TES Oblivion - Weird font with my HD3850

[Xolair]

Just got Oblivion today, since it was cheap and I've (actually) never finished it 100%, so guess it's not waste of money...

Anyway, there's one MAJOR issue that keeps me from playing the game fully. The font/text is scrambled and fuzzy in most of the spots including inventory, but all the dialogue text etc. are fine. Here's a shot:



It's the ''small'' font that is all fuzzy and scrambled. Has anyone had this kind of issues before? I remember experiencing the same with Crysis a long time ago, except the HUD icons got fuzzy too sometimes. Could it be a Windows font issue, or something?


P.S. No stretches/any other glitches in the graphics (thankfully), just the damn scrambled font. :shadedshu

 

[Black Panther]

The fonts appear ok and readable. What I see funny is the thing under the word 'tutorial' which looks like a view of skyscrapers or something...

I did have a (worse) problem before.... Do you doubt your disk is original? I once bought the Shivering isles for cheap too, it was from a Moldovian ebayer, and the fonts got really mucked up, like tiny and on the top left rather than where the fonts ought to be.

Then I realised that I could play the game (with font defects persisting) even with no cd in the drive.... confirming a bogus cd...

 

[Xolair]

^ Yup, this is a legit DVD alright, at least it appears to be...

Weiiird.

 

[Black Panther]

I dunno maybe you can post a shot of how the inventory looks since you say that the dialogues are ok?

It could just be a faulty install...

I seriously doubt it's the 3850's fault - if it were it'd be showing worse problems when you have the grass, shadows and magical effects in gameplay, rather than in the inventory!

 

[Darknova]

Reinstall.

Oblivion is very very very picky. I've had times where a complete reinstall has had parts of the GUI missing, or everything tinted pink.

Uninstall, remove everything from the main directory, delete all settings files in your My Docs folder (of course, don't delete your saves heh), clean out your registry, and reinstall.

 

[Kreij]

Did you load any mods that might cause this?

 

[Xolair]

I've reinstalled once already, could try defragmenting my HDD or something. Haven't got any mods installed, but the game is 1.0 version (perhaps should try it with a patch). I'll post some more pics tomorrow when I have some more time...

Oh yeah, I remember going into Windows through Alt and then back into the game, and the font appeared fine (!) for a few moments, then browsed through the inventory and it went scrambled again. VERY picky indeed, if that's the case. :shadedshu

 

[Kreij]

You definitely want to install all available patches for Oblivion.

 

[Black Panther]

http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/updates_patches.htm

Make sure you download the right patch corresponding to your location.

Since your location says Finland I'm guessing that this would be the right one: OBLIVION UK/EUROPEAN/AUSTRALIAN PATCH v1.2.0416

 

[hat]

Weird. Oblivion has been a very versatile game for me. I could play for hours on unstable overclocks. The only problem I ever had with Oblivion was that the game locked-up after alt-tabbing but that didn't always happen. And I pirated it... lol

 

[KainXS]

I am 99% sure tha its not the card or the game.

Xolair I had this same problem with my 4coredual and that same exact card but I switched the board and I am very sure that all the artifacts are gone but I haven't tried oblivion yet

switching the board got rid of every problem I had with the 4coredual and the HD3850 so far.

I'm going to play oblivion later to see if it still gets these problems with the new gigabyte board.

I'll post a pic to show you howw it goes since I have to start the game over, If I get out of the dungeon then that should mean that its working

Okay, I'm off to play oblivion

 

[Xolair]

^ Lucky you.

 

[KainXS]

OK Xolair I finnaly got oblivion installed and played for about 1 hour, up until the part you meet Jaufree and their are no problems at all, before i changed the board I had the same artifacts as you, its definitely the board. Sorry to tell you this man.

I also see that with the new board oblivion will play much faster, It played at 50 to 60fps for me maxed out in the settings at around 1280x1024 res BUT vsync was on as well.

Its time to upgrade your board.'

One thing I did notice though is that if you run in window mode, you will not get artifacts with the 4coredual but if you run in fullscreen mode you will, you can try that to confirm it.

I have no perfomance mods or anything installed except the game and the 1.2 patch

 

[Xolair]

^ Windowed mode? How do you run the game in it?

Yeah, if I had the balls/sufficient money to get a new mobo, I would. Now I'm very low on cash and... my family would probably be quite pissed off if I bought any more computer parts. Perhaps later when I get a summerjob, or something, guess I'll have to ''suffer'' 'til then. The erros stay away until after like an hour stuff appears, it's weird. Overheating?


P.S. Seems I haven't gotten rid of the errors even still:



Perhaps ASRock has some pretty serious issues with this videocard, they've launched a new BIOS again but doubt it'd help. Meh, I'll get a new mobo sometime, guess I'll play Diablo 2 for the moment as it doesn't artifact at all.

 

[erocker]

Man, what a wierd problem! In that last pic it looks like someone knitted a crazy colored ski-mask for your character. All signs usually point to the video card, but crazy that a mobo can do that! It must be in the PCI bus or something?!

 

[lemonadesoda]

Sounds like a memory management problem to me... assets not being reloaded. Try changing the size of your pagefile. Also make sure your PC isnt overloaded with fonts. Tidy up your system directory.

You have a 256MB version of the HD3850. Perhaps somehow the PC drivers are expecting a 512MB. Try drivercleaner and reinstall latest video drivers.

As a GPU memory test, turn texture detail DOWN... thereby freeing up more memory for other assets. If this fixes the problem... then we know its a GPU memory problem.

 

[KainXS]

Man, what a wierd problem! In that last pic it looks like someone knitted a crazy colored ski-mask for your character. All signs usually point to the video card, but crazy that a mobo can do that! It must be in the PCI bus or something?!

I know, when I had that board it drove me near insane

to go into window mode you have to load up oblivions launcher and go into options and then under mode pick windowed

thats why I have that board sitting in a box right now

anyone wanna buy it

 

[Xolair]

^^ This GPU has been tested by the shop I bought it from to be functional, after wondering myself that it'd be somehow faulty and trying to get it RMA'd. Guess it's a compatibility/mobo issue, I ain't ruling out drivers either. Dunno...

Just that the last time I tried the more recent drivers they made my games artifact strangely, Crysis didn't work AT ALL with the C8.1's, it gave these strange green boxes and pixellation everywhere. I'm still stuck with Catalyst 7.12's, guess I could try the 8.3's sometime and see if they work.

I could also email ASRock itself about this, but I doubt I'd get an answer. Or, then it'd be the usual ''we've done everything we could/we haven't had any problems like that'' and I'd change to a different mobo as soon as possible.


P.S. It just pisses me off, that how could a mobo cause all this? I doubt it'd be the 4x PCI-E speed, or anything like that. If the PCI-E slot was dead, wouldn't the GPU work at all? Drivers seem like a good option, but as usual, I'm not sure.

 

[ShadowFold]

Whats that weird slot above the PCI-E slot

 

[panchoman]

Whats that weird slot above the PCI-E slot

agp 8x.. but i think you can also use that as the magic cpu slot?

 

[ShadowFold]

agp 8x.. but i think you can also use that as the magic cpu slot?

Oh yea I knew that

 

[Xolair]

^ AGP slot.

EDIT: Oh whoops, pancho replied before me.

 

[KainXS]

I emailed asrock a ton of times and got the same crap back over and over again, even after they're useless little bios update, Its always "this card is not compatible with the slot, please flash your card to a GEN1 bios", the problem their is that there is no gen1 bios for the 38xx series.

so I gave up on it.

I have heard of people running the card on 4x slots in other boards but I have never heard of someone getting a pcie 2 card fully working on this board.

 

[Xolair]

Just played an hour or so of the game, didn't manage to catch any errors after trying all what lemonadesoda suggested (AGP aperture size/game's texture setting to MEDIUM). Perhaps those two settings might've helped, but I've got to play some more to confirm it. I'm somewhat hopeful...

... but shouldn't be too confident though.