Digital Foundry rubbishes popular Oblivion stutter-fix mods
Digital Foundry confirm that many of Oblivion’s popular optimisation mods do nothing to boost game performance
The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion launched a few weeks ago, and it has some stuttering issues. While the game does a great job overhauling the 2006 RPG, it has some glaring performance issues in certain areas. Specifically, the game game stutter when moving from area to area. To “fix” this, several modders have released optimisation mods that claim to address these issues. Digital Foundry has now tested several Oblivion mods and have confirmed that “it runs the same.”
One mod, dubbed the “Ultimate Engine Tweaks” mod, had over 630,000 total downloads at the time of writing. This mod claimed to “lower latency” and be “anti-stutter”. Mostly, this mod contains Unreal Engine 5 .ini adjustments to do little to impact the game’s performance. In A/B testing, Digital Foundry’s Alex Battalgia said that it “runs the same.”
I’m gonna say that this mod, and these style of mods, I’ve always thought they did nothing, and I didn’t want to test them because I couldn’t imagine them doing anything… but after testing them A/B… it runs the same.
As part of their testing, Digital Foundry also tested the “BSA Uncompressor” mod for Oblivion. Across a lengthy benchmark run, the mod yielded a “1.9% improvement” in performance. However, the game stuttered in the game places as before. Furthermore, a 1.9% performance difference lies within typical “run-to-run variance” levels for CPU performance.
Overall, Digital Foundry’s analysis is clear. Oblivion Remastered’s stutter-fixing mods do not fix the game’s stuttering issues. If .ini file tweaks were enough to address the game’s performance issues, the game’s developers would make these changes to the game and eliminate the need for these mods.
You can join the discussion on Oblivion’s anti-stutter mods on the OC3D Forums.
