Morrowind: INI-Tweaking on a 'newer' system

[Lord Cluttermonkey]

So, I recently reinstalled Morrowind on my newer laptop ,and by newer I mean less than 4 years old.

The specs of my laptop:

Spoiler:

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (Service Pack 2 installed)
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II P320 (2.09 GHz, Dual-core, 1MB L2 Cache)
GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 Graphics (Onboard, 256 MB shared memory)
RAM: 1024 MB DDR3-RAM (although only 768 MB are usable, thanks to my onboard graphic card)
HDD: HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 (SATA II, 320 GB, 7200 rpm, 16 MB Cache)

Sure, that ain't nowhere near todays standards, but Morrowind isn't exactly cutting-edge either.


The only changes I made were setting the resolution to 1024x768, disabling realtime shadows and increasing draw and AI distance to maximum. No 3rd Party mods installed, and I'm trying to keep it that way.

Then I enabled ShowFPS in the .INI file, and the results aren't bad:
Indoors, I get around 100-130 FPS.
Outdoors, it varies between 40-60 FPS (Tested in the area around Seyda Neen and Balmora).

What bugs me though is the lag when crossing a cell border.
It usually drops the FPS down to 10 for a few seconds and sometimes a Loading bar appears.


Is there a way to decrease the amount of loading and the FPS Drop in the .INI file?
(Longer loading would be ok, as long as it happens less frequent)
I know there's the option disable Thread Loading, but I'm not exactly sure if that would be beneficial or not.
Also, I'ld like to know some tweaks to increase the performance without decreasing the graphic quality if there are any.

That's all for now.

PS: First post, yay! But who cares anyway

[bastwren]

There is an extremely well-written and informative guide to tweaking Morrowind's .ini file which you can find online. It is one I have used extensively, and, although you are only asking about one element, it is very much worth reading it in its entirety. The author, Koroush Ghazi, has written many "Tweaks Guides" for other games as well as operating systems, many of which I have also used.

Anyway, you can find it at tweaktown (dot) com (I can't yet post external links, sorry), and search for "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Tweak Guide".

I would suggest copying it into a text file for easier reference. With regard to thread loading, disabling it will give you longer, but less frequent, load times. It is done to reduce visual stuttering.

I hope that helps.

[wildespace]

This website (uesp.net) has lots of information, including the .ini - http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Ini_Settings

To reduce the stutter during loading cells, locate "DontThreadLoad=" and set it to 1.