*official* Oblivion Thread - Technical issues

[jediphx]

yeah im getting quite a few random crashes to desktop and sometimes it crashes right after i select to continue game. I checked my cpu and gpu temps and they seem fine. any ideas? Are both ATI and nvidia users having same problems?

 

[ToddMcF2002]

WANTED OPINIONS:

I've been taking a good look at Oblivion's memory management. It seems to run at a commit charge of ~900MB after 2 hours. At least HALF of that has been assigned by XP as Virtual Memory. That's pretty annoying since I have a GIG of RAM. Some have stated that 2GIG of RAM is smoother but based on what I'm seeing I don't see any evidence the total commit charge on the whole machine exceeds 1.1GIG and more that half of that is VM even if you have 2 GIG of RAM. The wonders of XP I guess! (bangs head...)

So... looking at the swap file. I have Raptors in RAID 0. I have XP, Oblivion and my swap file on the Raptors. I have a separate IDE drive (WD320) which is basically idle. Most "tweaking" guides say to move the swap file to a non-system drive. Should I move my swap file there despite the RAID 0 on my primary? Has anyone looked at a tool like Page Defrag before? http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html

Please comment!

 

[Erik in sac]

Originally posted by: morkus64
mine crashes every so often, just because, and now it's crashing whenever i click continue or load from the main menu...

Same here. I also get random crashes when I try to go through a door or gate. Its always random for me. Sometimes it will go hours without a problem, other times it will crash 5-6 times in a row before I can even play the game

 

[morkus64]

Originally posted by: Erik in sac

Originally posted by: morkus64
mine crashes every so often, just because, and now it's crashing whenever i click continue or load from the main menu...

Same here. I also get random crashes when I try to go through a door or gate. Its always random for me. Sometimes it will go hours without a problem, other times it will crash 5-6 times in a row before I can even play the game

Hopefully this'll all be fixed in the patch. A few days ago a Bethesda rep said it was coming out ASAP

 

[BDawg]

Yaargghh... I just finished the thieve's guild quests... or at least I should have.

*** SPOILERS ***

After giving the wedding ring to the countess, the Gray Fox reveals himself. She then goes to sit down, but sits down backwards. Then, I'm stuck in cinema mode.

I've seen a few people with the same problem on the elderscrolls.com boards. I haven't read a solution yet. Anyone have a guess?

 

[Ordy]

Is anyone else having major control input problems? I cannot stop my character from swinging his weapon reliably at all. I mash the F key and hope he puts it away. Am I doing something wrong? I also cannot fire arrows. The character pulls the arrow back but will not release it. The game runs smooth as silk but I am having annoying input problems like the ones I described above.

 

[starwars7]

OB is working perfectly on my Rig since I followed the Tweek Guide posted on the previous page.

It was working fine before as well, but now it has much better FPS etc....

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: Kriz
I dont suppose anyone has benchmarked Oblivion on a WinXP Bootcamped iMac?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3149424

http://homepage.mac.com/leahyb/.Public/MVI_0524.AVI

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: ToddMcF2002
WANTED OPINIONS:

I've been taking a good look at Oblivion's memory management. It seems to run at a commit charge of ~900MB after 2 hours. At least HALF of that has been assigned by XP as Virtual Memory. That's pretty annoying since I have a GIG of RAM. Some have stated that 2GIG of RAM is smoother but based on what I'm seeing I don't see any evidence the total commit charge on the whole machine exceeds 1.1GIG and more that half of that is VM even if you have 2 GIG of RAM. The wonders of XP I guess! (bangs head...)

So... looking at the swap file. I have Raptors in RAID 0. I have XP, Oblivion and my swap file on the Raptors. I have a separate IDE drive (WD320) which is basically idle. Most "tweaking" guides say to move the swap file to a non-system drive. Should I move my swap file there despite the RAID 0 on my primary? Has anyone looked at a tool like Page Defrag before? http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PageDefrag.html

Please comment!

I upgraded from 1GB or DDR400 ====> 2GB DDR400 and there was a noticable difference. Mainly, and most notabily, I was able to turn on distant lands....the view distance increased considerable and was smooth.

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: Ordy
Is anyone else having major control input problems? I cannot stop my character from swinging his weapon reliably at all. I mash the F key and hope he puts it away. Am I doing something wrong? I also cannot fire arrows. The character pulls the arrow back but will not release it. The game runs smooth as silk but I am having annoying input problems like the ones I described above.

Try these things:

- Turn on V-sync

- If you have an nvidia card, go into the nVidia control panel and set the "render frame ahead" from 3 to 0.

 

[spacelord]

Originally posted by: starwars7
OB is working perfectly on my Rig since I followed the Tweek Guide posted on the previous page.

It was working fine before as well, but now it has much better FPS etc....

What Resolution and which NVidia drivers are you using?
Thanks.

I have a 7800GT and It really crawls for me sometimes when I'm outside in battle.

 

[CHfan4ever]

So 2gig of ram will really help??? Gamespot test didnt show that...so im a bit lost here

 

[skooma]

No, I don't think 2 gigs help at all. I haven't seen any data that suggests that. Obviously, the VGA ram from 256 to 512 makes a difference, but system ram doesn't seem like it matters.

Isn't the patch due out this week? Or am I thinking of the horse armor download.

 

[Whitecloak]

Originally posted by: skooma
No, I don't think 2 gigs help at all. I haven't seen any data that suggests that. Obviously, the VGA ram from 256 to 512 makes a difference, but system ram doesn't seem like it matters.

Isn't the patch due out this week? Or am I thinking of the horse armor download.

nice user name. :laugh:

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: CHfan4ever
So 2gig of ram will really help??? Gamespot test didnt show that...so im a bit lost here

All I can tell you about is my personal experience and upgrading from 1GB to 2GB helped some. The load times are twice as fast and the view distance is better.

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: skooma
No, I don't think 2 gigs help at all. I haven't seen any data that suggests that. Obviously, the VGA ram from 256 to 512 makes a difference, but system ram doesn't seem like it matters.

Isn't the patch due out this week? Or am I thinking of the horse armor download.

The Horse armor DLC has been how for about a week now I beleive.

 

[Noema]

Not a technical problem per se, but last night I couldn't resist and installed Oblivion (I had had it for about a week).

I didn't want to install it before as I was waiting for my new video card to arrive (7800gs) so that I could experience it in most of its glory.

But it was just too tempting. And my card won't be here for another week! What's a gamer to do? So I bit the bullet and tried to run it on my pityful 9600XT.

After some tweaking, I settled for 1024x768, medium textures, but almost everything 'off' or at its lowest settings. AA works fine indoors and if there's not too much going on; otherwise (like when there are 3+ enemies on screen or an Oblivion gate) I get like 3fps.

I also didn't experience any crashes in about 6 hours of play.

The game actually runs well; I get 30+ fps outdoors. The problem is that it looks like crap, for the most part. The tower in the first oblivion plane you enter looked so bad it reminded me of playing Shadowman (!!!) on my N64 almost 8 years ago (!!!!!!!!!!). It ran smoothly...but the price is too high.

So I will wait for my card to arrive. I'd recommend the same to people with low end or old cards (9xxx series, FX Series)...the game experience is just too diluted.

 

[Aarrggimapirate]

I have no lag really in oblivion the only problem I have is a problem I have experience before. Slight mouse lag. I don't get it in any other FPS's and if I do it is because I have my graphics up too high, but I am getting 60FPS almost constantly so I don't think that is it. Can anyone help me it is really really annoying.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: Aarrggimapirate
I have no lag really in oblivion the only problem I have is a problem I have experience before. Slight mouse lag. I don't get it in any other FPS's and if I do it is because I have my graphics up too high, but I am getting 60FPS almost constantly so I don't think that is it. Can anyone help me it is really really annoying.

I noticed that as well. It only seems to happen in menus and such.

 

[imported_electron]

Originally posted by: spacelord
What Resolution and which NVidia drivers are you using?
Thanks.

I have a 7800GT and It really crawls for me sometimes when I'm outside in battle.

I also have a 7800GT and WAS getting horrible framerates outdoors.....Until I found the mother of all oblivion tweaks.

First make a backup of your current oblivion.ini file in case you want to go back to the old one.

Next open up oblivion.ini and find the [Grass] section. It's almost all the way down at the bottom, so scroll down.

Next change to these setings:
[Grass]
iMinGrassSize=130
fGrassEndDistance=8000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=7000.0000
bGrassPointLighting=0
bDrawShaderGrass=1
iGrassDensityEvalSize=5
iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=2
fWaveOffsetRange=1.7500
fGrassWindMagnitudeMax=150.0000
fGrassWindMagnitudeMin=0.0000
fTexturePctThreshold=0.3000

The grass will be less dense, and more sparse but your framerates should improve outdoors dramatically. The rig in my sig gets 20-30fps now outside whereas before I got about half that and it was almost unplayable. I'm running everything on ultra high, 1280x1024 no AA and HDR on.

Feel free to experiment and change those .ini [grass] settings higher or lower till you find a good balance between framerate and visual quality. Let us know if you find a better combination or other tweaks that work well. Hope this helps.

 

[imported_Imp]

I'm tempted to increase the minGrassSize fom the default 80, but not really comfortable (or feel like) messing with the .ini file. Hope they add a slider or something in the next patch to deal with this. Otherwise, it's running fine (not super smooth, but consistently playable, not sluggish), just have my grass, object and item sliders set to half. Reasonable for me since I only have a 3200+ and 7600gt, so I'm happy. I WAS getting unplayable frame rates, but turning off grass shadows really helped. The grass settings seriously have to be tweaked (almost like it's the only problem, then again, don't see many games with grass which bring locales to life).

I'm also getting some kind of lagginess in conversations like others have noted. The mouse seems really sluggish when talking to people relative to personal menu speed(inventory, stats, etc.). Also, still getting exit "send error reports", but they are actually not as often. Sometimes don't even get them after marathon sessions. This "improvement" occurred after switching out video cards, so maybe it's video related? Lastly, still getting lock ups when loading from the start menu (just after splash). I just bypass this by starting a new game and then loading (annoying, but not as annoying as having to reset).

 

[professor1942]

I made the changes as per electron's post, and I like the result! 10-15 fps more in the grassy areas, and with this additional overhead I was able to turn canopy shadows back on and it stays above 30. Nice one. I think they kinda went overboard with the grass in this game anyway

BTW the 84.43 beta drivers make absolutely NO difference in Oblivion, contrary to what some people are saying...

 

[imported_electron]

Thanks for the feedback professor1942. Yeah I agree the grass is a little much left at default. I fought 2 bandits in the hills and one of their weapons (a mace) rolled down the hill and with all the grass I couldn't even find it! So I like sparser grass for the gameplay as well.

 

[skooma]

Originally posted by: Whitecloak
nice user name. :laugh:

I couldn't believe it was available. LOL.

 

[imported_Imp]

Definately agree the grass is a bit too thick. Fought a bandit with a glass mace that got "lost" in the foliage. After a few minutes, I just reloaded and killed her again by the road.