Hello, I just recently got Oblivion goty on steam, and every time I play on my computer (mostly in grassy areas and encounters with 2+ enemies) my framerates drop to about 5-10 when my comp can easily play the game normally with 60+ fps on ultra high settings. I tried setting core affinity to just 1 core and then just 2 cores (running with a triple core processor at the moment, I'll post specs below) and didn't see any improvement.

Any help is appreciated, thank you.

SPECS:
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Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600)
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. M4A77TD Rev X.0x
CPU: 2.90 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X3 435
500GB Sata hard drive 3.0 data transfer rate
2GB DDR3
Powercolor ATI Radeon 5770
500W Power Supply

Your system is definitely fine for playing on Ultra High settings, but during battle, the CPU is taxed more. I do not know of a processor running in consumer hardware that can run Oblivion without stuttering, either due to being under too much pressure or (at the high end) Oblivion not being optimized enough. I do not see how reducing your "active" cores would help, unless you are seeing significant speed boost by doing that.

Getting a sound card would help out your processor a lot. In the mean time, apply these tweaks for on-board sound - http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=oblivion_ini_tweaks#OnBoardSound

If you want to try adding a couple of unofficial mods to further help - http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/?page=stabilization_and_optimization_mods <-- You can learn about mods and how to install them by looking around the site. The main menu is ordered logically to that end.

Alright, ty Tom, I'll have to try out the tweaks tonight or tomorrow, had to uninstall because of a corrupt file.

When it comes to the reducing active cores, I just read somewhere that Oblivion was meant for single core ssytems and that if you changed the affinity to 1 or 2 cores, performance would increase.

I'll get back to you as soon as I have everything reinstalled tonight!

Now, if I could get a reply on my fallout 3 problem on the fallout forums, my day would be made xD

Oblivion was not optimized for multi-core processing. However, changing the affinity would only help if that somehow meant that the speed of those individual cores increased. It is true that Oblivion only really gains from the speed of the one core it runs on. The recommendation sounds reasonable if that is the purpose it serves; otherwise, I would not bother. In your case, your processor's speed is already pretty good, so taking care of the sound load issue should help quite a bit. 5 to 10 is kind of low, but do not expect 60 FPS while in battle with this game, haha.

If I played FO3, I would head over to that thread now, but I honestly have little interest in that game. My next PC game will probably be TESV. :L


Happy gaming!
- Tomlong75210

Well, the issues didnt quite get fixed, but I can live with them. As long as I can play my Oblivion, I'm happy, haha.

TY again Tom.