Useful tips and information

[Lord Valarian]

I'v been reading about the entering exterior <-> interior cells crash. I'v had problems with FXAA seeming to be the cause. However, I found recently an article about it. It says to turn off AA and bloom lightning. It seems to have fixed the problem.

 

If it requires only one of these tell me, else here's the tip to enjoy a less crash prone game.

[blacklordbl]

I just want to add some quick info that I discovered while searching for a way to improve performance on new and modern quad core machines: creating a bat file with this command: "start /affinity 9 /high obse_loader.exe" (or oblivion.exe if you don't use obse) should drastically improve performance. What it does is it runs oblivion on 2 cores instead of 4 which yields quite an improvement in performance.

 

This may not work for everybody or may even be obsolete on new i5 and i7 cores but on my Q6600 it improved my performance substantially.

 

@post below: The cores used have little to no effect on improvement, I just wanted them to be on separate sides of the CPU for thermal reasons, also at the time I was experimenting with this I had only a vague idea of what binary is and the affinity number was just a result of guess work. 5 would be much better because of diagonal cores and because most background programs will use core 0.

 

My rational was that while oblivion is clearly poorly optimized for a large number of cores, It had to be atleast slightly optimized for dual-cores since in 2006 dual-cores where standard and quads where just coming out. I scourged the internet and could only find people who said they gained an improvement by setting the affinity to one core. I then expanded on this with my above idea and then created a way to automate the process rather than alt-tabbing every time you launch the game.

 

The improvement is at least 30% for me.

Edited September 18, 2012 by blacklordbl

[alphabeticjunk]

I just want to add some quick info that I discovered while searching for a way to improve performance on new and modern quad core machines: creating a bat file with this command: "start /affinity 9 /high obse_loader.exe" (or oblivion.exe if you don't use obse) should drastically improve performance. What it does is it runs oblivion on 2 cores instead of 4 which yields quite an improvement in performance.

 

This may not work for everybody or may even be obsolete on new i5 and i7 cores but on my Q6600 it improved my performance substantially.

 

Without being able to test it right now (don't have OB installed -- eats too much disc w/all my extensions...;-)) that the above *should* be likely to improve things for just about anyone -- especially if you keep other processes OFF of those two cores. I'm not

real sure it matters *which* 2 cores you use, .. actually it might... but that would depend, also, on what oblivion runs on those two core..

 

Suffice it to say that I've never seen oblivion use MORE than 2 processors, so limiting it to 2 and keeping other processes off of those 2 cores would be likely to keep the most frequently used oblivion instructions in memory (since everyone's chipset has some type of 'L2 Cache' (and some L3 Cache').. and *some* of that L2 cache, on some models is available to only 1-2 cores.. Like

on a more modern Xeon that has 12MB L3 cache -- which is shared by all the cpu, there is still 256k of L2 cache on each that isn't shared. It's the stuff that isn't shared that is important -- since if you keep 1 program in those cores, it will get sole use of the cache -- and run faster. By keeping them on 2 fixed processors you help guarantee they will have higher likely hood of them getting the same cache content each time.

 

ALSO, for Intel cpu's with speedstep/Turbo boost, -- that meant if you only had 2/4 cores active, it might be more likely to run at a higher clock rate (like 3.2GHz instead of 2.9GHz or 3.4 instead of 3.2)... on the 2 that were active. So there are a couple of good

reasons why only using 2 cpu's for OB would help. The number "9" = 0000 1001b (binary). using core numbers 0 and 3 the lowest

bit on the right and the 4 from the right... Some modules might work slightly better with 0101 => 5 or 0011=>3, but 1001=>9 is

of likely, direct benefit on your model.

 

importantly, would be sure to measure that OB is still actually using 2 cores... For example, on a 6 core XEON chip, the cores are number non-adjacently -- from a 12-core linux machine... the even and odd cores are located on separate cpu chipsP:

 

CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 2 4 6 8 10

CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 1 3 5 7 9 11

 

With 1 core, likely values would be 010101 -> or any 2 of those 3: 16+4 or 16+1 or 4+1 (20, 17, 5)... It may be only Xeon chips that skip bits like that. Dunno.

 

But whatever works -- 2 cores is the magic number -- so good catch there!

[vanory1997]

Mine's not the best out there, but I'm trying to help out ;)

You said that you use windows 7. I have the same software and the same problem(every time i exit the game it crashes), but that didnt bother me until yesterday. I launched oblivion and loaed my save, but the game crashed. I thought the save was corrupted, so i loaded my autosave and entered the game. I used the midas mark/recall spell and teleported myself to frostcrag, and from there to leyawiin. But when i tried to exit the city it crashed. I loaded my save again (which was in the arcane university) and tried to exit the city from there, but the game crashed again. I dont know what to do. I uncprrupted my saves, but it didnt work. I ared a new character, with the thought the broblem might be on my previous character, but when i tried to exit the sewers, it crashed again! If you think you can help me resolve this problem, please post the answers to my troubleshoot topic "Outdoors arent there?" There you will find a full list of the mods im using aswell (all installed via obmm)You coould read any additional information there. I run a purchased copy of oblivion, with the patch, the shivering isles and its patch, knights of the nine, frostcrag spire, spell tomes and horse armor from the DLCs. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me resolve this issue( i thought about reinstalling the game, but i will constider this an option when everything else fails, because i have so many things installed and besides, if the saves have to be deleted aswell, i lose all my characters)PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[SirFrank114]

Hi, not sure if you're monitoring these posts but I did read your coment on Oblivion and Win 7. You said you crash when exiting. I do also but now it starts crashing when I save. I have very few mods and am using the new Nexus mod manager. I keep my game in C:\Games\Oblivion . Should I put it in programs X86 as the default suggests. I've heard its not good. Any suggestions?

[Striker879]

Putting your game in C:\Program Files (x86) will just open up a whole different world of problems for you (User Account Control (UAC) guards that and other system folders and UAC and Oblivion do not get along well).

 

Crashing on exit is a common thing with modded Oblivion. Crashing on saving isn't a good thing ... tells me you probably don't have 'good saving habits'. Do you use quicksave (by default F5)? Quicksave is a known corrupter of save files. Only use save from the Esc menu or the 'save <YourSaveNameHere>' command from the Oblivion console. Also never overwrite saves, always save to a new slot (or incremented number for named saves e.g. YourSaveName1 ... YourSaveName2 etc.).

 

You say you use very few mods but use the NMM for Oblivion mods. Know that NMM is only compatible with installing the simplest Oblivion mods ... you will be much farther ahead reading the mod's install instructions and following them. That said, did your trouble saving begin soon after installing a mod?

[alphabeticjunk]

Putting your game in C:\Program Files (x86) will just open up a whole different world of problems for you (User Account Control (UAC) guards that and other system folders and UAC and Oblivion do not get along well).

----

This is presuming you haven't disabled that annoying feature.

[SirFrank114]

Putting your game in C:\Program Files (x86) will just open up a whole different world of problems for you (User Account Control (UAC) guards that and other system folders and UAC and Oblivion do not get along well).

 

Crashing on exit is a common thing with modded Oblivion. Crashing on saving isn't a good thing ... tells me you probably don't have 'good saving habits'. Do you use quicksave (by default F5)? Quicksave is a known corrupter of save files. Only use save from the Esc menu or the 'save <YourSaveNameHere>' command from the Oblivion console. Also never overwrite saves, always save to a new slot (or incremented number for named saves e.g. YourSaveName1 ... YourSaveName2 etc.).

 

You say you use very few mods but use the NMM for Oblivion mods. Know that NMM is only compatible with installing the simplest Oblivion mods ... you will be much farther ahead reading the mod's install instructions and following them. That said, did your trouble saving begin soon after installing a mod?

 

Thanks for your advice. As to saves, I do not use quick save or any autosave I have control over, they're all turned off. I do save approx every 30 minutes (real time) then exit the game. A pain, but seems to cut down on the crashes. All other features of the game seem to be fine. I'm using OOO 1.33 as this is an absolute must for me. Played it about 4 years ago with about 6 mods active including OOO and had a ball for 6 months. Any suggestions on Hotkey extenders?

[Striker879]

I use Maskar's Hotkey Pro (a bit simpler than theNiceOne's Enhanced Hotkeys and doesn't have the MenuQue requirement). Your saving habits are 'cleaner' than mine. I save every hour or hour and a half (unless I'm about to start something special) and exit and reload every few hours.

 

As to disabling 'that annoying feature' ... yes it can be annoying but it's a safety feature. Seatbelts are also an 'annoying feature' to some people (until something happens where they save you, then they're not so annoying anymore).

 

- Edit - Back to the original complaint ... do you have a lot of hours on that particular save that's crashing on save? I'm wondering if you're hitting the 'A-Bomb' (animation bug) that plagues high playing time saves. I use Oblivion Animation Fixer myself, although if you're a Wrye Bash user it also has a utility for fixing the problem.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Striker879

[SirFrank114]

I use Maskar's Hotkey Pro (a bit simpler than theNiceOne's Enhanced Hotkeys and doesn't have the MenuQue requirement). Your saving habits are 'cleaner' than mine. I save every hour or hour and a half (unless I'm about to start something special) and exit and reload every few hours.

 

As to disabling 'that annoying feature' ... yes it can be annoying but it's a safety feature. Seatbelts are also an 'annoying feature' to some people (until something happens where they save you, then they're not so annoying anymore).

 

- Edit - Back to the original complaint ... do you have a lot of hours on that particular save that's crashing on save? I'm wondering if you're hitting the 'A-Bomb' (animation bug) that plagues high playing time saves. I use Oblivion Animation Fixer myself, although if you're a Wrye Bash user it also has a utility for fixing the problem.

 

Yes, me and the Animation Fixer are old friends. I forget how many hours or saved games it takes before those slowed actions start happening. I keep my saved game directory very minimal ( no more than 20 saves ) and keep every 5th save in a non-game directory in case I must reload way back. Now if I can only get to level 3 :)