Card or Driver issue with Oblivion?

aycabron

Hey,
After much thought I upgraded my Videocard, from my beloved ASUS Radeon 9800 XT to a BFG 7800 GS. I wanted to upgrade my CPU too (I have a P4 2.4 and 1 Gig RAM) , but the one I got was defective so while all that mess gets sorted out I decided to play somegames that gave me some trouble before with my old card. Call of Duty 2, FEAR & Far cry used to run decently at 800X600 with medium or normal eyecandies, but hi res shadows and such were out of the question, not to mention AA. but they are running pretty good at 1024 with maximum textures, and most, but not all of the eye candie on...so there I couldnt be happier.
But then we get to the game I played the most, hich now runs like hell...Oblivion.
It used to run fairly well with my old card, with Bloom lightning and medium textures at 1024, but now I starded using High textures and HDR and the game hicups like crazy. I decided to try several different settings like lowering some sliders, and switching back to Bloom...but the game runs horrible...I`ve tried some of the opotmizing guides but the problem continues...the framerates can be stealdy at 60 in some dungeon, but walking can cause it to CRASH to 19 and then go to a shacky 40, and that`s every couple of steps...
I`ve read that some blame the drivers, and since it`s the only FPS (other that Half life 2) that stutters like this....Some people say that the problem is the bottleneck between my CPU & Videocard, but it`s not like I want more FPS, which are really almost quite the same with the newer & older cards, I really cant play without getting really frustrated by the constant stuttering. So what do you think?

Yard Waste

I am using a BFG 7800 GS OC and I don't get the stutter (AMD 64 3600+, with 2 gigs of ram on a Gigabyte Nforce 4 Ultra board). I really don't belive it is the video card.

The new official patch came out today, you might want to try that.

Also, are you using onboard sound or a sound card? Either way, turn off the music. Apparently it is in mp3 format which cause your system to take quite a hit.

Also reduce your 'grass' settings.

In more detail, some suggestions from the new patch readme

"

• Make sure you have no other programs running in the background.
• Lower the game resolution. The game runs faster at 640x480 and 800x600.
• Go to your Options menu and select Video. Try the following options to improve performance: Set View Distance as low as possible. Your framerate and load times will improve but you will not be able to view as far.
• Set Tree, Actor, Item and Object Fade as low as possible. This will cause certain objects in the world to fade away sooner. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality.
• Set Texture Size to Medium or Small. Textures on objects will not appear as sharp when this setting is reduced. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality.
• Set Grass slider as low as possible. This will cause less grass to be displayed around your character. This will increase your framerate but you will see less grass displayed.
• Set Distant LOD to OFF. This will reduce your view distance, but your framerate and load times will improve.
• Set Distant Buildings to OFF. You will not see cities or the Imperial City in the distant landscape but your framerate and load times will improve.
• Set Distant Trees to OFF. You will not see trees in the distant landscape but your framerate and load times will improve.
• Set Interior Shadows as low as possible. This will decrease the number of characters that cast shadows while you are in interiors, improving your framerate.
• Set Exterior Shadows as low as possible. This will decrease the number of characters that cast shadows while you are in exteriors, improving your framerate.
• Set Self Shadows to OFF. The Player and other characters will no longer cast shadows on themselves, but will still cast shadows on the environment. This will improve your framerate.
• Set Grass Shadows to OFF. Shadows will no longer display on grass. This will improve your framerate.
• Set Tree Canopy Shadows to OFF. The forests will no longer cast shadows on the landscape, improving your framerate.
• Set Shadow Filtering as low as possible or off. This will reduce the amount of softening the shadows receive, but increase framerate.
• Set Specular Light as low as possible. This will cause objects to lose their shininess at lower distances, improving your framerate.
• Set HDR Lighting to OFF. This will increase your framerate but degrade visual quality.
• Use Bloom lighting instead of HDR, or turn Bloom off. Bloom is a less intensive version of HDR. Turning it off will improve framerate but degrade visual quality.
• Make sure Water Detail is set to Normal. High detail water will decrease your framerate.
• Set Water Reflections and Ripples to OFF. This will increase your framerate while you are near water, but the water will not show reflections or react to objects interacting with it.
• Set Window Reflections to Off. This will remove the subtle reflections from windows but improve framerate.
• Set Blood Decals to Medium or Low. At Medium, decals do not get applied to characters, only landscape. At Low, no decals get applied at all. These will increase your framerate in combat situations.
• Turn anti-aliasing down or off. This will degrade overall visual quality but improve your framerate.
• Turn off music
  The music is mp3 format and can slow the game down."

Hope it helps!