Brits Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 Thanks for all the input guys, I really appreciate it. "Have you updated Oblivion?" Yep, fully updated. "My first guess would be your lack of a sound card. The on board audio steals clock cycles from the processor and memory from your on board RAM. To test this theory, turn off your onboard audio in the BIOS and try running Oblivion. Of course there will be no sounds, but if you see a noticeable increase in performance a cheap sound card will probably work wonders for you. Just remember to disable the onboard audio when you install it." I'll try that out, although I'm not sure where the option is to disable it in BIOS. "I would be tempted to think that it's the videocard... ...You might want to try changing some of the higher end lighting and rendering options, like turning off shadows/reflections or switching to bloom lighting as those things might end up being too memory heavy, causing things to slow down. Playing the game in windowed mode, or with Fraps running can also slow down frame rate." I really don't want to resort to turning down a lot of graphics options. My PC should be more than able to handle this game at high settings.. so I want to figure out why it's bottlenecking.I play the game fullscreen 1024x768 no FRAPS running. "His Video card seems to be fine, what he's talking about seems (to me) to be a problem with outdated drivers. This does not mean only on your video card, check your BIOS and other Motherboard additions. This includes Sound drivers and PHYSICS drivers if you have a Physics cards. If it continues, it could always be a problem with your processor. Some processors tend to overwork themselves depending on the type. Dual cores should be able to keep this game running fine- The biggest thing you might have missed is defragging your computer! Make sure you do this! Oh, and check the memory. How much you have on a page file can make all the difference, this game Oblivion uses ALOT of Memory! I've been told different, but my computer (a 6k 6.22 ghz) Quad core had low pagefile, and turning it up a smidge made all the difference in oblivion. I hope this helps, but I'm not a computer genius." I've recently reformatted my PC and updated my GPU and mobo drivers. No need to defragment because I haven't installed all that much stuff.As for page file size, I don't really know how much to set it to. I have a 120 gb HD with about 45 gb free and 2 GIG RAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brits Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 Update: I changed the page file size from min 1500 and max 3072 to min 3072 and max 8192 Although those are much better numbers for my specs, I notice absolutely no change in performance either ingame or in windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brits Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 Update again: I disabled my onboard sound. I noticed no difference in performance I also updated my mobo BIOS, just for good measure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddah Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Disable vsync, it is not necessary and has been documented by Bethesda as causing slowdowns/stuttering. Buddah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1Prelude Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 Try more ram. Sounds simple, but I have a very good system and was getting crap frame rates with 1 gb ram. As soon as I updated to 3 gb, it got way smoother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brits Posted January 29, 2008 Author Share Posted January 29, 2008 @buddah: yeah... I never use vsync. @1Prelude: well, I've got 2 sticks at 1024 right now (dual channel) and I only have three slots :P If I were to get more RAM, I'd no doubt do it when I fully upgrade next. Still, 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM should be more than enough for this game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoots7 Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 @buddah: yeah... I never use vsync. @1Prelude: well, I've got 2 sticks at 1024 right now (dual channel) and I only have three slots :P If I were to get more RAM, I'd no doubt do it when I fully upgrade next. Still, 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM should be more than enough for this game.OK man I don't see any other thing it could be other than your video card (BFG 7900 GT OC 256mb (475mhz/680mhz)), YES it should be OK but you have eliminated most of the possibilities.Now it’s time to cut to the chase & crank down the settings (resolution).If that fixes it then contact the video card manufacture & ask for a replacement. Disable vsync, it is not necessary and has been documented by Bethesda as causing slowdowns/stuttering. Buddah Buddah when you say "it's not necassary" does that mean vsync does nothing at all?Why would they have that option then?.....Kind of weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddah Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 Vsync is basically a useless waste of assets....if you read the documentation that comes with Oblivion, Bethesda even states as much. It is in the readme on the disc. Morrowind also had the same information, that for almost all vsync causes choppiness and stuttering. This is what the readme for SI says for preformance tuning: There are several things you can do to increase game performance. -Make sure you have no other programs running in the background. -Lower the game resolution. The game runs faster at 640x480 and 800x600. -Go to your Options menu and select Video. Try the following options to improve performance: -Set View Distance as low as possible. Your framerate and load times will improve but you will not be able to view as far. -Set Tree, Actor, Item and Object Fade as low as possible. This will cause certain objects in the world to fade away sooner. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality. -Set Texture Size to Medium or Small. Textures on objects will not appear as sharp when this setting is reduced. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality. -Set Grass slider as low as possible. This will cause less grass to be displayed around your character. This will increase your framerate but you will see less grass displayed. -Set Distant LOD to OFF. This will reduce your view distance, but your framerate and load times will improve. -Set Distant Buildings to OFF. You will not see cities or the Imperial City in the distant landscape but your framerate and load times will improve. -Set Distant Trees to OFF. You will not see trees in the distant landscape but your framerate and load times will improve. -Set Interior Shadows as low as possible. This will decrease the number of characters that cast shadows while you are in interiors, improving your framerate. -Set Exterior Shadows as low as possible. This will decrease the number of characters that cast shadows while you are in exteriors, improving your framerate. -Set Self Shadows to OFF. The Player and other characters will no longer cast shadows on themselves, but will still cast shadows on the environment. This will improve your framerate. -Set Grass Shadows to OFF. Shadows will no longer display on grass. This will improve your framerate. -Set Tree Canopy Shadows to OFF. The forests will no longer cast shadows on the landscape, improving your framerate. -Set Shadow Filtering as low as possible or off. This will reduce the amount of softening the shadows receive, but increase framerate. -Set Specular Light as low as possible. This will cause objects to lose their shininess at lower distances, improving your framerate. -Set HDR Lighting to OFF. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality. -Use Bloom lighting instead of HDR, or turn Bloom off. Bloom is a less intensive version of HDR. Turning it off will improve framerate but degrade visual quality. -Make sure Water Detail is set to Normal. High detail water will decrease your framerate. -Set Water Reflections and Ripples to OFF. This will increase your framerate while you are near water, but the water will not show reflections or react to objects interacting with it. -Set Window Reflections to Off. This will remove the subtle reflections from windows but improve framerate. -Set Blood Decals to Medium or Low. At Medium, decals do not get applied to characters, only landscape. At Low, no decals get applied at all. These will increase your framerate in combat situations. -Turn anti-aliasing down or off. This will degrade overall visual quality but improve your framerate. -Turn off music The music is mp3 format and can slow the game down. Hope this helps. The last one is important, music eats up memory like a mother. change this setting in the ini file: bMusicEnabled=1 change to bMusicEnabled=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bben46 Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 I too have a 7600GT (FXF brand) video board, so I have been following this very closely. I have already done much of what Buddah recommends, but I haven't had to turn down my features quite so drastically. I am also running 2 wide screen monitors No Oblivion does not support the second monitor, I usually turn it off during play. But sometimes I forget until after the game has started. So mine should have worse performance than yours. I will try to get a list of my settings and post it here later. Not enough time right now. Real life is calling. If you don't see anything today, post a reminder, sometimes I get wrapped up in some other detail of life and forget. Even if what I post doesn't help, please post anything that you find that works as your experience could help others. Just checked my system - I recently reinstalled Oblivion and have not yet gotten around to tweaking it. So my current settings would be useless.My system XFX 7900GT with 256 mb AMD 64-60 dual core running at 2.61 2 G ram ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxw MB Turtle Beach Montego Sound board, on board sound disabled. Dual I-INC TW19D 19 inch wide screen monitors running Oblivion at 1400x900 (one screen only) As you can see my system should run considerably slower than yours. and as a matter of fact, since I have been too lazy to tweak it properly, it probably does. I hope to get down to tweaking later today. I will post a FPS figure fro before and after when I do. I recommend this site for tweaking information Tweakguides.com/oblivion_1.html The author is Koroush Ghazi and he really seems to know his stuff. The last update was in October, but there is a forum that may have newer information. He also has tweeking information on many other games, video cards and other programs. IMHO one of the best sites for this kind of info available. This is where my dual monitor system comes in handy, I can read the tweek guide on one screen while making the changes on the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martine94 Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 General slowdown can accur when the boot.ini file is damaged in windows dictionary but i doubt that's the case.My guess would be A virus or hidden processes taking up your RAM.Or , If if you have a lot of mods , Like a lot , wouldn't that slow down oblivion because of all the script running in background ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.