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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| RPGDot Feature: Optimising Oblivion, Part 1 |
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After a huge response to Rend's Oblivion review and many emails calling for more information, we have the first of two guides from Rend titled <i>Optimising Oblivion</i>. This first article steps through his tested and recommended Oblivion performance and visual tweaks and will be followed up with his gameplay mod recommendations in the next week.
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<br>Head <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1218">here</a> to read it all. |
Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:34 pm |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
Thank you for the excellent write-up. Many people are certainly going to benefit from it.
But then there will be people like me. Who are itching for a reason to buy the latest and greatest video card.
Hmmmmm. The latest and greatest video cards require PCI-e. Ok so I'll pick up a new motherboard.
Damn, my current CPU doesn't work on this mobo. Ok, I'll get a new CPU then.
Damn, my current memory doesn't work this mobo. Ok, I'll buy 2 1gig sticks.
Grrrr. The power supply doesn't have enough amps to drive the ATI X1900 that I bought. /rushes out to grab a new power supply.
/fastforward a few days later...
Well, this has certainly been the most expensive video card upgrade I've ever purchased. I not only have a new video card, but a whole new computer.
Maybe I shoulda just got an xbox 360...
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:38 pm |
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ToddMcF2002
Leader of the Senate
Joined: 10 Jan 2005
Posts: 317
Location: Boston MA |
See you're already outdated and have no upgrade path. PCI-e 2.0 next year. LOL 
I can't get at this article at work but I'm looking forward to the read tonight!
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"For Innos!" |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:16 pm |
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ikbenrichard
Guest
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great feature, most of it i had already. but now OB is not starting anymore LOL. well actualy its not funny.
wonder why its crashing..... |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:16 pm |
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TheMadGamer
High Emperor
Joined: 03 May 2002
Posts: 487
Location: Southern California |
quote:
Originally posted by ToddMcF2002
See you're already outdated and have no upgrade path. PCI-e 2.0 next year. LOL
I can't get at this article at work but I'm looking forward to the read tonight!
You forgot to point out the following:
CPUs will probably all be dual-core, 64 bit, and faster.
RAM sizes will be bigger and faster
Motherboards will triple their current FSB speeds.
Ah well. It's always like that.
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The Poster Previously Known As NeptiOfPovar |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:51 pm |
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Merz
Protector of the Realm
Joined: 22 Oct 2002
Posts: 260
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Thanks for a guide (I immidiately tried most of the visuals related tweaks).
So far I have two comments:
1) Systems with ATI videocards can have a serious problem when memory usage is set from "programs" to "system cache" (this is described e.g. here: http://www.genopro.com/PowerNotebooks/disk_corruption.htm
or here: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/22061/).
May be it's a good idea to warn readers about possible risks?
2) I really liked the German XLM MegaMod. However, without the German part (menus), it simply replaces the fonts, which is very little added value IMO. Does anyone know how to keep the menu tweaks without German translations?
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- Merz |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:58 pm |
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Sherwin
Guest
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I was getting horrible fps when playing oblivion often dropping to 1. I turned off HDR and switched to bloom and 2AA and started playing with the options/video settings by decreasing view distance just slightly and turning off all shadows as well as decreasing a few other video settings. The game does look a touch uglier but I can definately deal with it to have smooth gameplay. I instantly got a 10fps increase and less fps drops. In this case I didn't even have to mess with the .ini file at all. Of course I did change a few things in the .ini to remove the intro movies.
System:
P4 3.0->3.2 HT
6800LE OC340/741
512MB DDR400->420
RAID0 240GB
I'd rather wait another year before I upgrade to a new computer, I just upgraded my video card from a Ti4200 6 months ago, I hate spending money and dislike consoles. |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:14 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
quote:
Originally posted by Merz
Thanks for a guide (I immidiately tried most of the visuals related tweaks).
So far I have two comments:
1) Systems with ATI videocards can have a serious problem when memory usage is set from "programs" to "system cache" (this is described e.g. here: http://www.genopro.com/PowerNotebooks/disk_corruption.htm
or here: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/22061/).
May be it's a good idea to warn readers about possible risks?
2) I really liked the German XLM MegaMod. However, without the German part (menus), it simply replaces the fonts, which is very little added value IMO. Does anyone know how to keep the menu tweaks without German translations?
No, can't tell you this, but if you use the DarkUI with all the additional tweaks in the article, the result will be very pleasing, promised 
_________________
Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 6:49 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Very nice. Thanks a lot for the follow-up, Rend . Just one minor issue I'd like to comment on is...
quote:
The second tweak we will apply to your graphics card is that we will set coolbits to either 0, 1 or 2 from the standard 3. In order to get this working, you will have to switch off VSync under "Options" in the Oblivion launcher. To set one of the values, go to the "advanced 3D settings" tab in your control panel for your video card (after you have installed the coolbits tweak) and enter the numbers there. Use all three numbers, check with your save game and see which setting gives you the best result. For me, it raised framerates to 19 in the hot spot I saved.
This is the coolbits.exe for NVidia cards (Forceware):
coolbits
I can't tell you exactly how to do this tweak on an ATI card, but someone helpful will certainly post this to our forums.
I think what you are actually trying to say here is that you change the "Number of frames to render ahead" setting to either 0, 1 or 2 (3 should be the default value).
You are sort of making it sound as if there was a separate "CoolBits" option. That is not the case, however.
What the coolbits.exe does, is that it creates a new DWORD registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/nVidia Corporation/Global/NVTweak.
The DWORD entry's name is "CoolBits" and the value you need to enter (if you do it manually that is) is "3". I always do this manually after installing a new nVidia driver since you only need to restart once if you apply the CoolBits tweak right after the driver installation.
Please note that the CoolBits value of 3 (= enabling the additional driver settings) has absolutely nothing to do with what Rend wrote above or with the "Frames to Render Ahead" setting. That's two totally different stories.
Anyway, if you apply the CoolBits tweak, then it enables the advanced settings in the nVidia driver including VSync settings, overclocking options (which is the no. 1 reason why people use CoolBits at all) and the "Additional Direct3D Settings" tab where you will find the "Frames to Render Ahead" setting that you need to change (or can change) from the default 3 to a lower value (you should try 0 for best performance since your graphics card will then not try to keep any frames but the current one in the frame buffer). A value of 0 might cause some minor "tearing" though just like if you have Vsync disabled.
I'm personally experiencing some tearing with Vsync off and "Frames to Render Ahead" at 0 but it's infrequent enough to not be a nuisance (and it's 100% stable, too).
As Rend said... experiment with the settings but start at 0 and work your way up instead of the other way around. Try 0... if you get image glitches, then try 1, then 2 and if you still get glitches at 3 then RMA your damn card  . |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 9:59 pm |
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vois2
Village Dweller
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 12
Location: St. Louis |
To Rendelius and RPGDot Administrators:
During the last two weeks, I've been working with a very friendly software developer in Israel on a superb little program to tweak Oblivion's .ini file. This has been developed as a follow up to the excellent service provided by Rendelius and other helpful members on various forums. As you know, there are many good .ini tweaks which can be implemented. It's easy enough to access these .ini tweaks, but not so easy to remember what you tweaked and what you didn't and what was that last parameter setting ... well, you get the idea.
This program (entirely freeware) erases these hardships and makes .ini tweaking available to the masses with a very simply graphical interface. Some of the current tweaks package (31 tweaks in all, at the moment) include things to improve gameplay and many to improve performance and/or eye candy. An excellent English description is provided for each potential tweak.
Want to decrease grass density? {click} It's done.
Want a bloodier fight scene? {click} It's done.
Is the interior HDR lighting effect to glaring? {click} Now it's not.
Want to level up without finding a bed? {click} Ok, can do now.
I've mentioned three, but there are 30+ tweaks currently in the categories of Landscape, Grass, Trees, Textures, HDR, Effects, Hardware CPU, Hardware Memory, Hardware Rendering, Sound, and Gameplay tweaks.
Any changes are entirely reverseable (immediately) and your original Oblivion-configured .ini file can be brought back into force in a snap.
Additionally, it includes hardware detection and will recommend tweak settings to a certain degree based on the graphics card and type of CPU you are using to play Oblivion on the machine. The program informs you which line in the .ini file is being edited, so you can always wander the .ini file itself in the old style manner if you wish.
This is entirely freeware, and I decided to announce it only in this forum because the users here seem more mature and less in number than elderscrolls.com and tessource. I'd like to ask Rendelius and a few others to take a look at the program. It's been through many beta versions and is humming along nicely now. If the program could receive the weight of a good blessing from someone such as Rendelius, then it would have its credentials for sure. Thanks very much. Travis (vois2) --> firefighter@graffiti.net
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firefighter@graffiti.net |
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Thu Apr 20, 2006 10:06 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
Sounds very interesting - sent you an email. I'd like to test this program
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Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:37 am |
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vois2
Village Dweller
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 12
Location: St. Louis |
Thanks, Rendelius. I emailed you back the link to acquire the program.
I am convinced you will find it interesting and useful. It's very transparent and the graphical user interface is easy to use. And of course, you can't beat the price.
If you do like it, please avoid mentioning the program online for just a couple of days. There is an update coming out which uses splash screens to guide the new user just a bit more, making the program even easier to use.
Thanks again.
vois2
(Now I go back to downloading the eye candy mods mentioned in your most recent report...)
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firefighter@graffiti.net |
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Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:00 pm |
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vois2
Village Dweller
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 12
Location: St. Louis |
| memory usage in XP System properties |
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Just a comment about the function of Memory Usage. (Found in the Advanced tab of the Windows XP System control panel.)
I have a Pentium-4 3.0 with 3GB DDR2 RAM and the nVidia 6800 GS (PCI-e).
I was able to use the coolbits Render Frames Ahead and the suggested grass density tweak to improve my hot spot FPS from 13 to 16.
However, when I subsequently turned Memory Usage from 'Programs' to 'System Cache', the FPS in the hot spot unfortunately slowed to 15 FPS.
I have no real understanding of system memory usage, so I can't comment as to why. Anyway, I just turned it back to 'Programs' for Memory Usage'.
HD caching is mention in Rendelius article, and I think this is the same as the selection (in the same Advanced tab) for Virtual Memory. I didn't mess with that, though.
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firefighter@graffiti.net |
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Fri Apr 21, 2006 2:06 pm |
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Rendelius
Critical Error
Joined: 06 Jul 2001
Posts: 16
Location: Austria |
| Re: memory usage in XP System properties |
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quote:
Originally posted by vois2
Just a comment about the function of Memory Usage. (Found in the Advanced tab of the Windows XP System control panel.)
I have a Pentium-4 3.0 with 3GB DDR2 RAM and the nVidia 6800 GS (PCI-e).
I was able to use the coolbits Render Frames Ahead and the suggested grass density tweak to improve my hot spot FPS from 13 to 16.
However, when I subsequently turned Memory Usage from 'Programs' to 'System Cache', the FPS in the hot spot unfortunately slowed to 15 FPS.
I have no real understanding of system memory usage, so I can't comment as to why. Anyway, I just turned it back to 'Programs' for Memory Usage'.
HD caching is mention in Rendelius article, and I think this is the same as the selection (in the same Advanced tab) for Virtual Memory. I didn't mess with that, though.
You are right, that was due to my XP being german and me not knowing the english name for the tab
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Rendelius
former Senior Editor RPGDot
now at http://www.theastronomers.com |
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Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:13 pm |
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vois2
Village Dweller
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 12
Location: St. Louis |
Rendilius --
Just a note that the finalized release candidate for the freeware we discussed is now available at the site. This is version 1.10.112 with .gtp file #4.
It includes a nice splash screen providing graphical directions to load up the .gtp file and get the tweaks working.
I appreciate your comment about the German version of XP. I didn't think about that!
vois2
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firefighter@graffiti.net |
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Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:27 pm |
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