You have a SLI mobo but a ATI card?

Greetings!

I have spent the last few days fiddling with my rig, testing the game settings.

AN78Xe-DX
AMD 2800+ Barton @ 2.08
1 gig 3200 ram
SB Live Platinum
BFG nVidia 6800 GS OC 256 DDR3 agp

Not bleeding edge, but it ain't no paperweight either. I had to swap out the video card twice to get decent frame rates. I started with an Asus V9570 256 (nvidia 5700). Slide show city. Next, I tried an nVidia 6600 128 GT. Better, but still choppy at minimum resolution. The last card (6800) fixed it right up. Now I'm running it at 1280X1024, with HRD lights, high textures, and the 'faders' at half. Smooth like a Lexus. It will actually run at everything maxed, but it's a bit choppy in scenes outdoors, or with unusual lighting conditions.

Just for grins, I borrowed some RAM from another pc, and it made little, if any, difference in the framerates. So throw ALL your money on the best card you can! That unit cost me $249.00 Canadian, and was well worth it.


Regards, Nhoj

If you are going to be upgrading your GPU for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, then try to get an nVidia card. 6600 series will do a good job, but I reccomend the 6800 series or above. It may not seem like a difference, but it definently is. Try to get a 64-bit processor, or dual-core processor if possible. That also helps quite alot.

I have some serious performance problems with oblivion. I upgraded my Videocard not long ago from a 9800xt to a 6800gt and i don't think my system is so bad but oblivion is just sometimes a slideshow.

XP2800+ (2,25Ghz Tbred)
1024MB DDR400
6800GT 128MB
SB Audigy
latest 84.xx nvidia drivers

It stutters still a little on these settings:
HDR on
Textures medium
faders at 1/4 and Visibility at 3/4, all other effects down

It starts stuttering after loading a new level or part of the map (loading is finished!). Often, the stuttering goes away when i save and restart Oblivion from windows. That seems to me like a little bug. Is there any patch for oblivion yet to speed it up?

i would not advise anyone to buy nvidia cards for playing oblivion!!
As some benchmarks have shown, the new atis and even the old x800 series (which can't do HDR) perform much better in that game. This step is logical as ati was always better in Direct3D games and a Graphicschip with similarities to the R5xxseries sits in the xbox360 for which the game was mainly developed.

Some things i have noticed while playing:
The Textures have a low resolution even at eye candy settings. nothing compared to other games like farcry, halflife2 or doom3. very like Morrowind, only that the HDR lighting is really great and improves image quality like nothing other and the level-loading is also much better. But even compared to the old gothic2 night of raven the graphics hasn't much improved and that game uses an pumped up engine of the late 90s.
Story and all that seems great but gameplay is very much alike gothic2. I started to play morrowind and found it to be boring and started to play gothic afterwards. Textures, persons, graphics, gameplay, Oblivion is great but reminds me again very much of gothic2.
I always thought that the gothic folks, a small developer group at the end of the softwareworld in old germany do a great job in keeping up with such big fellows as the elder scrolls, so i am still a little bit disappointed with oblivion after the great Videotrailers. It is like in the Trailers but nothing more.
Cant wait to see gothic3. It will kick some serious boat i bet. Hope the performance is better than somewhat disappointing Oblivion.

This post has been edited by davidzo: Mar 30 2006, 12:16 AM

Ok, here are my specs:

3ghz processor
1024mb PC3200 (?? think that is right) but it is one stick only. I was going to get the second stick, but I screwed up and fried that socket of my motherboard. I will have to replace it when I get back to the states
Radeon Mobility, 9700 series vid card, not sure if it is 128 or 256 mb, but I KNOW it is 9700 series

I got the latest vid card driver.

I finally got the game yesterday and installed it. It recommended medium settings. First I said SCREW THAT and cranked it all up, moved anti aliasing to x4 and resolution to 1200x1024 (I think). Once it started, it wasnt even choppy, it was just froze with a glitch of movement every 15-20 seconds, just hitting "esc" to exit out took almost a minute. So now I have antialiasing shut ALL the way off, have the distances and fade's set to max and have resolution at 800x600

My problem is, I have no idea what half of these things do. I am a shameless noob when it comes to optimizing my settings. I dont have a clue what antialaesing is (other than good). I dont know what kind of impact changing the various distances does, and I dont know what kind of impact the screen resolution has, but I wish I could play it higher, so the letters and icons would be more crisp. Basically, whats a way to trade off various effects? I have seen posts about other ways to improve game performance, but using the search didnt help me much because I dont know/understand the terms they use, so I dont know what to search for. I dont have access to the internet with my own computer, and only limited access for a limited time on other computers. Links to other posts would be great, or just any direct suggestions in reply to this post. I KNOW I should be able to turn this up higher. For referance, I play FarCry with every setting maxed and it doesnt get choppy even when I charge into 10 enemies and start shooting fuel tanks with a helicopter flying around...

Any help would be greatly appreciated. You could also PM me if you want...

THanks agian, this is a great forum...
Cadaver

Well... I doubt that you're CPU or RAM could do anything with this but I think that if you would have to update you're computer it might be the GCard. But anyway. The resolution, I would say doesn't have that much to say - of course it gets much better playing with high resolution but also a lot of work for the PC. I think you could try to set the resolution down, also the different fade's of persons, tree's etc. and try to check out the pixel I think it is - Small, Medium or Large (Don't remember, should be right under resolution on Video Options) I tested out with small, then it's easy to see that the crests or what we can call it haning out from shops where the name of the shop stands is very blury, turning to Large it get's crystal clear...

I'm not a master in this either, but I think if you set resolution down, along with the different fading options and shadows etc. and try to set pixel to Large it might work much better hopefully. And I wouldn't wurry to much about antialiasing either...

My current specs;



I've no problems what so ever playing Oblivion with ultra-high graphics, I've taken everything on top with fade and everything and no problems. I jumped on some guards in Skingrad and ended up fighting around 15 - 20 of these guards at the same time with no lag. And I have no antialiasing but HDR insted and the graphics is just sick...

So I think you should try out what I said, if that doesn't work - then you have to test different things out, mostly with resolution, pixels etc. I wouldn't think about the fading and shadows to much. No need for Self Shadows either

I googled Oblivion performance tweaks and found an INI file tweaking guide. I am at work now, so that site is blocked or I would leave a link... sorry...

Anyway, I changed my INI some, and also got rid of the silly intros like "bethesda" and other crap so my game starts at just the main menu... very nice, because on MY freetime, I DONT want to watch intro videos, I want to PLAY!! Also adjusted some stuff that makes more stuff load during the loading rather than on the fly, so now my loading screens between say, a dungeon, and the wide open are about 30-40 seconds, but the play is VERY much smother outside, even though I kept the rez up at 800x600. Also turned the amount of grass down to 120. Still lots of grass, but doesnt seem so packed. Maybe loss of realism, but I actually like it... Makes hunting wolves a lot easier, as well as seeing where I am going. Thanks for the advice... I cant wait till my enlistment is done and I can stop having to worry about deploying to crazy places. Then I will be able to get a DESKTOP and not have to worry about upgrades so much....

Cadaver

I've been trudging through some older threads but still haven't found an exact answer and I know this must be pretty annoying but my current specs are -
2400+ AMD
512 DDR Ram
60 Gig HD (33gb free)
And uh....a GeForce FX5200

The graphics card will be the main one to slow it down and I have been afraid of purchasing Oblivion incase it wont run at all. I know the rest will slow it down but I want to upgrade my graphics card so I want to know something that will run it reasonably well (aka well enough for me to run everything on minimum) but that isn't too expensive.
Any suggestions?

I had to get a new processor and an additional stick of memory for Oblivion, now it is still running somewhat sluggishly, so I probably next will get a new video card.

Yeah I was trying it on my second pc which is about the same as that:

Athlon XP 2200+
384 MB ram
40 gig hard drive
GeForce FX5200

And it was running REALLY badly like 4 fps on the very lowest settings,

However I have a 6600GT on my other machine and it runs perfectly, not bad price either

Hmm, a 6600GT is around $200 nz, and I'll only be able to sell my FX for $50 so I'd still have to pay around $150. Anything slightly cheaper than that that still runs it reasonably on low settings?

Currently my system is..
Athlon XP 2500+
SOYO KT600
1.5 GB corsair valueselect.
2x200 GB hardrives.
Radeon 9800 256 MB


Yeah, I know, slow, but for a kid on 40 dollars a month not too bad.
Next system I am saving up for.
Unknown motherboard, will be AM2
Athlon 64 3500+ (Still being decided)
7900 GT
Dunno RAM. Not skilled in DDR2

If I was forced to buy now, my RAM would probably be
XMS corsair 2x1 GB
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

I have
2.8 Ghz Intel P4
Ati 9800pro 256mb
1gb Ram

what kinda results am I going to get?
How far below max am I going to have to set it

What should I replace

PS
don't know what mother board I have but it is about 3yrs old

I currently have a GeForce FX 5200 and will need to upgrade for Oblivion (as stated above). Will the GeForce 6200 256MB AGP be a good enough upgrade or will I have to spend more to get one that will run oblivion on min specs without too much lag?