Widescreen Gaming Forum

A friend of mine got a new laptop last month; a Toshiba Satellite with (IIRC) a Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz, a Geforce Go 7900GS, and 1GB of RAM. I'm positive that he has a C2D and a 7900GS, but not completely positive about the clock speed or amount of RAM. It's running 32-bit Vista. He's not very computer savvy - if I showed him these specs, they wouldn't mean anything to him.

Anyway, I convinced him to get Oblivion for PC instead of PS3 (he has a PS3 too) on the grounds that the PC can run it well, plus it's moddable. This is now the newest game he has, and the only one newer than The Chronicles of Riddick. We tried it on Ultra settings at 1440x900, no anti-aliasing, and we found that the game itself ran smoothly, but there was noticeable input lag. In other words, the cut-scenes were flawless, but in the game itself, there was some delay between pushing a button and seeing the action occurring on screen.

We tried lowering the detailed to medium and the resolution to 1280x800, and this completely ruined the performance; it was laggy as hell. We then bumped the resolution back up to 1440x900 with the details still at medium, and the performance was again good, and the input lag gone. We tried high details (still no anti-aliasing), and the input lag was back, so we went back to medium.

The installed video card drivers were dated December 2006, so I thought this might be a driver issue. I looked at nVidia's site for new drivers. There were Geforce drivers for Vista, and Geforce Go drivers for WinXP, but no Geforce Go drivers for Vista. When I tried the Geforce Vista drivers, it said that the GPU was unsupported. When I tried the Geforce Go WinXP drivers, it said something like "You are not running Windows."

Recently my friend visited, and he said that Oblivion became slow when traveling from one place to another outdoors. I couldn't see this myself, so I couldn't attempt to diagnose it. But worse yet, he said he was thinking of getting F.E.A.R. for the PS3, which BTW is connected via composite cables to a 4:3 TV that didn't cost a third of what the PS3 does.

So I want to know, is this kind of fair-to-middling performance expected given the specs? I would have thought that these specs would have been capable of handling Oblivion a lot better; I thought it could have handled at least high details. Is the problem likely crappy nVidia drivers, which might go away once decent Geforce Go Vista drivers appear? Is the problem something else? Is there anything I should do next time I visit in order to further diagnose the problem? Are there any game demos you recommend I tell him to download in order to test the performance in other games (I've already suggested F.E.A.R, he hasn't tried it yet)?

Basically, I want to accomplish two things. Get Oblivion working as well as it should, and prevent him from turning to the dark side of gaming (which he isn't even properly equipped for TV-wise).

I haven't got Oblivion, but input lag, mouse lag etc is all in my experience caused by the CPU bottlenecking.

Try and find options that are heavy on the CPU and turn them down and you should be alright.

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Formerly eZ`

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Input lag is sometimes caused when bUseJoystick is set to 1 (as it is by default), even if no joystick is plugged in. What you need to do is go to Documents and Settings[User]My DocumentsMy GamesOblivion, open up Oblivion.ini, search for that line and change its value from 1 to 0.

This may or may not help...

But back when i had a laptop with a Radeon 9700 in it, i couldnt just download the latest catalysts, ATI didnt supply them, and Acer never bothered posting new drivers.

However, 3rd Party customised drivers were availible, based off the latest versions of the main drivers. I used to be able to download a conversion tool which could convert the latest drivers into laptop ones :).

I dont know if these are any good, but it might be worth a shot:
http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=163&Itemid=41/

Vistas gaming performance is always worse than XPs. Thats because it eats more RAM/CPU in itself (1GB RAM for me!) and that the drivers are still fairly new. (Pretty much the same as XP was to 98 )

He could try to install the nVidia tweakers (e.g. Coolbits/RivaTuner) and lower the "Max Frames to Render ahead" from the default 3, to 2 or even 1. This setting "should" improve the input lag but also might lower FPS. Since you say that the game runs fairly smooth, it might be worth a try.

Also take a look at this page:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

Hope it helps.
Best regards.

Vistas gaming performance is always worse than XPs. Thats because it eats more RAM/CPU in itself (1GB RAM for me!) and that the drivers are still fairly new. (Pretty much the same as XP was to 98 )

He could try to install the nVidia tweakers (e.g. Coolbits/RivaTuner) and lower the "Max Frames to Render ahead" from the default 3, to 2 or even 1. This setting "should" improve the input lag but also might lower FPS. Since you say that the game runs fairly smooth, it might be worth a try.

Also take a look at this page:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

Hope it helps.
Best regards.

This is not true.

There are a number of people that have reported better fps in vista than on xp with quite a few games. It doesnt seem to always be the case but its possible. Usually the fps drop most report is not that bad.

Whats worse tho is your still one of the many that dont know about how Vista handles system memory, it has a super fetcher that memorizes what programs and apps you launch and preloads them into memory, and it also holds onto alot of memory for other reasons so at idle the mem usuage is very high. But when you go to play a game or do something else that requires the memory, Vista releases it and at that point it uses up very little almost on the same place as XP.

Bottom line, Visa uses unused memory and thats a GOOD thing not a bad thing, it atribues to why vista overall is faster and more smooth than xp.


As for the on topic answer. I remember when Oblivion came out there were alot of people with this issue, it was a setting in the game that had to be fixed. Its been too long for me to remember. I think it was the joystick command thing, the fps to draw ahead was also noted to reduce it for alot of people but generally considered a bad idea.

Also increasing the cache if he has alot of system memory may help.

I think we have enough data here to fix it if its indeed the same problem as XP had and not a new one just due to Vista.

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Thank you, I didn't know that (You never cease to learn, right? ^^).

Since I only saw threads of "Vista is killing my games" nature and saw the usage for myself, I kind of conducted that to be the cause. But then again, who would open a thread to say that Vista improves his/her gameplay?

No problem, you would be supprised how much bad info gets around just due to gossip and rumors.

I am personally conducting a 3 way test between xp, vista 32bit and vista 64bit here in a week with various game benchmarks and other types of benchmarks on my new notebook. I'll post it here in the user review section and then we can get a very good look at the performance levels between all 3 operating systems.

I personally suffer about a 10fps drop in vista ultimate 64 vs xp in the games I play on my desktop. I have never used 32bit tho so thats why I need to see for myself if its a vista issue or a 64bit OS issue. Also my notebook is much newer hardware and may not suffer the same way as my older desktop does.

Im going to clear up just how bad vista vs xp is and also clear up any diffrences in 32 vs 64bit vista.

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ViciousXUSMC on the Web - YouTube :: FaceBook :: Website

Vista runs STALKER a million times better than XP. It was damn near unplayable in XP but ran great once I installed Vista.

FEAR on the other hand runs about 75% slower in Vista.

Kinda a mixed bag. Overall, I am happy with Vista though. Especially now I know how to add games to Games Explorer.

To Cranky:

I don't know if Laptop gaming is going to convince someone of the benefits and joys of PC gaming. Laptops pretty much suck for games.

Just installed Oblivian in Vista and had the same terrible mouselag.
Setting bUseJoystick to 0 as NightBlade suggested fixed it at once! :)