Why does Oblivion run like a dog on my new hardware?

[shwig]

In trying to play oblivion, with some mods, I've found that I'm struggling to break 20fps. Indoors I do just fine, but out in the wilderness I'm hanging around 19. Cities are even worse, I sit around 12fps there. I'm set to small textures, bloom lighting, other sliders around 50-60 %. 2xAA and 2xAF are enabled through the catalyst drivers; disabling those doesn't do much for me. I'm running at 1280x1024.

Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H
AMD Athlon II X4 620 - stock
2x2GB DDR3 1066
ATI Radeon 5750 - OC'd to 790/1350.
Win 7 Pro 64 bit

I've tried disabling the texture mods, no use. I can average 74 fps in furmark. I've run Oblivion with task manager running on the other monitor, I never get over 62% CPU, and I always have at least 1.5 GB free physical memory. DxDiag doesn't find anything. I've followed every "Oblivion Tweak Guide" I can find, and have installed all the "Optimization" mods that I've come across. Drivers for both the chipset and video card are up to date. I dont even see the HD4200 thats build into the northbridge in my Device Manager anywhere, only the 5750.

What am I missing here? Is something set wrong, or an I just overestimating the power of my hardware?


DxDiag output
Oblivion.ini contents
mod load order

 

[shwig]

~26 in the city, slightly higher outside.

BUT

i think doing that gave me the solution. the script profiler on vanilla showed the scripts running at ~0.60% of the time. in my heavily modded version, they are ~20%. I've read somewhere that even a modest reduction there can create huge fps boosts. I'll go through my mods and see who's introducing tons of scripts into the pool. Hopefully I can find some relatively boring ones to turn off to really help out here.

 

[hawk56013]

One of the biggest problems is that oblivion wasn't made to run on multi-core processors, so shwig was right, the more scripts you've got running the lower and lower you FPS will go. Also, oblivion has a lot of grass and it blows in the wind, this REALLY takes its toll on the CPU. There are some low poly grass mods that really help

 

[dragoncyber]

Okay first of all know that Oblivion was created to challenge the systems of the time graphically, and still makes current hardware sweat bullets too. That being said
Your 5750 is fairly new and there has been talk of its drivers not being fully optimized yet for many games, does your system run all your other games fine?

Just as a comparison I used to run it on a GTX280 sli'd system with 4gb of ram and a 3.6 ghz processor (overclocked q6600 at the time) with well over 80-100 FPS inside, and outside I'd dip into the low 60's on average, but that was with everything maxed at 1920X1200 resolution.

So your 5750 isnt as fast as 2 GTX280's and your drivers arent that mature yet, so maybe thats all it is, but comparison wise your processor is slower than I was running too. Try turning vegetation off completely, Just leave the tree's and adjust view distance.. that should help. OH and turn off antialiasing completely, and HDR or bloom off as well. It wont look the best but might make your FPS acceptible.

 

[MGDJoker]

Cause it sucks

 

[jay_l_a]

I suspect the mods. Do a clean install (and leave the mods off) and see if the problem persists.