etc). Could it be some OCO related problem ?

 

edit 2 : gave a shot to a new configuration. Now I can run in circles across the IC districts with no crashes where before each cell transition would cause a CTD.

MoreHeap is set to 256 and OSR's heap replacer to 450 with algorithm 5, with OR and ENBoost on top of it.

Sorry for the disturbance, should've done more searching by myself before bothering.

 

edit 3 : game becomes crashy once again each time following a change in some ini files. I decided to disable the music and sfx engine from Oblivion.ini and it did actually worked and I played for 90 minutes straight without any crash, with Better Cities. Further testing is ongoing to see if I can replicate the strange behaviour.

Edited September 5, 2016 by TossMan

[bevilex]

but the game becomes extremely unstable in any situation involving human NPCs

 

What do you mean by that ? CTD ? FPS drop ?

It is normal to have FPS drop in areas where there are a lot of NPC even with the bests CPUs.

So I don't think OCO is the problem. OCO just does cosmetic changes to NPCs (not sure about this)

 

 

MoreHeap is set to 256

 

You can test MoreHeap set to 512. Maybe it can help.

 

 

OSR's heap replacer to 450 with algorithm 5

 

If you have breplaceheap = 0, I think changing algorithm and heap size will do nothing.

In OSR, I recommend you to use the default values with breplaceheap= 0

 

with OR and ENBoost on top of it.

 

You can check if ENBoost is working correctly by looking at your task manager. Normaly an "enbhost" application should run and use approximatively half the RAM that Oblivion needs.

 

Did you change the enblocal according to your computer specs ? ( VideoMemorySizeMb= )

Use for instance VideoMemorySizeMb=6000

 

If you use OR with ENBoost, you should disable OR's memory purger : in OblivionReloadedEsp.ini,

set ORPurgerQuest.PurgeTime to 0

You will use more RAM with ENBoost, so you don't need to purge it. (it can CTD during purge sometimes)

 

Disabling sound can have a good impact on perfomance for some system.

90 minutes straight without any crashes is not bad at all.

If you want even better perfromance you can reduce more these parameters :

 

uGridDistantTreeRange=15

uGridDistantCount=25 --> 15 for instance (but if you reduce it a lot, it can have a noticeable impact on visuals and LOD)

Edited September 6, 2016 by bevilex

[TossMan]

 

Quote

but the game becomes extremely unstable in any situation involving human NPCs

 

What do you mean by that ? CTD ? FPS drop ?

It is normal to have FPS drop in areas where there are a lot of NPC even with the bests CPUs.

So I don't think OCO is the problem. OCO just does cosmetic changes to NPCs (not sure about this)

 

I meant stutter and random CTDs here. I feared that having NPCs with a lot of new, hi-res, different head textures could strain the engine, that was designed to render potatoheads, but further testing proved that it had nothing to do with the whole thing (on my install at least)

 

 

Quote

MoreHeap is set to 256

 

You can test MoreHeap set to 512. Maybe it can help.

 

 

Done to a great effect ! Thanks ! :D

 

 

Quote

OSR's heap replacer to 450 with algorithm 5

 

If you have breplaceheap = 0, I think changing algorithm and heap size will do nothing.

In OSR, I recommend you to use the default values with breplaceheap= 0

 

This was just a small test, with breplacheap = 1, but in the end I was better without the heap replacement

 

All is A-Ok regarding ENboost, and I take great note of your .ini tweaks (even if the default settings work fine for the moment)

 

After several test runs I can say that shutting the sound engine down from the .ini solved all of my CTD issues, as weird as it is. The only downside is that with the absence of sound files, the dialogue text scrolls very fast. Do you think these sound problems are worth fixing ? Is it something fixable like a codec reinstall or is it an unresolvable disk access problem ? (To be honest I'm perfectly fine with a crashfree game, even with these implications, but.. but.).

[bevilex]

 

 

After several test runs I can say that shutting the sound engine down from the .ini solved all of my CTD issues, as weird as it is. The only downside is that with the absence of sound files, the dialogue text scrolls very fast. Do you think these sound problems are worth fixing ? Is it something fixable like a codec reinstall or is it an unresolvable disk access problem ? (To be honest I'm perfectly fine with a crashfree game, even with these implications, but.. but.).

 

I am afraid I don't know a lot about it. It is weird yes.

Have a look at this page, maybe it can help :

 

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Sound_issues

Edited September 7, 2016 by bevilex

[Striker879]

If you are on a desktop computer install a dedicated sound card ... if you are on a laptop I'm afraid you won't have that as an option.

 

On-board sound solutions like Realtek use your CPU for all sound processing (as well as you RAM), with the "on-board" part supplying sound output ports and microphone ports and that's about it.

[TossMan]

 

I am afraid I don't know a lot about it. It is weird yes.

Have a look at this page, maybe it can help :

 

http://wiki.tesnexus...hp/Sound_issues

 

 

If you are on a desktop computer install a dedicated sound card ... if you are on a laptop I'm afraid you won't have that as an option.

 

On-board sound solutions like Realtek use your CPU for all sound processing (as well as you RAM), with the "on-board" part supplying sound output ports and microphone ports and that's about it.

 

Thanks for the pointers ^^ I'll edit when i'll try that ;)