Mmm..Oblivion question

Are you planning on upgrading to a X800xl (AGP slot)? Isnt that throwing money into your dated tech like you didnt want to do?

Let me say at first that if you had the setup that you list on the end of your post, you'd be playing Oblivion at 1024x768 with medium-low settings for shadows, grass, and fades, with 4x AF and Bloom.... running at I would guess 20-30 fps. You might need to drop to 800x600 to hit those framerates, but it'd probably be pretty close.

Oblivion is VERY GPU dependant, but honestly, Oblivion is very dependant on everything. When I didnt have my HD defragmented well, I had problems with frame rates (no joke). The 1GB of RAM is gonna hurt too, as well as the low CPU speed.

I must say that you'd almost be better off waiting to play the game on a new computer, or buying a X360. Especially if you are going to be spending $200 on a new X800xl. For reference, my specs are 3.0 P4, 2GB RAM & X800XT PE, and I run at 1360x768, medium-low settings 8xAF, bloom, and 2x AA and get about 20-30fps, so I'm close to your setup with slightly better vid card, CPU and RAM.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Lukage

Dayvon, I tried the game on the same card, faster processor:

Low everything
Anything that can be off, was off. I would't bother TRYING anything above 800x600.

Same card and processor as what? Secondly, did you have HDR on? Thirdly, don't ever have on shadow filtering/shadows on grass/tree canopy shadows/self shadows and turn down int. shadows and ext. shadows. Shadows will eat crap cards for breakfast. Fourthly, if you are hoping to run well above 30fps (ie in the 50-70fps range), you should expect to turn everything off, even the game . But seriously, you shouldn't shoot that high with this one. Be happy with a solid 30-35fps.

And lastly, people, you need to understand that just having a "good video card" and "good CPU" IS NOT all that Oblivion needs to run well. You have to have a healthy system for good performance. For instance, you MUST have a well defragged hard drive. Oblivion does TONS of accessing and the more properly indexed your files are, the better. You MUST have significant amounts of RAM (1GB = passable, 2GB = good) running at good speeds. You MUST have a video card with sizeable RAM (256MB recommended). You MUST have a NO performance draining apps running idle in windows. I have this one program called Aquadock I use, but it is DirectX app, and will slow down a game. Heck, anything that uses RAM is bad for Oblivion (anti-virus, spyscanners, etc).

And this is just the beginning. If you have all these down, and a good 16-pixel pipe card w/ an AMD 3700/P4 2.8 or better, you are gonna have a good experience. If you don't have one of these things down, you will probably see drastic performance hits.

HERE IS A LINK TO A GUIDE THAT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU USE TO GET GOOD OBLIVION PERFORMANCE.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

9600 (XT, Pro, SE, whatever) is heavily underpowered for Oblivion. Be happy it boots up!!

EDIT:
The OP was asking how Oblivion would run on his setup with a X800XL instead of the 9600. I was referring to the X800XL configuration of his future computer in my posts.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Good to hear Rush. I take it you looked through the TweakGuide on Oblivion as well? (great source for optimizing OB)

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?