Oblivion Graphical Settings... Post your Results

Wrathcaster · 03-31-2006, 11:55 AM

I know there's already two full-sized threads about Oblivion already, but graphics are a huge part of this game; they are quite possibly the leading selling point for those not familiar to the series. The graphics, upon the first run, are not quite what I expected, however.

I'm running the default Ultra High Quality settings on this system:

Dual AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Maxtor 160 gig 7200 rpm SATA
Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX Sli
Standard Sony CDRW/DVD drive
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
Nforce-4 PCI-Express
1 gig Corsair XMS pro

I'll put up a list of my Oblivion video settings soon, but so far I've noticed a couple of things:
1.) View distance is incredibly short... It really kills the immersion to see shrubs popping out 10 feet infront of you. Doesn't really make sense to me why this would be the case with "Ultra High Quality" defaults
2.) Doesn't look so pretty without any Anti-aliasing, but enabling it turns off bloom... I'm not too up to date on alot of this stuff, so I'm not sure whether it'd be better to go for eliminating jaggies or keeping bloom on.
3.) performance sucks with tree canopy shadows and grass shadows on

That's about all for now, I know I've left out alot but I'll add more later; I'm not quite sure what every setting does at this point, or if enabling some would just make my performance worse. It doesn't really make sense to me why a decent system would be having such issues... I mean, what does it take, a fucking quad SLI machine to run this game?

Anyways, I'm sure you guys have a bit more insight than I do into this, how has your performance compared to mine? Has anyone been able to get the drop-dead gorgeous graphics without turning Oblivion into a slide show? What kind of settings are you using? Just curious if there's something really obvious that I'm missing here, or if it's just a shitty situation all around..

Also, has anyone tried the Oblivion enhanced nvidia drivers that are on guru3d right now?

makist · 03-31-2006, 12:18 PM

Pentium D 3.0Ghz dual-core
EVGA GeForce 7800GTX OC
200GB HD 7200rpm
2GB DDR RAM 533mhz
16x DVD drive

game auto detected high settings.. but if I turn resolution up I get less than optimal FPS with a bunch of entities on the screen, or in outdoor areas. Even at 1024x768, I have to adjust the settings to get optimal fps beyond the ultra high quality auto detect rigged up.

I run Fear with everything on at 1600x1200 with no hiccup at all, even with a bunch of enemies on the screen and me going into slow mo and lots of physics occuring.

makist · 03-31-2006, 12:19 PM

Also I am fairly certain you can turn on AA and bloom, you just cant turn on AA and HDR lighting.

Exmonk · 03-31-2006, 12:20 PM

Wrathcaster look in the .ini file and you can adjust the distances at which stuff pops. I think your system can afford the tweaks to make the popup occur far enough that it doesn't look bad.

Khorum · 03-31-2006, 12:25 PM

Man, your rig is plenty faster than mine:

AMD 3200+
1GB
7800GTX 256vram

But it plays great on my PC after a few days of .ini file tweaks. Bear in mind that the Oblivion.ini file is _NOT_ in your game installation directory, instead it should be in your /My Documents/My Games/Oblivion/ folder. Unless you adjusted the default setting (and im not sure how) that will always be the file the game loads.

First off, make sure you have HDR on. HDR is a generation ahead of bloom fullbright simulation, and it's supported on NVidia hardware. The difference is immediate and sublime---I actually find my eyes dilating/squinting at in-game sunrises, the HDR light simulation is that good. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, the method Oblivion uses is FP16 and generates a moving "window" of luminosity that adjusts all the pixels in a given frame to accurately portray the behavior of human pupil dilation. ATI cards aren't supported for this in Oblivion yet, Nvidias are. Let's point and laugh.

There are KEY TWEAKS that will substantially improve your performance... starting with dual-processor support with OpenMP threading:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article....CIID=36222&p=4

The game has options (presumably because of XBox specs) that support MP at least nomimally, since you have a dual core, this is supposed to improve your framerate by at least 10-15 fps. I have a single processor, dunno if it works. The forums are all squealing about it though.

Then there's graphical QUALITY settings, with distance and grass settings that would be entirely up to your preferences:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article....CIID=36222&p=2

I set my uGridsToLoad = 7 and the game is CONSIDERABLY prettier (no more low-res textures closer to your char. By your specs I'd say you would run fine at uGridsToLoad at 9 or even 11 (it has to be an odd number btw). Fool around with it till you find an acceptable balance of quality/performance. I'd start at 5, since that's perfectly OK for me.

Turn off shadows on Grass---it's a hog for some reason and is buggy like Self-Shadows. I turn self shadows off because the solution is flawed and it tends to make the character faces "dirty" looking with the shadows in the wrong places. An option in the ini file thats not in the game is point lighting for grass.... its a little less of a performance hit than shadows on grass but it makes the grass look less joltingly bright at night. Canopy shadows is a must IMO, game doesnt look right without it.

There's a LOT of suggestions on that atomicPC page. A lot were helpful and I'd suggest trying them, make sure you back up your ini file first though.

Wrathcaster · 03-31-2006, 01:59 PM

thanks for the help dudes.. The HDR is a fucking amazing difference... And no, on my machine, turning on AA disables bloom.. Not sure why.

The tweaks are helping too, although I think some of the performance issues have something to do with the way my machine is set-up.. Makist said he runs 1600x1200 without hiccups, which is not the case for me

It probably has something to do with system tweaks that I haven't attempted yet (just got this machine in february, haven't had a lot of time to really focus on efficiency yet). I run FEAR with 1024x768 and when scripted events/explosions happen, i experience hitches. Not sure why this is, I'm running on latest drivers and all, but something seems a little off.

I've been paranoid ever since I got the machine; it was given to me as a gift and came from Ibuypower and I'm not so sure how sterling their reputation is. Nevertheless, those tweaks really did make a huge difference mainly in how the game looks, which I must say is absofuckinglutely gorgeous.

Rythonn · 03-31-2006, 02:08 PM

The game runs great till certain NPCs are in front of me. Mainly merchants but any npc will slow me down, granted I have an older system but still annoying specially in combat. Hoping this page will help me out.

Wrathcaster · 03-31-2006, 02:19 PM

Oh yeah, AA also turns off HDR, says that HDR isn't supported when AA is on.

On another note, this may be a really dumb question, but anyone know how to do this, which they list in the guide:

"And defrag your boot and game partitions. Yes, really, it's worth the wait."

Khorum · 03-31-2006, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

Oh yeah, AA also turns off HDR, says that HDR isn't supported when AA is on.

On another note, this may be a really dumb question, but anyone know how to do this, which they list in the guide:

"And defrag your boot and game partitions. Yes, really, it's worth the wait."

Double-click my computer and RIGHT-click on the hard drive that oblivion is installed in. Click on properties.

At properties click on the "TOOLS" tab you will see an button for De-Fragmenting that drive. Click button, start defragmenting, go catch a movie, or a ballgame or something.

makist · 03-31-2006, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

Makist said he runs 1600x1200 without hiccups, which is not the case for me

Actually... I said

Quote:

Originally Posted by Makist

if I turn resolution up I get less than optimal FPS with a bunch of entities on the screen, or in outdoor areas. Even at 1024x768, I have to adjust the settings to get optimal fps

Mazuli · 03-31-2006, 05:24 PM

Athlon 64 3200+
Geforce 6800GS 256mb
1gb pc3200 ram

I have v sync off (it is kinda annoying and ugly but it was the most significant fix in framerate)
1024x768, all sliders to the max except grass which is set to off.
Shadow filtering and self shadows off.
Bloom on, HDR off, AA 2x.
IMO, Bloom + AA is a lot better looking than HDR.

Runs pretty smooth, aside from occasional stutters when I enter a new area and do a complete 360. After that, the area will remain consistently smooth unless I'm in an area with more than about 5 npcs.

tanjo · 03-31-2006, 05:45 PM

V-sync rapes my framerate too, but I can't play games without it. I'll literrally get a heachache that lasts for hours if I'm playing a game with screen tearing for too long.

The thing that's helped my frame rate improve a pretty good amount is using ATI Overdrive. It's an overclocking utility built into the video card software. It auto-detects the safest overclocking settings.

Khorum · 03-31-2006, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mazuli

IMO, Bloom + AA is a lot better looking than HDR.

No way man, it seems really subtle for a bit, but once you've been into HDR for a few hours then try to go bloom+AA, there's simply no comparison. Bloom is essentially a post-process filter apllied over large specular highlights, HDR adjusts the tone and color of the whole frame... for things like bright spell effects, especially the lightning bolts and whatnot, the difference is pronounced. That said, there are several tweaks for coming close to HDR quality with AA+Bloom that has been pretty popular. These are at: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=290158

I had a 6800ultra on March 24th, By 4PM on the 25th I had a brand new 7800GTX installed on my PC--the upgrade was well worth it. I had no performance issues with the 6800 until Oblivion, so I was convinced it was a software problem, I was only partially right, and whatever driver acrobatics I contorted my PC through yielded only the tiniest gains.

Here were some of the most effective tweaks I used to improve framrate. NB: these came with subtantially diminished visual quality/richness:

The grass tweak at http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=283055 yielded HUGE FPS improvements outdoors, but if you don't think you would miss the lush carpetting on grass in Oblivion's forests, you might be wrong, I was. Once I upgraded I maxed that shit right back.

Note that turning OFF grass-on-shadows, and turning ON point lights on grass will net a minute fps hit but looks MUCH better at night, when some of the grass textures are a little too diffuse and are jarringly bright.

Here's a comprehensive thread for ATI users:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=315628
I'm a god-fearing red-blooded American, so I wouldn't know a heathen thing about ATI, but I'm told that thread is helpful.

I'd add more but someone is running an index of all the useful threads, and supposedly at wiki at some point, at:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...&f=23&t=308781

I'm sure that thread includes all the stuff I mentioned, but it has tons more driver/registry stuff and the contributors have been piling on.

Wrathcaster · 03-31-2006, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khorum

Double-click my computer and RIGHT-click on the hard drive that oblivion is installed in. Click on properties.

At properties click on the "TOOLS" tab you will see an button for De-Fragmenting that drive. Click button, start defragmenting, go catch a movie, or a ballgame or something.

They said defrag the game partition as if it were some separate process, I know how to defrag a hard drive... I'm not that stupid. I guess I just misunderstood their instructions, whatever.

Not sure why, but HDR and Bloom both turn off AA for me, i wonder why?

Khorum · 03-31-2006, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wrathcaster

They said defrag the game partition as if it were some separate process, I know how to defrag a hard drive... I'm not that stupid. I guess I just misunderstood their instructions, whatever.

Not sure why, but HDR and Bloom both turn off AA for me, i wonder why?

Oh lol sorry. HDR and AA are mutually exclusive for all cards apparently... you can supposedly force AA under your driver settings, but I havent tried. AA isn't as effective or even meaningful beyond 1280x968 anyway.

03-31-2006, 12:25 PM	#5 (permalink)
Khorum Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Chicago Posts: 4,594 -33 Internets	Man, your rig is plenty faster than mine: AMD 3200+ 1GB 7800GTX 256vram But it plays great on my PC after a few days of .ini file tweaks. Bear in mind that the Oblivion.ini file is _NOT_ in your game installation directory, instead it should be in your /My Documents/My Games/Oblivion/ folder. Unless you adjusted the default setting (and im not sure how) that will always be the file the game loads. First off, make sure you have HDR on. HDR is a generation ahead of bloom fullbright simulation, and it's supported on NVidia hardware. The difference is immediate and sublime---I actually find my eyes dilating/squinting at in-game sunrises, the HDR light simulation is that good. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, the method Oblivion uses is FP16 and generates a moving "window" of luminosity that adjusts all the pixels in a given frame to accurately portray the behavior of human pupil dilation. ATI cards aren't supported for this in Oblivion yet, Nvidias are. Let's point and laugh. There are KEY TWEAKS that will substantially improve your performance... starting with dual-processor support with OpenMP threading: http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article....CIID=36222&p=4 The game has options (presumably because of XBox specs) that support MP at least nomimally, since you have a dual core, this is supposed to improve your framerate by at least 10-15 fps. I have a single processor, dunno if it works. The forums are all squealing about it though. Then there's graphical QUALITY settings, with distance and grass settings that would be entirely up to your preferences: http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article....CIID=36222&p=2 I set my uGridsToLoad = 7 and the game is CONSIDERABLY prettier (no more low-res textures closer to your char. By your specs I'd say you would run fine at uGridsToLoad at 9 or even 11 (it has to be an odd number btw). Fool around with it till you find an acceptable balance of quality/performance. I'd start at 5, since that's perfectly OK for me. Turn off shadows on Grass---it's a hog for some reason and is buggy like Self-Shadows. I turn self shadows off because the solution is flawed and it tends to make the character faces "dirty" looking with the shadows in the wrong places. An option in the ini file thats not in the game is point lighting for grass.... its a little less of a performance hit than shadows on grass but it makes the grass look less joltingly bright at night. Canopy shadows is a must IMO, game doesnt look right without it. There's a LOT of suggestions on that atomicPC page. A lot were helpful and I'd suggest trying them, make sure you back up your ini file first though. Last edited by Khorum : 03-31-2006 at 01:58 PM.

03-31-2006, 05:45 PM	#12 (permalink)
tanjo like a dum whore cripple Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: St. Louis Posts: 615 +0 Internets	V-sync rapes my framerate too, but I can't play games without it. I'll literrally get a heachache that lasts for hours if I'm playing a game with screen tearing for too long. The thing that's helped my frame rate improve a pretty good amount is using ATI Overdrive. It's an overclocking utility built into the video card software. It auto-detects the safest overclocking settings. Last edited by tanjo : 03-31-2006 at 06:21 PM.

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03-31-2006, 12:18 PM	#2 (permalink)
makist Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Rodcet Nife Posts: 769 -2 Internets	Pentium D 3.0Ghz dual-core EVGA GeForce 7800GTX OC 200GB HD 7200rpm 2GB DDR RAM 533mhz 16x DVD drive game auto detected high settings.. but if I turn resolution up I get less than optimal FPS with a bunch of entities on the screen, or in outdoor areas. Even at 1024x768, I have to adjust the settings to get optimal fps beyond the ultra high quality auto detect rigged up. I run Fear with everything on at 1600x1200 with no hiccup at all, even with a bunch of enemies on the screen and me going into slow mo and lots of physics occuring.

03-31-2006, 12:19 PM	#3 (permalink)
makist Registered User Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Rodcet Nife Posts: 769 -2 Internets	Also I am fairly certain you can turn on AA and bloom, you just cant turn on AA and HDR lighting.

03-31-2006, 12:20 PM	#4 (permalink)
Exmonk Banned Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 154 +0 Internets	Wrathcaster look in the .ini file and you can adjust the distances at which stuff pops. I think your system can afford the tweaks to make the popup occur far enough that it doesn't look bad.

03-31-2006, 02:08 PM	#7 (permalink)
Rythonn Registered User Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,652	The game runs great till certain NPCs are in front of me. Mainly merchants but any npc will slow me down, granted I have an older system but still annoying specially in combat. Hoping this page will help me out.

03-31-2006, 05:24 PM	#11 (permalink)
Mazuli Registered User Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 644 +0 Internets	Athlon 64 3200+ Geforce 6800GS 256mb 1gb pc3200 ram I have v sync off (it is kinda annoying and ugly but it was the most significant fix in framerate) 1024x768, all sliders to the max except grass which is set to off. Shadow filtering and self shadows off. Bloom on, HDR off, AA 2x. IMO, Bloom + AA is a lot better looking than HDR. Runs pretty smooth, aside from occasional stutters when I enter a new area and do a complete 360. After that, the area will remain consistently smooth unless I'm in an area with more than about 5 npcs.