Always fun to get new puters!

I honestly don´t know what graphic card I have, have to check that..

Very exciting, mALX! Enjoy!

I didn't know what my laptop had without looking either.




@ Grits - Thanks!

So, mALX, get the new 'puter yet?

I'm thinking hard about what to do with my desktop. It's a 2008 Intel Mac that is still running solid. But there is one catch. I'd love to play Skyrim on the same machine as Oblivion (and Nehrim BTW). According to the UESP wiki, this Mac Pro tower meets - no - exceeds all the recommended specs except the graphics:

Recommended
Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU processor
4GB System RAM
6GB free HDD (Hard disk drive) space
DirectX 9.0c compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI video card with 1GB of RAM: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or higher; ATI Radeon HD 4890 or higher
DirectX compatible sound card
Internet access for Steam activation

Now when I got this puppy over 6 1/2 years ago, I purposely got the upgraded graphics card in it (NVIDIA 8800 GT). It has served well with Oblivion and Nehrim, though I've avoided super high textures in the interest of keeping the game playable. But it doesn't handle Skyrim all that well. So I've been resigned to that fact.

My laptop is a 2012 MacBook Pro (MBP) with NVIDIA GeForce 650M 1 GB VRAM. It runs Skyrim pretty well, but I have more problems with carpal tunnel after a while, and would prefer a larger monitor.

I started looking into moving up to a 2012 MacPro tower (the last version before Apple moved to the futuristic Mac Pro. Refurbished models, depending on how many cores you get, run from about $1,000 to $3,000 or more. All I need is a single Quad core model, but those are pretty rare.

On a whim, I looked at graphics cards again. And guess what? It looks as if my puppy can take on a more powerful GPU! After consulting the UESP wiki again, I discovered that I can put this beast into my puppy and it should run. So I found a refurb from a reputable dealer on eBay and ordered it. It should arrive later this week, God willing (we are in the middle of a blizzard here right now - even the Apple Store closed early!). I only hope it doesn't fry my pup!

Good luck with your gaming puter, h-e-r!

I hope the upgrades work! Sounds like you've gotten some good life and service from your rig.

Yes, I've got it - only got a few very short plays on it though, I need to move it out of my office and closer to my living room; I don't have time or inclination to go to my office and work there, it is isolated from the rest of the house, so I spend all my time on my laptop, lol.

I'm going to move my new PC, give my office to my husband to play in, lol.


(but he CAN'T have my new PC !!!)

Let him have his Stupid Bowl! You get the better deal!

My Millennium puter sometimes doesn´t start up properly due to the unstableness of said Millennium OP... No biggie though, I´m just glad as long as it works. And in a few months´ time I´m gonna be using my 3.1 on a daily basis again!!!


If I´m not being distracted by a tedious job at that point, that is....

An update:

I got the Beast last week Friday. Put it in. Plugging in the power cables was a comedy of errors I choose not to relive again. Had to reset some fundamental parameters (reset PRAM for Mac users) to get it working on the Mac OSX side. It's been running beautifully (the Mac OS already had the drivers installed for it). My photo library in Aperture, which took about 30 seconds to load all the thumbnails, launches insanely fast with the new card.

But getting it to run in Win 7 under Boot Camp has been a real PITA. Win 7 wouldn't see the graphics card at all. No problem, just get the drivers installed. However, it kept running on something called "Generic VGA Adapter" which meant my graphics card would shut down after between 7 and 10 minutes of running. Not. Enough. Time. To search for the correct drivers! Tried the latest Catalyst driver package from AMD. No go. Tried Boot Camp driver installers. No go. Erased the drive and reinstalled Boot Camp and Win 7. Finally looked at "previous drivers" on the AMD site today, and found an older version that I knew would work with the Beast, and discovered that it needed .NET 4.0. Talk about an aha! moment. I installed the MS .NET 4.0 files, then the older version of Catalyst, and - fingers crossed - rebooted into Win 7. Knew it worked when Win 7's boot screen showed up in my monitor's native resolution (1920x1200) instead of the horrid 800x600 that should be illegal on any monitor larger than 15".

Since then I have spent the last several hours reinstalling my Oblivion set up and mods. Thank God for my download history at nexusmods.com! It's going to be a slow process, as I want to figure out the multiple install thing (MOM vs. mTES4?) So it'll be another week or so before I have time to try installing Skyrim.

So did you actually install the new GPU Yourself? Holy Cow!!!!

That reinstalling is the biggest pain unless there was some issue you really wanted to correct about the previous install. I'm STILL reinstalling on my laptop!

Best of luck with your new toys, h-e-r

congrats on taming the beast h.e.r. I had similar issues installing a pair of new graphics cards Tuesday. I put the cards in, and the first problem was the screws would not line up with the holes. After fighting with the cards for twenty minutes I just put the screws in at an angle. Then I start the machine up, and it doesn't boot. So I pull the cards out and swap them around, no luck. I put just one in, no luck.

So I put one of my old cards back in, and do some hunting online. I find some people with the same card had to update their motherboard bios to get it to work. I spent the next 3 hours trying to update my bios. But in spite of everything Asus tried to do to stop me, I eventually managed it. Then I put my new cards back in, and they worked fine.

Of course then the SLI didn't work. So I reinstalled the video card drivers, and then it worked. So I tried Skyrim, and as soon as the game started, my screen started flashing green. So I flipped around my SLI cable, and then it worked normally.

A video card is normally one of the easiest things to replace. Just put it in and you are done. I spent 4 hours getting the damned thing to work.

OMG, I am in awe! I would be terrified to try to put anything in myself to begin with, but then to have all these issues with it and keep going - and then actually fix them !!!




(they really need a bowing down emoticon here!)

Time for an update on the Graphics Card Update:

The ATI card ended up burning out after a week. I pulled it and did some more research - turns out it needed more power than my MoBo could provide (or was rated for). So I hunted around for a better alternative and found it - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (2 GB VRAM) that drew less than the maximum rated power on the MoBo. Installed it, booted up, everything ran fine on the Mac Side. Downloaded the latest drivers on the Win7 side, and no problems getting the system to see the new card. So I've been running it for a couple of weeks with no graphical anomalies. The FPS on it is insane - barely flinches around the Oblivion Gate at Kvatch and with multiple NPC's. The Battle for Kvatch was the smoothest I've ever seen, especially in the Castle courtyard where I often see FPS lags due to all the monsters and NPC's in the same cell. So I'm perfectly happy with the NVIDIA card, and, so it seems, is my Mac Pro.

However I'm running into a new issue with Oblivion. I have been trying to rebuild it, and have had to start over a couple of times because my game saves will not load. Oblivion will launch, I can play for a while, I save (from the console, never QuickSave or Autosave) a few times, then when I quit the game and go back into it, it will CTD upon loading the save games. I end up going back several saves and being able to move forward from there, but once again the issue returns. I delete all the bad saves and the last good save and start over from the save previous to that (in case that last good save is just prior to the corruption that seems to happen). Most of the time it seems to happen when I enter a specific cell; however most recently it happens when my PC mounts Paint to take Martin up to Cloud Ruler Temple.

I've tried researching online for the issue, but most of them talk about CTD's upon saving which then corrupts the save. I'm saving without CTD's, it's when I go back and try to load up upon relaunching Oblivion that the crap shows up again.

Any ideas out there?

Rider, glad to hear the you're happy with you new graphics card. Sorry though about the crash on loads - and unfortunately, I'm not clever enough to help. Plenty of puter-smart folks here though and I hope someone has some ideas.

Gaaaah, that sounds like something that most def needs fixing! Have you tried starting a new game from scratch and see if there are any issues then?

Yup, twice now. At first I thought it was the way the mods were being installed, but the most recent failure happened on just the basic load order (Oblivion GOTY plus the UOP's for both Oblivion and SI).

I do have Fast Exit installed, so only rare CTD's on exiting the game. And they do not have to occur before the saves start corrupting. Argh!

Go in on a clean game and then one by one add those you mentioned (I'd start with the fast exit, since I'd say that is causing the issues; then test with the unofficial patches if it isn't that one causing the issue).

One way this can happen is if a mod has bad code in a OnGameLoaded block. This is stuff that only executes when you load, to set up things that don't get automatically saved for you. I've used it a couple of times, when I had to check what other mods someone was using, and enable items in different places. For example, if someone had Open Cities, then items would be in a different worldspace.

While I was developing that code, and it was buggy, I got CTD's if I tried to do something to an item that existed only in OC, but OC wasn't loaded. It only failed on a load, because it was code that only ran during a load.

tldr; the save may be OK, but there's a mod that doesn't always handle a reload.

mALX, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Oblivion and the mods. These are mods I've used before in the past in my previous stable LO. Unfortunately, the link I used to set up the install order in Wrye Bash (not the load order) is no longer active, so I can't remember which mods get installed first. I do know the texture mods (i.e. Qarl's TP3) get installed first, but after that I can't quite recall! Ugh.

ghastley, is there a way to fix the issue you are describing? It certainly sounds like a possible cause, though this problem occurs after adding mods, not removing them.

There is one mod that I've used before, but gave me pause when I went to download it. Its the TIE - Tamriel Immersion Experience. I really like what it does to Cyrodiil, and have found that I just can't play without it. However, instead of a single file on the Nexus, it now has two versions, one for older versions of Better Cities (BC), and one for newer versions. I'm wondering if this now means that I can't play without Better Cities? I prefer mods that add new locations (like Arthmoor's village mods) rather than mods that overhaul existing vanilla locations.

What I really like about TIE are the added traders on the roads, and the *gasp* fewer bandits and nasties out there. I'd consider an alternative mod if that's all it did . . .

I'm totally dying to try out the QTP3 Redimized texture pack and one of two alternatives I found for vegetation, but I want to make sure I have a full stable LO with all my previously used mods from before first.

Do you have an SSD drive? And if so, do you have some of your stuff on the SSD drive and some one the standard drive? Is your SSD drive overly full? They don't work well under pressure.

Nope, this is the same MacPro I've been using all along for Oblivion. The only new hardware is the Graphics card, which installed easily and is running the latest drivers.

I did have quite a bit of the usual crashing with just the vanilla game and the UOP patches (both Oblivion and SI), but I expected that. I copied the d3d9_27.dll file from the game CD into the game directory, as well as the Fast Exit dll, which I've used before without the problems. It reduced the crashes to just the ones I'm describing above. Those start occuring upon exiting the dungeon. I suspect either TIE or COBL, as those two mods I often install first to test.

I'm off to try again with just the vanilla game and the UOP's installed. But that doesn't mean I'm open to other ideas!

@ SubRosa - could this be caused by the same dual core threading issues that the Fallout games experience?

I don't think so. I have been following this, and drawing a blank. All I can think is some kind of save game corruption and/or mod issues, which is was ghastley warned about.

mALX, I had considered the dual core threading issues you mentioned. My MP is actually dual Quad Core 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon (i.e. two quad-core processors). It has run Oblivion before without any issues.

I did run the 4Gb patch on the .exe file to make sure Oblivion recognizes the additional memory. Both the Process Explorer application and the GPU-Z tell me that with the patch the game makes better use of the GPU's higher capabilities.

I am suspicious that it may be either COBL or TIE that is causing the problem. I'm going to keep going. The other day I was able to play the MQ right up to entering the Oblivion Gate. I am still running the basic install with just Oblivion GOTY plus the UOP's. So far my saves are fine. I've already passed three points where the rot started on previous builds. So I plan to keep going with the vanilla stuff until I get past the last point (leaving Weynon Priory with Martin) that I could play the game without corrupted saves.

Wait a minute, I remember something from a long time ago about graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire configurations don't play well with Oblivion. I think King Coin had some issues with his when he first got his new card installed.

Is your new card configured for SLI or Crossfire?

mALX, I've only seen mention of a single card, so SLI and Crossfire don't apply. They're ways to make two cards work like one, with nearly twice the horsepower (you lose a bit from the coordination work).

I think the way King Coin ended up working it was to not use the SLI when he was playing a TES game (which aggravated him, because that is exactly why he had wanted the SLI to begin with).

But you are right, I didn't look back through to the original posts when I wrote that - (but did know SLI and Crossfire were for dual graphics, lol).

Hey mALX, thanks for trying to help me resolve the issue. ghastley is right - I have a single GPU.

I restarted from new with just the Oblivion GOTY, SI, and the UOP for both. Everything went well until after I talked to Martin in the Kvatch camp. I've pinpointed the issue to when the PC mounts Paint while Martin is following. Before, I was able to make it all the way back to Weynon Priory because the Horse Commands mod I used let Paint follow alongside Martin. I initially thought it might be that, but no, it's either the UOP or the original game. Because it's a new glitch to me (I had never seen that before, and certainly not reproducible like this!), I have to suspect a scripting error or something like that.

I've backed up my files and made the executive decision to completely uninstall Oblivion and reinstall, following this procedure. I'm in the process of defragging the drive. Once I finish that, it's on to reinstallation of the game from scratch.

The irony of all this is: by the time I get done with this, I'm going to be a Windows expert! I certainly am learning a lot about how this works! At this point I feel like I know my way around Windows 7 almost as well as I do the Mac OS.

Good luck, Rider. I hope all goes well and yer back ta playin' soon!

*makes mental note to pester h-e-r about future puter problems*



-What? Oh, nothing

If it's Mac or Boot Camp related pester away!

Okay new update for those following this tedious journey of the Misbehaving Oblivion.

I completed the uninstall-reinstall process outlined in the linky, and it seems to be working quite well. I was able to progress all the way to Martin's arrival at Cloud Ruler Temple without issues. I've started installing textures, and so far things look quite good. I'm ready to move on to the UI mods, but I'm taking a break from playing the game to research the options. I like the font choices of DarNUI, but not that I have to reset it every time I start the game. I like the ease of setup with Immersive Interface, also that I can make the compass go away.

I'm nearly eight hours into the game. Looks like the issues I've been having have gone away. Hopefully it's not too early to celebrate!

Yay! h-e-r can finally start wasting time on an eight-year-old game again! Much like me



Happy gaming!

Umm, I'm still adding mods back in and testing each step of the way. Until I've rebuilt my old load order and completed the MQ (great way to test your mod LO, if you ask me), I'm holding off on celebrating.

But wasting my time? Uh, yeah . . .

BTW, I'm playing with Julian. She is as awesome as evah!

I've kind of been a "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" type person - don't add the unofficial patches unless I find the situations come up that they will help. The same with the anti-aliasing. I will probably need them all one day, but until that day comes I don't install them. Not very "Girl Scout-ee" but keeps me from breaking my game before the time comes when I might need to,

I´m so with mALX on this!

I use the unofficial patch for Oblivion and SI. But not for Skyrim. I found that the one for Skyrim actually caused bugs for me.

In Oblivion, I use just the primary game UOP but none of the DLC ones. Using OBMM.

In Skyrim, I use all the USKP's, including those for the DLC. Using NMM.

I've never had a problem related to the unofficial patches in either game. Admittedly, my whole load order stays at or below 50 mods (and no 'overhauls'), so everything is probably easier with a light load order.

It's official!

While Julian and I haven't completed testing the new card yet, we have over 50% of our previous mod load out installed and everything is continuing to run smoothly! FPS in the upper 50's, typically at 60, even around Oblivion Gates and in the IC/Waterfront zones.

Here's the specs of my old Mac Pro: Taliesin

Aaaand now an update.

I decided to spend my sick day today loading Steam and - yup - Skyrim on my old Mac Pro. So far I only have the Steam Legendary content installed, and just made it through the first day. Of course I started over with my favorite (so far only) Skyrim character. Just as Julian *pwns* Oblivion and is my main PC, Alise Sudmeri is the Dragonborn in so many ways. After following Hadvar to Riverwood, Alise has improved her Imperial Light armor, her mace and long bow, and has had a good night's sleep.

What's next? I want to try the Skyrim Hi Res pack from Beth. Any thoughts? SKSE and SkyUI are definitely next, as I just can't play without them. I haven't played since October 1 of last year, but Steam's stats tell me Alise and I have put over 400 hours into the game. Wow!

I will have to go over my Skyrim install on my MacBook Pro and see what is already installed and working there, so I can recreate that here. I'm also looking at a few more mods. I love Argis pretty much the way he is, but I wish he was a little higher resolution. But I don't want him baby-faced - I loved how the NPCs in Skyrim look so rugged - almost reflective of how tough life is up there. Camping/Northern Ranger and Frostfall are also def on my list, as Alise just can't play without them. Being a Southerner, she hates the cold, especially along the northern coast. And she wants her kids back, so the Multiple Adoptions is coming back too.

Hmm, it's getting late, and I've got an early day tomorrow. Normally I'd stay up later, but with this darned cold I'm just taking things easy. Hasta la vista, babies!

Skyrim Hi Rez Textures: Before installing them the game automatically put my game settings at "Ultra." After installing them it automatically set them down to "Medium."

Well, you don't have to take the game's auto settings as set in stone, but it does give you an idea of how much memory they are using up.

Yes, upgraded textures make a huge difference in game; I would consider them necessary. So either use Bethesda's official ones or find an alternative that uses memory more efficiently - but some hi-rez textures are most def needed.

Congrats on the new install! Here’s some news: Chesko has just released Campfire, and apparently Frostfall 3.0 is on the way with big changes under the hood. Might want to check it out before you get into installing your camping mods. His mod page explains it far better than I could. Pretty exciting.

I hope your cold is better today! <-- restorative tea for hautee

@mALX: thank you for the info. This rig handled Qarl's High Res textures (the Redimized Version) just fine, so I'll look around for something like this for Skyrim. I want to keep things as high as I can because I know I want a lot of high textures on the people and clothing/armor.

@Grits: Wow, I'm really out of touch - Frostfall got updated since I last played! And now Campfire, too? What I liked about Frostfall is that it made me and Alise really think about our forays in the wilderness. It certainly made the trip up to the Throat of the World that much more arduous! After defeating Alduin, it wasn't certain if Alise would make it back to the Greybeards before death by hypothermia set in! Good thing those dragons gave off a lot of heat. Thanks for the restorative tea - I'm still fighting this thing and it's awful!

Can anyone explain why the sound sometimes disappear when I´m internetting? I don´t do anything, nothing happens, but suddenly the sound is gone and the only way to get it back is to log out and restart the puter.

I reckon it´s a bug of some kind but is there a fix? I´ve looked around a little but came up short.

It sounds like your sound card has an executable or two that load when windows starts, and they are taking a crap on you. Try Googling your sound card, and few keywords like "not working" or "quits".

I have an external Soundblaster, and it goes *boom* everytime it starts up, presumebly the executable you´re talking about.

Thanks, Rosa. I´ll look it up

It goes boom? Is it supposed to do that? Does it connect to your computer via a usb cable? If so the cable or usb port could be your issue as well.

When it starts up it makes a sound and of course how loud depends on the volume knob. And yes it´s a USB but what do I do about that?