Oblivion Ini Tweaking

[iwantmodsplz]

Hi guys, I am configuring my Oblivion Ini and I was just wondering about the these two variables.

 

 

uInterior Cell Buffer=3

 

uExterior Cell Buffer=36

 

I am aware that if you want to Oblivion to use more ram you tweak these variables. You add +3 and +36 for every 512mb of ram you have. I have four gigs of ram, so I set mine at 24/288. However, I have often read that Oblivion does not actually use more then two gigabytes of ram anyways, even when you set it's executable to large address aware. So my question is; would setting this higher for more than 2 gigs of ram actually be beneficial?

[Striker879]

Have you read the Memory, Loading & Multithreading Variables section of Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide (particularly the iPreloadSizeLimit settings referenced right below the uInterior Cell Buffer and uExterior Cell Buffer section)?

[iwantmodsplz]

Have you read the Memory, Loading & Multithreading Variables section of Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide (particularly the iPreloadSizeLimit settings referenced right below the uInterior Cell Buffer and uExterior Cell Buffer section)?

 

Naturally; but he never suggests a maximum for the cell buffer settings. I am wondering if setting them too high would do more harm then good.

[Striker879]

Koroush doesn't specifically say so, but if you look at the end of the iPreloadSizeLimit paragraph he mentions that raising that and your cell buffers should be coordinated, and adds a caveat that going too far may cause crashes. My own investigations around the subject lead me to believe that the largest impact you can make for smooth game play revolves around your hard drive system. His comments in the uGridsToLoad section of his guide supports this.

 

Look at it this way. No matter what tweaks you make, at some time the information that starts out on your hard drive, either in a compressed BSA or regular uncompressed file, needs to be loaded into RAM. The absolute slowest part of your machine (after your DVD drive that is) is your hard drive system. Even with SATA and RAID 0 your system practically starves while it's waiting for the data from the hard drive. Running the game off a fast SSD RAID 0 would probably help greatly, but I haven't the resources to test those waters (I'm an old Windows XP dinosaur anyway ... no SSD support). Before I retired I'd purchased the major parts for my next machine (just a CPU speed bump to the fastest version of my current Core 2 Duo). I've never got around to picking up the rest of the parts (we'll see if there's money left after this Christmas). I have 4 GB of RAM for that box, but I still have 3 uninstalled OEM copies of WinXP 32 bit, so it will be hard to justify the money for Win 7 64 bit. I thought about reviving an old DOS trick and set up a RAM drive to run the game from, but I really don't know how practical that would be (may not be too bad though as the game already is set up to store saves to your log-in profile's documents folder).

 

Bottom line ... I'd start out from Koroush's 2 GB recommendations and then make small changes from there, testing thoroughly between changes. I'd also suggest those small steps be made across uExterior Cell Buffer, iPreloadSizeLimit and uGridsToLoad (if you don't use an LOD replacer) in concert, so that you don't run into the one or two you didn't raise being the bottleneck. A lot of this will be subjective as well, as the game doesn't really require the FPS of a shooter or online click-fest game, and there aren't any good utilities for measuring the change in loading pauses.

 

And my best advice ... defrag, defrag, defrag. Everything you can do to help speed up your hard drive system is gold.

 

- Edit - Just saw Harvald's reply on this thread. The utility he linked to is kind of interesting, but will only help out if you have more than 4 GB RAM (by the way I read between the lines in the utility description anyway).

Edited December 9, 2011 by Striker879

[iwantmodsplz]

Thanks for the reply. What that utility does is set the Oblivion executable to large address aware, since Oblivion is a 32 bit executable. This means the program will only use 2gb of ram. However, since Oblivion wasn't programmed to run as a 64 bit program, I am wondering if making it large address aware, and then setting it to use a large amount of ram is more harmful then not. I am playing around with the settings and when I set exteriors cell buffers to 288 (4 gigs of ram) the game seems to stutter more and I lose more FPS then if I set it to use 2gb (144). Also I don't think the game unloads the cells right causing a big FPS loss.

 

Since my game is heavily moddified (qarls III, really everything viewable distant, better cities, OBGE, ect) I really need to set it right so I can obtain maximum stability and steadier FPS rates. Obviously the way the game was made with all these heavy mods I will never make it perfect, but I am just wondering how to set these variables up to reduce problems such as stuttering and crashes.

 

Anyways I am going to try to use my Oblivion.exe that isn't large address aware with 2gb max settings to see if this increases stability, so I will report on that tomorrow.

 

So I guess the real question is; does setting the game executable to large address aware actually make a difference? Maybe not.

http://sites.google.com/site/ballofflame/theoblivionperformanceproject found this, seems to have some good information there.

Edited December 10, 2011 by iwantmodsplz

[Striker879]

I haven't done any testing around large address aware as my current gaming machine is only 2 GB RAM, but I have seen comments on here claiming both it did and didn't make a difference. I think because there are so many interrelated factors (mods, background processes, CPU/GPU differences etc.) that it will be difficult to use another persons settings and get the same results (unless you duplicate their exact setup, from hardware on up).

 

I had a read through your linked Performance Project page. To me it seems mainly focused on getting the game to run on marginal machines (a huge issue back when the game was released). I'm not sure how many of it's suggestions transfer over to today's situation ... graphic and CPU intensive mods, pushing modern hardware, using a gaming engine that wasn't designed to take advantage of any of the benefits of that hardware.

 

One thing from that article did jump out though, that relates back to your original post concerning settings for uInterior Cell Buffer and uExterior Cell Buffer. In the next to last section where they talk about 'Worst Case - Best Case Scenarios' they make a good case for not setting uInterior Cell Buffer too large, especially in light of what they mention on how non-city interiors (caves dungeons forts etc.) aren't purged from memory when you exit to the wilderness cells. Before my current SLI had problems (one dead card) and had to be downgraded to a single card I usually never saw anywhere close to max GPU memory usage (then I had 2 x 640 MB). Now with the same Oblivion.ini settings (uGridstoLoad=5, uInterior Cell Buffer=16 & uExterior Cell Buffer=102) I regularly see over 600 MB GPU memory usage, even without any dungeon crawling. I'm going to trim that uInterior Cell Buffer back and test tonight. Maybe I'll see some improvement.

 

One habit I have had in the past is I regularly save (never a quicksave ... either from the Esc menu or console named save) and, at least when I remember, I exit the game and reload pretty regularly (every 2 or 3 hours of play). That may have been saving me from getting too much grief from that high uInterior Cell Buffer setting.