Oh, I'm looking at the screen. I just don't notice the tearing. Every once in a while I'll notice it. It doesn't happen that often though. If I were to use V-Sync, I'd use RivaTuners Triple Buffering app. RivaTuner hasn't been updated in ages though.

I don't activate it because every other game I play isn't crippled by a crap engine from 2004

The reason I have OSR restrict frame rates to 30 is to give that processing power over to the AI routines to keep things flowing.

As far as screen tearing, the last few ATI drivers have given me what I'm guessing is the tearing you're talking about. A bright line on the left and top side of the screen. It won't go away no matter what I set it to either. It's one of those rock & hard place situations because Gothic 4 crashes on the older driver I was holding on to for Oblivion.

@koldunic: Yes. FO3 is a vast improvement. The game sustains high frame rates even with large texture packs and doesn't have the same stuttering issue. At least for me. Game runs smooth as silk on a 100% default setup with the in-game sliders maxed out.

The latest nVidia drivers have an option to enable Triple Buffering. On that note, if I were to override Oblivion.exe's video settings using the nvidia control app, would it still take effect when I launch oblivion via obse_loader.exe?

Just to let you know it isn't the high end texture packs themselves that cause fps slowdowns and stuttering. It is when there is too much memory being taken up by textures that it is higher then the amount of video memory you have. Your system memory is slower then your video memory plus there are extra steps involved in moving textures between your system and video memory.

Somewhat, but not by much. While it's more efficient overall, it's still primarily a single core game. It makes use of dual core a bit better than Oblivion does, but not by much. And some people have even had problems trying to run it on quads. They needed to add a line in their ini file to get Fallout to ignore all but 2 cores. But as Arthmoor mentions, overall the game is much better when it comes to performance. I can run it with higher settings than I can with Oblivion and I still get a better framerate.

Most certainly. Oblivion.exe is still executed and the drivers detect that.

It wasn't designed for what you're throwing at it either. RAEVWD alone can be a real framerate killer, never mind adding those texture packs on top of that. My card can't even handle RAEVWD, at least not if want a half decent framerate. It will run the game just fine though, with an outdoor average of about 30 FPS, You should consider yourself fortunate that you can add all those extras and still get decent performance out of it.

Not that -- although that's one of the reasons I don't use ATI cards.

Tearing is what happens when the frame buffer updates in the middle of a monitor scan. Basically, the top half of the screen will show the old frame's angle, while the bottom half shows the new frame. It's most noticeable if you're turning horizontally, because there's a clear line where the camera angle changes. This is the "tear." Vertical sync completely eliminates this, by waiting until the monitor scan is at the first line before updating the frame.

Dunno, maybe I'm just hypersensitive to this effect, but it drives me crazy and I can't live without VSync.

Oh. I've never seen anything like that. So my issue is something else then? It's annoying because it only happens to Oblivion, at least so far.

Yes. You're right. I guess I am lucky that I can run the mods I'm running and still get above 30 FPS minimum.

I think it was only me. Well two years ago with a nVidia Card, The effect of distortion in Oblivion Gates was visible through walls, terrain, objects. ATI not have this.

My only solution for ATI driver issue was to turn off Antialias, it is not so bad. Helped a lot with Better Cities and Unique Landscapes.

You play without vsync long enough and you hardly ever notice the misallignment once in a while that lasts a second. Compared to the annoyance of things flying around when you enter some shops or houses, I can live with it.

However, if you have 5ms response LCD, perhaps the problem does not happen as much without vsync? I am going to try to turn it back on and see how it goes.

That may be why I never see it. My LCD has a 2ms grey-grey response time (fastest type) and it was something I specifically looked for to eliminate mouse ghosting and other such things. So perhaps it's because this screen is fast enough to avoid the issue.

It's the other annoyance I want gone because invariably the shifted screen is showing bright blue sky background and it's really noticeable. In dungeons you don't see it because the base background color is black.

Maybe my old monitor being 4ms and my tv (I think) being 2ms is the reason why I have never encountered that screen tearing. I have actually never had graphics anomalies since I had my S3 Verge a long time ago.