Oblivion and Quad Core

[Alehn]

Ehy guys, this is my PC:

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q8300 2.50Ghz
3,5 Gb RAM
XP Professional Service Pack 3
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5600 1,1 Gb

It is a good computer. But, to be honest, Oblivion runs better on my old Pentium 4.
Yes, I already know that the game doesn't use multi-core technology and that having four processors working at 2,50 Ghz is worst than having one processor working at 3 Ghz.

The game stutters, in particular when I ride my horse. And this is very annoying! If I lower graphical settings, the situation doesn't change!

I am writing this thread for asking you an opinion:

1) Should I overclock my PC just before playing Oblivion, or do you think that this procedure is dangerous and that it's a shame doing it on a young PC?
2) Should I try to install Stream line?
3) The installation of Stream line requires the installation of OBSE (Oblivion script extender). But, for installing OBSE, I should know if I have a Steam version of the game or a Retail version: what's the way to understand it?

P.S.:
1) Two days ago I installed Oblivion stutter remover, but it doesn't give me any improvements.
2) I also changed some values in the .ini file (in Documents\My Games\Oblivion), according to an official guide: nothing happened.
3) The third thing I tried was a complex operation with shaders (suggested by another guide) and... no results again!

Please, help me.

[jaxawier]

guess you have looked over at the official forums where OSR most of the times is among the first pages ?
Use heap 5 on my xp system,and trying heapsize 450 for now,in that thread it was talk about setting heap to 1000 might help.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... mover-osr/

Stremline and setting it to one of the more performance settings seem to help in some cases,dunno,have it rather relaxing my self.
but have slightly faster cpu,so a little oc on that q8300 might do.
1: I overclock everything a little my self,so I ´m the wrong person to ask that
2: yes,think that is a good idea combined with OSR and heap 5.
3.Don´t know,should you ? have the pc versions, no steam here.
ps.
1: try osr and heap 5,works for me on my xp32-system,also something picked up by lurking that osr thread.
2.I don´t trust all those guides out there unless it comes from trustworthy individuals.
3. as I said,I don´t trust the many "clever" guides circulating,unless the source is deemed trustworthy .
for example,the people in the OSR-tread is pretty much exactly that from my limited understanding.

[Alehn]

jaxawier, thank you very much for your help.

Unfortunately there's no way to improve my Oblivon.

I have tried with no results:
1) Multiple-Core Ini Tweak;
2) Oblivion Stutter Remover;
3) Streamline;
4) Stuff related to Shaders.

It is also important to tell you this: if I lower graphical settings, I don't gain improvements. The main problem is that the game stutters a lot when the character is riding his horse.

I think that overclock is my last hope. But I am worried about possible damages.

P.S.: I am Italian. This is the reason why I didn't know the meaning of the words "retail" and "steam".

[jaxawier]

weird,none of that worked.
begin to wonder if you running a lot of programs in the background when you playing,and if you play on high resolutions ?

Have a slightly faster q8400,was easy enough to overclock to 3 ghz and then some,just make sure you keep a close look at your temperatures,should be doable to put it around 3 ghz without messing with anything besides your fsb ( cpu-speed).
for higher you probably need to adjust voltages in bios,I did my oc with original settings,just increased speed a bit.
Not used to intel much,more amd here,but places like extreme overclocking,overclock net and such has a lot of tips,pointers and threads about all things overclocking,so that could be a good idea with a visit over there.Guru3d has some as well.

other than that,I don´t have more for now anyway.

[Andere]

Oblivion doesn't recognize / use more than one core in a processor. Some tries have been made in that way, you can find them by Google or other search... but it's most probably a dead end --- if the program doesn't recognize two cores... what can you do?

The only option to get more out of it is to overclock it. Bluntly.

[Orzornn]

Give overclocking it a try, but be sure to monitor your temperatures and all the precautions with overclocking, if that doesn't help there's something else wrong in my opinion.

[Andere]

I have a Sempron 140, normally running at 2.70GHz, I have it going at 3.3-3.4GHz, with the AMD "Cool and Quiet", and everything... it certainly is no top make up, I'd say it's a very modest build, but it works well.

One way some people have got it to work better is http://www.iobit.com, and their Game Booster. You might try that. Overclocking is no problem as such, but in case you have a new computer with warranties, you should know that overclocking disables ALL warranties - in certain and perhaps most cases, even warranties for parts you did not overclock. ---- There's a bit of a game in there, ok? Do be careful...

In case you want to do it, http://www.overclock.net is a quite nice place to look for answers. There you can most probably find references to your own system, and so on. Generally speaking, modern processors and video cards and whatever can take take a heck of a beating, they are in fact underclocked at factory level. The only risk is the warranty... blaah-blaah...

Best wishes.

[H8Ball]

I have one word for you all, SOUND. Stuttering when riding a horse is related to the fact that each hoof produces a separate sound. If you're using on-board (integrated) sound, it uses your CPU for almost ALL of the sound processing, which slows everything else down, including tasks like Rendering, AI and Havok Physics simulation. It's mainly the slowdown in Rendering that results in low framerates and stuttering. With four hooves, four sounds are being processed nearly simultaneously, resulting in high CPU usage, hence the slowdown.

The best solution is to upgrade to a dedicated sound card, as it has its own dedicated DSP (Digital Sound Processor) which removes 99% of the sound processing load from the CPU, leaving it free for other tasks. You'll get slightly better framerates and certainly a lot less stutter.

If you can't afford an upgrade just yet, the Quiet Feet mod (available from TESNexus) can be used to replace multiple footstep sounds with single ones, or even disable footstep sounds completely. In either case, the CPU load due to sound processing is reduced, mitigating the stutter problem.

I only have a single-core 32-bit CPU, but I have dedicated video (GPU) AND sound card (DSP) to take as much of the load off it as possible. The result is a fairly smooth experience without any need for Quiet Feet. Oblivion still isn't stutter-free because of the older/slower CPU, but it's performing FAR better than it would be if either my video and/or sound were integrated! Here are my PC specs...

Motherboard: ABIT NF7-S v2.0 (200MHz DDR FSB, AGP 8x, 5xPCI slots)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (UNDERclocked from 2.2GHz to 2GHz for stability)
RAM: 2Gb PC3200 DDR (3.2Gb/sec max transfer rate)
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Audigy 1 (PCI)
Video: XFX Geforce 7900GS (AGP 8x, 512Mb GDDR3 VRAM, SM3.0, 2.1Gb/sec max transfer rate over AGP 8x bus)

With extensive Oblivion.ini and mesh tweaking, coupled with OSR to limit framerates between 10fps and 30fps (perfectly suitable for a slow-paced RPG), this setup is running Oblivion at 1360x768 at near FULL details with HDR and Grass enabled. In fact, I gained SO much from the tweaking that I installed Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Redimized (suitable for 512Mb cards) for near photorealistic textures, and only suffered about 3~4fps loss on average. I've also recently installed Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO) which I knew would reduce framerates due to heavy scripting, but the loss is tolerable except in a few areas. I'm averaging around 20fps in the wilderness, 25~30fps (OSR limited) in dungeons and rock steady 10fps (OSR limited) in otherwise low framerate areas like Bravil (which would be <10fps without OSR).

Please don't ask me exactly what tweaks I used in Oblivion.ini. It was so long ago that I can't remember, and it took me weeks of experimenting to achieve reasonable performance while keeping as much eye candy as possible. My Oblivion.ini file is DEFINITELY backed up in case I ever need to reinstall. In fact, my ENTIRE Oblivion folder (all 9.13Gb of it) is backed up so I can restore ALL of my tweaked meshes, textures and also ALL of my mods in one fell swoop without having to reinstall the whole lot from scratch!

They're backed up to a separate hard drive (I have four installed) to BOTH Windows and Oblivion, just in case of a drive failure. I also have Windows and Games on separate drives, again in case of drive failure. If my Games drive ever DOES suffer a drive failure, I only need to replace that drive, install unpatched Oblivion from the DVD (for the Windows Registry entries), then copy the ENTIRE backup in over the top (all patches, Wrye Bash, OBMM, OBSE, mods, meshes, textures, etc). Should only take about half an hour at most, and I can then run the game and pick up EXACTLY where I left off with NO errors. In contrast, reinstalling ALL mods, etc, from scratch would take DAYS and be VERY error-prone!

Hope this helps.

[jaxawier]

sound, I have a habit of forgetting that,played with dedicatd soundcards since "forever",since onboard in general sucks.
there is a few exceptions but they usually are rather costly then, motherboards that is.

a lot of "experts" trying to tell me and others that it doesn´t matter much nowadays with cpu´s so powerful,and onboard is better and better, I´m in the lair where dedicated,good soundcard with its own dsp is a must,forget not everyone has that from time to time.Exceptions is motherboards from asus with integrated x-fi,and msi had an eunthisiast audiophile board,but none of those boards comes cheap in any means
think H8Ball is spot on here, but a slight overclock doesn´t hurt either

[KrisCrash]

I had no idea that could be a problem, since onboard soundcards have impressive stats I didn't think to get a dedicated one. I mean I don't need 7.1 stereo twice??? Besides my friend's computer seems a little confused 'cause of effectively having 2 sound cards. But I am sure it is solved in win7, it has much better sound contro.

It's not really true that Oblivion runs on only 1 core, in my experience, 32-bit applications tax all cores - but with a really poor effect. The tests I did with blender 32bit vs 64bit (a render test you can use to check performance, I suppose), the 32bit made it run at about .. 30-35% effect - not 25% as would have been expected. If you monitor your task manager you will see all CPUs acting.

[H8Ball]

You're getting away with it because you have a fast CPU. If you install a dedicated sound card, you'll see an overall performance gain in the game due to more CPU time being available. It's most noticeable in Rendering (higher average framerate) because that's what needs the BULK of CPU time per frame, but it also has positive effects on everything. Animation is smoother, Physics simulation is more accurate, AI is slightly smarter, etc. Background Loading also causes less stutter because the game can allocate a larger timeslice per frame to it, so more data is loaded per frame and assets become ready to use that bit sooner.

Your friend's PC is "confused"? That's because he/she hasn't disabled the on-board sound in BIOS Setup and the on-board device is occasionally conflicting with the dedicated device. Once that's done, the conflict will no longer exist.

When you install a dedicated video OR sound card, always disable the corresponding on-board device in BIOS Setup. If you leave it enabled, you're asking for trouble. The on-board device is only dormant and will still respond to requests. This can conflict with the dedicated device, causing slowdowns, lock-ups and even crashes. Once disabled, it will NOT respond at all. You should also uninstall the on-board device drivers as well, as they sometimes cause conflicts too, even when the device they serve has been disabled.

Sound Symptoms: Buzzing, crackling or popping. Sound keeps dropping out. Game locks up with sound repeating like a stuck record. No sound.

Video Symptoms: Lower than expected framerate. Sudden dips in framerate (<10fps slideshow). Rendering intermittently pauses for seconds at a time or locks up completely (sound still plays OK). Screen goes completely black. Unusual rendering artifacts. DirectX-related crashes or errors.

All of these symptoms can be caused by drivers as well, but checking in BIOS Setup is the first step in diagnosis.

Hope this helps.

[Alehn]

Ehi guys, you are fantastic: thank you for your great help and your participation

Dear H8Ball, I think you are right. Consider also that, when I ride my horse, there's another horse that follows me: he is Sonia's horse (Sonia is a battle companion from a mod): so, there are a lot of sounds!!!
However, I'll try your suggestions as soon as possible.

Four days ago I gave "Streamline" and "Stutter Remover" another chance: I don't know how much the situation is better now, however I am satisfied.

I would like to ask you these questions (I post them here so that I don't "weigh down" this site with three different threads):

1) Some weaks ago, when I installed Oblivion and Shivering Isles on my new PC, I also installed the Official Shivering Isles Patch v 1.2.0416. But I didn't install the Official Oblivion Patch v 1.2.0416: infact someone told me that if you have Shivering Isles, this is the right procedure. What do you think?

2) You know that Wrye Bash has an option that permits to update your saved games in order to set NPC levels for Oscuro's O O. Well... I updated my last saved game and then I used it for playing. After some days of gameplay, I saved another file and, don't ask me why, I updated its NPC levels too. So, actually, my game is updated twice. Is that a problem or not?

3) Do you know "Natural Environments" by Max Tael? This mod consists on the following esp files:
Natural weather;
Natural weather_HDR;
Natural habitat;
Natural water;
Natural vegetation.
My questions are:
1. If I play Oblivion with HDR, isn't it necessary to deactivate the first of the list (Natural weather)?
2. Someone told me there were bugs in Natural weather, so I replaced the first two esp files of the list with two esps (Natural weather_RD and Natural weather_HDR_RD) from a a guy who fixed these bugs. What do you think about this procedure?

Thank you very much and enjoy the week end!

P.S.: if there's something you don't understand, it's because I am Italian

[jaxawier]

3: natural enviroments has a kind of follow up,where max tael is specially mentioned in their readme.
All natural with addons: it is a thread over at the officials,and nexus: see if it is something for you.

officials:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... thread-32/

nexus:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18305

1: long time since I did my patching,if trouble I just put my backups in there,but it sounds right,but don´t quote me on it.

[H8Ball]

If you use Streamline with OSR, make sure you disable StreamSight (automatic detail level adjustment to reduce stutter) and StreamSmooth (framerate capping/smoothing). They both tend to conflict with OSR's stutter mitigation techniques and it's framerate capping/smoothing. Personally, I used to use Streamline to do what OSR is doing now, only better, so I uninstalled Streamline. Oblivion is running fine with OSR only.

Taking the rest of your questions in order...

1. As long as the version number on Oblivion's Main Menu SAYS it's v1.2.0416, you're OK. If not, install the Official Patch! I don't have SI myself (my Oblivion is the original DVD bought in 2005, so doesn't include KotN or SI), so I'm not sure. I'd take an educated guess and say your friend is right. Looks like SI requires Official Patch v1.2.0416, so comes with it and installs it first before installing the SI content. In that case, you won't need the separate Official Patch because SI Setup has already installed it for you.

2. I also have OOO (recently installed) and had to Update NPC Levels in Wrye Bash too. It's a one-time-only thing, just to re-level NPC's to fit with OOO's different levelling rates. There's no harm in doing it twice because it will simply recalculate the NPC levels the same as they currently exist (for OOO), so there's no change. If you uninstall OOO, make sure to Update NPC Levels to re-match them back to vanilla Oblivion's levelling rates again.

3.1. For Natural Environments, only ONE of the Weather ESP's should be active at a time. If you have HDR enabled, activate Weather HDR. If you don't have HDR enabled, activate Weather (non-HDR). It does no harm having the wrong one activated, or both, but you may see strange visual effects/glitches in-game because HDR and non-HDR modes use different shader-based rendering techniques.

3.2. I'm using Natural Weather HDR v2.12 Patched (Darker Nights version). All of the Patched versions fix several nasty intermittent bugs, 1. Weather instantly changing to snow on exiting Menu Mode (specifically the Inventory), 2. Clear blue skies in Oblivion and 3. Snowing in Oblivion. Don't use v2.97 as that's a revamp by a different author which adds many more weather types but doesn't fix the bugs. I'd rather have less weather variety than have my sense of realism badly punctured! Note: There are patched versions of all the Weather ESP's, both HDR and non-HDR, and you should only activate ONE of them.

Hope this helps, and have a good weekend too. Well, now that it's nearly over, that is. By my clock, it's 5:30pm so there's only 6 1/2 hours to go till Monday!

[Alehn]

Jaxawier, H8Ball, thank you again!

Dear H8Ball, I really like the way you reply: everything is clear, complete and easy to understand (and I am Italian, so you can be sure about that).

I have changed my Streamline version by doing this (infact the previous version hasn't a .ini file):

0. Deactivating Streamline 2.0 with OMM
1. Downloading Streamline 3.1 and Streamline 3.1 Patch
2. Extracting both archives to two separate folders, "3.1 folder" and "patch version folder"
3. Copying the three esp files contained in the "patch version folder" [(streamline.esp, streamline.esp (performance), streamline.esp (debug)] and pasting them over their respective esp files contained into the "3.1 folder"
4. Copying the "Streamline" folder + "Streamline.esp" (both contained in "3.1 folder") and pasting them into the Oblivion\Data folder.
5. Activating Streamline 3.1 with OMM.

Now I have a problem:
Even if I have setted SLv.Streamsaving to zero (inside the sl.ini file) Streamline autosaves every 5 minutes during the game. What is the reason why it happens?

[H8Ball]

Grazie per il tuo grazie! (Thanks for your thanks!) They're certainly much appreciated. I don't speak Italian, just used Babylon to translate. Is it correct?

StreamSave not disabling? That's one reason I dumped it. I had the same problem myself and came to the conclusion it was bugged. My savegame files are so large now (9Mb+) that the game pauses for up to 20+ seconds on saving. Last thing I want is something running in the background and causing a HUGE stutter every 10 minutes by saving when I don't want it to and me twiddling my thumbs waiting to continue!

The original reason I started using Streamline was that it purges cell buffers periodically to reduce stutter. You can do it manually using the PCB (PurgeCellBuffers) console command, but Streamline issues that command automatically. I used to use Streamline v2.x and that was ALL it did. Unfortunately, Streamline v3.1 has grown too bloated for my taste, adding StreamSmooth (framerate capping), StreamSight (automatic detail level adjustment), and StreamSave (automatic saving in a cycle). To my mind, it's trying to blow all the trumpets at once and only succeeding in producing a horrible out-of-tune noise.

OSR (Oblivion Stutter Remover) does a good job of stutter reduction and framerate smoothing anyway, and I'm assuming it's automatically purging the cell cell buffers too as part of its stutter reduction (since I don't have to do it manually any more). As such, it's doing everything Streamline does, except for StreamSave which is bugged and StreamSight which I don't like anyway because it changes in-game detail settings on-the-fly making a mess of my Oblivion.ini tweaks. OSR is also bug-free to the best of my knowledge, so it's the one I prefer to use.

If you want to use OSR, it's an OBSE plugin DLL, so you need OBSE (OBlivion Script Extender) to support it. You've probably already installed OBSE so to support the more advanced mods anyway. The best thing about OSR is it's "heap replacement" functionality which replaces Bethesda's buggy memory manager. It takes some studying of the OSR readme to set it up, but it removes the root cause of the vast majority of Oblivion's random crash problems so the game runs far more stable than before.

[KrisCrash]

Streamline is a bit better at stopping the MiniMap LOD glitch, but MiniMap is so glitchy THAT'S the one I got rid of instead
I still get random distant buildings showing up when near with OSR and no Minimap. Maybe that's just Oblivion...

[H8Ball]

It only happened for me with MiniMap, which was why I dumped it too. It's possible that one of your mods might be conflicting with another, triggering the same unusual behaviour as occurs with MiniMap. Maybe some careful reshuffling of your mod load order would help?

[KrisCrash]

The error is so rare it's practically not reproduce-able. Which makes debugging nigh impossible I might have only seen it once of twice since removing minimap - walk up to Chorrol and there's a wall in front of the gate.