Oblivion and combat

TBJ

Gawd
Joined
Oct 9, 2002
Messages
827
What graphical variables with video cards affect FPS in combat? For example just wandering around I'll do 24 to 30 FPS, but get into combat drops to 12 (at night). I have shadows shut off, settings such as objects and trees are at about 25% AA at 2X, my resolution is at 1200 x 800 widescreen.
 
The bottleneck is most likely due to the CPU, and maybe to some extent memory bandwidth. How much does dropping AA affect your FPS in combat?
 
That's one old ass computer in your sig, you don't really expect good FPS on Oblivion with that, do you? :p
 
Make sure distant land,trees, buildings is set to off. You could even drop Texture detail from High to Medium and see how your fps is then, but Low is just to horrible to look in Oblivion @ imo.

I would run Task Manager (Alt+Ctrl+Delete) when in game and see if Oblivion is using more than 1GB. If it is you might want to shop for 2GB. I've only ran Oblivion with 2GB 800MHz or 4GB 1333MHz setups, I retired my 3200+, 768MB DDR400 and Geforce 5900 by the time I picked up Oblivion... system memory might be a bottleneck there running with just 1GB total. Plus your mobo maxes out @ 2GB of up to DDR400 memory, I dunno about DDR400 on Oblivion. Even using a SATA HD instead of a PATA would load map area faster for you.

Your mobo supports CPU overclocking. I think your multiplier is locked @ 13x and below. But your FSB of stock 200 and can be adjusted on the DFI easily in the bios.

13Multiplier (x) 210FSB= 2730mhz
13x220= 2860mhz
13x230= 2990mhz

or try perhaps dropping the multiplier to 12x for

12x240= 2880mhz
12x250= 3000mhz

Max recommended VCore from AMD is 1.35V and 95 degrees for that CPU btw. Stay under those to be on the safe side.

Your current GPU is comparable to my old 7600GT.
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This videocard on Newegg gets twice as many frames as a 7900GS. (Which is slightly faster than a 7600GT) If you can afford it and don't want to do a whole system rebuild, I would recommend this AGP card. It would double and then some your current FPS.

ATI 4650 vs 7900GS (The 4670 has DDR3 which runs @ 2x the speed, unlike the DDR2 of the 4650 in this bench)
graph_video.html
 
OK, to recap at 720 x 480 (widescreen) everything maxed out in options, I get roughly 25 FPS, but the game looks like crap unless I run it in window then FPS drops around 20 (but its a small window :( ). If I max out the resolution to 1080p and everything maxed my fps hovers around 5 but everthing looks great if I stand still :D

This is what I noticed with my card/system, I always have 200-300 free MB of video ram (out of 512), I'll at least have around 200k ram left wether I'm at the lowest resolution or the highest. If I turn on a light source such as a torch (fire/lightning in combat for example), or use a illumination spell, my FPS drops a few points, with or without shadows turned on/off, doesn't matter.

The only mod I've done is reduce the density of grass (set to 120). If I get an HD4670 supposedly my FPS should double considering its twice the video card compared to the old one. I've read about needing more ram because of the memory issues inherit with the game, which game factors affect ram? Cpu power? Why does lighting a torch drop my FPS?
 
OK, to recap at 720 x 480 (widescreen) everything maxed out in options, I get roughly 25 FPS, but the game looks like crap unless I run it in window then FPS drops around 20 (but its a small window :( ). If I max out the resolution to 1080p and everything maxed my fps hovers around 5 but everthing looks great if I stand still :D

This is what I noticed with my card/system, I always have 200-300 free MB of video ram (out of 512), I'll at least have around 200k ram left wether I'm at the lowest resolution or the highest. If I turn on a light source such as a torch (fire/lightning in combat for example), or use a illumination spell, my FPS drops a few points, with or without shadows turned on/off, doesn't matter.

The only mod I've done is reduce the density of grass (set to 120). If I get an HD4670 supposedly my FPS should double considering its twice the video card compared to the old one. I've read about needing more ram because of the memory issues inherit with the game, which game factors affect ram? Cpu power? Why does lighting a torch drop my FPS?

Game textures are the worst offender. Turning them to medium or low will help a lot, as for lighting a torch it lowers your frame-rate because it draws extra shadows when the tourch is lit.

Oblivion is a very demanding game CPU wise and fairly demanding GPU wise if you get into mods.
 
Would I really need to install the Unofficial Oblivion Patch if I already have the official one already? I have the collectors edition and have patched to 1.2.0416.
 
Would I really need to install the Unofficial Oblivion Patch if I already have the official one already? I have the collectors edition and have patched to 1.2.0416.

I personally don't use it but I hear that it fixes a bunch of minor issues with the game that aren't covered with the official patch.
 
is the cpu or gpu responsible for drawing distance in oblivion?
 
is the cpu or gpu responsible for drawing distance in oblivion?

Both but it puts far more strain on the cpu then gpu, I really do hope Skyrim is programmed to take advantage of extra cpu cores unlike Oblivion.
 
Here I was running the game below 20 fps and 8 in combat in cities due to a hidden process sucking up CPU usage. Fixed now, up to 50 FPS normal and combat looks good now, just have to wait for my new ram to come in and I'll be good to go. Game looks really good now.
 
Nice. I have a bunch of view distance like lighting and grass pushed far back and it can get fairly demanding at times. I probably could just overclock the processor a tad (Phenom II 1075t stock) to get more of a push but I'd rather just scale back some of the more demanding details.
 
is the cpu or gpu responsible for drawing distance in oblivion?

It's definitely all CPU and I don't think it's multithreaded in anyway. I have crossfired 6950's and it does nothing for it but if I overclock my CPU to about 3.9-4.0GHz I notice an improvement. The game is from 2006 so you can't expect much.
 
It's definitely all CPU and I don't think it's multithreaded in anyway. I have crossfired 6950's and it does nothing for it but if I overclock my CPU to about 3.9-4.0GHz I notice an improvement. The game is from 2006 so you can't expect much.

Yeah, I think there is some performance bug especially with NPCs on screen (and especially multiple NPCs) and higher end AMD video cards, which somehow translates to problems with the CPU. I'm about 90% confident in that hypothesis.

Do you have another modern card (especially nvidia) to swap in? Doesn't matter if it's inferior to your card.
 
No, I'm on a budget. I've read somewhere that no more than 4 npc can attack you at the same time, due to the high cpu usage built in the game, otherwise it will lag too much.
Ha, the last nvidia card I owned was a geforce3 ti200 which I wrecked trying to pop off the gpu heatsink.
 
Draw distance will stress different components more depending on what you're looking at.

In the middle of nowhere with no enemies or NPCs close by it will just stress your video card more, since there is more objects to render. if you're in an area with lots of NPCs it will start including those NPCs in your line of sight which will up the CPU time needed as well.

The RAM is really killing you, 1Gb is just not enough to be running an OS and other background applications as well as a game like Oblivion.
 
Shadows and grass are going to be the big frame rate killers, as is Distance of view....
 
I remember playing Oblivion with a A64 + x1950. Turn the grass off, and go easy on the mods.
 
The 4670 is a fairly powerful card, it comes down to that athalon 64 you're running. Any dual core processor would yield you much better results.
 
Of course, I understand about my hardware's limitations :), but this is what I got with my budget..
I've only installed one mod, streamline v3. I don't have any FPS issues, works pretty good. Only issue now is the game will crash with either a black display or vertical lines, can't alt-tab, then computer reboots after some 10+ minutes of gameplay, it is not a heat issue, my card doesn't heat up past 60C.
 
i'm out of date here so bear with me but isn't there a bug in oblivion that was something to do with the footstep sound effect, like just your own steps are fine, but other creatures and npc's footsteps drop the frames really low or crash on some people's systems, ie, when in town or in combat.

good luck
 
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