Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (via Boot Camp).

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Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (via Boot Camp).

Off the bat, Oblivion DOES work with Boot Camp. I ran the installer and went right into the world without a hitch on my 17" 2 GB iMac.

...And there was much rejoicing.

However - what I am curious about is: anyone else running Oblivion that has tweaked their system preferences/game configuration to have it play optimely? It has been so long since I have configured a "PC" for gaming that I pretty much have no clue where to begin.

Anyone have any tips for getting the game to play as good as possible? (ie. what resolution should be checked, what effects can be run without slow-downs, etc)

Is there anything I should do with XP to make it more game friendly? (the only real reason I have it installed is for Oblivion, so I can configure the entire OS for this purpose)

iMac 17"/160gb HD/2gb RAM, Powerbook G4 12"/120 GB HD, iPod 4G/20 GB, iBook G3., Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 8, 2006 10:09 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 21, 2006 7:46 AM in response to mattsigal

I've played the game ad nauseum now on my 17" iMac. I have 1GB of RAM if that will help you compare our systems.

The settings I feel give the best bang for the buck, so to speak, are to set the resolution to 1280x720 with Anti-Aliasing turned off and effects set to 'Bloom' rather than 'HDR.' I used to run the game at low resolution with AA turned to 6X and it looked fine and run smooth as butter but when spell effects came on screen or when the Daedra Lords turned back into human form when killed the game dropped to a slideshow. It also took a severe performance hit around an Oblivion Gate.

I found turning off AA or HDR eliminated the stuttering when big time effects were onscreen but it looks horrible. Cranking up the resolution helps a lot but to get it to run smooth I turned off all shadows and set the grass draw distance to zero. I thought the grass hindered the gameplay anyways since you couldn't see more than 10ft. in front of your char in the wilderness.

Some people turn their draw distance down but high resolution makes the game pretty enough and the draw distance doesn't seem to affect my framerate much.

You can set the resolution to 1400X900 but my framerates dropped to around 10-12 fps so I had to turn off 'Bloom' to play it well. I wish the game allowed you to change resolution without restarting cause I'd go for higher resolution in town and dungeons and then drop the resolution for outdoor areas.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Apr 21, 2006 7:51 AM in response to mattsigal

I've played the game ad nauseum now on my 17" iMac. I have 1GB of RAM if that will help you compare our systems.

The settings I feel give the best bang for the buck, so to speak, are to set the resolution to 1280x720 with Anti-Aliasing turned off and effects set to 'Bloom' rather than 'HDR.' I used to run the game at low resolution with AA turned to 6X and it looked fine and run smooth as butter but when spell effects came on screen or when the Daedra Lords turned back into human form when killed the game dropped to a slideshow. It also took a severe performance hit around an Oblivion Gate.

I found turning off AA or HDR eliminated the stuttering when big time effects were onscreen but it looks horrible. Cranking up the resolution helps a lot but to get it to run smooth I turned off all shadows and set the grass draw distance to zero. I thought the grass hindered the gameplay anyways since you couldn't see more than 10ft. in front of your char in the wilderness.

Some people turn their draw distance down but high resolution makes the game pretty enough and the draw distance doesn't seem to affect my framerate much.

You can set the resolution to 1400X900 but my framerates dropped to around 10-12 fps so I had to turn off 'Bloom' to play it well. I wish the game allowed you to change resolution without restarting cause I'd go for higher resolution in town and dungeons and then drop the resolution for outdoor areas.

Hope this helps.

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Answer 3

Apr 21, 2006 12:50 PM in response to Chad Sullivan

After checking out the disappointing slideshow effect of full 1680 x 1050 resolution with everything maxed out, I was for a while running the game at 1280 x 720. But to get it to run at a decent framerate most things had to be turned off or down - though I have always had it running with max view distance and far lands enabled.

Such a shame considering how well my iMac copes with Half-Life 2 and Tomb Raider Legend.

After a lot of tinkering I found that I preferred to run it at a lower resolution but with everything at a better quality. Running at 848 x 480 I've disabled anti-aliasing, turned water quality down to normal and disabled all other water effects. But I've left most other things set to medium or high, including grass draw distance - I like grass;)

Best of all I've got HDR enabled, and it really does make a difference to the quality and feel of the colour and light in the game. Without it everything feels a bit flat and washed out. HDR really brings the scenery to life.

I don't have shadows on outdoors, but turn them up a notch or two for indoors scenes.

It runs really well, mostly quite smooth, even outdoors. Okay, the resolution may seem a bit low, but it actually does still look very good - you do learn to ignore the jaggies.

I think it is a case of quality and effects over resolution and sharpness. I recommend having a tinker and trying out various things until you feel happy... but be aware that the biggest performance hitters of running Oblivion on an iMac are anti-aliasing, water effects and having lots of shadows, especially at higher resolutions.

20" iMac (Intel Core Duo, 1gb RAM, 128mb video) Mac OS X (10.4.6) I've got a Windows laptop still... just in case. Of what, I don't know.

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