Oblivion: System hints & tips

molinari

molinari

molinari

Soldato
Joined
6 Jan 2003
Posts
5,275
Another Oblivion thread I hear you say! But wait, I think this one may be useful (to some). I've tried asking questions in the main Oblivion thread but it moves so quickly and most people are only interested in screenshots, saying how great it is and cursing suppliers who haven't delivered it yet :).

Basically, if people can post replies letting others know of any usual info they have to help get the game running better. Things like reducing the details levels are obvious, so how about setting on graphics cards outside of the game which will help.

To start with, someone mentioned something about VSync causing problems. Can anyone explain this??
 
If anyone is having trouble with vsync try enabling triple buffering in the control panel for their drivers that should help with fps issues. If people are having trouble with vsync being locked on or off and not being able to change it then also try changing the settings in the control panel to "application controlled".
 
i've seen a few helpful posts in the Main Forums.

I'll Quote them on here to save you searching for them

[Bug Hacks/Fixes]

1. Updates
2. Make Sure...
3. Bug: Stuttering
1.1 Music causes long pauses during battles and exploring.
1.1.1 Fixes
1.1.2 Comments
1.2 Stuttering movement/audio/game/voices
1.2.1 Possible fixes
4. Bug: Crashes
2.1 Crashes to desktop
2.1.1 Possible Fixes
5. Bug: CRC
3.1 Error in installation
3.1.1 Possible Fix
6. Other fixes for these
4.1 Threads
4.2 ATI Cards and nVidia Cards
4.2.1 CoolBits for nVidia users
4.2.2 Catalyst AI Tweak for Boost for ATI Users
4.3 Audio/Video Codecs and Removing
4.4 Try switching the slot of the sound card
4.5 Quick 'N Dirty Tweak Guide

Updates

* - 3/23/2006 9:47 AM CST - Added possible fix as a switching slots for sound card.
* - 3/23/2006 9:17 AM CST - Added Strom's audio/video codec tutorial.
* - 3/23/2006 7:18 AM CST - Added Catalyst AI fix for ATI users to get a boost in framerate
* - 3/23/2006 7:04 AM CST - Added CoolBits fix for stuttering and movement lagging
* - 3/23/2006 6:51 AM CST - Added codec fix to stutter bug
* - 3/22/2006 10:53 PM CST - Added CRC Bug and Possible Fix

Make sure...

Make sure you are not overclocking.
Make sure you are meeting or exceeding the system requirements, ESPECIALLY in the graphics department.
Make sure you are running Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
Make sure you have the latest drivers. The new nVidia driver is here: http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/84.25/8...p2k_english.exe
Make sure you have .NET Framework 2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en
Make sure you have the latest DirectX release: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&DisplayLang=en

1: Bug: Stuttering

1.1 Music causes long pauses during battles and exploring.

Symptoms:

Oblivion would pause about 5 seconds when an enemy detected me or I killed them, etc. Other people complained of crashes, they all had Creative cards.

1.1.1 Fix:

Works: If you have the Vodei Multimedia Processor installed, uninstall it. That fixed the long pauses for myself and a few others. One user reported unistalling VobSub as well. Might try that too... if that doesn't work:

Rename "Oblivion/Data/Music/Battle" folder to "BattleOld" or something like that. Just so that it's different.
Effect: No more battle music. Fixes the stutter issue. Not that bad of a sacrifice until Bethesda fixes it! You can also just edit the Oblivion.ini in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion and change "bMusicEnabled=1" to "bMusicEnabled=0" but that disable music entirely.

Note: The game will still pause when switching exploring music. I just renamed Battle because it happens so often.

1.1.2 Comments:

This fixes the syutter issue. If you want to see if your audio card is causing your problems:

Disable the sound card in Device Manager. To see if this fixes your problems, do this:

Right-click My Computer, click -> Properties -> Hardware tab -> Device Manager

Scroll down to Sound, video and game controllers.

Right-click your sound card, mine read "Creative SB X-Fi." Yours may (probably) will be different. If you don't know which one it is, try disabling everything except "Audio Codecs," "Video Codecs," "Legacy Audio Drivers," and "Legacy Video Drivers."

Start Oblivion and see if everything stops.

1.2 Stuttering audio/game/voices

1.2.1 Possible fixes

Use Software audio: Go to My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\ and open Oblivion.ini. Scroll down to the Audio section and change these two lines to:

bDSoundHWAcceleration=0
bUseSoftwareAudio3D=1

Movement: Edit the INI and change "bUse Joystick=1" to "bUse Joystick=0"

Bug: Crashes

I believe a lot of the crashing at the very beginning has to do with the graphics card. I think you should make sure your card supports above Pixel Shader 2.0. If you want to check quick, see if this makes a difference:

Edit the Oblivion.ini (in Mydocs\My games\Oblivion) and change "bUseShaders=1" to "bUseShaders=0" I would not recommend playing the game like this for the rest of the time you have it, but see if that fixes the startup crash.

2.1 Crashes to Desktop

Symptoms:

Crashes when starting Oblivion.
Crashing during the game.
Crashing after running it once and trying to run again. Works on fresh restart.

2.1.1 Possible fixes


Crashing -- May or may not work - For me, I was getting crashing after I played the game once... and needed to restart before I could play again. In fact, no other game would start after exiting Oblivion, they'd all crash. This is how I fixed it:

Start -> Run -> 'regedit.exe'

Navigate to: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]

Delete these keys (if you have them):

"DisablePagingExecutive"
"LargeSystemCache"

Navigate to: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]

Delete this key (if you have it):
"Win32PrioritySeparation"

Download DirectX 9.0C December 2005 Update: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

Reason:

I followed this guide awhile ago: http://kadaitcha.cx/performance.html And just rolled backed my changes, like above. Then just installed DirectX 9 update again just to make sure. Everything works now, no crashing.

4: CRC Bug

3.1 Error in installation

Symptoms: Crashing whilst installing and getting a CRC error.

3.1.1 Possible Fix

I recall having this problem with Max Payne 2, and it took me forever to fix it. I actually can't quite remember if this worked, but try this and see:

Go to Device manager (Right-click My Computer, select Properties -> Hardware tab -> Device Manager).

You need to know what channel you put your DVD on. Secondary or Primary and whether it's a slave or master. Under IDE controllers, right-click the appropriate one (Mine is on Primary), go to Advanced Settings, Device 0 = Master, Device 1 = Slave. For whichever one you need to fix (mine is Master), change Transfer Mode to "PIO Only." I believe this fixed my problems when I had it a long time ago... however, I bought a new DVD drive and it fixed it.

Also, you may want to see if switching IDE cables works. Try an ATA 100 cable.

Other fixes for these

4.1 Threads

MaineCoon: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...5&#entry4895515

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=277860

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=278903

Unofficial Technical FAQ: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...howtopic=277963

4.2 ATI Cards and nVidia Cards

If you are using an ATI card and you are having problems, try downloading the new .NET Framework v2.0.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

If you are on nVidia, download .NET 2 anyways, but also:

http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/84.25/8...p2k_english.exe

The new Oblivion optimized drivers.

4.2.1 CoolBits fix for nVidia users

Some users report that installing CoolBits and chaning a setting fixes stuttering. Personally I didn't notice a huge difference.

Install Coolbits: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

Once installed, open up Nvidia driver panel and under Performance and Quality Settings, click Additional Direct3d Settings.

Set Max Render Ahead to 0 (default: 3).

4.2.2 Catalyst AI Tweak for Boost for ATI

In the Catalyst Control Center (or Panel) go to Catalyst AI and disable it. You may see a noticeable increase in framerate.

4.3 Audio/Video Codecs and Removing

Posted by Strom:

If you want to play around with sounds codecs without actually uninstalling them, you can get to them in Windows XP by:

Start->Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices->Hardware Tab

From here, select Audio Codecs then hit
Properties->Properties Tab.

On here you have a list of the codecs, You can remove them, or hitting the Properties button on a particular one, you can change is priority in the heirarchy of codecs, or disable them (without actually removing them).

4.4 Switch sound card slots

See if this helps:

Put your sound card into a different slot, as far away from the video card as possible. Just try to switch it to a different slot and see if that helps.

Thanks to MaineCoon for that tip.
4.5 Quick 'N Dirty Guide

First and foremost, update your video card drivers.
Second, update your motherboard chipset drivers (from mobo website).
Thirdly, update your sound card drivers.
Fourthly, install Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Then, defrag your computer.
Next, in the Oblivion options panel, put everything to the lowest settings. 640x480, no HDR, no bloom, no distance, no vsync.

Close processes. Ctrl+Alt+Del, and sort the list by username. Any processes under you, see if you spot any that you can end.

See if that actually helps. If not, make sure you restarted your computer. Try it after a fresh restart.
Click to expand...
 
nO}{8 said:
If anyone is having trouble with vsync try enabling triple buffering in the control panel for their drivers that should help with fps issues. If people are having trouble with vsync being locked on or off and not being able to change it then also try changing the settings in the control panel to "application controlled".
Click to expand...

'Triple buffering' in the nVidia control panel only effects OpenGL. It shouldn't make a difference to Oblivion since the game is Direct3D based.

You can however force 'Triple buffering' for Direct3D games by using a nifty program called "DXTweaker". Read the section at the bottom of the page here for more info.

Also... Here is a complete guide on how to set up Triple buffering in Direct3D games with nVidia cards using DXTweaker.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2006/articles/DXtweaker/
 
Do any of the in game settings control AF or should I use the settings in the Ati control panel. I have maxed out all the in game settings.
 
i just bought this today, runs perfectly but im getting a strange beeping noise when playing for a while i think it could be due to heat but if thats the case shouldnt my pc restart or freeze up? Nothing happens plays as normal just this constant beeping!
 
Should HDR work on a X800pro? I am running the game at 1280x1024 with Bloom, Vsync enabled and no AA. It seems to running well but I need to get fraps to check out my FPS.
 
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