Help with Oblivion FPS

[karoza]

I just installed oblivion and I am getting horrible FPS,in forests it goes 10-15 and in cities 12-18.I really need help because I installed it once before and I got a minimum 20 FPS.I have tried all performance mods mentioned and I know my cheap computer can handle it.Tree fade is down to 25% Object and Item fade 25% and Grass fade 75%( I know its not the problem with the grass since lowering to 0% gets me only +1-2 FPS and resolution is 800x600 which is VERY low for me;increasing it to 1024x768 gets me down to 9FPS.AA is 2x(I need that much at least) and AF 2x and shadows are off with no bloom or HDR.My specs are not balanced but I can't upgrade them anymore:

 

2.4Ghz Pentium 4

1 GB Ram

Nvidia Geforce 6200 512 MB

A nice enough soundcard.

Please help me I really want to play Oblivion. Thank you!

[Striker879]

If you are using an LCD type monitor use the native resolution for that monitor, and then tweak the other settings to get your best FPS. Using a non-native resolution on an LCD can increase the load on your system rather than decrease it, as it now needs to interpolate the graphics before it can display them. If you are using an old style CRT monitor this isn't an issue (they don't have a 'native' resolution).

[karoza]

Well my native resolution is 1280x1024 and when I use it in Oblivion I get LESS than 7 FPS. So that is obviously not going to work for me so any more suggestions? I must be able to break 20 FPS without going below 800x600 and lowering all sliders (except view distance) down to 10% gives only 3 FPS. This game is horribly optimized.

[Striker879]

When you say you had it installed before and were getting 20 FPS was that with vanilla Oblivion (and are you trying to reproduce that result now with graphic intensive mods added)?

 

Have a look through Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide. I would also suggest to get as many background processes turned off that you can while you're playing. Things like real time virus scanning on file access, your favourite tunes playing in the background and even cool looking desktops (Win 7/Vista Areo etc. especially if you are running them emulated on Win XP) can all eat up system resources. Your machine is pretty limited in three ways, CPU speed, available RAM and GPU speed and memory. Get a 'gaming mode' of trimmed down OS and then use Koroush's guide to get Oblivion as cranked as your machine will stand. His guide links to two other important and useful guides of his, getting your machine and Windows install tuned for best speed/stability and optimizing your graphics. I suspect that since you last ran Oblivion you've added a lot of baggage to your machine.

Edited December 19, 2011 by Striker879

[karoza]

When I last installed Oblivion it was with Streamline, OSR, Low poly grass, Low poly trees, Operation Optimization, De-parallaxer, No lights flicker, Qarl's texture pack 3, Improved trees or something like that,Natural Environments, Natural faces and some very high resoultion mods and got around 25 FPS. Right now I have all the performance mods and none of the other graphics mods and get only 15-17 FPS. Setting to native resolution was a terrible idea. Also I don't have any background processes and the problem is not with the graphics card I know it's outdated but I can't upgrade it anymore because I have a PS3 to play games but no Oblivion for it. And anyways I have read that guide a million times with apparently no performance boost. I just need more than 20 FPS to play and not those epic graphics or frame rates other gamers always want. Just don't say you can't help me anymore. Edited December 20, 2011 by karoza

[Striker879]

If I could, I'd mail you 5 FPS for Christmas, but it doesn't work that way. If you could run all that on that same machine before and now you can't something has to have changed. What happens when you try just plain old vanilla Oblivion ... no mods, no utilities ... just out of the box flavour?

 

Another thing that comes to mind is are you using fresh downloads of all your extras or the same old versions you used before? If they are 'new and improved' versions they may be doing more than when you used them in the past.

 

I've started using a utility called Multiple Oblivion Manager to manage separate installs for different characters. Simple to use and works like a charm ... my only caveat is that you don't want to use it if you are really short of hard drive space. I would suggest using MOM to clone your Oblivion install, and then use Bben46's guide Revert to vanilla data to turn that clone into a vanilla install. If you get good frame rates with vanilla then you can try your mods and utilities one at a time or in small groups, so you get a good idea of what's helping you and what's not.

 

Key thing will be to figure out what's changed.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Striker879

[karoza]

Turning off view distant land gives me 10-15 additional FPS but it's so unrealistic I can't turn it off. BTW all mod versions are the same and running vanilla Oblivion gave me the same FPS 15-17.

[Striker879]

Have you updated DirectX or video drivers since the last time it worked good? Is the cooler on your video card all clogged up with dust bunnies (thinking along the lines of your video card dropping in speed to stop it's overheating)? If your case has filters, are they clean? When you re-installed did you do a registry cleaning beforehand to root out all traces of your previous install (can't see how that may affect game performance so much as getting the game to run ... you can probably see I'm getting down to the 'grasping at straws' end of my troubleshooting skill set). Are you a regular at disk defragging (especially important if you tend to add a lot of things and then later delete them)?

 

Which version of Quarls are you using? I'm not a Quarls user myself but I know there are less stressful versions available. I'm also not a Streamline user, but from what I've seen there are those who swear by it and those who wouldn't let it near their hard drive ... I've not seen many with a middle of the road opinion of it. If you don't use it do you see improved framerates or worsened? I know it has a lot of different settings available ... are you using exactly the same settings as last time?

[karoza]

The casing and everything else is perfectly dust-free, Direct X version is the same as the last time and I de-frag every month. I used Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Redimized and Streamline is not useful. Even I can adjust my settings every time I get a FPS hit and setting min fps to 20 doesn't even come near it. The settings remain the same. Purging the RAM doesn't give any more FPS. Last time I used High purge and it doesn't help now; even maximum purge doesn't help. Game runs at same FPS without Streamline and any other performance mods. Anyways, if you can't help me it's okay at least you spent some time trying to help me out.Thank you very much.

 

BTW Even Morrowind on 1024x768 with 50% all sliders gives me 15-17 FPS. I simply can't understand what's wrong with this cheap garbage bin.

Edited December 21, 2011 by karoza

[Striker879]

What version of Windows do you run?

 

- Edit - Looking at your original post I see you're running a P4 CPU. I'm guessing that you are also using an AGP slot for video. I'm wondering if you could possibly for some reason have had your video drop down to a lower AGP spec (i.e. from AGP 8x to AGP 4x). I've not used it since I last built a P4 machine, but I think the free system info suite EVEREST Free Edition might be able to identify what AGP bus speed you're currently using (the link is to the MajorGeeks download for the utility).

Edited December 21, 2011 by Striker879