Hey guys. About six months ago I picked up a new laptop for college work. I didn't really think about gaming when I selected it, but afterwards thought it should be good enough to run older games. Oblivion being five years old, I assumed it would have no problem (especially considering Portal 2 works like a dream on Medium settings). However this does not seem to be the case. I struggle to go over Low settings with Oblivion, introduction of any level of LOD makes things a lot worse. Higher settings just won't render right, all I get is a HUD and a black screen. If I use a widescreen resolution everything gets choppy, and I get severe mouse lag.

I am running a few mods (the game game didn't run particularly well before I started adding these though), and I use Steam. I thought I'd buy myself a new gaming rig at some point, and I'd just use the laptop as a guinea-pig to get everything working how I'd like it. That plan has been postponed due to other needs, so I'm stuck with the laptop for the time being.


My laptop is as following:

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
CPU: Intel Core i3 (2.53ghz)
GPU: Intel HD Graphics (built in chipset)
RAM: 3GB (2.86 Usable)


Mods I'm using (I'll just include the big major ones, there's a few small ones too):

Animated Windows and Lighting
Dynamic Map
Open Cities Reborn
Unique Landscapes Compilation
ImpeREAL Cities - Unique Districts
ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Castles for Open Cities
New Roads and Bridges Revised
Realistic Leveling
G's Loot Mod
LG's Unscaled Enemies
Persuasion Overhaul
Tamriel Transportation Network


I use OBMM for all my mods, and BOSS to get everything in the correct order. I haven't cleaned anything using TES4Edit though (don't know if that'd help?)

Am I doing something wrong? Is the laptop really that bad? Is Oblivion just harder to run than some newer games? Why can't I get any half decent performance out of it?

Thanks for any help.

Yes, it's really that bad. The Intel HD Graphics is really not suitable for gaming.

Portal 2 runs better than Oblivion, cause it have lower graphic card requirements and contained into small levels while Oblivion is a large world to explore.

Well that svcks. Shame really, everything else on it is quite good. I don't really see the need for fancy quad core processors for standard office work. Why would anyone put one into a laptop without a decent GPU to go with it? I suppose I'm the moron for buying it. I didn't really know much about computers until I started six months ago (it's my first private one, until now I've used the families). Looks like I'll be getting the gaming rig sooner rather than later then (I've learned a lot in six months, I won't be making the same mistakes again). I'll just make my car last an extra year or something, and sell the laptop .

Well your CPU is really a dual core with hyperthreading. (2 cores, each with 2 threads=4 theads, not 4 cores)

The main reason Intel uses those integrated GPUs in there is because they are good for battery life. Terrible for gaming, but you can get a much better battery life than you would if you ran a dedicated GPU from Nvidia or AMD.
When you do plan to get a good gaming system, you will almost always get a better deal if you build a desktop yourself. (And of course, if you sell the laptop, make sure you either keep the Hard Drive or wipe the data off it using secure wiping tools like http://www.dban.org/)

Thanks for the tips. I was planning to build myself, looking at a budget of ￡500. My colleague and I did a rough estimate at work the other day and it looks doable (I can't remember the exact components, but we went down the AMD/ATI route), it wasn't overly fancy, 8GB RAM, but we did find a good Quad Core processor (AMD Phenom). I'll build from scratch, brand new case, fans, power supply, everything. If anyone has any tips for good components, or good websites that'd be great!