How to reduce stuttering outside in Oblivion???

[wasc]

Hi, Now I have my 8800gtx, i've started playing oblibion again. With the graphics set to either "High" or "Ultra High", the game runs perfectly - i.e I'm getting a constant 60fps (I have v-sync on which limits my frame rate to 60fps)

HOWEVER, when i'm outside and running forwards the game stutters and you can see it loading details in the distance. As soon as the details have loaded it's back up to 60fps until I move another 15meters or so forwards and it stutters again.

It seems to me the card can handle the game fine, but Oblivion is stuttering every time it needs to load more details into the game. Is there a way around this???

 

[wasc]

Doesn't that mean you're running your monitor at 60Hz?

Try setting your refresh rate to 75Hz....you won't believe how much better it looks....

My monitor is an LCD, so they tend to prefer the 60Hz refresh rate.

 

[wasc]

what you are experiencing is the "cell buffers" loading. RAM is allocated an amount for internal (dungeons/rooms etc) and external (the outside world) as you move around the cell buffers are loaded. it is exasperated by faster travel - eg riding on a horse or characters with high athletics/speed attributes.

if you look up the TWEAKGUIDE for oblivion the guru will tell you what values to edit your oblivion.ini file as load cell values are preset regardless of your amount of RAM.

secondly hard drives play a huge part in performance as data is dynamically loaded constantly.

you will never completely get rid of the odd stutter, but here's what to do to make your game as smooth as possible.

1. read TWEAKGUIDE and edit your oblivion.ini file
2. load oblivion onto a seperate hdd from your OS. make sure it is a fast SATAII drive. prefably 2 Raptor X's in RAID 0 !!!
3. relocate your pagefile to a seperate hdd from your OS and fix the min and max values to 1.5 x your system RAM.
4. if your video card only has 256MB memory set textures to medium and don't use Quarls texture pack.
5. every 1/2 hour of gaming enter console and type "pcb" (minus quotes). this is purge cell buffers which clears RAM of redundant loaded textures.
6. turn off internet connection - anti virus - clear system tray. reclaim as much RAM as possible.
7. do a clean boot if you are really suffering.
8. if you do not have a sound card or dual core cpu you may suffer slowdown.
9. do a "dxdiag" to find out if any codec's are causing trouble. (oblivion is very sensitive to codecs)
10. read tweakguide again!!!

i have a dual core cpu/x-fi/2 gig ram and 512 video ram and suffered stuttering. i did'nt have any bad codecs and my system has a relatively clean boot. by loading oblivion and pagefile onto a seperate hdd and employing the tweakguide tips i've finally got oblivion running about as smooth as i'll ever get it. the biggest hit was most definetely the hdd fix. drastic for a game but i love my oblivion

TWEAKGUIDE linky

hope this helps mate.

Damn - that was an informative post. I'll give it a try and get back to you.

 

[wasc]

Try unpacking the texture and meshes bsa files in the oblivion data folder. I did that and it helped the stuttering quite a bit.

How do you do this?

 

[wasc]

Off-topic, but who's that in your signature Wasc?

he he - everyone asks me that

It's from "The Animatrix". So basically she's a cartoon