Well, let me first say I am a Graphics wh*re, so I prefer better graphics and a worse framerate. I reinstalled Oblivion again and I am hoping to increase the performance. I have disabled Music, I have installed Operation Optimization, (the PYFFI files for that too), Oblivion Stutter Removal, Low Poly Grass, and REAVWD.

I have the GOTY edition, so will the PYFFI Original Oblivion Meshes work? (last I remember, it was messed up). I have just finished PYFFI'ing the meshes, but do I also need to PYFFI the other folders? (the 2 folders that are outside the "meshes", I think it was trees and something else)

I am going to be using MMM for the first time; will that drastically slow my game down? (I will be running Fran's as well)

Any other mods that could help increase performance?

Also I have a Vista computer, specs: (I have disabled "Visual Themes", when running Oblivion).

Processor: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT


My in-game Visual settings:
Textures: Large
1680x1050
Self Shadows: On
Distant Land, Trees, Object, People: On
Shadow Filtering: High
HDR
Water: everything high/on


Right now I am getting between 15-25 FPS in dungeons, and 10-15 FPS outside.
(the only mods I have active so far are: REAVWD, (no cities), and LAME)

Any VWD mod will probably have an effect on performance. If I remember correctly OSO isn't safe.

Ahem. http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23208
edit: DO'H! Intended to link OSR, accidentally linked EMS instead. fixed

Also, IIRC RAEVWD should generally be used with a modified uGridDistantCount in Oblivion.ini as described in its readme.

Yes, MMM hurts performance. No, it's usually not as much of a performance killer as things like Better Cities or RAEVWD.

I wouldn't recommend you use RAEVWD with that rig. First of all, you should have at least 3 gig of RAM with Vista, preferably 4. The OS can use up to half of what your current RAM is just for itself, which doesn't leave much for other background tasks and your game. And the 8500 isn't that great of a card. I have an 8800GT and I still have a hard time with RAEVWD. And OSO, as mentioned, has some issues with it. Plus it really isn't going to improve your performance all that much. You don't even get an extra frame per second, the improvement is somewhere in the decimal places.

Water will [censored] your rig. I turned it off, easily another 15 FPS.

The folders outside the meshes folder are trees and distant LOD. You don't PyFFI them. I don't think, that is. I don't. I think PyFFI only handles .nif files. The trees are SPT and the LOD are LOD.

yeah, those are the folders I was talking about.

Update:
It turns out I don't have OSO (they all sound the same, got confused); I do have Oblivion Stutter Removal.

I've also disabled REAVWD, and lowered the water settings; I am now getting a solid 15 FPS outdoors, (smooth enough for me)

Can anyone confirm the GOTY PYFFI problem? (does it work with it or not?)

You should pyffie only meshes, it will have an effect only on files of the type ".nif". Yes you can do that on the vanilla meshes of GOTY version. I did it on mine. But you have to do it yourself. That patch thingy that is available on Tesnexus does not work on the GOTY meshes. Pyffi-ing is not so complicated, even i could learn it. Check out the Pyffie thread, there is a new version out version 2.1.3 just yesterday. Read the last three pages of the thread, that should put you in the picture.

Start here, and go forward: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1061938&view=findpost&p=15594942

You should also consider lowering your shadow settings. Self-shadows don't really do much, you don't lose much graphic quality by having it off. If you play in 1st person view, they actually do nothing at all, yet still cause a performance hit. Also Shadow filtering could be trurned down to Medium with no big loss in visual quality, and a slight increase in performance. You also don't mention what your AA settings are, that's an important consideration when it comes to performance. With that card I would recommend having it turned right off, but at the very most set it only to 2x AA, nothing higher.

since I can't have AA on with HDR, I have my Nvidia override Oblivion. Currenlty it is set to 8x AA.

Also, I have the PYFFIED meshes ready, but the Readme is a little confusing. Can you guys tell me if this is right?

Unpack the Meshes.BSA to a new folder, copy all the PYFFIed meshes into there, overwriting them. Then, using OBMM, repack that folder and call it Meshes.BSA, which will replace the original. (i already have a backup made)

8x Good God man, leave it a 2 or 4.

Sounds good. You could just as well have left them out of .BSA after pyffification (make no re-pack into .bsa), lying around in the folders Pyffie created respectively copying them in its folder structure into \data\meshes\.

I did basically that. I then repacked them into a .7z archive and installed that archive with WB BAIN. You could also create an OMOD of them and install them with OBMM. This makes uninstalling them easier if this is ever needed. Some say not repacking them into .bsa may boost performance a bit, depending if your HD read access is quicker than the .bsa unpacking by the CPU.

Disabling water sound like a huge overreaction. If things are so tight as to need to do drastic changes like that, it's time to get more RAM, period. Oblivion certainly won't be the only thing to benefit from the system having 4GB.

That video card isn't going to be up to the task of handling HDR+AA forced via driver at 8x. You need to seriously look at scaling that down to 4x, or probably just turn it off. At your resolution it would be hard to notice the difference. The gain in FPS will be noticeable though.

Arthmoor, I was tempted to make a comment about the 8x AA but then I remembered the best teacher is usually (a bad) experience. RAEVWD, as lovely as it is, is also not exactly the best mod to get on a tight system...

Some notes:
- oblivion is CPU intensive, a faster CPU is better, than a 8800Gt instead a 8500 (only 1GB Vram will be helpful, fully modded Oblivion uses around 750MB VRAM @ 1680x1050)
- speaking bout CPU, I cant really tell if a quad would improve more than a dual core running at high speed, especially when its the blue ones with lots of 2nd lvl cache, but others will prove me wrong
- if you run 8xAA at this resolution, I bet you'll sleep under your bed! hahaha (2xaa and you will laugh at the white rabbits)
- memory is necessary, 4GB won t harm, take 8GB and revenues up!
- MMM is awesome (one of the best modelers I know), try to combine it with OOO, and... oh well, Im still too excited to write about
- RAEVWD isnt really necessary at all, as long the uGridstoLoad is not working properly above 5, there are two reasons:
- first reason: if you set ugridstoLoad=5, sometimes you'll see the distant buildings hanging in the air, cause the landscape isnt loaded this far as you will see the buildings(walls etc)
- second reason: if you set uGridstoLoad=7, the distant buildings cope with the landscape, but the water is messed up! (no ripples is the best not to have i did achieve)

- OBlivion Stutter Remover is just like cream on top, I could completely drop streamline (btw thx for this mod)
- UL is essential, BC got a big impact on my framerate
- spice everything with the little tiny mods, like omobs, deadly reflex, duke whiz mods, UOP's, etc, etc like All natural, AWLS, EE, Ambient dungeons, there are so many outstanding mods I couldt tell them all, just incredible!
- and last, but not least, a page that did help me a lot setting up my first modded oblivion( its in german, but who knows) http://www.proxima-ltd.de/oblivionmods/oblivionmods.htm

umm, something's not right. In the Optimized Folder, where the PYFFI'd files end up, there are no files. The folder structure exists, but when you reach the end, it's empty.

Edit: well, the files are in the Patches Folder, I don't know what went wrong.
Edit, Edit: All the files in the Patches Folder are .nif.patch (what should I do?)
Anyway, I think I will just make an OMOD of the PYFFI'd files, that will work fine right? (although the Readme says not to overwrite any files?)

Our definitions of fully modded don't compute then. I've run my VRAM as high as 1.5GB in-game before. Yes, the game gets a bit dodgy that high up, but it can happen easily enough. Of course without a 2GB card, you crash and burn.



OB doesn't make use of multiple cores all that much. A 2 vs a 4 won't matter to it, but other games are designed for it.



Going over 4GB is only useful on a 64bit OS. And for 32bit games like Oblivion, only the Large Address hack will matter, otherwise the game itself is still restricted to a max of 2GB in system memory.



NEVER EVER touch the ugridstoLoad value. It causes any number of bugs, not the least of which is the bouncing landscape bug. Which is far more annoying than the water bug.

Also, in general, don't follow advice from tweak guides. Nearly all of them were written with the original release in mind and the current fully patched game runs way better with few or no changes other than the iShadowMapResolution value that needs to be something larger than 256.

Use http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html :nod:


Also, streamline is highly reccomended

I agree with Arthmoor here, never ever set your ugridstoload to be anything higher than 5. Alot more the water will be messed up. Not only that but you take a pretty serious performance hit by doing so, so it's pretty bad advice to give to someone who's trying to improve performance.

yeah, I used to have it pretty high (or it might have been another distant tweak), and my load times were horrendous. I have a default ini now, with the exception of the border tweak.


Success!!
I don't know if it was lowering my AA or Gamebooster, but I now have a buttery smooth 27 FPS outdoors!

Thanks for your help everyone!

Now, the question is, how long will it stay this good? lol.

Lowering your AA certainly has alot to do with it, 8x is really high for that card of yours and not at all necessary, especially with your resolution.

Thats only true if you make the .bsa with compression, otherwise putting them in .bsa will probably help performance and reduce oblivion's directory thrashing with too many files in \Data.

You could have a point there. Do you know if one can make an uncompressed .BSA with OBMM? I just don't know, i've never looked into that.

well since my FPS problems are fixed, have I missed out any good mods? (I've been gone since October)

Yes I thought no compression was default, but either way its on the bottom of bsa creator window.