Horrible frame rate with mods : IV

» Tue May 03, 2011 2:36 am

Spoiler

Active Mod Files:00  Oblivion.esm01  All Natural Base.esm  [Version 1.2]02  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm  [Version 1.34]03  Mart's Monster Mod.esm  [Version 3.7b3p3]04  Mart's Monster Mod for OOO.esm  [Version 0.9.9MB3]05  TNR ALL RACES FINAL.esp06  TNR - ShiveringIsles.esp07  Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp  [Version 3.3.4]08  Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp09  DLCShiveringIsles.esp0A  Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp  [Version 1.4.1]0B  SM Plugin Refurbish - SI.esp  [Version 1.30]0C  All Natural.esp  [Version 1.2]0D  All Natural - SI.esp  [Version 1.2]0E  Enhanced Water v2.0 HDMI.esp0F  All Natural - Real Lights.esp  [Version 1.2]10  WindowLightingSystem.esp11  Enhanced Economy.esp  [Version 5.2.2]12  Spell Delete And Item Remove.esp13  Map Marker Overhaul.esp  [Version 3.8]14  Map Marker Overhaul - SI additions.esp  [Version 3.5]15  Guild Map Markers.esp16  Enhanced Hotkeys.esp  [Version 2.1.1]17  DLCHorseArmor.esp18  DLCHorseArmor - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.6]19  SM Plugin Refurbish - HorseArmor.esp  [Version 1.11]1A  DLCOrrery.esp1B  DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.4]1C  SM Plugin Refurbish - Orrery.esp  [Version 1.11]1D  DLCVileLair.esp1E  DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.6]++  SM Plugin Refurbish - VileLair.esp  [Version 1.21]1F  DLCMehrunesRazor.esp20  DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.5]21  SM Plugin Refurbish - MehrunesRazor.esp  [Version 1.30]22  DLCSpellTomes.esp++  DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.1]23  Dude Wheres My Horse.esp24  DLCThievesDen.esp25  DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.8]26  DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch - SSSB.esp  [Version 1.0.4]27  SM Plugin Refurbish - ThievesDen.esp  [Version 1.30]28  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp  [Version 1.34]++  OOO-Water_Weeds.esp  [Version 1.33]29  OOO-Map_Markers_Stock.esp  [Version 1.33]2A  OOO-No_Guild_Ownership.esp  [Version 1.33]2B  Vanilla House Prices for OOO.esp2C  Mart's Monster Mod for OOO.esp  [Version 0.9.9MB3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Shivering Isles.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]2D  Mart's Monster Mod - Additional Enemy NPC Vars.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Looting NPCs & Creatures.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]2E  Mart's Monster Mod - Zombies for Body Meshes.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Safer Roads.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - No Undead Rise.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]2F  Mart's Monster Mod - Safer Quest Locations.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]30  Mart's Monster Mod - Dungeons of MMM.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]31  Mart's Monster Mod - More Wilderness Life.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - More Passive Wildlife.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]32  Mart's Monster Mod - City Defences.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]33  Mart's Monster Mod - Extra Wounding.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Friendlier Factions OOO.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]34  Mart's Monster Mod - Farm Animals.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]35  Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse WaterLife.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3f]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Slof Horses Complete.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]36  OOO-WaterFish.esp  [Version 1.34]37  Arcane Services.esp38  za_bankmod.esp39  DLCBattlehornCastle.esp3A  DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.5]3B  SM Plugin Refurbish - Battlehorn.esp  [Version 1.30]3C  DLCFrostcrag.esp3D  DLCFrostcrag - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.5]3E  SM Plugin Refurbish - FrostCrag.esp  [Version 1.2]3F  Knights.esp40  Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.1]++  SM Plugin Refurbish - Knights.esp  [Version 1.06]++  Mart's Monster Mod for OOO - Knights .esp  [Version 0.9.9MB3]41  Harvest [Flora].esp  [Version 3.0.0]++  Harvest [Flora] - Shivering Isles.esp  [Version 3.0.0]++  Harvest [Flora] - DLCVileLair.esp  [Version 3.0.0]42  Harvest [Flora] - DLCFrostcrag.esp  [Version 3.0.0]43  HUD Status Bars.esp  [Version 3.0]44  Improved_potion_of_exploration_11.esp45  MMDrink100Potions.esp++  more books teach.esp46  Respawning Varla & Welkynd Stones.esp++  Respawning Ore Veins.esp47  Toggleable Quantity Prompt.esp  [Version 3.2.0]48  Legendary Abilities-Shield MOJ.esp  [Version 2.0]49  Grandmaster of Alchemy.esp++  Mart's Monster Mod - Resized Races.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]4A  LandMagicPatch.esp4B  Bashed Patch, 0.esp

As far as replacers go, I have the following:

- Beaming Sunglare
- Qarl's Redimized with Detailed Terrain shader (it was this .omod I downloaded from FilePlanet, sorry I can't remember who made this but it had a lot of reduction options in the omod script; I didn't choose any reduction)
- RAEVWD and only selecting meshes for ruins, forts, statues and wilderness
- Koldorn's noise replacer (for distand LOD)
- Deathborn's Modified Qarl's Normal Maps (distant LOD normal maps)

OBSE plugins:

- Fast Exit
- WEOCPS (crash prevention)
- Pluggy HUD version
- MenuQue
- Elys' Uncapper
- Elys' Universal Silent Voice
- Oblivion Stuter Remover

Misc:
- All vanilla meshes have been PYFFI'ed and repackaged as new BSAs.
- INI tweaks: uGridDistantCount = 18 so that RAEVWD doesn't hurt so much. Everything else is left at default settings

And finally, my hardware:

ASUS Rampage II Extreme
Intel i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz (stock settings no overclocking, stock fan)
3 GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 @ 1033 MHz (again, stock)
ATI 4870 X2

Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Catalyst 10.12, all Catalyst settings at factory defaults

My problem? I am getting very horrible average FPS, making the game not fun to play at all. If I were to stand in front of my IC Waterfront House and look towards the direction facing the IC itself, my FPS drops to 7 FPS! And walking around in Tamriel drops the FPS below 30 a lot. During combat, my FPS can drop below the 20's.

I have deduced that the two following packages are what severely hurts my FPS: OOO, and MMM.

If I were to resetup my mods to EXACTLY as the above, but MINUS OOO and MMM - I get a steady 30 FPS average which I consider playable. IC Waterfront still has horrible FPS (drops below 25) but running around Tamriel and fighting rarely drops my FPS below 30.

OOO alone is just marginally better; I'll still get below 30 FPS on average in combat (but never below 20 FPS), but exploring is tolerable.

Having QTP Redimized or not does NOT make any difference, in both my full mod setup and the one without OOO and MMM. In the latter setup, not having RAEVWD doesn't improve FPS much at all (I gain about 3 - 5 FPS at most) - probably due to the fact that I reduced my uGridDistantCount and also I didn't install all of the meshes. I can live without RAEVWD so I'm not ruling it out though - I do admit that it does affect some FPS, but it doesn't KILL it like OOO and MMM combined.

Once I add OOO... my average FPS drops by around 5 to 10.

And when I finally add MMM... well, this thread was created.

Please note: I have no problems with stuttering. Game runs as smooth as it gets with OSR (PYFFI'ing the vanilla meshes also improves the stutter problem a LOT; I was a non-believer at first!). What I am talking about is my average FPS, causing a very annoying gameplay experience, and even makes combat much harder than it needs to be (with such a horrible average FPS, controls become unresponsive, and fighting against fast-moving enemies is a nightmare because it gets harder to hit them properly with the crappy FPS).

And I haven't even enabled OBGE yet. How the hell are people claiming to get 60 FPS with FCOM, a bajillion item and body/clothing mods and all of OBGE's shaders cranked to eleven? I'm sorry for being blunt but I am inclined to think that those claims are a load of crap...

Sorry if this post has an angry tone. I'm having insomnia and I don't really feel good. I just want to enjoy my modded Oblivion.

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:08 am

I'd try installing a spawn rate reducing plug in for MMM (unless you already have one and I've missed it). It made a HUGE difference for me in terms of performance. Qarls also have a big impact. If its not super important to you to have as high-resolution textures as possible, you might like to have a look at getting Bomret's texture pack instead, which is far better looking than Vanilla but with no extra performance drain, though considering your specs, removing it might not be necessary with MMM spawn rates reduced..

Some more experienced users might be able to pick out some technical things you could do, but these are the most obvious ones to me.

» Tue May 03, 2011 5:39 am

I suspect the two fish-adding plugins might be at least partly to blame here. So, OOO Water Fish and MMM Diverse Water Life, or whatever they're actually called. I believe the OOO one is slightly worse in that regard, however. :shrug: Regardless, I suggest not using both.

Anyway, I guess both OOO and MMM simply add a lot of stuff going on everywhere, so yeah, I can see some logic there. Hm.

Still seems a bit on the low side, however.

Generally I've had similar problems when using gazilliions of mods, *plus* the full Better Cities experience, when around the waterfront. But that's not the case for you, so... not sure.

edit: Ah yes, of course - spawn rates! Nice one, prettyfly. Yeah, I use the "slightly reduced" FCOM plugin, for the same reason. Presumably, an MMM option would work just as well.

edit2: As for "claims" and all that - people go about things in different ways, not to mention, they might have better graphics cards? Eh, beats me.

» Tue May 03, 2011 10:07 am

Yeah, I think your system seems to be working abnormally slow as well. When I compare my system to your system, it makes me really surprised that I get performance to the level I do with what I have loaded.

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:32 am

Yep, it sounds like a CPU-limited build to me. I was also getting unacceptable framerates till I set MMM to the lowest possible spawn rate. Fewer spawn points are your friend.

You might also try setting uGridDistantCount lower than 18--I had to go clear down to 9 to get good framerates!

» Tue May 03, 2011 9:51 am

Disabled OOO-Waterfish.esp and Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse WaterLife.esp, then added Mart's Monster Mod - Spawn Rates - Reduced Vanilla.esp.

Using the aformentioned position and view angle outside the IC Waterfront player home, I get an average of 14 FPS. Yay.

Is it that my hardware just doesn't cut it for heavily modded Oblivion? I want to believe that my hardware is pretty decent...

» Tue May 03, 2011 4:05 am

No, your hardware is fine (though you might consider getting more RAM and adding the LAA patch). You were pushing the engine far further than it was ever intended. Creatures and NPCs can destroy this game if there's too many of them at one time.

» Tue May 03, 2011 2:10 am

Using the aformentioned position and view angle outside the IC Waterfront player home, I get an average of 14 FPS. Yay.

Well, it doubled!

Er. Not sure what to suggest next...

Is it that my hardware just doesn't cut it for heavily modded Oblivion? I want to believe that my hardware is pretty decent...

Looks alright to me. Though, as Thomas mentioned, more RAM might be a good idea. Maybe 6GB, plus the LAA patch? Anyway = does Oblivion utilise Crossfire? If so, you should be fine. If not, well, that's a slightly different story. Also, what resolution do you play at?

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:47 am

Oh forgot to mention, my EXE is already LAA patched.

So I can't help but wonder... the people who are claiming 60 FPS with FCOM, OBGE, body replacers, super high res textures... what kind of hardware are they using anyway!?

EDIT: I play at 1920 x 1200, my 24" LCD's native resolution. My Catalyst settings are at factory defaults, which means no anti-aliasing and all that fancy stuff. Also, I'm not sure if a single ATI 4870 X2 would enable CrossFire. I think it'll only get enabled if you link two X2's (a "quad CrossFire setup").

Anyway, I doubt my performance will greatly improve if I switch to a newer and more powerful graphics card. Maybe the new GPU will help with OBGE and its shaders, but I somehow think that I'm getting this bad performance because the CPU is being stressed too hard...

» Mon May 02, 2011 11:34 pm

No, Oblivion isn't really that great with Crossfire or SLI. Using it can drop your framerates, so you might want to check that you are forcing single-GPU in your driver settings.

As for those people making those claims (if they are)... they are lying. 60FPS with all that is pretty much impossible in this game heavily modded. Again, see engine limitations.

» Mon May 02, 2011 9:49 pm

Your hardware is far better than what I have. Its got to do with what you have loaded. Oblivion is woeful when it comes to efficiency and unless you have and absolute top of the range system you will have to make sacrifices to get satisfying frame rates (though different people have different standards for performance, of course).

» Mon May 02, 2011 9:52 pm

Oh forgot to mention, my EXE is already LAA patched.

Pointless, with only 3GB.

» Tue May 03, 2011 3:21 am

Not connected to your performance issue, but

05 TNR ALL RACES FINAL.esp

shouldn't be checked as it will override OOO's NPC stats. Import NPC Faces into the Bashed Patch and keep it unchecked. You can do the same for TNR SI. After that, you should update the NPC levels for your save with Wrye Bash as well.

» Tue May 03, 2011 9:35 am

it has now been proved that RAEVWD + water reflections ON murders framerates, so you will want to get rid of one.

also, reduced spawn rates.

» Tue May 03, 2011 3:32 am

wasn′t mentioned, only know for my setup I use a reduced tamriel travelers with 5 or 10 for spawns in that mod,it make a huge difference for my fps compared to running it with 20 (there is different esp′s for it),
don′t notice any big differences using various versions of qtp,there is some but not by much,for me it is tamriel travelers and its spawns.All natural takes some fps but it is so nice so that one stays regardless.
Haven′t tried ob on my i7@3.8,only play on amd-1090T@3.74, a little oc clearly helps. bumping the gpu can help a little,iirc catalyst has easy options to oc a little.

» Mon May 02, 2011 9:12 pm

...So I can't help but wonder... the people who are claiming 60 FPS with FCOM, OBGE, body replacers, super high res textures... what kind of hardware are they using anyway!?

EDIT: I play at 1920 x 1200, my 24" LCD's native resolution. My Catalyst settings are at factory defaults, which means no anti-aliasing and all that fancy stuff. Also, I'm not sure if a single ATI 4870 X2 would enable CrossFire. I think it'll only get enabled if you link two X2's (a "quad CrossFire setup")...

That monitor is the difference between you and people who get 60 fps (or whatever they're really getting that they're exaggerating, but is probably quite playable) on average hardware with a ton of mods. Take it from someone with a very similar hardware setup, excepting more ram: I used to play on a monitor with a native res. of 1280x768. I was sitting on an average of 40-ish FPS, using FCOM. I upgraded to a 1920x1080 monitor and my average FPS now sits right on 28 when there are no actors around in exteriors.

The problem is that even with a beefy graphics card, the higher setting hits your CPU usage as well. All the scripts in MMM/OOO hit your CPU even harder.

Someone said it already, but lower UGridsToLoad in the Oblivion.ini. This helped me a great deal. With it set as high as you have it, in MMM+OOO, the game is literally processing combat between actors so far away from you that you can't even see it. Wolves are killing rabbits, bandits are killing wolves, etc. - The effect is like you were in combat with them yourself.

» Mon May 02, 2011 6:14 pm

Lower your resolution. It's killing you. Don't sweat Qarl's Redimized. Qarl's original, yes, but the Redimized version shouldn't drop you at all.

» Tue May 03, 2011 6:35 am

Lower your resolution. It's killing you. Don't sweat Qarl's Redimized. Qarl's original, yes, but the Redimized version shouldn't drop you at all.

Yes, High-res textures don't cause lower framerates on their own. They only affect performance once you exhaust the VRAM available on your card, at which point the game will start very noticably stuttering as it tries to load them.

And I would also recommend lowering the resolution to something that your monitor supports but wont eat your GPU for breakfast. I play on 1360 X 768, myself.

» Tue May 03, 2011 4:35 am

Regarding resolution: with vanilla Oblivion (zero mods, not even the unofficial patches), resolution has no effect. In the starting prison, during the first encounter with the Mythic Dawn agents, FPS immediately drops below 50 while the fighting is going on, regardless of whether I'm playing at 640 x 480 or 1920 x 1200. Once the agents are dead, FPS averages around 55 to 60 as I look around the dungeons, with the Emporer, Glenroy and Baurus visible. Again, this is at 640 x 480 - the fact that the FPS does NOT stay at 60 with such a low resolution and zero mods is already making me go "WTF!?".

Now that I have a vanilla installation, I'm going to try installing one overhaul mod at a time and NOTHING ELSE (not even unofficial patches). I want to measure how much FPS gets lost just by installing an overhaul alone.

1) OOO only
2) MMM only
3) Both OOO and MMM

Will come back to this thread later...

» Tue May 03, 2011 12:12 am

My suggestion would be to try installing QTP3 redimized. It reduces and optimizes Qarl's textures with no loss of image quality. You might also try streamline. It is an amazing fps optimizer

» Mon May 02, 2011 9:05 pm

I take it you misread my first post.

EDIT: 20 FPS in the IC Market District with vanilla (zero mods) and graphics at defaults (clicked the "Default" button in the Video menu then restarted the game) at 640 x 480. Bummer.

Anyway, back to the task at hand...

EDIT 2: I think I may have found the culprit, with my vanilla setup, at least. Water reflections. Turning them off completely, and the aformentioned IC Waterfront test spot will result in about 40 FPS. Not bad! I also just realized that apparently I had the reflections turned on for misc, statics, trees and actors. Turning those off, then turning on reflections at the same spot, I get about 30 FPS.

Never suspected that the water would hurt FPS this much! It didn't hurt my FPS this bad with Morrowind and MGE...

» Tue May 03, 2011 7:13 am

As if we didn't need any more reminders that water reflections are an FPS killer. :rolleyes:

Well, that's thanks to how badly the game handles them, eh? Essentially, if you have reflections turned on, every single VWD mesh in the game gets rendered twice (once for Distant LOD, once for reflection map), even if there is no water close by. Could gamesas have even possibly chosen a more inefficient way to handle those? :banghead:

» Tue May 03, 2011 12:55 am

Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned here or not, but water is actually under every single cell in the game, so turning off water reflections seems to improve fps even in areas you wouldn't expect it to.

» Tue May 03, 2011 6:50 am

As if we didn't need any more reminders that water reflections are an FPS killer. :rolleyes:

Well, that's thanks to how badly the game handles them, eh? Essentially, if you have reflections turned on, every single VWD mesh in the game gets rendered twice (once for Distant LOD, once for reflection map), even if there is no water close by. Could gamesas have even possibly chosen a more inefficient way to handle those? :banghead:

I wonder why reflections don't matter with my set up as I get much the same lousy performance with or w/o them. I'd guess it's caused by my CPU (AMD Athlon 64 3500+, yay!) being the bottle neck rather than the GPU (ATI 3850 AGP), but at the same time I notice a huge difference with and w/o RAEVWD (which I'm using), so it's a bit odd.

» Mon May 02, 2011 7:15 pm

I dunno... they don't hit me too bad, but they do hit me (I can get about 5-8 extra FPS by turning them off). All I know is that they've been proven to murder FPS on certain systems (and again, right here) and in certain areas (like the Imp. City). I'm probably going to just leave them off in my game and deal with the soupy, bland default water texture. I'm pushing my system as hard as I wish to at this point.

I really wish that it would at least reflect the sky with the reflections turned off... well, we can dream. :whistling: