Five Ways to Make Oblivion Run Faster
- April 05, 2006 16:59 PM PST
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Several tweaks have been found to vastly improve the performance in the PC version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Fans with middle-of-the-road gaming PCs have been frustrated by the steep system requirements and erratic performance of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The good news is that several dedicated fans have found ways to vastly improve performance in the game. Here are five of the best ways to boost performance while retaining visual beauty in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
In-Game Tweaks
These tweaks are all applied in the in-game menus in Oblivion -- as such, they're easy for tweaking newbies.
#1 Reduce resolution and disable anti-aliasing. A no-brainer, but still hugely important. If your performance is jerky, the first thing you should do is disable anti-aliasing. Even on the GamePro office power PC (an Athlon 64 3500+ with 2 GB RAM and a Geforce 7800 GT), Oblivion runs only decently at the widescreen resolution of 1360 x 768 with no anti-aliasing. Your resolution options will be very narrow if you use an LCD or plasma monitor (though you can try running in a window to reduce the resolution and retain compatibility). But if you've got a bigger, bulkier CRT monitor, try turning your resolution to 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600...even 640x480, if you must.
#2 Disable V-Sync and lower texture detail. Another hugely important tweak. Turning off V-Sync might introduce a subtle "tearing" effect when you spin the camera around quickly, but you'll get used to it. Besides, disabling V-Sync is one of the biggest performance boosters in the game. Same goes for lowering the texture detail, though Oblivion is pretty good at automatically setting texture sizes according to your PC power.
#3 Reduce interior shadows and exterior shadows. Shadow processing takes up quite a bit of processing power, so you're smart to tone these down if you're experiencing frame rate hitching in Oblivion. You don't need to turn them off (that's ugly), but scaling back a few notches will definitely give you a noticeable boost. Also, be sure to disable shadow filtering, too -- it's gorgeous it but taxes your PC.
.ini File Tweaks
As dedicated tweakers know, game .ini files frequently contain the most powerful performance tweaks. The following two strategies come courtesy of TweakGuides.com, an excellent resource:
NOTE: With the following .ini file changes, be sure to mark the .ini file as "read only" when you save your changes. Find this option by right-clicking the .ini file. You'll need to uncheck "read only" if you need to make .ini changes again later.
#4 .ini setting: Reduce the iShadowMapResolution option. The TweakGuide article notes that "this variable determines the resolution of the shadow maps. By lowering this value (always using a multiple of 8), you can gain significant FPS in areas...in return for much 'rougher' looking shadows." The default option appears to be 1024; try a lower multiple of 8, such as 800 or 640 in order to boost performance a notch.
#5 .ini setting: Increase iMinGrassSize to 120. This setting governs the thickness of the beautiful grass and flower patches that adorn Oblivion. Oddly, the higher you set this number, the thinner and sparser the grass will get. A nice medium number between 100 and 150 will give you vastly improved performance without sacrificing much beauty. It will also let you push the draw distance for grass out much further, without the game becoming a slideshow.
Enjoy Oblivion!
