Ended Stutter in Oblivion

[Lanceor]

Thanks for the very informative post pleasenoname. Even though Oblivion is a 6 year old game, when fully modded it is capable of crippling any computer on the market. Your tweaks helped me squeeze in a few extra frames per second.

[TheMastersSon]

Does your computer monitor (LCD) have a DVI input? If so you may have better luck on DVI ... it's 'old school' digital, no DRM stuff to interfere with the digital signal.

 

I've got a couple of 19" CRT computer monitors laying around unused. I'm not sure I could ever go back to a non-wide screen format, plus after years of being spoiled by my 24" 1980 x 1200 I think the 19" would look small. I can't imagine how much desk space a 24" CRT would take up ... the 19" took up all available space.

Striker, I'm running on two 22" CRTs (Sony F500 & Mitsu2040), the former was kind of a holy grail find.. a corporate spare and never used, stored in a warehouse since 2001. When I got it last year the factory box had never been opened. Oblivion and just about everything else look amazing especially at 75Hz or higher. People forget, or at least I had forgotten all the benefits of CRTs.. stunning gamut and black levels, no ghosting issues, variable screen sizes and refresh rates etc. Yes it's as big and heavy as a dozen LCDs and yes I probably will eventually die from radiation poisoning. :)

[pleasenoname]

I should mention before this thread becomes too old:

I put in a second 4890 recently and the two 4890's are in "Crossfire" now.

Initially the notorious Crossfire micro stutter was horrible, however I was able to adjust settings in "AMD VISION Control Center". Now I run the game without stutter with 8x Anisotropic Filtering and 2x Anti-Aliasing (I don't like the blurriness of Anti-Aliasing, that is why I only put it on 2x). I was running at 16x Anisotropic Filtering. However the detail was too good and made some low resolution textures stand out. Also it was using a lot of resources for a very slight texture improvement over 8x. You have to uncheck the box for "Use application settings" for these filters (Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing) to work with HDR lighting.

 

To get the micro stutter from crossfire stopped I went into AMD VISION Control Center-->3D Application Settings(Under the "Gaming" tab). I experimented with all the settings for some time before turning "Catalyst A.I." to "Advanced".

 

Next I realized that "Wait for vertical refresh" was kind of like a second VSynch. So I turned that setting all the way to "Performance" (thus disabling it) and was able to eliminate micro stutter. It will say "Always Off" under the slider bar for it.

 

I set "AMD CrossfireX ^TM Mode for 3D Applications" to "Default Mode". This is because Oblivion is not designed to alternate frame render (it will cause flashing of shadows if you try it).

 

I kept the "Triple buffering" box under "OpenGL" checked.

 

Also remember to save the application profile that you just created. A window will open when you do. Find the "Oblivion.exe" and click that, then click open. Make sure not to pick the Launcher's exe.

 

I was able to set "iFPSClamp=" back to zero in the .ini file (Though I do enjoy the superspeed of "iFPSClamp=40"). VSynch is still enabled in the Oblivion Launcher.

Edited May 9, 2012 by pleasenoname