Help me Run Oblivion on my PC

CrimsonKing

Okay, so back when I had 512 megabytes of RAM and an x800 on XP I could run Oblivion better then my 2 gigabyte RAM, x1650 Vista rig that I have now. I can't figure it out, but I'm not good with technical stuff in any case so maybe I'm missing something. So, heres my specs:

-Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
-2046MB RAM
-Radeon x1650 (Specs here)
-AMD Athlon Dual Core Processor 4200+ 2.20GHz

The problem is, on my old PC I could run Oblivion at 1280x1024 on medium settings and in the wilderness be getting a reasonable frame rate.

Now if I run at the same setting with 1280x1024, on my new supposedly better PC I get about 5 fps. I'm guessing its something with Oblivion as only no other game gives me a problem. Except S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but, thats expected. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Henroid

Are all your drivers up to date? That's seriously the only thing that's coming to mind right now. I'm seriously confused about this. However, I will say it isn't your hardware and most likely Windows Vista being, well, Vista.

Edit - Oh, and are you using the same lighting method in game? (as in HDR or... that other one they offer)

Kagera

Is it a pre-built system? Does it have a lot of bloatware installed?

CrimsonKing

I just clicked on the general "medium" button. And, yes, its an HP. I normally wouldn't have but it was the best I could do at the time. All my drivers are up to date. If it is "bloatware" how would I get rid of it.

CrimsonKing

Henroid wrote: »

Are all your drivers up to date? That's seriously the only thing that's coming to mind right now. I'm seriously confused about this. However, I will say it isn't your hardware and most likely Windows Vista being, well, Vista.

Edit - Oh, and are you using the same lighting method in game? (as in HDR or... that other one they offer)

What type of info do you need?

Kagera

CrimsonKing wrote: »

I just clicked on the general "medium" button. And, yes, its an HP. I normally wouldn't have but it was the best I could do at the time. All my drivers are up to date. If it is "bloatware" how would I get rid of it.

Well...the first thing I can think of is look at your taskbar. Where the time is on the taskbar if you see a lot of icons there then THAT is bloatware, it's stuff that runs in the background and eats up your CPU time. It usually loads at startup and depending on what it is can be useful or useless. Generally you can remove it by going to Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel and uninstalling the software but don't do this if it's something like an anti-virus program or firewall.

Some people even choose to reformat their computers to start from a clean install which is great if you're having trouble running games as they should on your PC.

Of course, looking at your first post you said something about Oblivion itself being the only game to have problems, so this probably won't be bloatware related.

Mike99TA

When you say your drivers are updated do you mean using some sort of HP driver update or system update tool? Theres a high likelyhood that HP installed OEM drivers on your system for things such as your video card. Make sure you actually have the radeon drivers from ATI installed, not from HP, this is the single biggest thing you can do that will speed up games. If you've already done that, bloatware could be a problem but all the bloatware on an HP shouldn't be enough to slow your PC down *that* much.

harvest

Turn off shadows, choose Bloom instead of HDR in the options. That will help some.

Henroid

harvest wrote: »

Turn off shadows, choose Bloom instead of HDR in the options. That will help some.

The thing is, whatever options he had on an old computer aren't working out so well on a new computer.

CrimsonKing

Henroid wrote: »

harvest wrote: »

Turn off shadows, choose Bloom instead of HDR in the options. That will help some.

The thing is, whatever options he had on an old computer aren't working out so well on a new computer.

Which is confusing the hell out of me.

harvest

I'd start with cleaning your sound and video drivers out completely with http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1655 Guru 3D's Driver Sweeper. Do it in safe mode, then reinstall the drivers. Make sure you don't have any CPU throttling bullshit running. I'm not sure where you'd find that, because I've never had any. Maybe in Power options in the Control Panel.

Go in your Video control panel and just for kicks manually set everything at the minimum. Anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, everything. Just to see if it's something in there that's fucking with your performance so that you know where to dig deeper.

Might be worth your time to go into Win+R->msconfig->Startup and uncheck everything that you know you don't need/want. That will prevent any retarded crap from starting up with windows that are possibly sucking precious CPU cycles from their divine gaming purpose.

KungFu

If you lower your graphics settings in Oblivion dramatically, does it still run shitty?