(This guide was based on a MSI Wind U100 (default specifications except: with 3 GB ram + Windows 7), but most of the netbooks pack the same specifications. The game is with both BLOODMOON and TRIBUNAL installed.)

Welcome.

This guide should hopefully help you get the smoothest experience of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind on a netbook. The FPS was based on the average FPS gained when walking around the center of Seyda Neen.

The tests were done with the lowest settings in graphics.

Inside Arielle's Tradehouse the FPS was playable without any modifications, and the FPS was generally higher when in the wilderness than inside a town.

The goal of this guide is to reach a reasonable FPS when standing in the center of Seyda Neen.

Without any modifications, my Morrowind ran with 10-13 F(rames) P(er) S(econd)

#1: Modifying the Morrowind.ini file

You can find the Morrowind.ini file inside your main Morrowind folder. Open it up with notepad or a similar program.

Find the settings in the .ini and change them according to these settings below:

Morrowind.ini
[General]
Max FPS=60 (No reason to set it any higher, but you can always give it a shot.)

TryArchiveFirst=0 (Use "1" if you aren't using any mods, 0 if you are using mods)

DontThreadLoad=1 (If you choose to enable this ("1") you will get a better FPS but longer loading times. WARNING: Has apparently been reported to cause sound problems on some system, because of this, all changed marked with an * requires this to be set to "1". Test your game after changing this, and if you have problems, leave all the * marked settings at their default.)

Disable Audio=0 ("1" disables audio for a slight performance boost.)

Interior Cell Buffer=128 (If you don't have a lot of RAM, leave these at their default.) (* If you're using ThreadLoad set this to 1)
Exterior Cell Buffer=256 (If you don't have a lot of RAM, leave these at their default.) (* If you're using ThreadLoad set this to 4)

ShowHitFader=0 (Disables the red "blood shadow" when taking physical damage.)

[Lightattenuation]
UseLinear=0 (Settings this to 0 will allow you to use the rest of the "Light attenuation" settings.)

UseQuadratic=0 (A minor FPS boost for worse graphics.)
QuadraticRadiusMult=4.0(Reported to give better graphics without loosing fps)
End of Morrowind.ini

After these ini changes, the game ran with about 15-17 FPS and looked like this:

       

In the following tests, the ini changes was kept.

#2: Using external utilities

There are a number of utilities available which can all help bring some of the heavy load away from Morrowind.

Morrowind FPS Optimizer

Morrowind FPS Optimizer can be downloaded from TESNexus from THIS LINK.

It should work almost out of the box, but you can try changing a few settings if you feel like it. The way it basically works, is by changing the Morrowind settings (like shadows, view distance etc.) depending on the situation.

If you would like to change a setting, it would probably be:

Can Optimizer adjust View Distance to maintain FPS?

If Yes, what average FPS you want?

Here you can choose how much the FPS optimizer should adjust your settings. If you choose "30" you will get a pretty good FPS.

With the FPS optimizer set to 30, the game ran with about 17-20 FPS and looked like this:

       

As you can see there's a lot more fog, and inside Arilles Tradehouse the fog seemed to go nuts, but there was still a small gain in FPS.

In the following tests, the optimizer was not active.

#3: LowFat Morrowind

LowFat Morrowind is an audio and graphics replacer, which aims to make Morrowind a lot lighter than it currently is. This replacer is easily recognisable, mostly when looking into the sky. But hey, it's still Morrowind, who cares about graphics?..

Quote:This is an experimental mod that tries to improve playability on older machines, by running much lower resolution graphics and sound files than initially shipped with the game.

You can download LowFat Morrowind from THIS LINK and it's around 20 MB.

Before installing LowFat Morrowind, it is advised to make a back up of your Data Files in case you simply think the graphics are too bad. The folders you will need to back up are: Textures , Music and Sound/FX.

While running LowFat Morrowind the game ran with about 17-20 FPS and looked like this:

       

In the following tests, LowFat Morrowind was not active.

#4: Mods/Modifications

Sadly there's only a limited amount of mods availiable for Morrowind that improve FPS, because it's getting old and most people have a machine that can run it and therefore wont work on these kinds of mods, but there are still a few that can help us.

Ultimate Morrowind Anti-Mod
by ChaosTony

Ultimate Morrowind Anti-Mod removes a lot of static objects which basically aren't needed. Bethesda often used a lot of static objects that wasn't needed and some of them isn't even possible to see from anywhere in the game, and therefore only eats the CPU and graphics without giving anything in return to the player.

This mod should remove a lot of these objects. From the readme:

Quote:Greatly increases FPS in towns by removing many static objects throughout Morrowind. Removes MANY useless rocks and other static objects to maximize FPS.

Using this mod and the ini tweaks, I archieved around 12-15 FPS and spotting any differences wasn't possible. My results weren't very big, it might be because a lot of objects weren't removed from Seyda Neen.

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Thank you for reading the guide. Personally I got my Morrowind to run in a playable state on my netbook, mostly when inside interiors or in the wilderness, but a walk through Balmora was also doable without too much stuttering. Please post your comments of success or failure or if you have any questions. Any suggestions for the guide are more than welcome!

Sources and special thanks to:

• http://www.TweakTown.com
• http://eeeuser.com
• http://www.yacoby.net
• http://forums.gamespy.com/morrowind_technical_problems
  

* Mercery waits for google bot to google crawl this.

* Pronam waits for google bot to save this guide as 'Windows 7' and 'MSI Wind u100'

Did you write this all by yourself?

Yup. Took some time.

Found the information and help from the sources.