Bottleneck?

[Doomulation]

Playing Oblivion on the computer, it is only able to push out a mere 10 fps at some areas at 1920 x 1200. However... I am coming to think that it might not be the gfx card that is the bottleneck, but the CPU.
I have two reasons to suspect this...

Firstly, no matter how many settings I adjust, speed seems to stay the same. Although, when activating shadows, I notice a little slowdown. Again, the CPU has to process this.
And second, I can render ahead a lot of objects, with maximum detail and such, so it seems it isn't the gfx card.
And third, the CPU load is typically around 70-80% on both cores.

So, do you think there is a way to tell where the bottleneck is? Like a program that (hopefully) can measure how pressed the gfx card is...? Or something else?

 

[t0rek]

Bottleneck? are you kidding? With that CPU that makes nonsense. With your videocard you must assure that you have the latest drivers from nVidia, I'm always worried about that with my 6600 and mine is not so recent as yours. It should be a driver or game issue. Try to check the driver issues in the release notes. 1920x1200 is a very high resolution indeed, try lowering it a little, it won't kill you, because that resolution is considered very high, it takes a big performance hit even in a system like yours. You can always use a lower resolution and play with the antialiasing and it even may look better. And BTW and AFAIK shadows are mostly GPU intensive.

Edit: I forgot to mention that many games and driver issues are due to dual core processors, so check on that too

 

[Clements]

Check the Firing Squad benches to gauge your performance.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_high-end_performance/

Oblivion is pretty slow on single card solutions, and is insanely GPU limited, even with 7 series cards (especially when outdoors).

X2 3800s should also overclock to 2.4GHz (4600+) on stock volts and cooling if you are worried about possible CPU bottlenecks. I am planning to do this once my X2 3800 is installed.

 

[Flash]

Oblivion engine sucks. It not optimized at all.
CPU isn't a bottleneck, even my ancient AthlonXP can handle ANY modern game.
All you need to have is powerful video card and lots of RAM.

CPU is real bottleneck for Dolphin, PCSX2, some MAME (250MHz 64bit CPU,Voodoo2, and everything is software LLE ) games.

 

[Doomulation]

Bottleneck? are you kidding? With that CPU that makes nonsense. With your videocard you must assure that you have the latest drivers from nVidia, I'm always worried about that with my 6600 and mine is not so recent as yours. It should be a driver or game issue. Try to check the driver issues in the release notes. 1920x1200 is a very high resolution indeed, try lowering it a little, it won't kill you, because that resolution is considered very high, it takes a big performance hit even in a system like yours. You can always use a lower resolution and play with the antialiasing and it even may look better. And BTW and AFAIK shadows are mostly GPU intensive.

Edit: I forgot to mention that many games and driver issues are due to dual core processors, so check on that too

Even lowering the resolution to 1280x800 will give me like a 5 fps boost. Not much. And then there is the fact with the awful character edges. It looks just plain awful. To eleminate it completely, you need a high resolution (like 1920x1200) and AA enabled. I'm telling you it is absolutely unbearable to play at 1280x800 with HDR enabled, because you can't use AA with it on.
Shadows play a big hit the more it is rendered, yes, but the true bottleneck seems to lie with how much is rendered.

I mean... the game runs at 30 fps with all the view distances set to minumum. Basically minimum graphics, that is. And 10 to 15 with max view distance. So? I don't know if the CPU is the bottleneck or not, but the results are still clear: something is bottlenecking it.

Well... I am trying to modify the ini with tips and experimenting with the settings to get a good performance/quality ratio. Oh yes, I use the 84.20 beta drivers, I think... Don't know if they've been officially released yet. I could check that.

EDIT: Saw official drivers has been released. Should try them with more experimenting tomorrow... errr, later 'today.'

 

[Clements]

84.26 WHQL is the latest available right now.

Edit: But I'd stay away from these and get 84.25 Beta from the looks of things. 84.26 appears to have problems.

 

[Doomulation]

Ahhhh... I'll use them later, too. Anyway, I tried 84.21 WHQL and I found a resource hungry app in the background too... which I terminated. Didn't know it was that hungry. Meh. Oh well.
I get a steady 15-20 fps outside, in nature now, and 10-20 in towns. With graphical quality maxed out, of course, save for self shadows, which are still a little buggy it seems. And yes, grass shadows were enabled too!

It just seems that many settings (like shadows) have no performance impact at all! ...It does not matter if I enable them or not, I still get the same FPS.
All fps was measured with FRAPS.

 

[arnalion]

Oblivion engine sucks. It not optimized at all.
CPU isn't a bottleneck, even my ancient AthlonXP can handle ANY modern game.
All you need to have is powerful video card and lots of RAM.

CPU is real bottleneck for Dolphin, PCSX2, some MAME (250MHz 64bit CPU,Voodoo2, and everything is software LLE ) games.

Not true. It's recommended to have atleast a 3500+ to the 7800 cards and up. If you get a 7800GT would there be a huge bottleneck with your cpu

 

[t0rek]

This "Oblivion" game engine must sucks then...what kind of machine would you need to run it @ 60 FPS then?

Edit: Chek out this drivers, they are supossed to contain performance enhances for Oblivion

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1356

 

[Clements]

This "Oblivion" game engine must sucks then...what kind of machine would you need to run it @ 60 FPS then?

If you want 60fps minimum in this game with HDR enabled and decent AF in all situations in the game, you must use SLi/Crossfire, even at 1024x768. Even the X1900XTX drops below 40fps average in areas of high foliage at 1024x768, so this game is the most GPU-intensive game that is currently available.

 

[t0rek]

If you want 60fps minimum in this game with HDR enabled and decent AF in all situations in the game, you must use SLi/Crossfire, even at 1024x768. Even the X1900XTX drops below 40fps average in areas of high foliage at 1024x768, so this game is the most GPU-intensive game that is currently available.

Quite impressive... I wonder if the gameplay worths all the graphics...

 

[Doomulation]

The sad things are that you will get slowdowns, most often in towns. Also when tossing and turning, things will take a temporary speed hit due to the extreme graphics. I could say oblivion is a fine game. The far most interesting part of the game has been the beginning. After that, well not just as good as the beginning. But there are lots and lots of quests out there so you really shouldn't get bored.