I bought Morrowind via Steam last week, and have been fighting with it to run smoothly since then.

First off this is the plain old vanila version, no mods etc in use.

Loading up the game goes as follows:
When I load up the game the Bethesda logo movie runs smoothly.
When the title screen starts to load everything slows down, to the point it takes several minutes to get to the New/Load/Options/etc screen, unless I hit ESC to skip the loading of the title screen.
When I try to move the mouse around on the title screen to select New or one of the other options its very slow, and takes a while to respond to a click.
Once I select new the opening movie loads and plays fine.
Once the game begins the slow down returns, I get 5 FPS when looking at Jubb. If I look at the floor/walls it reports 240FPS but still lags and stutters if I try to look around (even though it keeps reporting 240FPS)

Because of this I haven't played further in to the game,and have been searching this forum, Google, Steam support etc for advise, tips fixes etc. Nothing seems to work.
I've run the game as an admin, turned on all sorts of compatibility options (including the ones mentioned on the sticky on this board), shut down all extra running proceess, and lowering the max FPS to 40 in the INI among other things. Also installed the latest catalyst drivers in case that was an issue.

Now given I used to run this game just fine years ago on a Gforce 4600 AMD 1600+ with 4 gigs of RAM, I'm sure there is some sort of configuration change or patch I need to run so I can make to have this game run better than it is.

I know it won't take advantage of all the power of modern hardware (like the multicore CPU), and its more CPU than GPU intensive, but I see posts of people with similar systems running the game just fine, so I'm likely just not doing something required to make this game run well under this configuration.

Any insight or help anyone can provide would be greatly appericated.


My computer is an Asus G73-JH
Specs:
Intel Core i7 CPU Q 720 @ 160Ghz (8 CPUs)
8192MB Ram
Windows 7 Pro - 64 Bit
Ati HD5870

You don't have the music turned all the way down, do you? If so, raise it one notch and see if that helps.

Thank you Yasgur, your suggestion pointed me at a direction that makes the game playable, now I need get around the next issue:

I went in to the game and checked the music (again this was a very basic setup so nothing even the simplest of options had ever been touched). Music was set at default, tried lowering it and raising it, still the same issue.
So I then tried turning the music all the way down, suddenly the game ran fine. As soon as I turnt he music up one notch the slowdown returns.

It looks like when the title screen loads its trying to play music but is having a problem causing slow down there, and when I get to the actual gameplay its trying to play music causing slow down again.
Did a bit of digging around further now that I narrowed it down to the music and not the stuff I was looking at before. In my case it appears I'm not having the "Music volume all the way down, mouse lag issue", but rather the Codec issue with Mp3s.

Using troubleshooting I've found, I've tried the following to resolve that (because I would like them music during the game):
Set Window Media Player as my default MP3 player (it was VLC)
Regsvr32 quartz.dll
Install Zoom Player
Switch between 3D and Software acceleration in game

None of the above will allow me to have the music on.
Also not once have I heard music when playing the game, or at the title screen.

It looks like a Codec issue according to what I can see, but Nightmare2013's codec fix is only for Windows XP not Windows 7, so again I have to ask for anyone's insight on how to correct that problem.
Again any help is appericated.

I'll continue to search online, but if anyone has a suggestion its more than welcome.

The audio device on the Asus G73JH I'm using is a Realtek High Definiton Audio if that helps (checked for updated drivers but looks like I'm using the latest)

All of the codec problems I've seen with Morrowind have been associated with video codecs, so this is very strange. When you checked for audio drivers, did you check with your motherboard manufacturer or, if a big name system builder like Dell, on that builder's site? Check the sound section of your direxctx report to be sure that is in fact using a valid driver and not an emulated one. Another thing to try is go to Sound in Cointrol Panel and try the various listed sound devices on your Playback tab...just remember the original selection.

Also, if you've installed a codec mega-pac, like K-Lite, in the past you could try an uninstall. Those are mostly video codecs, but I suppose they could have some audios included.

We have no history on problematic audio codecs, so I'm kind of at a loss and taking shots in the dark.

It appears I didn't have the latest driver for the Realtek HD Audio.
I was going by Asus and Microsofts drivers which are back at 6.0.some revision I don't recall. 6.2 was the latest on Reatek's site, which fixed the audio issue with music. So I'm now playing the game with music and a full frame rate.
That allowed me to put the graphical mods on after which I have a very nice looking Morrowind running at a good framerate and playing all music and sounds it should.

Don't download drivers for hardware from Microsoft (or Windows Update). They are simply drivers in the MIcrosoft database that are WHQL certified. They are usually old and aren't optimized for your specfic configuration.

Excellent and well done! Enjoy.