Oblivion runs slow

ANyone knows if oblivion uses dual core or quad cores or if it only uses one core? I ask because I am getting really bad fps in it on ultra high settings (even high). I never played it before and recently installed it. For some reason it runs good but when the king and his men in the beginniing start fighting or are around it dips to like 25 fps. I havent had the chance to test the outside fps in grass etc. but I was expecting like 100 fps average like im getting on mount and blade or the first stalker since those came out a lot after oblivion.

What are you specs?

Its marketed as multithreaded but in reality i believe only a small portion of physics processing is offloaded. There will be a difference between single / multi core CPU's but it is more limited by your GPU.

i'm not too sure about Oblivions prerequisites either but im going to test it on my system. ill keep you updated, if i cant run it chances are this game is horribly optimized.

I also realized when i kept shadows on grass on, it only appears (shadows on grass) on some areas of the game, and it dips like 10 fps lower if not more.

Turn the Grass OFF. it means you can't see items on the floor, and is a total system hog.
Turn the internal and external shadows down as much as you can.
Even though this game has been out a while, it still take quite a bit of hardware to run it maxxed out (I certainly can't)

http://tweakguides.com/

Great site for specific PC games and relevant adjustments to them. In Oblivion's case, simply editing the Oblivion.ini file can yield great results (in both fps and visual quality).

An essential performance mod is the "low poly grass" mod. A solid alternative to turning grass off.