Somethings gone wrong here and this post is acting funny, ive moved the data to the next post instead.

HEH, something has gone wrong with the first post when i tried to edit it, it deleted everything, lucky i had backed it up.

Like many many people i was once told that i would never get oblivion running on my laptop which has a Moblie Intel? 965 Express Chipset. Then i was told that i might get it to run with oldblivion. Then it was i might get to run without anything, but it would be so bad graphicly and so much stuttering that it wouldnt be playable. Now i have proved all them wrong, getting my card to run at around 20 FPS consistently, without any third party programs like oldblivion or 3d anolyze, just three preformance mods.

How did i do this, it has to do with the amazing v15.9.0.1472 patch that Intel made for a range of its integrated chipsets. After getting this patch the game would run but it was very bad quality and the stuttering was really bad, like i had been told. I had given up for a few months but recently i started up my mod pixelivion, and thru that i began testing and trying to get oblivion working on my laptop again. Now i have achieve a playable standard for the game.

The chipset is pretty reliant on the RAM power so the better you have of it the better your preformance will be but, on my shoddy laptop i only had 1 gig of RAM (which vista likes to chew on). Therefore i had to use three mods to help my preformance, Streamline (the ULIMATE preformance mod), Oblivion Polygon Overhaul and my own Pixelivion, i had streamline set to preformance on its list. I had my graphics set to medium at the lowest resolution (640x480), but i can still play at 800x600, and it looks TONS better then too, but that your preferance, preformance over quality. This all gives me a good alround FPS, heres a table:



So in a nutshell:

Prestarting: Install Oblivion and patch it to v1.2.0416
You can download the lastest patch from http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/updates_patches.htm, simply find the right oe for your game and region. THIS IS NOT NEEDED FOR THOSE WITH THE GAME OF THE YEAR EDITION.

1. Download and install the latest drivers (Current: 15.12.4.1666) from the http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Default.aspx?lang=eng

1-1. If it gives you an error when installing the driver:
Some manufactors (like Dell which I use) has a habit of using this card in their laptops, but they have some problem with the Intel drivers. So if you download the Intel one, it won't install (instead telling you to get it from your manufactorer). Check your manufactorer, but But Dell has decided not to update the drivers ever, or at lest since about April 2007. Never fear, I found a solution!

1-2. Before you start make sure you already have the Intel Driver on your destop or other easy access folder, this is important. To install the Intel Drivers you must first uninstall the current drivers that you have. To do this right click on my computer and select 'manage'. When it open, click on 'device manager' in the sidebar thingy on the left. Then open up 'display devices' and right click on the intel device, hit unistall. After its done the resolution will change to 480x640 resolution, then go and run the Intel driver setup and follow the promts and your done!

1-3. (This was on mine with Dell, may work with other companies too) Sometimes this can cause incompatibilities, I found that if you have the Intel driver installed you can then installing the Dell Driver, it retains the updates from Intel but get the compatibilities back from Dell. UNCONFIRMED on any other computer.

2. Download and install OBSE from http://obse.silverlock.org/ (So that Streamline can run)

3. Download and install Streamline from http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10400

4. Load up the game with streamline running at Low graphics setting (set in the lancher > option menu)

5. Test a game (or start a new one), setting the Streamline to your preferance (i used 'Preformance').

6. There shouldnt be too much stuttering at this level of graphics, but if there is skip to step 10 and ignore turning it up to medium.

7. Now turn it up to 800x600 resolution, has the stuttering gotten to unplayable levels, if so then you can turn it back down to low and fiddle with other setting or you can add more preformance mods.

8. Now you want to improve the stuttering a bit, well i have some suggestions fo you. There are many polygon replacers out there, the best are in http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=718322here, but i have to suggest these:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6981
http://oblivionmodgods.de/rpg-blackdragons-lowpolytrees-t245.html
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12280
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10400 (of course)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10510
Install these and test again.

9. In testing, has the stuttering gone yet? if it is you can finish now and muck with the graphics a bit more, but if you're after a bit more then you can do what i did.

10. Turn your graphic up to medium in the lancher, set the resolution to 800x600 and turn on distant trees. Load it up in-game, there should be a ton of stuttering, if not you can fiddle more you're self and thanks the gods your computer is nice to you. If it is stuttering close the game and get Pixelivion, my texture pack.

11. This does down-grade the graphic a bit, but it still looks good in most place and is better the having it a low. Install these and see what happens. The stutting should have stopped enough to be playable. I do suggest you turn off grass as it can be annoying and it is a major slow down, sett the tree distant to about 1/4 (not too much change anyway) and turn the item and NPCs up to about 3/4 or 4/5. This i what i had but you might need different.

12. You should now be all good now, if you prefer the other way before then you can revert back to it by unistalling Pixelivion and setting the graphic back.

This will work with the 965 chipset and may work with others like it, but its hit and miss. This has not been an attempt to promote my mod or anything, its just that i came across all this when i was making pixelivion and it is also a good mod to help with preformance on these chipsets. So yah, dont acuse me of doing that.

Ah-Yes, before i forget again, i made a video for pixelivion so anyone who follows this and get the same result can see what i ended up with and compare. The stuttering is caused by FRAPS, dont argue, it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf1bx8fl9ls

That's not exactly smooth performance....I'm guessing you're running at about 15FPS?

Read his post again.

So as I said, 15FPS (outdoors). Just look at his video.

Well... I guess that is, technically speaking, "running the game".

Personally, I couldn't PLAY that way, but yes; your PC is running Oblivion.

I'm sure many people will find this information helpful as well.

Well, you can't deny that you wouldn't have been able to play Vanilla Oblivion. These "just" three performance mods do make a hughe difference.


To be honoust: that vid still looks like a slideshow to me. What I see is constant jutter and still very low framerates. I personally wouldn't consider that playable, because I can't imagine the jutter and low fps doesn't put a big strain on your eyes.

Still, very good work though. Perhaps as these performance mods (like yours) and Intel's drivers develop further it will become truely playable.

True but you also need to remember that He is also running FRAPS at the time he is filming it which will severely slow the agameplay down due to the HDD access of streaming the movie to it - So I'm sure it runs better when he is not also saving the gameplay to HDD uncompressed. Looks pretty good actually for being on a laptop that normally could not run the game !

FRAPS doesn't slow gameplay much at all. I ran it while using my old Radeon X300, and I got no drop.

Either way, he even said that he was getting 15FPS in his first post. Either way, I wouldn't call it playable.

yes it does, thats why theres so much stuttering on the video, the moment i turn Fraps on it becomes really slow, without Fraps recording it is alot better. Im guessing that too do with RAM and CPU power, both of which i dont have much of.

and the 15 FPS isnt that bad as streamline helps remove the stuttering alot. and its mainly caused by the trees, and i dont have the lowpoly mod activated on my laptop to help that. i just forgot about putting it on.

Well, all I can tell you is that when running FRAPS on my radeon X300 and Pentium 4 processor I saw no performance loss.

Well its the same for my gaming PC, no lose when i record...

But here it is from the FRAPS website:



so yeah it is under standable that i'd get slowdown.

I have a distinct hatred for Intel cards, so my recommendation is, and will always be, for Intel cards: Replace them if it is in any way humanly possible. Even if you get it to work with Oblivion, most other games don't support Intel cards.

But if you are completely strapped for any ability to replace the card, or you have a laptop, I guess this could work as a last ditch effort.

I allways have performance hit with fraps recording.

Well thanks for your input, but I've never noticed a performance hit when using FRAPS. It does bring my FPS down when recording, but that's only because I set a limit so it records more smoothly.

Very good effort! I'm sure plenty of people will be finding this post useful. (Suggestion - can it be stickied somewhere?) Getting the game to run on integrated graphics is a big step forward. True one won't be getting ultra high graphics or all that... but well while playing one gets immersed and it doesn't matter much if you can see every single strand of grass......

Which could explain why you do not notice a slowdown !! and if there was no slowdown then why would you need to set a limit to get it to record more smoothly as it will only record a max FPS depending on what you have it set to in the options no matter what FPS the game is running at ! - Also do you have FRAPS saving the movie to the same drive that the game is on or do you have it on a seperate HDD and possibly seperate controller channel as well (since both of those will make a difference on the amount of slowdown as well as the resoltution you have it saving as and the FPS you have it saving! I know at 1680x1050 saving fullsize at even 30FPS it is stressing a HDD to save that much info and does cause a drop in game FPS on a 3200+ Athlon CPU with a 7800GS AGP card - so it would no doubt do the same on a laptop with a single HDD and integrated graphics chip even on a lower resolution setting!

Only when I see independent verification from a site that has a reputation for good methodology am I going to believe in Intel finally getting anything (video related) even 10% right!

I'm in the same boat as this thread starter.

I have a Gateway laptop. ML670.

1.42 Dual core processor
2GB Memory
Vista 32 Premium
Intel 965 Mobile Set

At first I couldn't really play the game because it was very laggy. I got Oldblivion and got it running on low settings but when I exited the sewers I crashed. I tweaked the INI to get it working but quit a month or so later when I couldn't deal with the ugly graphics and brightness. So I came back to the game about two weeks ago. Obviously the drivers that came out on May 28th has improved the performance of these cards because I can now play somewhat smoothly with this chip. I have Streamline, Polygone overhaul, Francesco's and Martigen's mod along with Wiseman's texture packs. I have a few other texture reduces and play with the lowest resolution on medium textures. I have a few item level list mods that run also. All in all, I have about 30-40 mods on an Intel 965 card with Oblivion. The ini is beyond tweaked and I'm very proud that I've been able to get the game running.

I feel like I should clean install the game and I might have an improved performance but I'm afraid to do that because I've seen people have a lot of trouble installing the game.

Now all I need to know is how to remove the smoke/fog from inside the caves/ruins.

i was just checking out the release nores for the intel chipset drivers when i noticed something REALLY strange, the driver number was different. Seem that Intel has pulled a fast one., but in a good way. On the 7/29/2008 they released the v15.11.1537 driver for the intel chipsets!


Im no genius so could anyone tell me what this new drivers add? http://downloadmirror.intel.com/16777/eng/relnotes_winvista_gfx.htm. They are properly only minor, but i would like to know so i can update this guide a bit.

I have to do some updating again :clap:

It seems that this drivers fixes a lot of bugs, but the fixes concerning Direct3D will not impact Oblivion much, as it appears that they fixed some things for certain games only.

okay, after some research i have included a list of other chipsets that might also be used with this guide, i am looking for people to confirm them for me if they have them.

okay added the guide that tells how to get the intel driver features, and the Dell driver compatiblity.

would like to know if it works on someone elses computer.

Thanks for this had just about given up on attempting an install for my fiancee to play on our laptop because of this chipset. I am unwilling to give up the desktop that just about runs it smoothly without any mods or tweaks!

glad to know i helped


Ive been doing some more work on the Pixelivion mod, as there are some dodgy looking areas currently. Hopely in the next few daays ill have a new release.