Optimising Oblivion

Threads
These settings probably do help -- we noticed Oblivion.exe spawning 12-15 threads over the default 11 after using these (keep in mind some only appear when required, like when fighting), but overall haven't noticed any real measurable boost. Their advantage, if any, is more likely to be with preventing or reducing pauses and slowdowns.

bUseThreadedBlood=1   (default 0)
bUseThreadedMorpher=1   (default 0)
bUseThreadedTempEffects=1  (default 0)
bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1 (default 0)
iNumHavokThreads=3    (default 1)
bBackgroundPathing=1   (default 0)
bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1  (default 0)
iThreads=10      (default 3)
iOpenMPLevel=10    (default 10)

There’s some confusion about the OPENMP section on the forums. Here’s what we know: OpenMP refers to a threading API which, in Oblivion’s case, seems to be used mainly for spawning threaded disk loads to minimise load times. It’s worth noting that from our analysis the game core itself isn’t multi-threaded, and so won’t directly benefit from dual-core CPUs. Kudos to the developers for at least attempting to thread some tasks, going by the above options, but take note none of these tweaks will magically enhance your performance. They also don’t require dual-core, single CPUs can use them just fine.

If you want to get really hardcore you can set the environment variables OMP_NUM_THREADS= and OMP_STACK_SIZE= in Windows and see what happens, but that’s beyond the scope of this guide.

As a final note: don’t necessarily go around turning everything on. It’s just as easy to generate detrimental performance by switching the wrong option. In fact, of the options above, you may even get better mileage by setting bUseBackgroundFileLoader=1 back to ‘0’. It’s a setting that’s in our ‘maybe’ list at the moment.

CODECS -- ffdshow
If you have codec pack installed that uses ffdshow you may find multiple instances of it running during and after you quit the game. This can be solved by disabling the use of ffdshow as a filter for MP3s.

Rather than just remove the codec pack from your system, which could leave it in a worse state, update your codecs to the latest k-lite codec pack from here:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm

Then navigate to the K-lite Codec pack ‘Codec Tweaker’ in your Start menu and select to disable the ffdshow codec (and detect and fix any problems, if you wish). This will default to using the Windows Fraunhofer MP3 filter.