My save game has really low res ground textures ( looks like 256 x 256 or lower ) everywhere. Is this a normal effect of ugridstoload=1, or am I missing some kind of utility .dds file? It looks fine at ugrids 5, but I'm running MMM with moderate increased spawns and have four companions, so I want to have less cells loaded to keep things smooth. Why am I so stupid?

No no no, you should never set your ugrids to 1. Put it back to 5! Your game will almost certainly crash, and frequently. I'm actually amazed you can get your game to load at all.

If you're having framerate problems the way to make your game run smoother is to decrease spawns. Or cut back on AO or script-heavy mods. Or lower some of your settings in your Options menu.

Alright, thank you for the warning. I guess the Oblivion engine can't deal with that number. I'll have to sacrifice NMC textures, and don't need godrays. You must understand how easy it is to get overconfident and overzealous with modding Oblivion into something that is the exact opposite of what the developers intended.