I just installed fraps to see how many FPS I have in different areas and sometimes I see in shops 30 FPS but outside with Better Cities sometimes a little bellow 10, or sometimes even 5. Is this bad?

I have 10-15 on Better IC Market District. It is playable, but not comfortably. Good thing you don't get into fights there.

If it's playable it doesn't matter what FPS is, is my take on it

Better cities is a fps killer. The other thing to avoid is replacing armor/clothing with very high polygon meshes. Mods designed as replacers are generally ok, but replacing meshes with your fave random mods will kill your fps eventually.

Thank you for the replies. I notice that what you say about the clothes dropping FPS in my companion, I have Viconia and Vilja, and I got them both some nice clothes, and when I look at them I get about a 10 FPS drop - in the wilderness with UL from 20 to about 11. Is that too big?

As a general rule, I like my games at least at 30 fps.

It's really only you that can answer that. For some players it's unacceptable with less than 30 FPS - others are fine even with 10 FPS. Personally, I'm not comfortable when it goes under, say, 15 FPS. In short, if it's annoying to you, you should do something about it - if not, not.

My game runs about 10-15fps, which I can hardly stand, but I can't get rid of all those wonderful mods either. :ahhh:

Above 15fps in non-combat is fine for me, I like even higher in combat though, trying to shoot stuff at 10fps is horrible...

I feel the same way, I am unable to think that I would be forced to remove even one of the mods I love because of low FPS. I played hundreds of hours with mods like Qarl Texture Pack, UL and BC, and although I felt a bit of lag it didn't bother me.

But now I installed RAEWVD and I became aware of the FPS which I ignored so far. And so I installed FRAPS, and I began to wonder what target of FPS should I aim for, or if there is such a target.But until now the game feels playable according to my standards even with RAEWVD

@Arkngt Until now I didn't care, and now that I care a little I don't know if it bothers me

The game is no fun for me if the framerate is too low. Before I had a better PC I constantly typed 'tdt' to see what the framerate was like when I felt there was some stuttering. Now the game runs with 40+ FPS everywhere (mostly at 55 capped by Stutter Remover). Maybe I'm a bit special in that regard and of course I agree with what Arkngt said, but I can hardly believe that anyone would want to play a game with less than 10 FPS. And I don't think you like it either, otherwise you wouldn't watch your framerate and start a thread about it here. You would just play the game.

FPS (frames per second) is an FPS (First Person Shooter) thing. If timing is important to the playability of the game because you're shooting at a moving target or a jumping onto a moving platform or whatever, then it really matters. I don't think it matters at all in Oblivion. It's not that kind of game.

Except that it is. Try hitting moving NPCs with target spells and low FPS. My current char is a mage and during fights my FPS can go down to <10 FPS, which makes it basically impossible to use target spells, unless they also have an area effect of course. I'd say that lousy performance is the most challenging enemy in my game. But of course it's not a twitch game as playing a first person shooter on a professional level.

Funny you mention this, I was benchmarking too with fraps and here are my results:

resolution : 2048x1152 (recommanded for my monitor)ControlScenario : IC Isle run-------------------------Vanilla OblivionVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsa1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2295,     60000,  27,  55, 38.2502.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2411,     60000,  28,  53, 40.1833.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2362,     60000,  27,  52, 39.3674.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2353,     60000,  27,  54, 39.2175.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2389,     60000,  27,  54, 39.817average : 39.367 fpsframes : 2362min : 27max : 55--------------------------------------------------regularHeavily modded OblivionVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsaOOO, MMM, OCC, etc.OBSE1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1351,     60000,  10,  31, 22.5172.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1375,     60000,  11,  31, 22.9173.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1372,     60000,  10,  31, 22.8674.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1364,     60000,  14,  31, 22.7335.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1363,     60000,  12,  31, 22.717average : 22.75frames : 1365min : 10 ;this is OSR at workmax : 31 ;OSRTask Manager Process > affinity core#1 & 3 > priority high //G-series Profiler & SetPoint set on core#0 & 2Heavily modded OblivionVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsaOOO, MMM, OCC, etc.OBSE(IC Isle run)1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1390,     60000,  12,  31, 23.1672.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1391,     60000,  13,  31, 23.1833.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1360,     60000,  11,  31, 22.6674.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1350,     60000,  14,  31, 22.5005.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  1365,     60000,  10,  31, 22.750average : 22.853frames : 1371.2min : 10 ;OSR at workmax : 31 ;OSR-------------------------------------------------ControlScenario : Bruma run-------------------------Vanilla OblivionVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsaOpen Cities Classic1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2288,     60000,  20,  70, 38.1332.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2264,     60000,  20,  67, 37.7333.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2257,     60000,  20,  62, 37.6174.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2189,     60000,  20,  61, 36.4835.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg  2195,     60000,  19,  58, 36.583average : 37.310frames : 2238.6min : 19max : 70--------------------------------------RegularHeavily modded OblivionNo priority or Affinity setVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsaOOO, MMM, OCC, etc.1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   594,     60000,   5,  18, 9.9002.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   581,     60000,   5,  16, 9.6833.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   543,     60000,   4,  16, 9.0504.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   568,     60000,   4,  17, 9.4675.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   593,     60000,   5,  17, 9.883average : 9.597frames : 575.8min : 4max : 18Task Manager Process > affinity core#1 & 3 > priority high//G-series Profiler & SetPoint set on core#0 & 2Heavily modded OblivionVibrant texturesLow poly-treesRAEVWDLow Tri-Poly GrassPyFii Meshes - uncompressed bsaTextures uncompressed bsaOOO, MMM, OCC, etc.OBSE1.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   580,     60000,   5,  18, 9.6672.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   607,     60000,   6,  19, 10.1173.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   631,     60000,   6,  19, 10.5174.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   589,     60000,   6,  17, 9.8175.Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg   546,     60000,   5,  16, 9.100average : 9.843frames : 590.6min : 5max : 19

In the wilderness, I'm comfy with a 20-25 fps, but in cities it's horrible : 10 fps. Granted I have tested this with Open Cities Classic, Crowded Citites and UL-Snowdale in Bruma, etc... As stand alone, they're fine, but together they're FPS killers. I would be ever so happy if I could get 15 FPS in Cities, but then I'll have to make a choice as what plugin to remove... I can't ! :ahhh:
There was a talk about a plugin for OBSE to get the most out of multi-core CPU (january 2010) but that seems to have died. That's why I tested affinities with this benchmark, that is, let Oblivion run on core#1 & 3 only, to see if it helped, but it's not significant: 0.3 FPS gain.
Wouhou. Let's party. :foodndrink:

Haa, here's the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1071130-giving-oblivion-multi-threaded-capabilities-using-obse/page__p__15573110__hl__cpu%20affinity__fromsearch__1&#entry15573110.

I would play the game but I am busy with other things right now and I have time to write in the forum only. I installed once Improved Trees and Flora that really dropped my FPS to unplayable levels, and I guess starting then I began to care truly about FPS and I am careful to not add something that would make my playing experience unpleasant.

Thats why I am asking in this thread what do you recommend about FPS and also I care about other possible issues if I have low FPS that maybe exist that I don't know about, like some scripts not firing because of FPS, if this problem even exists.

I'm always using Improved Trees and Flora on my ancient rig and it doesn't give that much of a performance hit. Perhaps you were using its canopy shadows, which are really nice but gives a significant hit?

Anyway, for me it's basically a question of finding a balance between eye-candy/additions and performance. And I'm always pushing the limit, which means one added mod sometimes can break the camel's back. For instance, Open Cities Bruma was my last bastion from the Open Cities package - but adding Vilja to my game made the performance there too painful so I had to let OC go. Using BAIN it's easy to try/swap out stuff, though.

Yes, BAIN is awesome when it comes to experimenting with mods and in general .

And I definitely got a big performance hit with Imp Trees and Flora, especially in UL Forests. Maybe I will try it again in the future after I make sure my computer can handle RAEWVD.

Depends on how I mod it. I'd love to use FCOM but I just can't stand getting 12fps in fights. I can usually mod mine to the point where combat is involved. Like All Natural, RAEVWD and the likes are fine. But mods like OOO and FCOM kill my FPS completely because of the awesomely optimised Oblivion engine. I'm actually re-installing now and might just try a simple Frans setup or something, see how that turns out.

Typically 30-60, although 30 in practice since I set that as the max in Oblivion Stutter Remover. I did notice it dip to about 25-27 during the fight in the Temple District near the end of the main quest when there was all kinds of stuff going on.

Running QTP3 redimized, all unique landscapes, Better Cities, etc. I have a high-end system, however. Unfortunately, Oblivion can't make use of my 12 Gbytes of RAM among other things.

Hmm...both the vanilla canopyshadow.dds, Mikel's version and http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16186 are the same size - 171 Kb, so unless there are other files that also gives the canpoy shadows, you must have imagined it.
Or do you mean turning on canopy shadows at all gives a significant FPS hit?

If Mikels Trees and Flora is too demanding, I suggest getting http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30313 instead. They are half the size of Mikel's, but nearly as good. Or 1/4 the size since Mikel's also have "normal maps" or whatever the _n part of the file names mean.

As none has mentioned it as a play killer yet.

STUTTER!

I got a pretty smooth game with almost no stutter. Then it is fine with 20fps in combat, with moving targets an all. If it gets to 15 and lower it gets choppy and harder to control your movement, you overshoot etc.

Stutter and FPS is not necessary companions - at least not in Oblivion. Some with high 40 complain about stuttering and I can understand that, because it is that chopping up and down of your fps and temporary micro second lockups that kills the game.

What can you do about it? OBSE plugin Stutter remover helps allot if you set it up right for your rig, even if you leave at default it helps allot.
Overclock your CPU if you know how and got the cooling to go with it - remember the memory speed is pretty important too. I can overclock allot more with lower RAM speed but the game plays worse even.

If any have any insights in specific mods or scripting that bring more stuttering that would be interesting to read.

Cheers!

I always try to have good fps over graphical niceness because my computer isn't that great and I can't stand anything approaching 15fps. I used to use open cities classic and a number of other non-graphical mods and my frame rate was pretty bad, but fairly recently I had a massive cull of my mod list (including open cities) and noticed a massive fps boost, and it's now incredably playable. However, I do use FCOM so some fights (darn imps) have a big hit on my fps, so I always keep my mod list low to make sure that these fights are playable, which for the most they are. I haven't checked my fps anytime after the cull, because if I new what it was I would be dissatisfied and would want higher, instead of just being pleased with it and not really noticing it.

Like others have said though, on-one can tell you how good your fps is. It's completely up to you. All I can say though is that if you are experiencing 5 fps I would reccomend removing Better Cities, and if you're having trouble in the wilderness I would reccomending installing low-poly grass and decreasing your grass density slightly in the ini file.

As long as there is no stutter or pop ins which I have I can deal with 20 fps in Oblivion.

Remember that the killer is often NOT load on your graphics card with Oblivion if you use a lot of mods, but the CPU. Most mods add at least one, often more, "quest" script which can tick between once and 300 times per second, and a number of per-frame scripts that occur under some conditions that also run at up to 60 per second; I've seen people who's mod lists could include over 200 quests, that's a LOT of function calls per frame being added on top what was already not a memory light game.

Large numbers of mods; or worse a small number of very sloppily coded scripts can put a lot of load on the processor and cause it to stutter/chug without needing the GPU to be overloaded.


I personally try keep my FPS above 30, which is quite easily achieved I normally have around 50-60fps, so I spend the "spare" framerate on OBGE =3

Just curious, do you use any overhaul mods with that kind of framerate?

I get about 15fps in Imperial City, it can drop lower, around 20 outside. Inside and dungeons is silky smooth though.

I'm not really sure what's killing the FPS, it's running on a high-end system (HD5850, i7, 6gig RAM, all on an SSD) - I assumed it was being CPU limited as has been mentioned above (running OOO, MMM and Oblivion XP for a start) but then I've recently been over to Windfall and everything is smooth as hell out there. Not sure what that means.

What sort've overhaul? - like Better Cities, or you mean stuff like COBL?

The "biggest" mods in terms of changes I have are:


My mod list is relatively small (<35 .esps) as I tend to take clothing/armour mods and pack the items I want into my own tweaks mod instead of strapping 30 minimods into the load order. As you can probably guess from the number of mods I've made I tend to be quite hands on with my modding instead of scourring nexus for stuff xD