Strange Oblivion problem

[Inkey]

I have oblivion playing fine accept for one thing. When I am outdoors and see an animal the game stutters something horrible. It only seems to be animals that do it though, as I have already fought humans and a few imps outdoors and there is no stutter. I had two deer run infront of me and my fps dropped to around 5-6. I am usually getting 40-50 outdoors. Now I made it to aleswell and the sheep in the pens do it also. When I had two on the screen at once my fps dropped from 30-40 to 15-20. When I attacked them however, my fps jumped back up to normal.

I am normally running at 800x600 with no anti aliasing an all the setting adjusted. My system is

Pentium D 820
1gig DDR2 ram
ATI x800 gto2 256mb
160gb ata harddrive

Any ideas?

 

[nottheking]

I have oblivion playing fine accept for one thing. When I am outdoors and see an animal the game stutters something horrible. It only seems to be animals that do it though, as I have already fought humans and a few imps outdoors and there is no stutter. I had two deer run infront of me and my fps dropped to around 5-6. I am usually getting 40-50 outdoors. Now I made it to aleswell and the sheep in the pens do it also. When I had two on the screen at once my fps dropped from 30-40 to 15-20. When I attacked them however, my fps jumped back up to normal.

I am normally running at 800x600 with no anti aliasing an all the setting adjusted. My system is

Pentium D 820
1gig DDR2 ram
ATI x800 gto2 256mb
160gb ata harddrive

Any ideas?

That's strange indeed; normally, common spots for performance drops would be in dense forests with thick grass, in town, in combat, or near oblivion gates.

It could also be that the game is loading, though normally, this should be done with little problem for dual-core systems. I might try enabling the "debug text," by doing the following:

• [*:b1e158015e]Press tilde "`", to bring up the debug console.
  [*:b1e158015e]Type in "TDT", and hit enter.
  [*:b1e158015e]Careful not to press "scroll lock" by accident. This can change what text is shown. If it is hit, hit it again until you cycle all the way through.This will bring up some text in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. Some of it will make sense, like the "XX fps" counter, but the real thing to watch for is the "count" number. When you cross cells, a potentially large number will appear there; that's how many objects the game is in the process of placing. This is VERY CPU-intensive, and can result in abysmal framerates while it's happening. My recomendation? Keep the console up while it's loading; that will stop all AI and physics, dramatically freeing up CPU power, which can speed loading by several hundred percent.
  
  Obviously, this isn't a guaranteed fix, but it's just a suggestion to start with.

 

[Inkey]

Thanks, but I found my problem. My onboard sound card wasn't up to the task of the footsteps created by four legged creatures. There is a patch on another website called quite feet which takes out all four legged creatures sound effects. Cleared my problem right up except for wolves. Dear, sheap and rats are no problem now though. All I have to do on wolves is wait for it to get right next to me then no more feet sounds and no lag.

 

[rman3349]

Coming a little late to this one but what sound chipset do you have. This is somthing that I would not expect. Very interesting.

 

[szutyo]

Hi Guys!

I strongly think that these are sound card issues. I am struggling with the same thing I think. I have an ATI Radeon 9600 and the game runs smoothly in 800x600 until the fight mode kicks in. Before an enemy sees me everything is fine. When I am detected the game lock up for about 5 seconds. This is really annoying.

I have an Creative Audigy 2 NX soundcard, I will try to see how I can resolve this issue and post back if I find anything. If someone has a solution please help. I have problems with any-legged creatures. I will unplug my soundcard/ install the mentioned patch now...

Thanks in advance

 

[szutyo]

Okay, I am sure the problem is in my sound card.
I don't know if this could be an issue but the Audigy 2 NX is an external USB sound card, could the low usb speed be the problem?
I installed my original onboard sound driver and the same thing happens, when chanigng music the game locks for 5-10 secs, the silent feet patch does not affect the problem.

The lock up also happens when not going in or out of fights, it happens in mid play when the game plays the next tune.

Any opinions?