I wasnt able to look at this last night but I did notice this morning that
NVidia has released a new beta driver

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_do...etadriver.html

I didnt see anything in the release notes that is relevant but I might give
it a try

At this point I am running the games at the same resolution as the Windows
desktop so I dont get the flicker issue

I am trying to avoid dual booting but it may be required once I start
loading the older games.

"Andy" <Android8675> wrote in message
news:4e30
[..]

I still havent really solved this one.

For now I have dropped my resolution and am currently getting high FPS but
there are still times where the movement is jerky.

I can only guess it is the BSTask but still have not found out what this is.

"Craig Grell" <craig.grell> wrote in message
news:2044
[..]

"Craig Grell" <craig.grell> wrote in message
news:4532
>I still havent really solved this one.
>
> For now I have dropped my resolution and am currently getting high FPS but
> there are still times where the movement is jerky.
>
> I can only guess it is the BSTask but still have not found out what this
> is.

I haven't figured it out either Craig, and now i'm noticeing the same
problem. It only seems to happen when I go outside for a moment, not sure if
it's the foliage or what, but it'll start "stuttering", sometimes really
bad. everything looks like a slide show.

I did narrow down why my game was crashing at startup though.

In the Compatibility Tab if I enable the "Disable Desktop Composition"
option, all my problems go away. I don't have to run in XP mode or
Administrator mode. That fixed the startup crash, but the stuttering is
still there.

I downloaded drivers for nVidia from Guru3D, apparently they get releases
for video card drivers like a couple days before they go live on nVidia. so
I'm running a "160" version, I forget which off hand.

Ah well,
-A.

"VRG Admin" <the8oxy> wrote in message
news:3644
>
> A web board with a dozen or so posts........................
>
> Vbulletin Commercial Forum software with 422,161 posts.

I didn't see any of those when I went there. Didn't feel like making an
account. First impression wasn't that great. Might want to work on the
presentation.

> Adsense is there so we can add better services for people to use FREE.
> (Like the new website that is being developed at the moment)

Let me know when it goes up.

> Please feel free to assist us in making the forum/site a better place.
> All contirbutions are very welcome, also as a member you could point us in
> the right direction and also help with original how-to's.

This a paying job?

-A.

I feel your pain Craig and Andy. I am having this exact same issue.
Beautiful framerates with maddening random exterior stuttering. It
seems to be a issue with the way the game loads objects outside. I have
been searching madly for some sort of solution and have pretty much ran
out of options. I have done everything from defrag, vista optimization,
ini tweaks, in-game feature adjustments, and so on. At this point, I am
going to dual boot XP to see if this might be the issue. I have no
problems with any other games.....so I am assuming Oblivion doesnt like
Vista much.

As far as the little war going on here regarding this VRG site, this
pretty much pissed me off as well. Gave you some basic "is your
computer plugged in" type suggestions then suggested going to their
site for the "answer". I went there of course because im desperate,
and found a thread that had 2 freaking posts and basically says "works
great for me, by the way, Bethesda doesnt support vista". Hey great,
im glad it works fine for you. I hate those completley useless types
of answers. I have found mutliple sources seeking to provide vista
compatibility information stating that there is obvious stutter. This
is a very real issue for a lot of people! I DONT CARE IF IT WORKS FOR
YOU THIS SUCKS! :mad:

Yes my computer is plugged in, and it should run (and does when I am
standing in one place) awsome. It is when I move around that it random
chokes. I could be running straight with amazing frame rates and then
turn to the right and uh uh uh hu choooookkeeee awsome framerates
again.

Asus A8N32 Deluxe
AMD X2 4200
4GB OCZ Platinum
8800GTX Video Card
RAID 0

WTF? I am going to install XP tonight to see if this may do anything.
I am assuming that this will most likely eliminate this issue.

> As far as the little war going on here regarding this VRG site, this
> pretty much pissed me off as well. Gave you some basic "is your
> computer plugged in" type suggestions then suggested going to their
> site for the "answer". I went there of course because im desperate,
> and found a thread that had 2 freaking posts and basically says "works
> great for me, by the way, Bethesda doesnt support vista". Hey great,
> im glad it works fine for you. I hate those completley useless types
> of answers. I have found mutliple sources seeking to provide vista
> compatibility information stating that there is obvious stutter. This
> is a very real issue for a lot of people! I DONT CARE IF IT WORKS FOR
> YOU THIS SUCKS! :mad:

@Miker

If you had spent a little more time on the forum instead of flaming it you
would have found the problem.
Its common in 90+% of all systems that are running Vista and Oblivion.
Sorry that you are too pig headed and ignorant to try the "search" button.
We help a vast number of people on VRG, granted not all members claim to be
experts or have the most up to date systems.
But as we have found every bit of help is getting people closer to the
solution.
A few people on here have the wrong idea about VRG.
It was set up to help people, for FREE! by every day Vista Users.
How many Games companies out there have a free support system ?
Those that do declare the game is not yet "Vista" compatible.
Let me see, Oblivion seems to be one of them.
Nice that we are at least solving these problems, or at our very best trying
to solve them.

Please feel free to contact me via email and discuss how bad VRG is, or just
continue to act like a spoilt 6 year old on here.

VRG Admin

www.VistaReadyGames.com

Here we go guys,

Make your swap file larger and if possible move to another HDD. (2GB Ram
make it 3.1GB non system managed)
Even better another HDD on another controller if possible.
Seems to have solved this problem on a very high % of systems.
Hope it solves the problem for you all.

VRG Admin

www.VistaReadyGames.com

"miker" <mjrossijr> wrote in message
news:tsq0
>
> As far as the little war going on here regarding this VRG site, this
> pretty much pissed me off as well. Gave you some basic "is your
> computer plugged in" type suggestions then suggested going to their
> site for the "answer". I went there of course because im desperate,
> and found a thread that had 2 freaking posts and basically says "works
> great for me, by the way, Bethesda doesnt support vista". Hey great,
> im glad it works fine for you. I hate those completley useless types
> of answers. I have found mutliple sources seeking to provide vista
> compatibility information stating that there is obvious stutter. This
> is a very real issue for a lot of people! I DONT CARE IF IT WORKS FOR
> YOU THIS SUCKS! :mad:

Yeah, well it's not really a war per say. I can be a little harsh at times,
and I suppose I could apologize for that. VRG Admin is at least acting
professional here, and that says a lot. It's so easy on "forums" to just let
loose, it takes a stronger person to keep your tongue in cheek espically
when people get all huffy. I'm sure it's simply business, and he's trying so
lets leave it be for now.

As for the "Object Loading" as the possible problem, that makes sense. I'm
sure you've noticed that Vista for some unknown reason will at times take
forever to copy files or move them to the recycle bin. I'm guessing the
Vista filesystem just isn't as efficent at loading/caching as Windows XP
was, or it handles files differently in such a way that if Oblivion had been
written with the newer cacheing methods in place they could of spent more
time fine tuning the game for Vista.

As it is, it's not a killer for me and it doesn't happen enough to be a deal
breaker. I'd guess with 4 gigs of ram it happens less than with my 2, but
who knows. I could be way off.

> Asus A8N32 Deluxe
> AMD X2 4200
> 4GB OCZ Platinum
> 8800GTX Video Card
> RAID 0
>
> WTF? I am going to install XP tonight to see if this may do anything.
> I am assuming that this will most likely eliminate this issue.

it'll work better, game was designed with XP, you should be golden in that
situation.

Party,
A.

@ VRG

Well sorry for my rather childish little rant there. You are by no
means bad in any way. Post like the one I saw in this thread and via
my limited perusing of your site are pretty much the bulk of what I
have been digging through in various forums. The it "it works fine for
me, reinstall the driver" comments. I was a bit to quick to judge
really. For some reason it hits a nerve. I just got kind of aggitated
and for whatever reason decided to flame on. Sorry for that. There was
really no need for my comments. Ill go ahead and delete those comments
as they are unecessary.

EDIT: Well it seems I cant edit the post anymore, oh well. You have
already quoted it anyway.

At any rate, back to the point. If I figure anything else I'll be sure
to post it here. As of now it seems like we are out of luck until
Bethesda provides a patch(I dont think this is likely as they seem to
think there are no issues according to their FAQ). It might not even
require anything from Bethesda, who knows. I tried the creating a
larger page file and moving it to another drive idea before and it
didnt seem to work. I will give it another go and see what happens.

You are right in assuming that the "stuttering" is an issue of loading
content.
Good framerates are an indication that your graphics subsystem is well
capable of handling that side of things.
But Oblivion is a very complex and demanding game and behind the scenes is
carrying out a multitude of tasks that go into producing all the beautiful
things you see and do.
Displaying the results is not your problem.
Your processor, hard disk, and memory are at full tilt and every so often
they just can't keep up and simply stall.
No doubt you have tried all the obvious tweaks, but I would recommend the
Oblivion Tweak Guide on TweakGuides.com as being extremely detailed and
containing lots of (to me at least, previously unseen) ini settings that are
aimed precisely at preventing this type of stuttering.
Hope this is of some help. Let us know how you get on, as many people share
your problem.


Phypps


"miker" <mjrossijr> wrote in message
news:tsq0
[..]

Craig,

I have observed pretty much the same thing and I want to say I sympathize.
A given system which ran Oblivion fine under XP is under Vista suffering
from the stuttering your describe. NOT low frame-rate per sé, but stutter.

After much experimenting with all the "tweaks" people suggest (none of which
BTW address this Oblivion-under-Vista specific issue), and many nights
combing the web for an answer, the only thing I've found that makes any real
difference is to lower the amount of GPU RAM demanded. I have observed, with
my hardware at least, that lowering resolution and AA (touching nothing else)
makes a difference. Even though under XP 1280x1024 with 2x AA was fine,
under Vista it stutters BUT dropping to 1024x768 with no AA ~almost~ gets rid
of the stuttering (though not entirely). Most people would quickly (and
wrongly) say that the video card is just not powerful enough but that ignores
the fact that A) the same card can handle it under XP and B) that its NOT a
low frame rate issue as we?ve said.

I?ve boiled it down to whenever (I believe) there is substantial transfer
between the system and the video card (as objects and textures come into
view, even the dropping in of grass). I ~think~ it has to do with the (new)
way Vista drivers deal with video RAM resources etc, or maybe even the PCIe
BUS itself. It seems to be "less efficient" for lack of a better phrase and
Obvion's engine is such that it manifests itself as the stutters. That?s my
guess anyway.

Since the problem seems fairly unique to Oblivion it would stand to reason
that the "fault" lies there but a fix would probably constitute a complete
rewrite of the code so lets not hold our breath there.

I'm just hoping that when Nvidia finally gets rid of the "these drivers are
still under development" disclaimer (on even their WHQL Vista drivers!) that
this issue might go away. I don?t know.....

Have you looked on the TweakGuides site at his Oblivion tweaks.
There are several ini file tweaks that are aimed squarely at stuttering
(even though frame rates are high !)
There must be something in the way Vista preloads stuff and swaps it in and
out that Oblivion (being so demanding) is very sensitive to.
I am sure you will find something of help there.

Phypps


"B Flow" <BFlow> wrote in message
news:b0c8
[..]

My current settings are 950/600 or exactly half of the native resolution of
my LCD and HDR on and all setting on high

I find this way the game is playable and still get a good image. The
framerates are now very high but I can still notice it being jerky.

So far I do think it has something to do with the 8800 (well the driver
interaction with Vista) and with your theory maybe even just the GTX with
the greater RAM

Since the game is playable I have stopped trying to solve this and am just
playing it

Great game, I hope the next one gets rid of the seperate areas. Meaning when
you get to a city the gates open and you walk through. No loading screen to
go to a seperate area. It would also mean that you could climb over the wall
and get in/out of the city.

Quite the amazing view standing on a hill and being able to see so far away.

"B Flow" <BFlow> wrote in message
news:b0c8
[..]

Hi Craig Grell,

I'm really glad that you posted about this problem.

My computer is set up similar to yours and I'm experiencing the same
choppy performance as you have with Oblivion.

Like you, I'm averaging high (~50 fps) even outdoors with all the
sliders and shadow effects turned up to their maximum levels, but the
movement is still jumpy.

It's not as if the game is freezing, it’s actually jumping ahead.
Maybe our computers are too fast :smile:. Or maybe there're some
synchronization issues Oblivion is experiencing with our multi core
processors.

Even when I crank all the effects and the resolution way down, Oblivion
is still not as smooth as it should be.

I haven't been able to narrow down the cause. Seems like it's due to -
1) Oblivion - Vista/Direct 10 issue
2) Oblivion - multi core processor issue
3) Oblivion - GeForce 8 issue
4) or one of the other dozen or so things I've seen reported on the
net.

I've tried about a dozen of the remedies that people have suggested,
but none of them have helped.

I recently downloaded the demo/beta version of Unreal Tournament 3 and
it freaking screams on my computer. Sure, UT3's environments aren't as
extensive or lavish as Oblivion, but it's still a pretty CPU and
graphics hungry game.

Fortunately for me, I've already explored the majority of Cyrodiil and
the Shivering Isles on my Xbox. But I really feel for people who were
looking forward to experiencing it on their PCs. It's a shame neither
Microsoft or Bethesda is likely to release a patch for this truly epic
game.

Rather than live with a choppy existence in Cyrodiil, I'm very much
looking forward to the release of The Witcher come the end of this month
(10/30/07) -
'The Witcher Official Website' (http://www.thewitcher.com)

The Witcher is getting great reviews, which seems rare for most RPGs.

And then there's Age of Conan coming out March of next year!

Thanks again for posting. I feel your pain.

"Rodin" <eric.artman> wrote in message
news:nzp4
>
> Hi Craig Grell,
>
> I'm really glad that you posted about this problem.

....but when did he post about this? You didn't include the original message,
and I have about 2 months of threads from this newsgroup, but this thread
seems dead. Next time start a new message.

> My computer is set up similar to yours and I'm experiencing the same
> choppy performance as you have with Oblivion.
>
> Like you, I'm averaging high (~50 fps) even outdoors with all the
> sliders and shadow effects turned up to their maximum levels, but the
> movement is still jumpy.
>
> It's not as if the game is freezing, it's actually jumping ahead.
> Maybe our computers are too fast :smile:. Or maybe there're some
> synchronization issues Oblivion is experiencing with our multi core
> processors.
>
> Even when I crank all the effects and the resolution way down, Oblivion
> is still not as smooth as it should be.
>
> I haven't been able to narrow down the cause. Seems like it's due to -
> 1) Oblivion - Vista/Direct 10 issue

Oblivion doesn't use DirectX 10, so that's not an issue (if the game doesn't
use it, then it's not used). Oblivion came out before Vista so yeah, that's
probably the problem. Not sure if you noticed, but if you watch Divx movies
(or any video type) in Vista you'll occasionally get a similar result (video
slows, audio continues then video speeds up to catch up to audio).

> 2) Oblivion - multi core processor issue
> 3) Oblivion - GeForce 8 issue
> 4) or one of the other dozen or so things I've seen reported on the
> net.
>
> I've tried about a dozen of the remedies that people have suggested,
> but none of them have helped.

....like?

> I recently downloaded the demo/beta version of Unreal Tournament 3 and
> it freaking screams on my computer. Sure, UT3's environments aren't as
> extensive or lavish as Oblivion, but it's still a pretty CPU and
> graphics hungry game.

UT3 has been tested on Vista, Oblivion wasn't, though I imagine the latest
updates have been at least tweaked a little. engine patches after the game
has been released is really risky, you risk breaking more stuff than you
fix.

> Fortunately for me, I've already explored the majority of Cyrodiil and
> the Shivering Isles on my Xbox. But I really feel for people who were
> looking forward to experiencing it on their PCs. It's a shame neither
> Microsoft or Bethesda is likely to release a patch for this truly epic
> game.

Doubt it, they are too busy with Fallout 3, and FYI, Microsoft didn't
publish this game, it was take 2, and I doubt they have the ability to do a
patch. Take 2 can ask Bethesda to do a patch, but like Bethesda, Take 2 has
probably moved into Fallout 3 mode.

Didn't they just release a "Fighters Guild" download? I heard it was the
last support to be released for the game, so if you install that and the
game still stutters it's probably just something you'll have to live with or
tweak til you get it where you want it.

I suggest installing Windows XP to play Oblivion (Dual Boot), sounds like
you have a nice system (Geforce 8), if you want the best experience you
might as well go the extra 9 yards to have the best play field for games,
and thats still Windows XP.

(--clip advertisemenet--)

Drop all your settings, does the problem go away?
Try running with Desktop Composition disabled.

Respond with your system configuration and what troubleshooting you've
attempted. In the future include the original post or at least the parts
that are relivant for people who may not have every message in this
newsgroup.

-A.