frames per second in Oblivion

Parmenides

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 25, 2006
Messages
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Hey, I seem to be having problem with frames. I just wonder what you are all getting on your modern systems. I'm finding it sort of rare when my game pushes past 30 FPS. Texture mods, like QTP with AA/AF don't seem to affect my FPS by much. But looking at NPC actors will hurt my frames bad. Without mods, looking at 4 NPC's in a smaller interior can drop down to 30. With mods on, I've once hit 20's when looking at two NPC's. Looking away from NPC's helps a lot. I get better frames outdoors with QTP, than indoors looking at NPCs without texture mods. I tried quiet feet, but that doesn't help. I also notice a little drop in frames when I switch from first person mode to 3rd person.

Is that normal for you all? I know that Oblivion doesn't scale well with modern machines, but is 60 FPS too much to ask for with my hardware? (in sig)
 
When I played Oblivion with no mods on the rig in my signature (desktop), I seem to remember getting ~60FPS outdoors, which I believe is as high as it would go with Vsync on. I remember later playing Shivering Isles with Vsync turned off, and I would sometimes get FPS in the low hundreds while inside buildings. The thing that really hurt FPS for me was combat, especially if multiple NPCs were involved. In those situations, like when approaching an Oblivion Gate outdoors, FPS would sometimes drop noticeably to the point where it negatively impacted the gameplay. It always seemed kind of wierd to me, since the game ran great otherwise.
 
Yeah, combat is always a hit. But for some reason even standing NPCs really hurt me. Your average is definitely a lot higher than mine. Seemingly more than the difference between Q9550 and i7 920. Have you done anything special to the .ini file?
 
Nope. Installed game, cranked up settings, and enjoyed the (for the most part) smooth ride. After struggling with Oblivion for years on my other computer, it was a highly gratifying experience. I believe I did have Shivering Isles and some official DLC installed though, which I'm assuming included the latest patch. If you haven't already, I would make sure you have the game fully up to date. That is wierd that NPCs are causing such a hit for you. Have you tried with no mods running whatsoever to make sure that is not the issue?

Edit: What res are you playing at? I'm only at 1680x1050 so that could in part account for my higher frames.
 
Nope. Installed game, cranked up settings, and enjoyed the (for the most part) smooth ride. After struggling with Oblivion for years on my other computer, it was a highly gratifying experience. I believe I did have Shivering Isles and some official DLC installed though, which I'm assuming included the latest patch. If you haven't already, I would make sure you have the game fully up to date. That is wierd that NPCs are causing such a hit for you. Have you tried with no mods running whatsoever to make sure that is not the issue?

Edit: What res are you playing at? I'm only at 1680x1050 so that could in part account for my higher frames.

Same resolution. I tried it without mods too. Fully patched.
 
Yeah, I refer to there. I read somewhere that since the latest patch some of those values are better left unchanged. Though I'm not sure which.
 
Having the same issue on two of my systems. Outdoors with no NPC's close by run great, but in an interior such as the mages guild with 3-4 people standing around tanks the FPS to 20-30. Both systems using a Q6600, but one has a GTX 260 and the other a 4850. I could swear that the game used to run better on both systems but even with no mods enabled at all the performance is almost the same. Only thing that has changed is running W7.
 
Oblivion's game engine has always been very non-optimal when running large numbers of NPCs nearby. Nature of the beast. Bethesda knew this and designed around it. You won't have noticed this, but when there are more than about four NPCs in combat with you, the others will become inactive to reduce the performance hit. Also, almost all of the quests were very deliberately designed to not normally have more than 4 NPCs attacking the player. People designing mods to make armies of NPCs (like zombies) attack the player ran into this problem.
 
Try turning off self-shadows... the effect can be glitchy, and it doesn't look good anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if it caused weird performance issues.
 
did you manage to sort out decent fps?

I'm suffering from the same issue at the mo. I think its definetely a cpu thing, as it seems to me to be determined by the number of npc's on screen rather than anything graphical (changing graphics settings makes no difference). We also both have i7 920's...i'm going to try forcing it on one core, not overclocking, or maybe disable hyper threading and see if that makes a difference.

I understand the game isn't well optmized, but I should be able to enter the Imperial City and not get fps in the teens, with no mods activated.

System:
i7 920 @ 3.8
ATI 5970
6GB of DDr3 RAM
asus p6td deluxe motherboard
asus xonar d2x sound card
windows 7
 
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disabling multicore support didn't help. Stock clock doesn't help. It's definitely the NPC and some scripts going on. CPU's today are a lot faster than when Oblivion first came out. I"m not sure why 4 NPC's should give Oblivion much trouble for CPUs.

Get this, disabling Microsoft Security Essentials makes my frames even slower!

I know Oblivion is supposed to be *just* a disc check, but I wonder if there are some DRM issues at play. I bought this game when it first came out. I made an iso from disc. So I mount a virtual DVD to play. I can't find my original disc, though I'm sure it is in the house. I read somewhere that the existence of a virtual drive might take a CPU hit.
 
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sorry for ressurecting an old thread, but there is possible solution i'm going to try out in case anyone else comes looking with the same issue.

I gave up on oblivion in the end as with no mods and a fresh install, when i got out of the sewer and entered the city nearby, I was getting fps below 20.

I've just been playing fallout new vegas with the same engine (awesome game, preferring it to the original now most of the bugs have been sorted), and a lot of pc players were getting npc slowdowns:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1123107-fps-when-near-npcs-problems/

there was a dll file that fixed it for me (now obsolete with the latest new vegas patch), which i'm hoping might work with oblivion:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34778

there is another one floating around the new vegas nexus that apparently works better with ATI cards.

Hopefully it will also sort out oblivion, as I've heard its amazing and I didn't play it when released. I'll post back once i've tried it.
 
Yes, please report back. I've been thinking about trying that dll on Oblivion myself.
 
NPC's are really a strain on that particular engine, they used it for fallout new vegas and it raped everyone's computers when fights broke out between more than a few NPCs, especially in open areas.
 
I just tried the dll from new vegas nexus but it made no difference to oblivion.

Looking at this list of supported graphics cards by oblivion:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:System_Requirements

If the dll was to work, perhaps it has to be related (i.e the oblivion launcher would believe you had that card) to one of the ones listed on the above web page as 'originally supported'. The new vegas nexus dll makes oblivion believe you have a 7900 GS, but that card isn't officially supported by oblivion anyway. I've no idea how to go about getting different versions of the d3d9.dll. Anyone?

Since i first responded to this thread i have added a gtx 260 to my pc as a dedicated phsyx processor (my main card is the ati 5970). I just disabled my 5970 and tried running it with the gtx 260, and strangely enough the problem has gone away. With the 4 npcs who meet you in your cell I get a solid 60 fps with the 260, whereas i was getting high 40's with my 5970.

.....no idea why npcs do this to my 5970, but hopefully the 260 will give some decent fps in the imperial city and i can finally play this game!
 
Wow, that is bad. I do remember there was a sort of build your own d3d9.dll for the ATI version on the nexus. I never tried it.
 
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