This page is a work in progress! To be updated as James has free time. :-)

This guide will not cover the Shivering Isles expansion pack. As far as I understand, that should be one of the first things you install.

My system

• Core 2 Duo 1.9 MHz
• Intel Integrated X3100
• 2 gigs of RAM 

Preliminary

• Before you do anything, defragment your hard disk.
• Upon completion, install Oblivion. I recommend installing it to a location you have write access to; on my Windows 7 system it's installed in "c:\users\james\saved games\oblivion"
• Patch aforementioned oblivion installation
• Get the Oblivion Mod Manager, hereby referred to as OMM. OMM will make it quite easy to backup, install, and remove mods. You should endeavor to 
• Install 7-zip. You will need it to extract some of the mods, and it's very handy.

Now, let's go for some basic, essential stuff. Grab the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. It fixes a ton of bugs and issues with the base game. I am using the version 3.2.0 OMOD. 

Performance mods

Note that some of these mods overlap with each other. To override conflicts, hold Ctrl and click "Yes." I have ordered the mods so that you should be able to overwrite previous files and still get the largest performance boost.

Operation Optimization

Optimized illumination

Script Optimization 

Oblivion PolyGone Overhaul

RPG_BlackDragon LowPolyTrees 1.0

Short Grass

Low-Low-Poly Grass 1.5

No Wind

LowRes Cyrodiil Complete parts 1 - 5 

De-Parallax 1.1

Streamline

Streamline is an invaluable tool which manages Oblivion's memory usage and generally makes the game a much smoother experiance. Additional configuration details to follow.

OBSE (Install this first!) - http://obse.silverlock.org/

Streamline - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10400

Config file tweaking 

Config file location: C:\Users\James\Documents\My Games\Oblivion

By default, when you choose the "Very Low" graphical setting, the game will drastically reduce the number of textures used. This makes the game run quite fast, but also makes it quite ugly and near impossible to navigate by roads. Here, I provide an alternate ini file which falls somewhere between "Very Low" and "Low", while still remaining fairly playable. This is likely not as optimized as it could be; I will update it as I discover additional tweaks.

oblivion.ini - March 11, 09

Playing without the DVD

If you are using an integrated graphics card, you are likely using a laptop. It is thus vastly more conveniant to play the game without the DVD in the drive. I have no ethical issues with this as I own the game, but I will not link to anything here. Note that it is ideal to use a mini iso with a virtual drive, as Streamline has issues with hacked exes.

Note that playing without the DVD has no performance benefit, as it seems to only be needed when the game starts.

Handy links

TweakGuides - http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

This is a completely invaluable config guide for getting the most out of Oblivion. If you'd like to improve upon my config, this is a must read.

Oldblivion - http://www.oldblivion.com/

Use this if your card either does not support 2.0 Pixelshaders, or does not render them as quickly as the 1.0 shaders. Note that for recent Intel graphics cards, using Oldblivion will actually decrease performance! I do not use Oldblivion and thus cannot write about it in detail in this guide.