Oblivion-HDD-Pagefile & Stuttering

MooSey-UK

MooSey-UK

MooSey-UK

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Joined
29 Aug 2006
Posts
635
Anyone that plays Oblivion will have experienced the open world new area stutter now and again. My own game stuuters more than i'd like and im wondering how to improve it.
think i know how but just wanted to get some feedback.

Currently running Oblivion off my main C: drive along with Win XP and the pagefile.
The Hdd is an EIDE maxtor 133 80GB (i use another 120GB Hdd for storage)
Ram is 2Gig.
Since the game can't load the entire cyrodil country into RAM i assume it dynamically swaps data to and fro the HDD. being as the game, windows and pagefile all use this same aging HDD i think thats the culprit for stutter.
Was thinking last night of ordering a SATA II Hdd and loading Oblivion onto it, hopefully speeding up the game.

Its not awful stutter. indoors, dungeons,Oblivion planes etc are fine. Its just that whilst riding on my horsey i get smooth - jerk jerk -smooth smooth - jerk etc etc whilst objects like boilders and trees dynamically generate.

View distance is max, actor/item/object are all maxed or high
grass distance is about 50% and grass shadows are off.
HDR on. water/reflections Hi. shadows lo. tree shadows on etc

my rig currently is;

X2 4400 (969 @2.66
2 Gig Ram Geil value @ 220
Gainward 7800GS+ 512 @ 600/1400
rez of 1280 x 1024

I've set the .ini, got my mods in good load order, got frame rates to my satisfaction..... just want to improve the dynamic area stutter.
Do you think a new SATA II Hdd for games only (seperate from OS) will improve matters?
 
It's generally a good idea to have the page file on a separate drive to the operating system. If you can, give it a small drive all to itself. You can also set it to be a fixed size in system properties, ie. the same min and max sizes. This stops windows resizing it on the fly, which slows things down more.
 
BloodWolf said:
How do you move paging file? I might put it on my other 250GB drive. :D :cool:
Click to expand...

Click Start, Right click on My computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory Change, Chose the drive, and then specify the amount, finally click on Set, Ok, then Restart your PC.
 
after some testing and checking i found a LOD texture mod was installed with duplicate files. i've deleted this and things are now much smoother.
a case of video ram causing the stutter.
i still get the odd stutter (much a less pronounced stutter!), playing with the sound off reveals the hdd's are always on the go.
im going to fit a new sata II drive anyway just for games.
i'll partition it for the pagefile at the same time. should then be as smooth as butter.
the most demanding game i've ever come across, with some of the most demanding problems too!
setting it up, installing mods and troubleshooting is a labour of love rewarded by the stunning scenes you sometimes encounter.

entered an oblivion gate for the first time at lvl 29 the other night. my god this reinforces the fact this is my favourite game of all time ;)
just have to save up for an 8800gtx and widescreen tft now....... :D
 
BloodWolf said:
bump? :P
Click to expand...
wasn't it always 1.5x your ram?
I'm not sure tho, maybe having in way smaller (like 500meg or so) would speed things up as windows wouldn't spend so log titing around with it?
 
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