By "XP" you mean 32 bit windows. Some people around here have 64 bit XP, or 32 bit non-XP, so they're not synonymous.

@Ozmandias - depends on a couple things.
A. how much dedicated video memory your graphics card has.
B. how much system memory you installed on your motherboard.

there is some room to gain LAA benefits, just not as much as a 64 bit OS. reply back with answers to A and B and we'll let you know.

@Ozmandias - depends on a couple things.
A. how much dedicated video memory your graphics card has.
B. how much system memory you installed on your motherboard.

there is some room to gain LAA benefits, just not as much as a 64 bit OS. reply back with answers to A and B and we'll let you know.
EDIT - just saw ur sig. Give me a minute to figure out what ur gains could be. Geez, I just saw my double post, stupid iphones!

Ok, Ozmandias. When you get a chance could you let me know how much installed memory Windows XP reports when you right click on My Computer and select properties? Also, try pressing ctrl + alt + delete to open your task manager. Go to the performance tab and check how much memory is being used. From there, I can make a good determination how much memory will be available for Oblivion using LAA.

EDIT - So I thought of a good round amount of free memory that LAA should take advantage of in your case.
Based off my old XP 32bit install I had 4gb of ram and 1gb of VRAM. Windows reported that I had 2.25gb of system ram installed. My thought is if we increase that amount by another 512mb (difference of your VRAM vs. mine) than you should have 2.75mb installed system ram reported by XP 32bit. If you use about 500mb for your OS and programs that leaves us at about 2.25gb again. Than further reduce 1.6gb as this would the allocated memory ceiling for Oblivion on XP. So that leaves 640mb of available system memory. Just for good measure, lets decrease that amount to 500mb.

There you have it. I would say the LAA patch should allow Oblivion to take advantage of up to another 500mb of memory. It's not confirmed if the extra memory could be used as VRAM as well. I'll have those results soon though.
Anyone feel free to correct me if I didn't take anything into account.

@Psymon - I may be way off on this theory.
I have a CRT monitor that was recognized by XP at it's maximum specs. (i.e. refresh rates up to 200hz)
Windows 7 added a EDID reporting method that is screwing it up and now only reports my CRT monitor as being capable of producing up to 85hz.
My tie in on this is that maybe Morrowind bases it's playable resolutions based on the reported EDID from Windows 7.
If that is the case, I can give you instructions how to create an EDID override to force Windows 7 to recognize all available resolutions supported by your display.
Sorry, but I don't play Morrowind or use MGE so I'm probably not going to be much help.

As you saw in my sig, I have a 512MB video card and 4G system RAM on a WinXP 32-bit system.

"My Computer" reports that I have 3.25G RAM

"Task Manager" reports the following...

Page File = 209MB
Physical Memory Total = 3406820
Available = 3024046
System Cache = 150616

Posting to mark this.
Great info. Thanks.

Well, that's good news for you!
I must of mis-calculated what my rig reported in Windows XP 32 bit before. I actually questioned myself
if it was 2.25gb or 2.75gb so it must of been 2.75gb after all, idk for sure. It's been a while since I've had Windows XP 32.

So Oblivion.exe process should be able to allocate up to 2.6gb with the LAA patch. Keep in mind that it hasn't been tested yet. I would say it would be worth backing up your Oblivion.exe file in your Oblivion installation location folder. Apply the patch and then follow the directions from the OP.

1. Run Oblivion in window mode either by changing the setting in the Oblivion Loader.exe
or by changing the Oblivion.ini value bFull Screen=1 to bFull Screen=0

2. Open task manager by pressing ctrl + alt + delete and choose Options.
Be sure to check off "Always On Top". Next, be sure you select the processes tab and also sort
by memory so that the program using the most memory is on top.

3. Make sure your desktop resolution matches your in game resolution.
This is to ensure that when you run Oblivion in window mode, you won't experience any major overscan on your monitor.

Based on those instructions, See how far you can get the Oblivion.exe memory process past 1.6 - 1.75gb.
*Just a suggestion, but it's a good way to make sure you are actually benefiting.

If you are just looking for reports that it works I can provide that.

With Vista 64 I have a sidebar gadget that is basically the display from task manager with physical RAM and cpu usage displayed on a graph. After any crash I can see the previous 3-4 minutes of system useage still displayed. I suppose that I could run in windowed mode and see it all the time. Just sounds like no fun at all really.

Since using the 4bg LAA enabler I've seen RAM usage on my computer go as high as 80% while playing oblivion - now that is something considering I have 8 gigs of DDR2 ram. To run Vista takes almost 2 gigs (that's vista for you).

But often before gaming session I will go into task manager and turn off process not needed (Nero and Steam often being big offenders). I've also set the bethesda games to turn off Aero visual theme while running to save resources too.

previously I'd seen non higher than 6 gigs being used but that means other background process that the famously unoptimized Vista may need to run. Basically I've seen an average or a 2 gig increase in ram when running Oblivion. That is the game that struggles the most. Coming up on 200 mods on fallout3 and I rarely crash that much at all and Morrowind never makes my system sweat.

I still think memory leaking happens - just a higher ceiling.

As for patched exe files - this is good to know about OBSE - in fact I now recall that being implemented about a year or more ago after having OBSE loader not work with the 3gb enabler. Of note the game that probably has the most exe patching is morrowind and I've read reports that the key is to add the LAA after other patches to the exe - so do that one last - and it works. But again - I've yet to make my rig struggle with morrowind.

hey,

Between This and OSR I am happily playing for hours on end.....and most of the time I exit. without a crash...lol Ram usage is way up there but with also using a purge utility (HFT something) Stays steady. Average frame rate is about 20-30 now. Need to Tone down a few more things (FCOM).. Gonna try a reduced spawn rate.


I see 200- 600 FPS in Menus, would it help to use v-syn for Oblivion and set that for the refresh of my monitor ?..85 Would that make any differance? Test that in a few....

MY system doesn't see Oblivion as a tough exe to play with ...What i mean is my system is set to dynamic....will change on the fly and up the speed of the CPU when neccesary.....at idle i am at 1488, top end is 3400 when in game it don't go over 2200 . and CPU usage is only 30% or less. Now that I can make Oblivion USE a lot of memory How to make it use the Processor?....


Edit,




I use Riva tuner Logs in the background . Will also log to file (is caped at 10 meg file size) Mine shows me.....Speed of video card, fan duty , temp of Video card, temp of CPU(4 Differant readings), Cpu usage (all in one and 8 separate threads), also shows Phy mem and page file usage...So i can really see what is going on and when...

@Camaro:
I really don't know how you set your system to change cpu clocks dynamically but you should look for a solution there(I had never heard of such a setting before).
And Oblivion will greatly benefit from going from 2200Mhz to 3400Mhz, you should really investigate how to do so for Oblivion.

Its in the bios for this new board the throttling. makes you use less power..... I will try the Static settings but really liked the fact that it ran low most of the time.......


Dynamic.......multiplier x9 = 1488 MHz Like right now on internet IF i was to say fire up Prime 95 and use all 8 threads Ramps up to......X21 @ 3471.9 MHz


So i could set this to run all the time at this setting but that would make this a power hungry beast. Kinda Like how i can hear my fan ramp up as i push this system.....gonna have to research this more.....



Edit in case your intrested a link to Dynamic turbo boost with Intel http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p7p55d-deluxe_9.html

You might want to disable the dynamic overclocking tool, and install a tool that let's you save multiple profiles. I know AMD Overdrive can do this, and can let you change between profiles without restarting, and I'm sure there are similar tools for Intel processors. This way you can use an underclocked profile when not gaming, and switch to an overclocked profile before you start Oblivion or any other CPU demanding application.

Some new helpful information that I've discovered today...

Soo, I recently cautioned players after posting my last video that once a certain amount of memory had been cached within a single cell, Oblivion would CTD if I tried to switch cells or run PCB. This was true, but I found out why...

I'm sure most of you knew this already. I even knew it, but thought I was stable. Oblivion hates overclocked hardware! I had to let go of my 4.44ghz OC today. I kept getting crashes during my testing because I was stressing my components soo much that I started getting harddrive corruption errors in my event log. Oblivion was crashing because it couldn't access a file! First time I've ever seen that message, so it definitely made me re-think OCing. I went ahead an went back to stock clocks on my CPU (3.33ghz) Not slow, but certainly a noticeable loss of FPS. However, my stability improved 10 fold! Here is the highest test result I've seen for combined VRAM and system memory usage! http://img40.imagefra.me/img/img40/2/2/21/far327/f_1bh9u4m7q60m_a0e56fe.jpg (The system memory didn't show in the FRAPS ss, but it was about 2.35gb.)

Even though I was nearly rock solid stable, I did end up with a CTD after about an hour. The interesting thing though is Oblivion didn't cause the crash... A windows system file did...

Faulting application name: Oblivion.exe, version: 1.2.0.416, time stamp: 0x462392c7		 Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7100.0, time stamp: 0x49eea706		 Exception code: 0xc0000005		 Fault offset: 0x0002e1c3		 Faulting process id: 0x20c		 Faulting application start time: 0x01cab345c481e190		 Faulting application path: D:\Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.exe		 Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll		 Report Id: b1c3fad0-1f3c-11df-873e-001fbc0081eb

"ntdll.dll" Guess it's time to research some more on this. Let me know if you guys have any ideas on that type of CTD.

***EDIT - Although getting rid of my overclock on my CPU did increase stability, I still ended up with frequent CTDs when entering new cells or running PCB once my VRAM exceeded past it's dedicated amount. Usually the instability began around 300mb above the dedicated amount.

I've added another update to the OP after testing the limits of maxing out VRAM when using LAA.



Hope this helps some people who may of decided to try going beyond there dedicated VRAM usage.

Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_API

It says it all, it contains the basic functions like allocating memory, freeing memory, etc.
And it's extremely stable(if it wasn't your windows wouldn't last 5 minute without crashing).
It probably crashed because a part of Oblivion(or an OBSE plugin) tried to free memory that wasn't allocated, a typical scenario would be free(NULL_POINTER); which will crash ntdll and Oblivion with it(though there may be ways to prevent that through exception handling, maybe ocps does handle that exception).

This is incredible!!!

Prior to running this better cities was unplayable - now it runs like a dream. You're a genius.

Many thanks

Thanks for linking this! I'll study over it to see if it sheds any light.
I only saw that CTD message once in the event log. Now that I understand
that pushing VRAM beyond it's dedicated amount eventually causes instability,
I'm not overly concerned about getting that type of crash again.
If I do, I know where to read. :thumbsup:

@icutoffmyear - Thanks! Although please keep in mind that I only provided
some in depth information and testing as to why the 4gb LAA patch is needed
for a heavily modded Oblivion. (I should update the OP stating this somewhere.)

EDIT - I will be doing LAA testing on WinXP 32bit today. I should have
memory ceiling numbers for users without LAA with 2gb and 4gb of memory.
We will see if it works, and if there are any real gains.

I'll be interested to see what you find. I still have WinXP 32bit, and also 4 GB of RAM. That's a very helpful thread you have created.

Was that on XP? Vista and Win7 routinely (standard procedure) set aside some RAM for the vid cards use. Think that might also be a contributor to instability with those?

All the VRAM testing with LAA enabled so far have been tested on Windows 7 64bit.

EDIT - Yes, it's clear that 7 and Vista both set aside system memory for VRAM use if dedicated VRAM is all used up as that was what prompted these tests. But any thoughts on why it would be unstable? My initial thought was that maybe the total VRAM and system memory combined were hitting some new 'total memory ceiling'. But the amount of memory in use at the time of each CTD fluxuated too much to make that conclusion. And if it were a memory ceiling, it would CTD without doing anything. Meaning I could just be standing still and as soon as a ceiling was reached it would CTD. This was not the case. The game would remain stable as long as I remained in the cell where all the cached data was, AND as long as I didn't purge the cell buffer. (Just thinking out load here)

I would guess that implementation was done far better in Vista, and Win7, than XP. I think it was more of a 'just in case' measure there, so, probably not coded as well.

I would also guess that LAA code in oblivion probably doesn't take 'overflow to system ram' into account, or, it is just poorly implemented, thus, when purging cell buffers, it gets confused, and causes a crash.

An interesting test might be to use an exe that ISN"T LAA aware, and load the game down with texture packs, and see if the PCB still causes the same crashes. Not sure if there is any good way to track just what is using which blocks of memory though.

It's a great idea! But a real challenge. Say if I used the original Oblivion.exe and maxed out the textures as much as I could. Most likely the allocated system ram ceiling point for Oblivion.exe would get hit before I could get the VRAM up high enough for an effective test. That is, unless we can think of another way of loading a bunch of texture data into the VRAM without filling up to much system memory.

Your comments make sense about the CTDs. I didn't know how to word it correctly, but I was thinking similarly along those lines...

@Tommy_H - UPDATE on the XP 32 bit non-LAA memory ceiling... - It ended up higher than Windows 7 64, but not by much... 1.8gb is the ceiling
I'll enable LAA now and see how far 4gb of ram can carry an XP 32 bit game. (That is if it works at all)

Well if it matters much, since I'm still sitting on XP SP3 32bit, I've run my VRAM usage as high as 1.5GB before. MANUALLY doing a PCB has always worked. PCB during cell changes outdoors usually works, but if the VRAM usage stays high enough it will crash since the game seems to begin loading new material before the PCB has a chance to kick in. It's an absolute gamble though as far as going from outdoors to indoors. The size of the interior cell seems to have an impact on things.

So its possible that the crash with PCB is related to timing of events? wonder if it would be possible to run the PCB, and add a slight delay to loading new material?

Using a vid card with limited memory, on a system with a fair bit, might enable test results to have some meaning?

I've been using this patch over the weekend and so far I'm running rock solid. Not one, single, solitary crash. None. My longest session lasted for over 4.5 hours yesterday (using Windows 7 64bit w 4GB RAM). I typically average about +300 over my VRAM limit, (768MB on my card). I used to get horrible stuttering before it would ultimately CTD in that scenario (well within 1 hour) but not anymore. Seems to be working great. I's using QTP3, RAEVD, Better Cities, plus a bunch of other replacers/enhancers and I barely get a hiccup. I'm about to be a glutton for punishment and see just how far I can go.

One thing I would like to add, since you mentioned overclocking, is you may want to consider how aggressive your memory clock and timings are set. I used to run with a pretty aggressive FSB and memory OC but also found out that Oblivion (and out of all my games ONLY Oblivion) does not like it. I can push the FSB/CPU to about 10% over but I keep my RAM unlinked at default with conservative timings. From my experience, pushing my RAM more than anything else definitely caused much more crashing with regards to overclocking and running OB.

Oh, and I'm not using Streamline or any other pcb mods but I am using Oblivion Stutter Remover and weOCPS. No other performance enhancing except for a few common .ini tweaks (+mem allocated, + int/ext cell buffer, turned off all autosaving, music off, borders off, and tweaked some HDR/blur settings to my liking). Everything else including any background loading and threading is left at default vanilla settings. I never gained much mileage from those to begin with and even in some cases saw a performance/stability drop.