The Oblivion Hardware Thread...

[Willem]

Originally posted by bonscott

https://www.tweakguides.com

I would wait until you get outside before you start tweaking around too much. Most of the tweaks are for the outside environments.

Cool, thanks. That's a very helpful article. I think though that I'll just wait a couple of weeks until I can afford my new video card. I don't want to spend several hours tweaking things just to have to do it all over again later.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Man, just found almost my first showstopper bug! I was doing a Fighter's Guild quest in the "Fallen Mine" (or something like that). I had just upgraded to the new NVIDIA Forceware drivers (which increased FPS outside by like 10 FPS!). The game just kept crashing. The screen would turn to all grey and take the system with it. It kept happening.

I thought it was the drivers, so I tried the last official drivers... DID IT AGAIN! By this time I was getting pissy. Put the new ones on again, and the last time got through the cave. After I had what I needed, I hightailed it the **** out of there and saved when outside.

Whew! I still have no idea what that was about!

[Quillan]

What tweaks have you done, Imran? There are a few places where the game requires specular lighting, and it'll crash quickly if you have it disabled. That may be one of those spots.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by bonscott

https://www.tweakguides.com

I would wait until you get outside before you start tweaking around too much. Most of the tweaks are for the outside environments.

good info

I've done these ones on the ini(make sure its the right ini - the 'your name/my docs/' one) - just to improve stability for longer playing sessions:

bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1(changed from 0) - helps tidy up memmory

bSelectivePurgeUnusedOnFastTravel=1(changed from 0) - does the same but on fast travel

bUseHardDriveCache=1(changed from 0) - meant to improve general performance, not sure yet.

iMinGrassSize=120(changed from 80) - helped me get around 20 FPS when running through grass( it was dropping to around 16 FPS before).

and then restarted with a new char to get my first in-game freeze/lock-up - as opposed to a crash to desktop. So yeah maybe do any changes once you are outside.

The above changes definately helped with the crash to desktop i had been getting(maybe every 30-40mins?), and yesterday i was able to play for 4hrs without a crash.

lol my new advice for Oblivion has become the same as my best advice for Daggerfall - Save often! such progress we've made

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Quillan
What tweaks have you done, Imran? There are a few places where the game requires specular lighting, and it'll crash quickly if you have it disabled. That may be one of those spots.

Yep, Weynon Priory is one of those places. Basically what I did was kept specular lighting turned on but limited it's distance to very close so basically it's only used on my own equipment to just a couple feet in front of me. This keeps the frames up, makes my sword look all shiney and more importantly keeps the crashes away.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Quillan
What tweaks have you done, Imran? There are a few places where the game requires specular lighting, and it'll crash quickly if you have it disabled. That may be one of those spots.

I have spec lighting... I got everything turned up. It just didn't like that one cave. It was quite strange. Hopefully I didn't mess anything up in the tweaking of the .ini (though it just happened last night, so I don't think I did).

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by El_Cid


good info

I've done these ones on the ini(make sure its the right ini - the 'your name/my docs/' one) - just to improve stability for longer playing sessions:

bPreemptivelyUnloadCells=1(changed from 0) - helps tidy up memmory

bSelectivePurgeUnusedOnFastTravel=1(changed from 0) - does the same but on fast travel

bUseHardDriveCache=1(changed from 0) - meant to improve general performance, not sure yet.

iMinGrassSize=120(changed from 80) - helped me get around 20 FPS when running through grass( it was dropping to around 16 FPS before).

and then restarted with a new char to get my first in-game freeze/lock-up - as opposed to a crash to desktop. So yeah maybe do any changes once you are outside.

The above changes definately helped with the crash to desktop i had been getting(maybe every 30-40mins?), and yesterday i was able to play for 4hrs without a crash.

lol my new advice for Oblivion has become the same as my best advice for Daggerfall - Save often! such progress we've made

The preemptivelyunload vars are recommended to not be set to 1 unless you have <1gb ram ... and if you have <1gb ram ... buy more Definitely tweak the grass though, that makes a HUGE difference

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Man, just found almost my first showstopper bug! I was doing a Fighter's Guild quest in the "Fallen Mine" (or something like that). I had just upgraded to the new NVIDIA Forceware drivers (which increased FPS outside by like 10 FPS!). The game just kept crashing. The screen would turn to all grey and take the system with it. It kept happening.

I thought it was the drivers, so I tried the last official drivers... DID IT AGAIN! By this time I was getting pissy. Put the new ones on again, and the last time got through the cave. After I had what I needed, I hightailed it the **** out of there and saved when outside.

Whew! I still have no idea what that was about!

Check your vcard's temps if you can - that could be an overheat. Also could be the new drivers, oddly enough; my recent upgrade of ATI drivers, though good for Oblivion, made Civ4 way more unstable...

[bonscott]

I'm still on the ATI 6.3 drivers. They are stable enough and I get good enough frames in Oblivion. I'll upgrade once they make some actual tweaks for Oblivion and see what they do. I haven't launched Civ 4 in months so I don't know how it performs with these drivers. Since I see a new patch is out I may need to try it.

[Asher]

This is one of the advantages of playing the Xbox version.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Asher
This is one of the advantages of playing the Xbox version.

The only one though, well and being able to use AA+HDR at the same time, which the PC version will get properly soon

If your on PC you can tweak stuff and get free mods. Got myself some improved textures as recomended in the tweakguide site:

http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

plus the remove 'loading area' text - an unfun left over from the console port i guess?

also i've got the 'Call steed+saddlebags' mod, as it makes sense you can use your horse to carry some things.

@Snoopy,

Originally posted by Snoopy369
The preemptivelyunload vars are recommended to not be set to 1 unless you have <1gb ram ... and if you have <1gb ram ... buy more Definitely tweak the grass though, that makes a HUGE difference

Lucky i got 1 gig then - i never knew that. Still After another 6 hour session today, i've not had the crashes i was getting fairly regular - so its seems to have done something good

[Asher]

Originally posted by El_Cid
The only one though, well and being able to use AA+HDR at the same time, which the PC version will get properly soon

Only on X1K series ATI cards.

[El_Cid]

Thought i'd add my system specs here, as i've found such posts usefull when trying to compare a games problems with hardware performance.

Abit AX8 v2.0 motherboard
AMD Athlon64 3700
1 Gig Kingston value ram(2x512mb) PC3200
Connect 3D Radeon X1600pro PCIE
On board sound Realtek AC97

I've got all the latest drivers+updates for those bits of hardware that might need it.

Curently with graphics set to 1024x768 and HDR on(no AA) and most of the distance settings set to max or near max, i'm getting around 30+ fps indoors and around 20+ fps outside.

Its was a few frames per second slower until i tweaked the ini files is i posted earlier(most likely it was the grass settings in the ini that made the difference). Its not zooming along, but its certainly playable and combat doesnt drop the frame rate by more than a few fps.

[snoopy369]

If anyone's still having trouble running Oblivion due to an old gfx card, read this article from online gaming mag IGN ... "Oldblivion", which apparently allows non-dx9 cards to run oblivion (a homebrew patch).