I'm reinstalling from the ground up, so I thought I would check out my fps as I go to more clearly see what affects performance, etc. Just informal testing, but my first results were surprising to me, so I thought I'd share.

System:

• AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU @3.0 GHz
  
• HD Radeon 4870 1GB VRAM
  
• 4GB DDR2 RAM
  
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

No AA. HDR enabled. All view distances highest settings. Texture size Large. 1280 X 1024 (which is my monitor's native resolution).

Load order: (Nothing running except the below - no texture replacers, no OBSE or various plugins) I did run TES4LODGen.

Active Mod Files:00  Oblivion.esm01  Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm02  Francesco's Optional New Items Add-On.esm03  Cobl Main.esm  [Version 1.72]04  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm  [Version 1.34]05  Mart's Monster Mod.esm  [Version 3.7b3p3]06  FCOM_Convergence.esm  [Version 0.9.9MB3]07  Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp  [Version 3.2.4]08  DLCShiveringIsles.esp09  Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp  [Version 1.4.0]0A  Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Bosses.esp0B  Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Enemies.esp0C  Francesco's Optional Chance of More Enemies.esp0D  Francesco's Optional Leveled Guards.esp++  FCOM_Francescos.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_FrancescosItemsAddOn.esp  [Version 0.9.9]0E  FCOM_FrancescosNamedBosses.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  Item interchange - Extraction.esp  [Version 0.78]0F  DLCOrrery.esp10  DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.3]11  DLCMehrunesRazor.esp12  DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.4]13  DLCSpellTomes.esp++  DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.1]14  Cobl Glue.esp  [Version 1.72]15  Cobl Si.esp  [Version 1.63]16  OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp  [Version 1.72]++  FCOM_Cobl.esp  [Version 0.9.9]17  Bob's Armory Oblivion.esp18  FCOM_BobsArmory.esp  [Version 0.9.9]19  Oblivion WarCry EV.esp1A  FCOM_WarCry.esp  [Version 0.9.9MB3]1B  Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp  [Version 1.34]++  OOO-Water_Weeds.esp  [Version 1.33]1C  Mart's Monster Mod - Additional Enemy NPC Vars.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]1D  FCOM_Convergence.esp  [Version 0.9.9Mb3]++  FCOM_EntropicOrderRebalance.esp  [Version 0.9.9beta2]1E  FCOM_RealSwords.esp  [Version 0.9.9]1F  FCOM_DurabilityAndDamage.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_SpawnRatesStronger.esp  [Version 0.9.9Mb3]20  Mart's Monster Mod - More Wilderness Life No Gates.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - More Passive Wildlife.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  FCOM_NoAdventurersInGates.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_LessReaversInGates.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Looting NPCs & Creatures.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]21  Mart's Monster Mod - No Carrion Rats.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Less Reavers.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]22  Mart's Monster Mod - Safer Quest Locations.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]23  Mart's Monster Mod - Dungeons of MMM.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]24  Mart's Monster Mod - Gems & Gem Dust.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]25  Mart's Monster Mod - Hunting & Crafting.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]26  Mart's Monster Mod - Farm Animals.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]27  Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse WaterLife.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3f]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Slof Horses Complete.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  FCOM_DiverseGuardUnity.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_BobsGuardUnity.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_HungersUnitySI.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  FCOM_Archery.esp  [Version 0.9.9]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Shivering Isles.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]28  DLCBattlehornCastle.esp29  DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.4]2A  Knights.esp2B  Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp  [Version 1.0.9]2C  Mart's Monster Mod - City Defences.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  FCOM_Knights.esp  [Version 0.9.9Mb3]2D  Salmo the Baker, Cobl.esp  [Version 3.08]++  Item interchange - Placement for FCOM.esp  [Version 0.78]++  Item interchange - Option, Ingredients in Bulk, reduced.esp  [Version 0.78]++  Mart's Monster Mod - Resized Races.esp  [Version 3.7b3p3]++  Cobl Filter Late MERGE ONLY.esp  [Version 1.53]2E  Bashed Patch, 0.esp

FPS Results:

• Tutorial prison cell: 120 and up, jumping all over the place within that range.
  
• Coc'd to Vilverin: 60 and up, dropped to 20-25 when encountering NPCs.
  
• Coc'd to Weye: 190-ish in the room, dropping to 105 when the sleeping man is on the screen. This was the surprising bit to me.
  
• Outdoors in and around Weye: 40-ish, dropping to 20 with 2 mounted guards holding torches on the screen.
  
• In the nearby fort: 120 at the entrance, dropping to 60 when torches come into view, dropping to 15 and holding with 5+ NPCs on the screen.

gothemasticator

All of these of MMM plugin would have a impact on amount of Npc or Creatures that are close to Weye,

Farm Animals has a spawn point, Waterlife has a spawn point, MWL has well..Remove those and rebuild patch and wait x amount of days, rerun test in that area what is difference..?

Changing MMM plugins did not change anything.

Keeping the same load order as posted above, I added OBSE and all the plugins I need, including OSR. Set max fps to 30. Results:

• Constant 30 fps even running through the wilderness, encountering pack of wolves, etc. (Slight and temporary slowdowns when loading new areas, no big deal.)
  
• Abrupt drop to 20 fps when two mounted guards with torches are on screen. (Back up to 30 when only one is on screen.)

Interesting.

gothemasticator

I also noted an extremely high fps drop with torches.
I mainly noted after adding Dungeon Actor Have Torches to my modlist and going to Vilverin, where usually it was a smooth ride. It started dropping at 10-15 fps when in range of actor with torches(there were quite a few of them but still).

I tried adjusting shadows, I didn't gain 1 fps from disabling all shadows.
I don't remember if I tried changing that specular lighting parameter though.

If you want lots of performance related data, OSR 4.1.3 can produce some.

bExtraProfiling will make it produce lists of how long each function call took every 10 seconds, working from a list of known calls inside Oblivion. Low performance overhead.

If Master\bExperimentalStuff is enabled then Experimental\bMonitorBSShaderAccumulator will make it print out how much time one particular function called from the internals of rendering/culling takes... that function accounts for like half of all the time used during normal game play on my computer. Low performance overhead, though the log file produced will be very large if you play for more than a few seconds. Might only work if bExtraProfiling is enabled.

Experimental\iPrintSceneGraphDepth can tell you the entire shape of the scene graph if you want. Each and every frame. If you ask it for everything then each frames scenegraph printout will be on the order of 200 KB, which will slow Oblivion down a lot and produce huge log files rapidly. Might only work if bExtraProfiling is enabled.

Thanks, skyranger. I might look into it.

gtm

Lighting is well known to be a hog, but two torches causing that much of a difference is surprising to me. I wonder if this indicates a problem with the torch mesh itself?

Do you still get the same FPS decrease from torches if you use the "No Light Flicker" tweak under "Tweak Assorted" in Wrye Bash? (Not suggesting you play that way, since the flicker looks really good, but just wondering if that's what causes the slowdown.)

I'll test the no flicker option when I next fire up the game (haha).

gtm