Strange Freeze up on Win10

[etayorius]

I been having this Extremely weird issue for the last two weeks where the game would start fine, the save would load fine and after like 1-5 minutes or Gameplay, the game just freezes up. Like literally, the screen Freezes but i can still hear the music playing,but the HDD would start reading like crazy and i can't seem to be able to do much. So i just wait for around 2/3 minutes and the game would RESUME, like nothing just happen... What the...?? but then i move again and after another minute of two of playing the game would freeze again only to resume after several minutes. This goes on basically for ever. I thought my windows just needed a fresh install, so this last Sunday i reinstalled windows 10 all over again. Then fire up Oblivion and same thing happens!

Then, i was like ok... Maybe it's my Oblivion Install because i use one 128GB SSD for Windows, 1TB HDD for Steam (Where Oblivion is installed) and a second 1TB HDD for storage. So uninstalled through Steam and got rid of any leftovers by deleting the whole Oblivion Folder inside Steam/SteamApps/Common/ and start a fresh download of Oblivion. Dowload finished then i fire the Oblivion with a new GAME using not one single mods, just to test if everything is fine... but just when i thought everything was fine now and was about to go out of the Tutorial sewers... IT'S BACK! the game freezes again just 6 feet from where the game asks you if there is anything you want to change before going out the sewers! and then after two minutes of watching the frozen screen, the game resumes again and pretends nothing happens! Ok, i go out of the sewers walk like one minute heading to IC AND IT HAPENS AGAIN!

I am not sure what the hell is going, Fresh windows install, fresh oblivion install with not a single mod...so??? i thought it might be my Windows Page file, because i use one of the HDD Drives as Swap file with 4-8GB of disk space, because SSD hates Swap Files. So i moved my page file to my Steam Only HHD, launch Oblivion and THE SAME Bull**** happens!! Ok, then... moved my page file to the SSD. Launch Oblivion and the game Starts stuttering like crazy (SSD's...) but still freezes up. So it's definitely not my page file. Well, all games should be doing this right? Launch GTAIV and play for an hour or so of just teasing and harassing the police but everything works fine. Then i try GTAV and fire up one of the heists with one of my Steam buddies, we exploited and repeated "The Data Breaches" Heist, the part of defending the IAA Base like 5 times in a row and earning near to 2Millions in less than 20 minutes. Fire up Doom 2016 with Vulkan and played around two hours the MP TDM, but all fine.

So i start thinking, maybe i should test Bethesda games only, so i start Fallout 4 and play for like an hour and everything just works perfectly. Then i go to Fallout 3 and play for almost half an hour and all fine again. Fire up Fallout New Vegas and again all fine for like 15 minutes. Run SkyrimSE for an hour of just hunting roaming outside Whiterun and all perfectly fine. Finally i go back to Oblivion, start a new game with the fresh Oblivion install and this time made it out of the sewers, but just before getting to IC i get the $#%%#&^*% %#^^%&%^&* Freeze again! it's driving me crazy!

I'm using win10, Core i5 6500, GTX970 and 8GB DDR4 RAM. I have already tried to change my nVidia drivers from newer or older versions to no avail, Oblivion still freezes and resumes after a while. What i am going to do NEXT is copy my fresh Oblivion folder to my Storage HDD. The problem could be my Steam only HDD?? but if so, why are all the other games running without any issue? even other Bethesda games. I'm Stating to think it might be Windows 10 somehow, because it updated about a month ago before all the problems started. I even defrag both of my HDD and even used PowerShell ChkDsk for any bad sectors on my HDD's, but Windows claims there are no errors or any sort in my HDD's, so what the heck? I also tested my RAM with Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool and there are no issues, It's only Oblivion acting weird. I am going to try my RX480 and GTX1070 (which i use for mining) and try them on this System, maybe it's my GTX970? doubtful, but i will still try it out.

I just can't Live without Oblivion, it was my first Bugthesda Open World game ever, and i keep coming back to it despite all the CTD's and Glitches. Anyone have any ideas what might be wrong or what can i do to figure out what the hell is going on? I have been playing Oblivion without any other obvious issues for almost a decade, but all of a sudden it this "Freeze" started happening and refused to go away even with a Fresh Windows/Oblivion install.

To recap, these are the things i tried:

Fresh Windows Install.

Fresh Oblivion Install.

New nVidia Drivers.
Old nVidia Drivers.
No Mods and with Mods.
Delete Oblivion.ini inside User/Documents/My Games/Oblvion.

Moved my PageFile to each of my Other Drives.
No Page File.

Defrag both Steam HDD and Storage HDD (but not my SSD, should never be Defragged)
ScanDisk through PowerShell for any bad sectos or errors.
Check RAM through Windows Memory Diagnostic Tools.
Tested about a dozen Different Open World games, Bethesda and other developers and Oblivion is the only acting like this.

Things i still need to test:

Test Oblivion in different Drives.
Test GTX1070 and RX480 in this particular System.
Test Oblivion in my Mining Rig with either RX480 or GTX1070.
Test GTX970 playing Oblivion in my mining Rig.

[Edit]

LOL? I tested Original system with GTX970 and the Fresh Oblivion Folder in my Steam only HDD without any Mods, but this time i lowered resolution to 720p, Oblivion Texture size to Low and Disabled all the Water Effects in Game. I fiinally managed to walk all the way from the Tutorial Sewer, to the "Inn of Ill Omen" without any issues. Now i will try the Second Oblivion Folder full of mods with these settings. If all works out fine then it might be a problem with Oblivion Shaders somehow. It looks like Crap... but hey, "It Just Works" (LOL)...

Edited December 5, 2018 by etayorius

[etayorius]

Well, it has something to do with Texture Size in the options, as soon as i set it to "Low" i stop getting these odd freezes... So who knows what i'ts causing it. But i least i can play now. Looks horrible though...

[etayorius]

I finally know what is causing them. It turns out it was my GPU overclock, Clock Speed was set from default 1114Mhz to 1214Mhz. Just by returning to default values the Constant freezes almost went away, because i played for two hours straight and just right after another freeze. Then enabled my OC again and there it was, right after two minutes mark the game froze again. Disabled OC, tested for an hour and not a single Freeze until about 2 hours again... hmm so i basically underclocked my GTX970 from Default clock speeds of 1114Mhz to 1014Mhz. I left the game running idling just right outside IC for 4 hours straight, not one single Freeze. I also tested temps and the GPU was max temp while playing oblivion was 43°C and even playing Doom, Fallout 4 or SkyrimSE only maxed at around 58°C. So there was definitely not a Temperature issue.

I kinda of remeber having this exact same issue back when i had a 8800GT in around 2009 and even a GTX470 in 2011. I just sort of forgot about this deal, so Oblivion seems to hate OC or high clock speeds. So basically if you're having any sort of freezes of CTD's just disable OC or underclock the GPU a bit.

Edited December 11, 2018 by etayorius