Elder Scrolls: Oblivion PC performance and troubleshooting.

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Yes I know this is yet another ESO thread, but I did not see an equivalent one. So here is one for performance and troubleshooting of ESO for the PC. Lock or move the thread as needed.

From this thread.

To anyone who would like to squeeze that last bit of performance out of Oblivion I found a few things that helped me.
Keep in mind these had an effect on a AMD X2 4200, with 2GB RAM and SLI'd 7600GTs running at 1600x1024 resolution. I was able to obtain about 5-10 more FPS depending on the circumstances, and it appeared to make combat more fluid. Use at your own risk.

NOTE Please note do not edit the oblivion.ini in the \Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion directory, as this has no effect. You must edit the oblivion.ini located in \Documents and Settings\..\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion.
Important Make a backup before you make changes.

In the oblivion.ini file find and alter the following variables:

bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1
bUseThreadedBlood=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1

[Display]
bAllow30Shaders=1
[HAVOK]
iNumHavokThreads=3
[OPENMP]
iThreads=20

*EDITed 04/15/2006*

lethial wrote:

woo are those options that will make good use of dual core systems? Certainly looks like it, thanks Nimco!

What graphic driver do you use? Also do you have any idea what the maximum values for those options are? And what is bAllow30Shaders exactly?

thanks again

Currently I am using Forceware 84.25. The values for the bUse or bAllow commands are 0 or 1 as far can tell (on or off duh). I have not explored the iNumHavokThreads=2 past those values yet. If you find a sweet spot please share. bAllow30Shaders seems to imply the use of version 3.0 shaders, so if video cards support them, it may be of benefit.

*NOTE* I did however bump up the [OpenMP] variables with a noticeable result, see *EDIT* in comment above.

For reference:
Distance rendering is on as is HDR , and I have VSYNC turned on. I also turned off character shadows as it seems to have a bug.
Indoor and Outdoor shadowing are not maxed but around the middle.
I average around 30-40 fps outdoors which can dip way below 20 when in intense combat.
I average around 40-60 fps indoors which can dip way below 20 when in intense combat.

Use the command tdt in the console to see your FPS.

This game appears to be very CPU limited. When I turn off VSYNC I easily get triple digit fps but not consistently.

I'm having great performance until I get into outdoor combat, not sure what it is about that aspect that is dragging my system down.

I've done alot to my settings already.

uGridDistantTreeRange=15
uGridDistantCount=25
uGridsToLoad=7
SMainMenuMovieIntro= (leave this blank)
SIntroSequence= (leave this blank)
bUseThreadedBlood=1
bUseThreadedMorpher=1
iPreloadSizeLimit=2000000000
SOblivionIntro=OblivionIntro.bik
bUseHardDriveCache=1
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1

[Display]
bEquippedTorchesCastShadows=1 (torches cast shadows now)
bAllowScreenShot=1 (self explaining)
iShadowMapResolution=2048 (bigger map in menu)

fHorseRunGravity=3.0000 (allows low gravity for horses. 3 is default)
iNumHavokThreads=2

bAllowConsole=1 (self explanitory)
bInstantLevelUp=0 (when you level up, you don't need to sleep)
bAllowHavokGrabTheLiving=1 (allows you to drag sleeping NPC's like in Splinter Cell)

[Grass]
iMinGrassSize=90
fGrassEndDistance=3000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=2000.0000

[OPENMP]
iThreads=20
iOpenMPLevel=20

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with artifacts? I have a 9800XT (not enough horsepower, I know), but even at the lowest settings things are just sparkling with artifacts. Is it the card dying?

hubbinsd wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with artifacts? I have a 9800XT (not enough horsepower, I know), but even at the lowest settings things are just sparkling with artifacts. Is it the card dying?

Update the drivers?

Edwin, how are you using the non-standard 16:10 res? When I edit my .ini for it the game won't start.

It's standard 16:10, you just need to tell windows to add it. To make your own just take 1680 - 1440 which is 240. 1050 - 900 = 150. With this in mind you can find any 16:10 resolution just by either adding or subtracting from your 1680 x 1050 resolution. So far 1440 x 900 or 1200 x 750 seem to handle it well.

IMAGE(http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/4264/untitled17pw.jpg)

Awesome, thanks!

So, even though the monitor doesn't claim to support 1440x900, you can theoretically add the resolution through the NVIDIA driver, and then it would be available? Interesting.

I don't know what monitor you use but the Dell 2005FPW that I have works with it. These resolutions also work on my laptop.

I hooked my PC up to a 32" LCD HDTV and wow, just WOW. Visually, this game is so awesome. I don't fully understand all that 480i/p 720whatcham'callit, and I had to do some messing around, but I finally found a resolution that didn't cut off any of the screen. I set it to 1776x1000. Remarkably, it seems to be running just fine at that resolution and 4xAA.

How do you display the FPS, or can you?

I do hav a question, even though it's not exactly PC performance. Right now I have it hooked up to my HDTV via composite cables (blue, red, green). My TV also has DVI and VGA inputs. Which is ideal and is there enough of a difference to warrent me going out and buying a new cable (DVI or VGA to VGA cable.) I have a X800XT All-In-Wonder video card, btw.

Damn this game is so much fun.

Oh, thanks for that ini trick to zoom out of NPC conversations. I agree, it was too close and too wierd looking.

Edwin wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with artifacts? I have a 9800XT (not enough horsepower, I know), but even at the lowest settings things are just sparkling with artifacts. Is it the card dying?

Update the drivers?

Yeah, that's the first thing I did. I tried the most recent Catalyst, the most recent Omega, and an older Catalyst. No dice. I don't get them much in other games, although on occasion.

hubbinsd wrote:
Edwin wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with artifacts? I have a 9800XT (not enough horsepower, I know), but even at the lowest settings things are just sparkling with artifacts. Is it the card dying?

Update the drivers?

Yeah, that's the first thing I did. I tried the most recent Catalyst, the most recent Omega, and an older Catalyst. No dice. I don't get them much in other games, although on occasion.

If you haven't checked it out already, check out this Unofficial Tech FAQ. It's got some good info and fixes in it.

Propagandalf wrote:

I do hav a question, even though it's not exactly PC performance. Right now I have it hooked up to my HDTV via composite cables (blue, red, green). My TV also has DVI and VGA inputs. Which is ideal and is there enough of a difference to warrent me going out and buying a new cable (DVI or VGA to VGA cable.) I have a X800XT All-In-Wonder video card, btw.

I'm guessing that the DVI is copy protected and can't be utilized with a PC -- at least that's how it is on my 32" LCD HDTV. When ever I hook up a PC, I attach it to the VGA because the PC treats it like a monitor and can detect it's native res. At the native res, there's no dithering so everything is crystal clear. I'd say give it a try if you can stop playing for the 5 minutes required to do the testing.

Edwin wrote:

I've done alot to my settings already.

Interesting, some of my unedited values were the same or higher than yours. Must be automagically generated by the engine.

I did however try iPreloadSizeLimit=2000000000 previously and found no "noticeable" benefit.

Did you notice a difference with bUseHardDriveCache=1? How much memory do you have Edwin?

Propagandalf wrote:

I hooked my PC up to a 32" LCD HDTV and wow, just WOW. Visually, this game is so awesome. I don't fully understand all that 480i/p 720whatcham'callit, and I had to do some messing around, but I finally found a resolution that didn't cut off any of the screen. I set it to 1776x1000. Remarkably, it seems to be running just fine at that resolution and 4xAA.

How do you display the FPS, or can you?

I do hav a question, even though it's not exactly PC performance. Right now I have it hooked up to my HDTV via composite cables (blue, red, green). My TV also has DVI and VGA inputs. Which is ideal and is there enough of a difference to warrent me going out and buying a new cable (DVI or VGA to VGA cable.) I have a X800XT All-In-Wonder video card, btw.

Damn this game is so much fun.

Oh, thanks for that ini trick to zoom out of NPC conversations. I agree, it was too close and too wierd looking.

Certainly use a VGA cable for your PC to LCD TV.. that way you should get the LCD's native resolution automatically...

I posted this in another thread, but since we're trying to consolidate:

Well for those who own nVidia cards there may be a way to get increased performance for free. Apparently, a bunch of folks over at theelderscrolls.com forums have tried this "hack" and seen up to a 50% improvement in fps:

1. Download CoolBits (this is simply a registry fix that opens some of the hidden options in nVidia's control panel)
2. Go to DISPLAY PROPERTIES -> ADVANCED
3. Go to Additional Direct3D Settings
4. Change "Max frames to render ahead" from 3 (or whatever it is) to 0.

To be honest, it didn't do much for me but it did seem to help other folks out. Tried this on your beast, Nim?

Chum, that setting, along with turning off V-sync enabled me to play at 1920x1200 HDR smoothly. I haven't got into a HUGE battle though. But those two options definitely helped a lot for me.

Is anyone else getting a massive performance hit wandering around the Waterfront in the Imperial City? I'm dropping to ~1FPS.

Chum wrote:

To be honest, it didn't do much for me but it did seem to help other folks out. Tried this on your beast, Nim?

Yep but no appreciable difference, but I do not think that my video cards are the bottleneck. Some of the suggestions on the ES forums I have come to equate with voodoo.

*EDIT* I turned that setting back to 3 frame pre-renders, no difference. However since I finally succumbed to turning off VSYNC, I think all of the tweaks have paid off. I stay above 60 fps consistently and pop above 120 fps occasionally. I still dip below 15 fps when in an intense battle, or in some areas. But I can live with that (till tomorrow ;)).
*EDIT2*Ok I lied. Back to 0 frame pre-renders. I started to notice a slight interface lag.

hubbinsd wrote:
Edwin wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with artifacts? I have a 9800XT (not enough horsepower, I know), but even at the lowest settings things are just sparkling with artifacts. Is it the card dying?

Update the drivers?

Yeah, that's the first thing I did. I tried the most recent Catalyst, the most recent Omega, and an older Catalyst. No dice. I don't get them much in other games, although on occasion.

Update: Some fresh Arctic Silver 5 on the GPU cleared all the artifacts right up.

Found in another forum. Evidently the poster works for Bethesda as an artist.

speon (Bethesda Artist) wrote:

DISCLAIMER: Use at your own risk. Back up your Oblivion.ini first. Please do not request official troubleshooting support with any changes to your .ini file. Consider these to be just from a fan playing the game. You guys are smart and know all this, just cma again

Here are some tweaks I play with:

uGridDistantTreeRange=15
raise to increase area in which LOD tree billboards are drawn - looks quite nice doubled if your comp. can take it

uGridDistantCount=25
raise to increase the number of LOD tree billboards drawn - looks quite nice doubled if your comp. can take it

uGridsToLoad=5
raise to increase the X/Y dimension of the number of high detail exterior cells loaded - should be an odd number, 3 or greater. This is quite a performance hit with anything above 5. If there are 25 cells loaded at a time with a value of 5, then there are 49 cells loaded with a value of 7 and so on. I would not recommend going above 7 or 9, but terrain looks nicer if your comp can take it

bAllowScreenShot=0
set to 1 to allow the PrintScreen key to take screenshots

bFull Screen=1
0 = windowed, 1 = fullscreen

iSize W=640
iSize H=480
current screen resolution

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=0
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=0
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=0
bUseWaterReflectionsActors=0
set these to 1 to allow these kinds of objects to reflect in water

fDlgFocus=2.1000
raise to pull camera back some in dialogue - I use a value of 4 or so

bForceFullLOD=0
a value of 1 forces foreground trees to always render at the highest detail - I haven't found this to be a huge performance hit for the visual benefit, your mileage may very

iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=2
raise to allow more unique grass types per terrain texture - 4 should be enough to let you see everything possible

Here are some comments straight from an Oblivion developer. They go against some of the settings up above, so if they're working for you then ignore this:

-edited-
Nimcosi beat me to it

-edit 2-
I will add that I'm not sure if PC users will see much benefit to "bUseHardDriveCache=1" as that sounds like an Xbox360 setting. On the PC you'd be better off letting it use your RAM for caching than your harddrive.

-edit 3-
Edwin, I used all of your INI settings (except the auto-leveling, grabbing sleeping npcs, etc) that effected graphics and it killed my PC. The game was running at around .5 fps (and that's not an exaggeration.. the water would animate once every couple seconds). I don't know what you're running but its way way faster than mine. I'm going through the settings to see which one it is.

Okay, found the one my system didn't like:

iShadowMapResolution=2048

Not sure why, but that setting brought my system to it's knees.

Also:

[Grass]
fGrassEndDistance=3000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=2000.0000

These settings drastically lower the grass draw distance putting a very small bubble around your character where grass in drawn. I noticed a tiny increase in FPS, but I couldn't stand the constant fill in of grass around me. I ended up bumping mine up to 10000.0000 and 9000.0000 respectively to increase the distance at which grass is drawn. I hardly see any grass fill in now. I may have taken a 1-2 FPS hit, but I'll deal with it for now unless I hit a particularly grassy area that hits my system hard.

This game is making it very hard not to want to spring for one them shiney X1900XT cards.

Nim - Are you using HDR or AA (2x, 4x)? Bloom?

Vega wrote:

Here are some comments straight from an Oblivion developer. They go against some of the settings up above, so if they're working for you then ignore this:

-edited-
Nimcosi beat me to it

-edit 2-
I will add that I'm not sure if PC users will see much benefit to "bUseHardDriveCache=1" as that sounds like an Xbox360 setting. On the PC you'd be better off letting it use your RAM for caching than your harddrive.

Sorry about that. I concur with your statement about bUseHardDriveCache=1. I enabled it and perceived a slight slowdown due to HD access.
Uuummmm, this is a tasty burger Mind if I have some of your tasty beverage to wash this down with?

Chum wrote:

Nim - Are you using HDR or AA (2x, 4x)? Bloom?

HDR baby. HDR.

Keep the tweaks coming kids.

I just stumbled across this link which looks pretty promising:

http://ideveloper.pandora-studios.com/files/OblivionSettingsGuide.txt

I just wanted to say thanks for all the tips. I've been too rapt to ever shut the game down long enough to look up this stuff. I really like the pullback for the speech, that helps a lot.

Is anyone else having a framerate issue whenever a non-humanoid creature moves? I think it's an animation or havok issue. The stutter seems to be in sync with the creature's walking animation, which could also be an indicator of that creature interacting with the ground in some way. I see some stuff in the ini related to Havok but am too skiddish to just start meddling. I took a glance at the Elder Scrolls forums but it's so chaotic over there that I don't how anyone could gleen information for all the "please help me" threads.

Edwin wrote:

It's standard 16:10, you just need to tell windows to add it. To make your own just take 1680 - 1440 which is 240. 1050 - 900 = 150. With this in mind you can find any 16:10 resolution just by either adding or subtracting from your 1680 x 1050 resolution. So far 1440 x 900 or 1200 x 750 seem to handle it well.

IMAGE(http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/4264/untitled17pw.jpg)

Not truely a OB troubleshooting problem, but does anyone know if ATI has something similar to this in their drivers? I'd probably lean more towards an ATI card down the road for my next upgrade if so.

Thanks so much guys. Anyone has problem getting any kind of voice to come up using X-Fi at full acceleration?

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