Do you have onboard sound? If so, perhaps you could pull the SB card and see if that improves anything. If nothing else, at least you will either confirm or eliminate that as the problem.

However, I think your problem is really the 470, unfortunately. That card is DX 11 while Oblivion is DX 9. Nvidia is going to be working to optimize DX 11 on that card and I think the DX 9 compatibility isn't the best. I'd normally recommend downgrading your video drivers, but the drivers that some find work better for Oblivion (the 186 version) don't support the 470. Have you tried complaining to Nvidia? Not sure that will help any, but maybe they have some suggestions...

The more I read the topics on the Nvidia forums, i'm fairly sure you are right. I dropped 330 bucks on what some are slandering as a "useless paperweight" on the nvidia forums. UGH. i picked nvidia this time around not because thats what I already had, but because I was under the impression that the Nvidia drivers were performing better than the ATI drivers in this generation of cards. Nvidia was quoted on saying the card is "twitchy", which really pisses me off, because I hadn't seen that before buying it obviously. I'm up for suggestions on a new card that handles old games as well as new games if i can somehow get this worked out and sent back.

Not true. At least, not in my experience. I've a GTX 470 (from MSI, if that makes a difference) and I can play Oblivion without any lagging issues. Occasional stuttering when the game is loading a new area, but that's it.

Do you have any graphics mods? MTAEVWD or whatever it's called made Oblivion lag ridiculously for me.

It's funny how we go through these cycles. I've been an Nvidia user for decades. We used to use ATI (call it a bit of patriotism - they are/were Canadian ), but Nvidia ruled for a while. I just finished buying my husband a Radeon 5970 Unfortunately he doesn't play Oblivion, so I can't say how it performs... He wants to play Crysis at full settings.

I'd hang on to your 470 - I think it will do fine with newer games and Nvidia will get the driver issue sorted eventually. You might consider going back to your 8800 GT or getting an ATI. I've heard ATI's perform very well with Oblivion. I'd do some research and get the best performing 100-200 card to tide you over until Nvidia gets things sorted. Tom's Hardware has the best reviews, imho, or not so humble, as the case may be

After giving my hubby the 5970, I got his 285 and it's doing very well. Unfortunately the 285 is the hidden gem that's not available anymore (so I can't SLI ).

You could also try simply uninstalling and reinstalling your drivers, but I think someone suggested that already. You'd have to make sure you cleaned them out completely - see http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html for instructions. Now trira is correct about MTAEVWD, but I don't think you're running that...

Nope. no mods. Trira, what sound card do you have? if your card plays the game fine, then maybe its my sound. I'm just not really wealthy enough to dish out for a quality sound card right now.

Also, your 470 is ok with other games, right? If not, then it could be a bad card. I avoid EVGA now because I've had bad experiences with them. I actually got one where the onboard fan didn't work - turned out the wire going to the fan was pinched when the heatsink was installed and had shorted! Bit of electrical tape fixed that, but that's poor manufacturing in my books

Also, you're not running that sound alchemy thing are you? If so, remove it!! There's been lots of posts on the forums from people having problems with that...

idk what sound alchemy is, but i didn't see it on my system. and the 470 plays most newer games well like you mentioned. But GTA IV doesn't run well either. my card can't be pushed anywhere near its resource limits, or else it just gives up with a CTD or CTBSOD, which I find odd, because my 8800gt was able to be pushed OVER it resource limits and still ran the game remarkably well given what it was doing. Once I get some extra cash i may try a new sound card or my onboard. Although I heard oblivion doesn't like the onboard sound of this mobo.

[img]http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/5232/72330261.jpg[/img]

Heres the latency issue I suppose. Going into oblivion jumped my latency up quite a bit. Is there a fix for this?

I'd try your onboard sound. Disable hardware acceleration in your Oblivion.ini file (set bDSoundHWAcceleration to zero). Also have a look at this http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107342-two-issues-ive-recently-had-keyboard-and-mouse-locking-up-and-music-refuses-to-play/, if you haven't already. It's not the same as your issue, but I've heard of Creative Alchemy causing other problems too. That's it's proper name...

We're just trying this as a test. Your onboard sound may not be an ideal solution in the long run, although I must admit, I've actually gotten rid of SB cards in the past and have gone back to onboard sound. This is usually for mobos that have pretty good onboard sound though. My current mobo is kind of odd - it's sort of onboard sound It's an ASUS Striker II Extreme that comes with its own soundcard. So it's a separate card, but I think the OS sees it as onboard sound. Anyway, once I turned off hardware acceleration for Oblivion only, it works fine. I don't have any problems with other games.

I guess you're at the point where you can't return the 470? It's rare that you could do that anyway and get something else. Usually you're limited to returning it for another of the same card, at best.

Yeah i likely can't return this card. And I want to try the onboard sound, but I can't find any drivers online for my xfx nForce 650i ultra mobo. i don't have the disc. nvidia's website has drivers, but not for sound for some reason.

My Audigy 4 SB worked just fine. It is an older card, but it still did its job.

Oblivion.ini Tweaks for On-Board Sound - http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=oblivion_ini_tweaks#OnBoardSound

You can also turn off HAA through the Dxdiag menus (at least, in WinXP you could...)


Edit: oo, I can't stand typos...

Oh, we are in luck! I have XP I turned HW acceleration to off and the sound was terrible, but no lag! i'm getting crazy good fps around 300. I turned it to "basic" acceleration, and that lets the game run just as well but with good sound. Thanks so much! I guess this is a temporary fix? I should perhaps get a new sound card?

I kind of just jumped in on the end of this, but what is wrong with your current sound card? Have you tried only grabbing and installing the latest drivers from the site, leaving all of the extra stuff alone?

Yeah i have the latest, but some sort of conflict is causing latency issues I guess, and this card has given me problems in oblivion in the past with crackling and other annoyances, but those cleared up a long time ago, perhaps to due driver upgrade, i can't remember. Do you not think getting a new card would fix it?

and I just realized I said it incorrectly. I have to turn my HW accel to 'basic' AND i have to make the .ini edit for turning off music.



If you happen to check this post again, what kind of performance do you get with your 470 in GTA IV? Maybe my issues in GTA IV are due to the same reason oblivion was messing up. in that case i'm all for buying a new card so long as anyone thinks that will work.

I upgraded to an X-Treme Gamer, and this card seems to work just fine. I am only pointing this out to say that you do not need the top-of-the-line sound card to run Oblivion with good performance. The crackle-pop thing with the older Creative cards is not nice, I have to admit...

i just turned the HW acceleration slider back on, with BmusicEnabled=off and the game is also working. So i was entirely mistaken, its not the dxdiag slider that fixed it, but bmusicenabled. Why would this be?

I'm using the integrated sound that comes with my mobo (Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H revision 1.0).


I don't have GTA IV. So I can't help ya there.

Wow, lots of responses since I was here last

I just went to http://xfxforce.com/en-us/Help/Support.aspx and I saw this:



I recommend signing up for their support service and downloading the latest drivers for your onboard sound. See how that goes. As I said, I've been happily using onboard sound and it looks like trira does too It certainly doesn't hurt at this point.

Disabling the music is a well known performance improver, but it shouldn't be necessary in your case. Let's see if we can get the onboard sound working, with music on. If not, you may have to go with no music and look at replacing your sound card.

There is no need to sign up there. That is the updated Realtek driver. It has actually been updated since R2.50 - http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3

Either grab the R2.51 driver or, if this is a problem because HDMI is being used, grab the HDMI update for ATI cards as well.

There you go... Didn't realize it was Realtek... You'll have to plug in a microphone if you want to edit dialog (if you do any modding), but don't worry about that if you're not modding

I'll post back with an update once I install the recommended BIOS upgrade from XFX. someone mentioned this could alleviate the problem on nvidia.com. If not, the next thing I will test is the onboard sound. I'm finding out I don't even really miss the music too much, although dynamic music is neat.
I'm waiting for my right angle sata cables to get here first though, i'll need them for my CD burner to run the BIOS update. Thanks for all your help again you guys/gals are the best

You need a CD burner to do a BIOS update? Can't you just do it with an USB stick? Or does your mobo not allow that?

Sorry to hijack, but how does it cause a CPU hit?

I've never experienced one, so I dont know.

I updated my bios via CD because xfx didn't provide any sort of winflash utility along with their update. However, the BIOS update has not seemed to have any effect other than my CPU temperature dropping 10 degrees Celsius. Why would that happen? Its weird, because my CPU used to idle at these temps (27C) and then at some point it jumped up to 37C and stayed there for a good length of time, maybe a year. Weird. At first I thought it was due to the C1E halt state, reducing clock rate, since I had to reset the CMOS (for some unknown reason), but I turned that off and yet the temperature remains 10 degrees cooler. idk, i guess it can't hurt anything other than overheating without me knowing, but thats not of much concern i dont think.


I still have yet to understand why its the music of the game causing this though. Now I have sound HW accel turned ON, and the game runs fine. but as soon as I put BmusicEnabled=1 i get about 5FPS.

Anywho, my next step is trying onboard sound. I will post back with the results of that. it'll probably have to wait till i get off work tonight.

There's no reason this should be the case.

However, AFAIK Oblivion's copy protection isn't so easily circumvented as this. Are you also using a cloaking tool of some kind?

ONBOARD SOUND did not fix my problem. Damnit. now I'm at a serious loss. Does that mean buying a new sound card won't fix it? Now that I have my CD drive, I may just do a reformat in a while to see if that helps. But I work a lot and may not be able to for some time.

If I rename oblivion's music folder (hence removing all the music files from being played), it has the same effect as bmusicenabled=0. its something about those files. The other sounds work just great. Any other ideas? anyone knowledgable of codecs think this might be a codec issue? I have K-Lite Standard Codec pack, but I've uninstalled it to no avail. I tried the tool someone posted to reset all the codec associations and that didn't work either.