PCIE & Oblivion

[zbo2408]

Hey guys I jumped onto the Oblivion band wagon kinda late but so far it is an awesome game, love it.
But once I got out into the open world with the grass and trees and water my performance dropped... alot.
Here's my specs.
AMD Athlong 64 3500+ 2.2GHZ, 512KB L2 Cache, 2000MHz FSB
1024 MB DDR SDRAM Dual Chanel
ATI Radeon X700 Pro (PCEIx16)

Ok so I thinkmy processor and ram should be sufficent for this game. SO that leaves me with thinking my X700 is holding me back in this game. What kind of card under 250 bucks can ya'll recommend to give me the best performance for the money?
Oh yeah I have a 17" monitor and I like 1024x768 resolution. If I get a new monitor it will only be a 19" most likely so I running1900 resolution on a 24" monitor isn't something thats important to me.

THanks

[azzey]

Get factory OC'd GeForce 7900GT that will fit nicely in your budget. If you can't afford that you could also get a 7600GT. You will not be disappointed.

And yes, I agree - the rest of your system is fine for now. My only suggestions would be to maybe pick up an X2 because s939 is dying fast and you won't be able to find any soon. Video cards aren't going to be changing platforms anytime soon.

[saphalline]

I agree with azzey on moving up to an X2 soon. This is something I'll be doing myself in the next month. If you ever wanted to go dual-core, you should do so soon. Otherwise you'll be looking at a total core upgrade - those Socket 939 X2's are dying fast.

Look at the GeForce 7950 GT or the 7900 GS. Both offer incredible performance for the price on NVidia's side. On ATI's side, look at the Radeon X1900 GT and X1950 GT. Any of these will blow away that puny X700! My own graphics system is more powerful than yours, and there's no way I could reasonably play Oblivion at 1024 x 768. That game is punishing to any system that doesn't have a modern $250 vid card.

[jlreich]

Turn the grass off. I know it looks great, but it makes items on the ground easier to find and it really helps with performance.

I just upgraded to a 7900GS 600/1600MHz and it rocks. But I still had to drop the resolution down to 1024x768 in order to keep the fps up to around 40. At 1280x1024 I was only getting about 30 fps.

But wow, the details I was missing with my 6800GS! And it was a good card!

Yeah Saph I know you need 45 fps minimum, but I am very happy with 40. :D And like I said the detail is awesome. I didn't know everyone was so ugly in Oblivion. :D :p

[joshuarepko]

Turn the grass off. I know it looks great, but it makes items on the ground easier to find and it really helps with performance.

I just upgraded to a 7900GS 600/1600MHz and it rocks. But I still had to drop the resolution down to 1024x768 in order to keep the fps up to around 40. At 1280x1024 I was only getting about 30 fps.

But wow, the details I was missing with my 6800GS! And it was a good card!

Yeah Saph I know you need 45 fps minimum, but I am very happy with 40. :D And like I said the detail is awesome. I didn't know everyone was so ugly in Oblivion. :D :p

I got a RADEON X1650 Pro AGP - in outdoor enviroments, I average 15 fps.

Lol, but frankly I think the game-engine was horribly crafted - it demands much too powerful technology to run decently. Oblivion is an amazing computer game, but... lol, I wish Valve had made it instead, if you know what I'm getting at. ;)

[zbo2408]

Ha Ha yeah Oblivion looks great but so did HL:2 which my x700 rocked on.
Ya'll are talkin about gettin a x2 amd, how would I do that, just go to tiger direct and browes the processors that are socket 939? Would it use the same power supply plug the current one uses?
How do I get a factory over clocked card, I've never seen that option on like tiger direct and newegg.?

[azzey]

On TigerDirect.ca that's the only one available
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1447065&CatId=1948

[joshuarepko]

Ha Ha yeah Oblivion looks great but so did HL:2 which my x700 rocked on.
Ya'll are talkin about gettin a x2 amd, how would I do that, just go to tiger direct and browes the processors that are socket 939? Would it use the same power supply plug the current one uses?
How do I get a factory over clocked card, I've never seen that option on like tiger direct and newegg.?

Well, what I meant was one of the reasons HL2 was so great was because the Source-Engine was crafted to run very well on many different GPUs. However, Oblivion is an absolute monster - it requires top-notch hardware to run decently. This is bad because... well, the truth is most people don't own that kind of hardware. But, Valve was much more successful in that area. They got more sales because they designed their software to work on a much wider range of GPUs.

I love Valve because
- I could run HL2 at 1280x1024 resolution & maximum settings using a 128MB GPU with high fps.
- I could run HL2 at 1280x1024 resolution & maximum settings using a 256MB GPU with higher fps.
- I could run HL2 at 1280x1024 resolution & maximum settings using a 512MB GPU with even higher fps.

May this be a lesson to all video-game manufacturers: if you want to be truly successful, create software that can run smoothly on any GPU (though, obviously smoother on more expensive GPUs).

[zbo2408]

You know that processor you linked me too has only half of the FSB mine has. How would that affect it?

[saphalline]

The reason Source-based games run well on many different configurations is because the engine itself has 3 run-time environments. One for DX7, one for DX8, and one for DX9 SM 2.0. Only a high-class development team like Valve can afford to custom design 3 different environments in one engine. Bethesda and most every other developer simply can't do this. Besides, the Oblivion engine is a step up from Source (as of HL2) because it's fully SM 3.0 capable.

And in any case, gamers really do need to keep up with their hardware. Many people bought Oblivion without even looking at the minimum system requirements, and then complained because it wouldn't run on their Radeon 9200. :rolleyes: This, to me, is the epitome of stupidity. How can anyone reasonably expect a new high-end game to run on a 3-year-old low-end vid card? If you ask me, PC gamers should be upgrading a lot more often than every 3 years! And they shouldn't be buying cheap-@ss hardware, either. I love games that make older computers cry simply because it makes upgrading so much more rewarding. For those who can afford to spend $350 on a new vid card, they should see some improvements beyond those who can't. HL2 did this to a certain extent, but there's just something morbidly satisfying about being able to play a game that lesser systems can't even install! :cool:

You know that processor you linked me too has only half of the FSB mine has.No it doesn't. Technically, K8-based CPU's don't even have an FSB. The listed "FSB" spec is actually the speed of the HyperTransport Link. You will often see it as either 1000MHz or 2000MHz, depending on how the vendor wishes to present it. Because it's a bi-directional 16-bit bus, either speed is technically correct.

[zbo2408]

I am weary of getting an Nvidia card because my mobo is an amd/ati mobo. A friend of mine is a computer engineer student and he "had" an aleinware a bad ass computer but it was an Nvidia SLI mobo and he put a Radeon X1950XTX in it and the computer would constantly restart the vpu on the graphics card and he said there were errors working between the nvidia mobo and ati card.

[jlreich]

There were other issues involved with your friends computer I'm sure. Perhaps something wrong with the video card itself. There are no problem running an nVidia card in a mobo with a an ATI chipset, or running an ATI card in a mobo with an Nvidia. They both have to follow certain specs for the PCIe x16 slot among other things.

[saphalline]

I agree with jlreich that your friend's system had other issues. Off-hand, I'd say he didn't allow adequate cooling and failed to update the BIOS. Remember that just because he's a computer engineer student doesn't mean he knows about high-end hardware. ;) I've seen all sorts of so-called computer experts make newbie mistakes with custom builds. Not even Unix NetAdmins with 20-years of experience are immune to hardware problems (although their ego's will tell you differently :p).

But if you really don't want to try NVidia, that's fine. ATI will be rolling out their R600 vid cards in a few months. NVidia just happened to beat them to the punch with D3D 10 on the PC (ATI had a unified shader architecture first with their Xenos 360 VPU on the XBOX 360). Be patient and the hardware will come...