CPU performance with a 200+ modded game

[Afromelon]

Okay so first off, this could have gone in the normal oblivion support area, but as this place seems to be visited more, and this forum also includes 'mod talk', i figured it would still be appropriate.

 

So i have lots of mods. LOTS of mods. FCOM, Better Cities, Better Dungeons, Unique Landscapes, Reclaim Sancre Tor, Kragnirs death quest, the aylied steps, supreme magica, LAME, deadly reflex 5, Dynamic Leveled Lists, lots of other little mods like cliff's better notes, etc, some more quest mods. Of course, sometimes the game crashes. I also get down to 7 fps in certain areas in certain cities, with Better Cities.

 

I have an i3 3220 3.3ghz, paired with a 560ti 448 core. Now i know my cpu is the bottleneck because i have tons of neat graphical things turned on with OBGE, and when im down to 7fps, turning those off doesnt raise it. So my question is...

 

Would purchasing an i5 3570k, and overclocking it to 4.0ghz or 4.5ghz turn that 7 fps into say, 15 maybe? And the most important question: WOULD having a more powerful cpu reduce crashes related to just having a largely modded game? Such as crashing when going through a load door after X amount of time of playing, completely random crashes when roaming the wilderness, things like that. (i pretty much never get a repeated crash because i try to make my game as compatible as possible).

 

I would greatly appreciate your input/replies. Thanks.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Afromelon

[lonewolfkai]

Crashing is typically related to mods as in a conflict between them. It's also quite possible you're reaching the 2gb ram limit cap that's on the vanilla settings. There is a way to get up to 4gb instead if you have a 64bit OS. If you only have 32bit, you're stuck at the 2gb limit.

 

Upgrading to a more powerful CPU will certainly help your bottlenecking because the game engine is limited to using only one core, despite having a duo or quad. Therefore you're only getting to use a 3.3ghz SINGLE core for your game. You might also want to try reducing the background programs that may be running and taking up additional resources that won't be available for Oblivion.

 

Also, look into getting Oblivion Stutter Remover and adjusting the settings to your system specs.

Edited March 22, 2013 by lonewolf_kai

[Afromelon]

Oh believe me, i already know this stuff...ive got streamline, stutter remover, the 4gb patch, cpu priority set to high, and yes, i have 64 bit win 7. And i know the crashes aren't mod conflicts, because they don't reoccur, they are just random. Could upgrading to a more powerful cpu help reduce these entirely RANDOM crashes?

[nenina]

Modded and vanilla Oblivion is going to crash no matter what system you have... because it's Oblivion. And the mods you're using, FCOM + Unique Landscapes + Better Cities == Ouch! First, let me tell you my hatred for Unique Landscapes file xuldarkforest.esp Mr. crashcrash. Turn it off, it even gave me crashes while inside Bravil. Better system won't reduce crashes because it's the engine at fault. I would say, pardon the blasphemy, but consider trying without Unique Landscapes for a while, as that's when my FCOM was last stable. Right after installing Unique Landscapes I got my first crash of this game after 6-8 hours total gameplay. Losing xuldarkforest reduced the crashes, but not all. Overall I've had 13 crashes and 1 freeze, not a one of them came before installing Unique Landscapes. But I put up with it, because see how it looks!

 

I've learned to accept that crash is imminent after 40 minutes playing, because memory ceiling. Same problem with Oblivion War Cry New Dimesion, but sooner because of the way it ate up my system with its textures. Nice overhaul but, man, the author tells you to put uGrids to 1 just to deal with it. Use a pcb mod to delay the inevitable and extend playtime.

Edited March 24, 2013 by nenina

[Afromelon]

The thing is though, for every mod i use one of these http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/13834 ... Nenina, when it was crashing for you, were you using those compatibility patches?

 

:O

 

Also, i dont fast travel, so for me unique landscapes is a must for exploring.

Edited March 25, 2013 by Afromelon

[lonewolfkai]

Have you got autosave turned on?

[nenina]

Yes, there should be three for FCOM but I only use two because I'm not using the optional module from Frans. Also for Bandit Hideouts. It's just that FCOM, UL,BC and the rest of them combined are getting at that memory ceiling faster because of my textures. I've read that having 6-8 GB RAM might have performance ( not crashing ) improvements, but those few are in conflict with the following post. If you haven't seen it yet:

 

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1176244-oblivion-and-memory-usage/

 

I totally understand not wanting to play without UL, because of how uninspired exterior cells will look without it. With UL it's >= Skyrim.

 

By the way, how do you get Oblivion.exe set priority to high and make it stay that way, AND use OBSE? With OBSE it says I have no access for some reason. Without OBSE, I can set it but will be playing without the script extender. I've never tried that method before.

 

Btw, you CAN try Windom Earle's Crash Prevention System, which will catch, prevent and fix a crash and allow you to continue playing, just playing a Windows boink sound to tell you it happened. However, I've seen it deprecated and accused of corrupting savegames, so I don't use it until I know more.

 

*EXPERIMENTAL! Consequences of using this plugin aren't known*

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/22282

[Afromelon]

Yep, i already use Windom Earl'es Crash Prevention System...hahah.. And as for the Oblivion priority thing...first you need to download something called "Prio" http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html This lets you set a priority for ANY .exe in the task manager and it will stay that way and automatically apply that each time you launch that program. And yeah, when you start with the obse loader, two things open in the tast manager... obse_loader.exe and oblivion.exe. Oblivion.exe is what you want to right click and set the priority to high on, to do this you just have to open up the game, alt tab out and set it. Of course going back to the game will give a black screen and you will have to force close it. But thats how you set it, and from then on you just need to start the game and boom. I'm actually not sure how beneficial (or how harmful) this is to a heavily modded oblivion, but its worth a try and its why i do it. I wonder if setting the priority to high in obse_loader.exe would improve performance...if its the process that obse scripts run though, then maybe setting it to high would reduce crashes...who knows. Theres pretty much never any cpu usage and barely any memory usage coming from it though, so i never thought about it.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Afromelon

[Afromelon]

Have you got autosave turned on?

No, i have it turned off because i know it can cause instability...i instead use streamsave from streamline, with 40 or so save slots, have it autosave after resting/waiting, going through load doors etc, and after combat. In addition to that i have it save every 15 minutes. Only reason i do this is because it crashes so randomly, i need to make sure im losing as little progress as possible.

[lonewolfkai]

Okay, I'd check into your mod compatibility then. Sounds like there's an issue there.

Also, have you cleaned the mods you have with TES4Edit?

Finally, I'm one of those who prescribe to be leary of use of WECPS. There have been cases of it causing problems with other users, including irrepairable damage to their save game files.

Edited April 3, 2013 by lonewolf_kai