My frame rate is horrible. I've got the resolution set to 640x480 and most of the sliders all the way to the left and I can't seem to get more than 15fps in most areas. Of course, the fact that my PC is just barely over the minimum system requirements and I'm running it through Wine instead of natively on Windows isn't helping.

When I first bought it, I couldn't run it at max, but I hated it and didn't play it anyway, so it didn't matter. That didn't have anything to do with the graphics - my issues were (and still are) with the hand-holding - particularly the map markers and the in-game hint delivery system laughably called a "journal."

A bit over a year after it came out, I was given a GOTY edition of it, and I had substantially upgraded my computer by then, so I went ahead and reinstalled it and cranked it all the way up. I almost immediately turned the grass off, and have never turned it back on. The short draw distance, even at max, absolutely kills any graphical benefits it might provide. Eventually, as others have said, I ended up turning a lot of it down and adding a fog mod. Yeah - it's nice to come around a corner and see a beautiful valley sweeping away from me and rising up to foothills in the distance, but that's completely destroyed when an entire freaking building pops into existence BETWEEN me and those foothills.

Is there a way to put a cap on the FPS in the regular game? (Without OSR?) Oblivion ini or the rendering ini?

Actually that makes it worse. Worse than without OSR at all.

There is (iMinFPSCap) but you don't want to tweak this as the moment the framerate dips below the number specified here, the game goes into slow-mo.

Huh, I dunno, Rosa, maybe OSR just doesn't like you?

Have you tried experimenting with different heap settings? My preferred heap is 5 with size set at 450. A number of users have also reported decent success with mode 1 and mode 6 with size 1024, as well. This is were the bulk of OSR's magic comes from. With my preferred setting, the stuttering was actually reduced to Fallout 3 levels on my PC (a huge improvement, to say the least).

Now, since I am using a huge slew of graphics mods, I do have a few of the more expensive settings turned down, but the very minimum I have on the draw distance sliders is 75% (for actors and objects). Everything else is maxed out. Game runs at a near constant 30 FPS (with occasional, albeit uncommon, dips in a few areas of the Imperial City), and I couldn't be happier with performance.

OSR does absolutely nothing for me without experimenting with the settings. The only way I found any improvement was after spending days of trial and error tweaking. Speaking of Fallout 3 though, it has always run beautifully for me with all the graphics options at their highest. I put it down to Oblivion simply being poorly coded, and FO3 being when they fixed the engine.

That's... really weird. Oblivion runs very well on my setup. i7 and an ATI HD 5770.

It... stutters? With 12 GB of RAM??? :ahhh:

Yes.

First time I played Oblivion, I had everything max, and I couldn't even play it. Made me quit, then I remembered that I can lower the graphics.

That won't make a difference. Oblivion only uses just under 2GB when it is running, no matter how much RAM you have. You can use a patch utility to double the amount of RAM Oblivion can use but that's still under 4GB.
Most programs are like this by the way.


I use Shadows on grass but not Self shadows. It looked pretty bad to be honest.

Even so, how the heck can anyone have a computer with 12 GB RAM now?? I have 4 and that′s more than enough at this point. I don′t see myself with a 12GB RAM computer until 2055 when TES 9: Ultimate Tamriel hits the shelves

A simple answer is that DDR3 memory is dirt cheap right now. I wish DDR2 was similarly inexpensive. I'd love to go from 4 GB to 8 GB on my secondary rig (which has its own Oblivion install, used for mod testing). That one runs Windows Vista 64, which is more a resource hug than Win7. I can't justify an OS upgrade. Truth be told, now that Vista has matured I like it as well as Win7 for what I use it for...except for the extra resource footprint.

-Decrepit-

Hmmm...

This is strange. I'd been running a pretty solid 35fps after adding a bunch of mods and my new monitor was delivered.

I just went from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 and my fps jumped back up to 45 fps.

That's weird, right?

It does help to have a good CPU too and not just RAM. I run Win7 64 3Ghz and as I said I see no need for more RAM right now. But 12 RAM.. damn!

It's pretty easy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231456

$149 on memory is less than I'd usually spent in the past for far less. And if you're ok with 'slower' 1333Mhz memory you can get that down to $95 for 16GB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231441

Oh yes, I forgot: I have Self Shadows turned off too. It does look pretty bad.

I guess I'm strange (what else in new?). I don't really care what my framerates are. If the game feels right, I'm happy. If it doesn't feel right, I do something about it. I stop doing something about it when it feels right again. Over the years I have adopted a moronically simple attitude toward technical matters, lol.

Soon after it came out.

When I first got it I could barely run it. Then I immediately upgraded.

I've always thought that the people who obsess about framerates are the strange ones, but they do seem to outnumber the rest of us, so...

In any event, I agree with you. I couldn't care less what the actual framerate is - if the game looks fine, then it's fine. That would seem to me to be the only thing that really matters.

Framewhat? I′ve never payed any attention about it whatsoever either. Whether or not the game runs smoothly is what I care about.

I tried the 4gb patch a while ago, and it has absolutely no effect on the Oblivion's performance. At least not for me.



I went from Windows XP, to Vista, to Windows 7. Of them all I prefer Windows 7, with XP coming in second. I strongly recommend you scraqe up the money for Win7. It is worth the improvements.



What Decrepit said about the Ram. It did not cost me all that much. Besides, my box will take up to 24 gig, so I am only using half its potential. But I am happy with how it runs on only 12, so I'm sticking with that. Everything runs great except for Oblivion, and I do not blame my PC for the latter's issues. It has done the same thing on 3 different computers I have owned.

I tried the 4gb patch a while ago, and it has absolutely no effect on the Oblivion's performance. At least not for me.



I went from Windows XP, to Vista, to Windows 7. Of them all I prefer Windows 7, with XP coming in second. I strongly recommend you scraqe up the money for Win7. It is worth the improvements.



What Decrepit said about the Ram. It did not cost me all that much. Besides, my box will take up to 24 gig, so I am only using half its potential. But I am happy with how it runs on only 12, so I'm sticking with that. Everything runs great except for Oblivion, and I do not blame my PC for the latter's issues. It has done the same thing on 3 different computers I have owned.


I do not usually bother checking my framerate. I only look when a game is running poorly, and I am trying to figure out why. That is what exasperates me so much about Oblivion. I have ten times the computer I should need to run it, and still it runs like crap.

I never quite got that either. If I wanted, I could mess with the INI and probably squeeze a consistent 40fps out of it, which is great compared to what I get, but the game would look so horrible that I don't understand the point. No trees, featureless textures, and flat lighting just looks bad.

I'll reduce settings or disable them to improve the frame rate but I still want it to look the way it's supposed to.

Console player reporting in...

Well, i can run it at max settings, but it'll be totally laggish during outdoors, due to the grass. And funnily it always lags when oblivion gates appear and mostly it lags during combat if i have everything maxed.

I'll just hope that i can run Skyrim at decently zomg graphics, wouldnt want all those scenes to go to waste eh?

I don′t run grass because it looks too ugly and appears in my FOV where there was nothing just a few steps back