SureAI

Have you installed Nehrim over a clean Oblivion or over a modded Oblivion? Because if you had Qarl's texture pack, maybe you still have it in Nehrim. And it does increase hardware hunger.

It was a clean install via Steam.

Ran the Nehrim exe and saved it into a folder on my desktop then moved all the files inside to the Oblivion folder.

Any other ideas? :/

You have decent hardware except for sound. So why not get a good sound card to complete your system? You should not expect to get good game performance if you are using on-board sound.

Also, I would look at every single process and service that is running and eliminate anything not required to run the game.

I'm highly doubting the reason behind me getting <10 fps in a relatively small "city" is because I'm using onboard sound but I am looking into buying a decent sound card. It more likely has to do with Oblivion not being too kind to any newer hardware (from what I've seen) though what I've been trying hasn't seemed to fix it (enabling Multithreading under the Nehrim launcher actually LOWERED my fps?). When I had Oblivion modded I got ~20 FPS in the main city's trade district while raining (with a good weather mod installed). In Nehrim I get 9 fps in a town during clear weather.

Also, I practically always do that and hardly run anything in the background normally. Pidgin and Steam, maybe Ventrilo, none of which have any real impact on my performance.

What I need to figure out is why NPCs have such a huge impact on my performance while outdoors despite being fine in dungeons even when fighting 4-5 enemies at once.

Sorry, but I'm at my wits' end here. If you are inclined to do some experimenting, try putting down some settings like Exterior Shadows (Oblivion FAQ: "Set Exterior Shadows as low as possible. This will decrease the number of characters that cast shadows while you are in exteriors, improving your framerate." - given that you have problems with NPCs). I do have framerates around 15 in Erothin too, but I'm playing on a laptop, and I have most settings much higher than you (except of a smaller screen res, and no antialiasing - I never use AA), and pretty much everything except for Erothin runs rather nicely. Sorry, maybe it is really your hardware...

Might as well ask a few questions about your configuration if you don't mind.

Are you using the Steam or retail version of Oblivion? I could pick up the retail version very cheaply (without DLC) though I'm doubting that will have any real impact unless the Nehrim launcher settings aren't working correctly with Oblivion from Steam.

Have you changed many .ini settings for better performance? The only thing I've really done is install the 4GB patch, I'm going to try messing with other various settings in a bit.
edit: Changed around the Cell buffer+preload settings and didn't notice an increase in performance.

If you were to allow your Oblivion to auto-detect hardware, what does it try to put your settings at? Despite mine seeing that I have a Radeon 5800 series it sets my settings to Very Low. I just tried running Oblivion with these settings and despite it looking absolutely horrible (as you can imagine) I'm still getting under 60 FPS in Giliad. Depending on where I look at I'm getting 40-50 FPS, sometimes 55, never over 60.


Also, I'm not even sure it is an issue with NPCs outdoors, I'm just guessing at this point. Overall my performance outdoors is mediocre but becomes worse in small towns like Giliad (or nearly unplayable in parts of Stonefield). I just turned off ALL sound and shadows and noticed maybe an increase of 3-4 FPS at what I was currently looking at (a guard with a forge behind him in Giliad). I move over to the bulletin board and stare directly at it (I can hardly see anything else aside from the board itself) and I'm getting 18-19 FPS steadily. Looking at what was basically a wall.

edit: For now I'm going to try reinstalling Oblivion and running it vanilla to see if my FPS is still bad, will back up my saves though and plan to reinstall Nehrim if I can figure something out.

I've also found turning off distance land lods (TLL) will often help.

Hi.

Sounds like you might run fraps a lot ?
Tip. Might help. Turn it off.
If you have a save game in one of these areas, check it out with fraps on. Turn off fraps and instead use tdt at the consul. Watch fps in top right as you run through your test area.
It cannot give min/max or avg's but you should see a difference.

@scooby
I'll look into that, not sure if I have that on or not.

@Hawk
I don't have fraps installed nor have I ever downloaded it.

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Haven't bothered uninstalling Nehrim/reinstalling Oblivion yet, been kind of busy lately.