Oblivion Runs Like Garbage

[xTLx]

After purchasing Oblivion GOTY edition a while back on steam I decided I would find some mods and see what all the fuss was about. Now, admittingly, the game is about six years old so my expectations weren't huge, but this was just ridiculous. Right now I'm re-installing the game so that I can decide what to do with it, but a few months ago when I tried to mess around with it, the game was essentially unplayable. I don't have some blazing fast rig, but my laptop can handle Skyrim at medium/high settings fine enough. When I tried playing Oblivion however, even without mods, the frame rate dropped so low when exiting buildings or going outside that the game became either frozen/unplayable or crashed all together in some areas. Interestingly dungeons and indoor areas ran smoothly and at expected quality, but it seems that my laptop is not compatible with the game or it cannot handle the enormous amount of CPU the game begins to take up. I've tried playing the game both in vanilla and with mods and while they both are terribly choppy it seems that the mods in many cases worsen it. I've tried optimizing the game's performance with several mods and tweaks to the .ini, gone through many combinations of settings, and even updated my drivers, but nothing seems to work. After seeing older outdated machines run the game alright I'm convinced that there must be some sort of glaring error or incompatibility, because despite reading threads online with similar problems I've found no solution.

 

I understand my laptop is nowhere near the level of many computers, but it runs Fallout 3 and other titles flawlessly. So here are some specs, maybe someone could offer some help or suggestions, and feel free to ask questions:

 

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

 

Memory: 4GB

 

Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 310m

 

OS: Windows 7 64bit

 

I've also tried a variety of resolutions and options within the software provided by NVIDIA.

 

EDIT: I was able to solve the problem by tweaking the draw distances of foliage and using bloom lighting rather than HDR.

Edited May 9, 2012 by xTLx

[Qwaxalot]

While I don't have a solution for you, I can tell you that the problem is your GPU. Oblivion is more Graphics dependent than many would expect. Try the lowest resolution, but don't expect a good result.

[Lethys90]

If you haven't already, you should try OSR

As for GPU power, I'm running Oblivion with a lot of mods on a GeForce G105M at 1280x720, high texture detail (lowering it is not an option imho :tongue: ), HDR and some RAEVWD. It goes quite smoothly indoors, but it DOES stutter outdoors, especially in some locations(the Waterfront is the absolute worst with 10-15 fps), though generally it's acceptable.

I'm not a GPU expert, but from the numbers, I'd say yours is newer.. So all I can do is recommend the above mod, as it made all the difference for me.

[LFact]

Some review about GeForce 310M I found: http://www.notebookc...0M.22439.0.html

Oblivion is quite demanding game than you think(especially with so-called graphic mods).

Edited May 7, 2012 by LFact

[xTLx]

Some review about GeForce 310M I found: http://www.notebookc...0M.22439.0.html

Oblivion is quite demanding game than you think(especially with so-called graphic mods).

 

Well I guess that's pretty obvious now... Although I hear a lot of people complaining about how poorly written Oblivion was. Is there any truth to that? Because aside from the toll that high quality shading has on my GPU I've managed to get Skyrim and the newer Fallout games to run just fine. Was Oblivion meant for machines with only dual-cores or what?

[AlfredTetzlaff]

Nope, basically Oblivion was meant for single cores ;) Its not poorly written, it is just very old :)

[chakaru11]

Nope, basically Oblivion was meant for single cores

 

QFT.

 

 

Oblivion does not really make use of or acknoledge dual or quad cores. There are certain ini tweaks you can try to edit the way it handles RAM/memory, but bottom line is that it does not matter to Oblivion if you have a dual core processor or not.

 

The stutter remover should help, you can also edit the cell buffer etc in the Ini.

Edited May 8, 2012 by chakaru11

[xTLx]

Nope, basically Oblivion was meant for single cores

 

QFT.

 

 

Oblivion does not really make use of or acknoledge dual or quad cores. There are certain ini tweaks you can try to edit the way it handles RAM/memory, but bottom line is that it does not matter to Oblivion if you have a dual core processor or not.

 

The stutter remover should help, you can also edit the cell buffer etc in the Ini.

 

Okay, actually I figured it out somehow last night. Oh, and sorry about posting the topic twice... I probably should have checked the forum rules before spamming like that. Anyways I always wondered why the game wouldn't allow me to activate both AA and HDR and why it had such trouble recognizing my graphics card, so last night while I was tweaking the .ini and trying out the stutter remover as well as other things people suggested I tried running the game with AA and bloom lighting. Now, it doesn't look INCREDIBLE, but along with the edited draw distances and some changes to the grass and trees it definitely runs at at a tolerable speed outside. It's not perfect, but it's about as good as it's going to get.

[Lethys90]

I just thought of another mod that might help: Low poly grass

I've been using it for so long I forgot i had it!