Anyone have a VisionTek X1300 PCI?

K121 Widowmaker

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2006
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I was wondering. I want to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on my Dell Dimension 3000 (crazy me :p). I upgraded it quite a bit, more ram, bigger HD. But my motherboard has only PCI slots. I found out the best PCI card on the market is the Visiontek Radeon X1300.

How will this run Oblivion?
 

Shadow Conception

Golden Member
Mar 19, 2006
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Probably on lowest settings, you'll get a reasonable framerate, but even at that, it's not worth it.

You're best off getting a new computer.

Why don't you ask all-holy Maxvista for some benchmarks?
 

TanisHalfElven

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2001
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Originally posted by: K121 Widowmaker
I was wondering. I want to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on my Dell Dimension 3000 (crazy me :p). I upgraded it quite a bit, more ram, bigger HD. But my motherboard has only PCI slots. I found out the best PCI card on the market is the Visiontek Radeon X1300.

How will this run Oblivion?

yeah it'll work. not super good. but at 640x480 you wa=on't get max effects and grass and stuff.
at 320x(something) (i would advise you to get an old xbox controller and mod to work on the pc and then sit a bit back from your monitor for that resolution to work...its what i do) you could prolly enable max setting and maybe even HDR
 

K121 Widowmaker

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2006
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I was thinking it would work good, because Elder Scrolls made a list of Cards, and categorized them. The X1300 made it into the "mid-range" category.
 

imported_Kiwi

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2004
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Originally posted by: K121 Widowmaker
I was thinking it would work good, because Elder Scrolls made a list of Cards, and categorized them. The X1300 made it into the "mid-range" category.
If you refer to the list currently hosted by NotTheKing, it is an unsupported range of personal opinions, and only the X1300 "XT" qualifies as anything other than an office presentations special. Should NTK disagree, he's nuts.

Be that as it may, plain PCI is a shared 133 GHz bus. One speed. No accelleration. A real X1300 XT (renamed X1600 Pro) is an 8X AGP or 16X PCI-e. Either way, it is a DEDICATED bus. No sharing. Full speed at all times. No bogging when the music is intense. Of all of the Low Quality cards, the newer ones, like the X1300 Pro, and the 7300 GT, are closer to the border zone between Low Quality and Medium, but not when tied to plain PCI.

There is no Crossfire nor any SLI without paired PCI-e(8x) slots. Doubling up on plain PCI accomplishes nothing in improving graphical speed, and given the slow bus, probably means everything is slower still.

There is no PC that was made without a true dedicated video bus that is worth putting even one dime of money into for an upgrade. If it won't do what you want it to, you're supposed to just get another. And next time, pay attention. That junker Dell was never meant to be upgraded. It is disposable, and goes out with the rest of the garbage. Or save it for word processing only when you get a real PC.

Incidentally, here is Brash's thread on assembling a $353.46 PC that will run Oblivion:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde...353309&pid=6885029&st=40&#entry6885029
 

imported_Kiwi

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2004
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There is no Crossfire nor any SLI without paired PCI-e(8x) slots. Doubling up on plain PCI accomplishes nothing in improving graphical speed, and given the slow bus, probably means everything is slower still.
 

Dethfrumbelo

Golden Member
Nov 16, 2004
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Forget it. Trying to run Oblivion with any PCI card is a waste of money. Not gonna happen.

The X1300 will still have massive problems even when paried with a dedicated 4X/8X/16X slot. Maybe you could do 640x480 with everything set to low/off under the most ideal circumstances.

If you want to play Oblivion, I'm afraid you'll need a mobo/cpu/video card upgrade. A cheap A64/Sempron for around $50, a $50 754/939 mobo, and a $150 7600GT would do it.
 

K121 Widowmaker

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2006
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I heard only a certain few motherboards are compatible with Dell Dimension? Could you list a few? I know, Dell's messed up alot of stuff, like compatibility so perhaps you could list a few?
 

Qbah

Diamond Member
Oct 18, 2005
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Wanted to write, that there's a review of the PCI x1300 on Hardocp.com :) A few games are included , Oblivion being one of them. But BrentJ beat me to it :p
 

SPARTAN VI

Senior member
Oct 13, 2005
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An Xbox360 just might be your answer.. It sure beats the crap out of that $380 whatever oblivion machine.
 

K121 Widowmaker

Junior Member
Jul 12, 2006
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Thing is, the main reason why I wanted to play Oblivion is to mod for it, I work for a large modding project, that requires th Construction Set. X360 does not have that ability.
 

imported_Kiwi

Golden Member
Jul 17, 2004
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There's a very old saying about wasting time. It's about beating a dead horse. It's not going to give you a ride. That toy PC is your dead horse. It doesn't make any diiference how big of a whip you use on it, it's still just dead.