Oblivion problems- again =(

BTW I'm not running Oblivion on a laptop, I'm just posting here from one. The interwebs on my desktop will not get fixed until this weekend.
The graphics card is whatever came with the box- I'm not sure of the name- I'll check it when I get home.... I still don't understand how that makes a difference now, though because I ran Oblivion on a lesser machine and I NEVER had any problems. No crashes, no bugs, nothing. Got through the entire game, and then some without any problems. Just lucky I guess? I ran it on high, etc and still no problems. Now, I have a faster machine with more ram and windows 7 and I can't get it to work. I understand that a good graphics card makes a difference in the quality and smoothness of the video- but i don't understand why my machine keeps crashing. I can only conclude that the operating system must be part of the problem. I will do what Frostmourne said and try to update the drivers first. I'll keep y'all updated.

kmakar said:

BTW I'm not running Oblivion on a laptop, I'm just posting here from one. The interwebs on my desktop will not get fixed until this weekend.
The graphics card is whatever came with the box- I'm not sure of the name- I'll check it when I get home.... I still don't understand how that makes a difference now, though because I ran Oblivion on a lesser machine and I NEVER had any problems. No crashes, no bugs, nothing. Got through the entire game, and then some without any problems. Just lucky I guess? I ran it on high, etc and still no problems. Now, I have a faster machine with more ram and windows 7 and I can't get it to work. I understand that a good graphics card makes a difference in the quality and smoothness of the video- but i don't understand why my machine keeps crashing. I can only conclude that the operating system must be part of the problem. I will do what Frostmourne said and try to update the drivers first. I'll keep y'all updated.

The OS is unlikely to be the issue - games go through the DirectX API and then through your GPU drivers - that could be the problem. Incidentally, the game does stutter slighly on 7 with an unpredictable framerate - no matter if AA is off or 4x samples (haven't tried 8x). Essentially 70FPS, then drops to 35FPS, then spikes to 60FPs etc - Bethesda should patch it again.

Frostmourne- here is the summary screen you asked for.

An X3100 GPU will not run Oblivion properly - lower the resolution to 1024x768 and the settings to low - I've fixed 80% of the stuttering by lowering the view distance to 70%, turning AA to 2x and distant land off. Also run the game in XP SP3 as admin.

How do I run in XP mode as admin?

OK, so I ran as admin, turned on XP compatibility, turned off distant landscape, put setting on low, changed screen resolution... and nothing. no difference. still crashes in same spot. Screen goes black, task manager says Oblivion not responding... shit. i don't know what to do now.

Yes, I tried the Oldblivion and still nothing. I think the hardware is too new- I got an error message that said the hardware was not recognized and the settings went auto to medium. I think i'm just screwed- but I still don't think it's a graphics issue- like I said before, I ran Oblivion on an older, crappier machine and it worked fine. I'm not sure what to do at this point- I can't go back to XP-I can only go back one generation and that would land me in Vista territory. I might try an NVIDIA card if it doesn't cost too much to put in- but might be less to just buy a PS3 and play it that way