Oblivion.ini settings for modern PC

[Striker879]

The Oblivion game engine is old, and without the source code for it we can expect only so much from external sources like patches etc.

 

I wonder if a better way of looking at it would be "what tweaks can be made to modern hardware and operating systems to help Oblivion run better on a modern PC".

[Tinien]

Yes, I catch your thought. Koroush Ghazi, the author of famous TweakGuides, wrote in his Oblivion Tweak Guide that "many people report problems with this game and in almost all cases these are due to general system issues and not the game itself. With that in mind I strongly urge you to take some time and follow the advice below if you truly want this game, and indeed every other game you own, to run at its fastest and most trouble-free". And further he suggests to thoroughly read his TweakGuides Tweaking Companion - almost 500-page Windows guide. Well, I don't have such patience and time to read through all this guide just to get few useful tips on how to set up my OS for better and stable Oblivion gameplay. Not worth the candle. If only there was some program which could analyze my PC specs, OS version and in accordance to received data it would tweak OS optimally for Oblivion (or any other game with the same cranky engine) - I'd be ready to buy such miraculous program for any reasonable price. Of course provided that after all this OS tweaking my Oblivion would become absolutely stable. Like Skyrim without mods.

 

P.S. My first post is still viable and I'll be very glad to read some useful tips from Oblivion gurus.

[Morghean]

I have the same problem. I've upgraded my rig about two years ago, thought I'll have better running with things, maybe add more beauty to it, but ended up not even able to start the game. I've went through all those multi-core settings on about 3 or so major gaming portals (TweakGuides, IGN, Nexus, Gamespot, etc), none of them were exact about what settings does what... and more importantly, how must one set those according their own rig, like how many cores you have. So the two old games (Oblivion & Fallout 3) that I used to play with and mod (even with own mods) were rendered unplayable. Even tried reinstalling those games, freshly with all mods as an idiot check, but I already knew, that if it doesn't start, it's the ini at fault (which I tried to set and reset multiple times). I have the GOG version of both games by the way.

 

I used to have a very (I mean VERY) old rig:

- Intel P4 2.4GHz (single core)

- 1GB DDR2 ram

- Radeon 1650 pro with 512MB ram

- 32bit WinXP Pro

(yeah.. apart the radeon, the whole rig was about 14-15 years old)

 

I had about 50 mods loaded, give and take another 5 depending on the character I wanted to play with (like, not loading vile lair and such evil themed things if I played with my goodie-two-shues kaleen warrior). Things that could stress my rig was OOO, Enhanced Weather, Realistic Water, ImpeREAL City Unique Districts, Kvatch Rebuilt and the usual eyecandy armors and clothing mods, with some texture halving (performance) mods too...

I'd say, it was quite stable (to the standards of that old rig.. having a CTD only after about 4-5 hours of game play...), I thought, that when I'll have a better rig, I could afford higher textures and maybe ENB too.

Side note: FO3 was running with ~96 mods, with high demand mods like FWE, EVE, MMM, Project Beauty, on medium with halved textures/performance mods. The game was pretty stable... more stable than Oblivion itself, probably because I used xEdit extensively to make things work together (since Wyre Bash wasn't available for the time). The only time I had a ton of lag was the end of the Main Quest, when Liberty Prime went on it's way, or when I peeked on how the Brotherhood fare with the Enclave on the runway battle, in Andrews Air-force Base (Broken Steel's end).

 

My current rig is still considered old:

- Intel i7 2,8GHz (four cores)

- 16GB DDR (couldn't get which version, but surely 3 or better)

- Radeon XR 550 with 4GB vram

- 64bit Win10 Pro

(again, the radeon is the youngest of the bunch, having purchased last year)

 

I can run Fallout 4 with 200 mods (not counting .esl files), on medium settings. Can run Skyrim LE on high settings (with official high res pack). Can run Skyrim-Enderal with ~50 or so mods on high settings without much problem... Except for Skyrim LE, I have a stability of 6-7 hours between CTDs (more with FO4 if I only do settlement building). Skyrim LE is only unstable because I only have it a few days and it's still fresh (and suffocates under 200 plugins...). Troll note: I do consider buying Skyrim SE, but only when steam has it discounted to more than 50%...

 

I know this is an Oblivion forum and mentioning things like TES5, Enderal, FO4, FO3 is out of place, but FO3 has the same engine so it's kind of a sister-game (about the same settings needed for it) and the rest is for to compare the new and old rigs...

 

 

I too would like to have an insight of how the ini files can be tinkered with to have better compatibility with my own rig. Something that goes beyond: "if you have multi core set this to that..." to the way on: "if you have this much cores, you should set this and that, to about/around this or that". Unfortunately, not even the guide on Nexus does that.

[ReverendFelix]

This is the best I have found;

 

Multi-core CPU tweaks

 

If you have a Dual/Quad core Processor or a processor with Hyper-Threading, then set these values to this:

 

bUseThreadedBlood=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedMorpher=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedTempEffects=1 (default 0)

bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 (default 0)

bUseBackgroundPathing=1 (default 0)

bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1 (default 0)

iNumHavokThreads=3 (default 1)

iThreads=10 (default 3)

 

 

 

bDebugFaceGenMultithreading=1

bUseMultiThreadedTrees=1

bUseMultiThreadedFaceGen=1

 

I am actually about to test these settings myself. So be aware I can't verify yet.

[Tinien]

Thanks, Felix, but these recommendations are similar to those on uesp and I've read them too. One parameter among them is disputable. I mean bUseBackgroundFileLoader which when set to 1 can cause CTDs on some systems, says Oblivion TweakGuide. There is another parameter though, which I haven't met so far in any guides - bDebugFaceGenMultithreading. Is it really needed to be enabled and what does it do? Maybe someone would know the answer.

 

And I especially wish to note two variables in Oblivion.ini one more time - bUseMultiThreadedTrees and bBackgroundPathing. By default first is enabled (1) and the second is disabled (0). And there is a question about each one. First bUseMultiThreadedTrees - does this variable affect something regarding trees rendering and if yes then what exactly and how? And how would it be better to set it for the game stability on modern CPU - 1 or 0? And next bBackgroundPathing - what does this parameter do and is it needed at all if there is bUseBackgroundPathing=1 next to it? In other words, why do we need two apparently identical variables, one of which is disabled and the other is enabled by default?

[ReverendFelix]

Honestly, I found these suggested settings through a friend. I can't really offer much info regarding them. I personally plan to enable these settings 1 by 1, and see how the game reacts. But it may be a bit, I am currently modding a lot. I feel it's a bad time to make these kinds of changes.