Oblivion on HEL80

I have really specific lag issue with this game and this computer.

Oblivion has a severe lag in highspeed-motion situations, such as when I ride horses, the framerate jumps around in rhythm with the gallops, and it is really noticeable when wolves are chasing me, which I figured is because wolves run really fast.

At first I thought this was a battle-specific lag, now it's just weird. Even at rock-bottom settings lags occur in the aforementioned situations.

My old desktop with much worse specs than this laptop didn't have that problem (though I did turn down the settings quite a bit).

Any ideas on what could be causing this? I tried turning down sound acceleration from dxdiag, I tried installing the 1.1 patch, and I tried 2 different drivers for my GPU so far (the one that came with the CD, and one from tweaksrus.com, I believe version 84.something); I even tried the coolbits tweak, and still horrible lags with high-speed motion!

Thanks for all and any help.

 

have you tried turning down the settings to what your desktop had, to see if the lag goes away? quite frankly, my freind with a 7900 still has problems running this game at max settings and theres still some lag there too.

 

Maybe my computer is abducted.

 

I think I might know the problem, its ram, more like a lack of ram, and possibly a lack of GPU vram.

Highend Video cards like 7900 need to have 512mb, in order to support high res and max settings, because all these graphics and textures take up to 400+ vram.

If the video card does not have enough vram, it will start taking it from your physical ram, thus causing stuttering.

Kurae, i do suggest turning down the graphics and see what happens.

Also try a different game with a lot of speed, like WOW and ride your epic mount, or Need for Speed, and check for stuttering.

You may also want to monitor temps, Oblivion is one great game and heavily taxes the machine, hehe.

Also does the stuttering occure immediately when you start playing the game and go on your horse?, or does it build up over time?

Well, i hope this clears some stuff for you, Good Luck.


Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

For the best answer, see ChazMan's post

 

Paladin and ChazMan to the rescue, again!

Oblivion now runs better than before, even at higher settings!
On stock drivers, Oblivion defaulted to Medium settings, but after 91.31 it defaulted to High settings.

Well, to be perfectly honest the lag is still there, but only noticeable because I look for it; I blame the terrible PC optimization of the game rather than my computer or anything else.

Who knew that a driver can change so much?

 

what sort of framerates do you get with the new drivers? i play oblivion on my desktop a bit (athlon 64 somat, some cheap ram, and ati x800 gimp version) on high settings with fairly smooth play, so i imagine it'll be pretty good...

 

I run it on my compal hel80 at 1680x1050, medium detail. It runs OK but I'm going to turn a few things down to get some extra frames. I'll update when I play some more; so far its only been in the sewers with a touchpad (just got the thing today)

 

Did you OC at all, or are you running at the default settings?

We got some pretty good results from our conservative over clocking.

 

heh, I cant even get oblivion to last past the first sequence of gameplay. It will all be working and suddenly the screen will go blank and a hardboot will be the only way to bring the notebook outta the black screen.

I tried the laptopvideo2go driver update, and it didnt help. I reinstalled to no avail.. im at a loss for ideas

 

I have not OCed yet, but I would like to see how high i can get it! a little more power to get me through the tough parts would me nice

 

that's propably a bad install of Oblivion, i've had the same on my PC.
Everytime I got thrown into prison my pc would freeze.
Just reinstall the game

 

You may need to do both, reinstall the game and or reinstall GPU drivers.

Does this happen to other games too?

Try and play other highend games, like Doom 3, FEAR and others, and see if that black screen occurs.

 

I will try the reinstallation of the game when I get home from vacation. It does not happen in other high end games just oblivion for some reason. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

Alright I reinstalled the game, and downgraded the drivers to a stable 84.25 as suggested by the laptopvideo2go.com forums.

Now when I run the game, it will play the game for about oh say 7-9 seconds and then the sound will loop and screen will go blank. but instead of causing a hard crash now I am able to cntrl alt del and end the oblivion process. However my screen resolution is stuck at 640x480 and the only other option in the display tab is 16 colors and 800x600.

Thus I have to reboot to see my desktop in full resolution again.

I am running windows 2000, directx 9.0c.. Anyone know what im missing?

(Geeze, maybe I should go back to linux..... I might have better luck... lol)

 

Windows2000 may be your problem. The HEL80 is not certified for this OS. You need XP with Service Pack 2, or Linux may work as well.

 

I guess I will reinstall and then post my findings.

 

yup that did it, game plays fine now under windows XP SP2 thanks

 

I love it when a plan comes together

 

Here's a tip for all those running games on their Nvidia cards:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetelderscrolls/topic.asp?fid=8697&tid=1879067

This is only for Nvidia users.

Chaz

 

I can vouche for the effectiveness of that tip. (not that Chaz needs vouching for... )

Running Oblivion I had severe problems with jerky motion and unresponsive controls, but when I opened the console and typed "tdt" to show the debuf info, my fps were much higher than it felt like they were. After the tweak they stayed equally unimpressive (dipping below 20 a lot on "high" settings), but they *felt* a lot faster. The game was much more responsive, and much more playable.

 

Has anyone had the opportunity to see whether or not Oblivion looks better on the Xbox 360 or an overclocked Hel80? I'm going to buy the game and am not sure which system i should choose to buy the game for. Thanks!

 

Grass takes up a TON of power to render, especialy in some areas. Id suggest you try this mod, it works wonders:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507506

use version 1.0. It really doenst look much worse at all than default if you turn up density a bit ( I run it at 60 or 80) and it can get you 5-15 fps....great mod.

 

Operation, I'd say it looks better on the Xbox 360, unless your TV is crap. You've got HDR, for one. The HEL80 *has* it... it's just best to not try to use it and play the game at the same time

I'd still buy it for the laptop instead of the console. One word: Mods.
For instance, I'm using this interface mod that lets you have a reasonable number of inventory items up at once, along with a larger map, and slightly more convenient controls. And if Morrowind is any indication (actually I haven't looked yet...) there are tons and tons of truly awesome quest, equipment, monster, balance, and other mods from the community.

 

Thanks for the reply! That's a really good point I hadn't thought of...I guess it's PC all the way then.