Now, can someone come up with why -- after playing this game for over a year now and on three other PC systems -- suddenly, on an Intel D975XBX w/E6700 C2D CPU, 1 GB of OCZ Dual Channel DDR2 RAM, and an X1950 Pro 256 MB video card, I CANNOT play the game in the great outdoors?!
The game plays just fine inside the cities, inside the dwellings. Ultra High settings, 1280x1024, HDR, V-Sync ON and I get anywhere from 50-85 FPS in these environments. BUT, take one step outside the gates and the game drops to an appalling 3-5 FPS! Yes, you read that right: 3-5 FPS!
This mobo has a crappy Sigmatel Audio controller onboard. So, I even disabled that and put in a separate PCI Xtreme Audio 7.1 card. Got exactly the same result.
Then I just completely Disabled ALL AUDIO and I could play the game until the cows come home and get 70-100 FPS! That's with NO AUDIO at all!
I've tweaked the oblivion.ini, changed game settings to the lowest settings possible, resolution at 800x600 and with any AUDIO ENABLED the game simply almost completely stops when I step outside.
I've built other and cheaper systems that play the game better than this.
Intel insists it's a problem with the game and they won't accept that there's any problem with the mobo. BUT, like I said above, I've played this same game on other setups without any problem like this at all.
So, any gurus here have anything to suggest? I'm really stumped.
It's actually working quite well now, BUT I'll have to report later on just what 'fixed' it. Let's just say I removed a few 
