You know when you run Oblivion for the first time, in the Launcher program, it tries to detect your GPU but then it says it's unrecognized because it's too new, and defaults to crappy settings? Is there any way to circumvent that? I don't want it intializing crappy settings on my new hardware.
(inb4 "just press the Ultra High preset" - no, apparently pressing this button STILL leaves behind certain settings at the lowest)
No, there isn't. The presets are actually coded in there based on which hardware is detected.
Most games are like this.
The best thing to do is, as stated, experiment. Start off with the highest settings in the launcher. Save those settings. Go in game and set all the settings to their highest. Exit the game to make sure they save.
Then play the game. If it's smooth, you can then go about customizing things even more.
Edit:
I also fail to see what's wrong with the launcher having a default when you can simply change things manually....