I had a question that ties in with purgeing cell buffers.
I understand the the game remembers cells that you visit for faster loading. When this information becomes too much for your 'cell buffer' to hold, the game can crash. This is why we purge our cell buffers so often. I figure this has to tie in with ini settings such as:
uInterior Cell Buffer=12
uExterior Cell Buffer=144
iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600
I've set my ini settings to the above, based on reading articles like: http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_9.html
Running a DX diag it says that I have:
Memory: 3454MB RAM
Page File: 1562MB used, 5554MB available
And according to http://nightmare2013.brashendeavors.net/DXDIAG.html that means that I have a total ram of 5554MB, 1562MB of which is used, leaving 3454MB for me to play with. That's 3 gigs.
The tweak website says: "For those with 2GB, try double again at 104857600 (100MB). " and suggests I not raise it any higher than that.
1) does having more ram mean I would have to purge my cell buffers less often?
2) would lowering the preload size limit/ cells loaded reduce the amount stored in the cell buffer and therefore decrease cell buffer overload?
3) Or would a higher number mean you could store more data and then go longer without an overload?
4) So basically what I'm hearing from dx diag is that though I have 6 gigs of ram, I'm only getting to use three for oblivion?
5) any other tips and cell buffer insights would be greatly appreciated. I currently use the purge cell buffers mod at every 3 cells, and use pcb before traveling from to any city.
Thanks! :D
After I first installed
After I first installed Morroblivion and I noticed the heavy performance issues so I used this guide http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_9.html to mess around with some of my .ini settings, increasing the cell buffer fairly dramatically was the main thing I did and I think I've been having a lot less crashes then most people, never crashed on anything that was'nt a load, never had to pcb or have any of the wilderness crashes associated with it.
Specifically I used his reccomended settings for 2gb ram, as you have 4 you might be able to double them though.
Just realized you used the exaxt same link as I did hah. So yeah, in my experience this tweak works great.
1: Not exactly, more ram means you can make your cellbuffer bigger, THIS should be able to let you purge your buffers less often if not at all.
2&3: No, as I understand it the preloadsizelimit is how much can be buffered purely in data (instead of the cell limit), if it's too small and it tries to load too much cells (more then the data available in the preloadsizelimit) it will prolly crash, so for stability, the more the better (don't overdo it though and try to stick to the guide, that guy knows alot more about it then I do).
4: Unless your sure you have 3 2gb sticks in your system I would say you have 4gb, the discrepancy between the 3454MB shown by your system and the arbitrary 4GB label has to do with the weird way datasize is computed, I don't know the specifics about it but I'm fairly sure you should'nt add your pagefile to it as that's located on your harddrive.
5: I believe your running Eloth's visual right? In my case deleting that did wonders for my performance, ofcourse everything looks somewhat low res again though. So it's really a question if you find graphics or performance more important.