Help on upgrade to play Oblivion

[Munky]

The faster mem on the x1950xt will help it keep up with the 512mb model using slower mem. It will not, however, make it faster than the 512mb card. I've tested my x1900xt at various mem speeds, and the performance difference between 725mhz mem and 800mhz, for example, is only a few percent. In the end, given that the 256mb model costs considerably less and performs almost as well as the 512mb card, the x1950xt is a better value for the money.

 

[VanTheMan]

I think I've settled on the X1950XT. Is Newegg the best place to get one? I'm way out of touch with ATI info. What's a good brand to get? I see Newegg has Sapphire.

 

[Munky]

All the Ati brands have the same hardware. Sapphire is no worse or better than the other brands.

 

[MrUniq]

Uhm I have a 7600 GT running at similar speeds and I'm running oblivion just fine. It's not as much as a card killer as you think. If you want to go BEYOND 'normal' gfx setting then yes you need muscle.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan
I think I've settled on the X1950XT. Is Newegg the best place to get one? I'm way out of touch with ATI info. What's a good brand to get? I see Newegg has Sapphire.

There is a close relationship between Sapphire and ATI. For instance, most of the examples sent to ATI's production partners to show how ATI will be producing its own cards are actually made up by Sapphire. Alos, ATI apparently doesn't have major warehouse space, and when they get a particularly large order they can't fill quickly, Sapphire has all of the ATI packaging materials, fan shrouds, and decals to slap onto their own cards to make up the difference.

Sapphire tends to hew right to the line of the reference samples, rather than the KO and OC specials that BFG and eVGA offer. I've had quite good experience with several Sapphire video cards, myself.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan
I think I've settled on the X1950XT. Is Newegg the best place to get one? I'm way out of touch with ATI info. What's a good brand to get? I see Newegg has Sapphire.

Good call ... you'll be very pleased with this choice, your power supply should be ok as long as you don't have too much other stuff in your system & the 256mb cards perform very close to the 512mb versions below 1280x1024.

Edit: The only issue with Sapphire comes up if you need to RMA the card... I believe you need to go through the vender to do this just like HIS so make sure to buy from Newegg, otherwise I'd suggest going with Powercolor or Asus because they offer their own RMA support that you can actually get ahold of.

 

[crazylegs]

I used to play Oblivion when it was hot off the shelf with an OC 6600gt and that was just bearable - obviously with low settings lol

Shortly after its release i switched to a 7900gt with volt modded and OC to be almost on a par with 7900GTX and Oblivion plays just fine!

Its been a while since i played the game as i now only really play WoW, but if i remeber correctly i always had grass turned off otherwise it was f**king impossible to find any herbs

With the grass turned off the performance of this game takes a HUGE boost and still looks georgeous

 

[VanTheMan]

Oh come on! I wait one day and the Sapphire card goes out of stock.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: crazylegs
Its been a while since i played the game as i now only really play WoW, but if i remeber correctly i always had grass turned off otherwise it was f**king impossible to find any herbs

With the grass turned off the performance of this game takes a HUGE boost and still looks georgeous

Grass off = barren carpeted landscapes like mown lawns :thumbsdown:

Herbs are easy enough to find (most are brightly coloured anyway).

 

[Dave Richardson]

Oblivion shot itself in the foot by encouraging a reputation for being a bit of a beast in terms of requirements. I was put off playing it until late last spring - then to my surprise I found it very playable on a PC based around Win2K, 512MB RAM, Athlon XP 2400, Nvidia GeForce 6200 (hangs head in shame - but my ATI 9700 blew up and I couldn't afford to replace it properly). Still using that incidentally for EvE online and its fine.

I lived in the world of Oblivion till October. 700 or 800 hours as I remember.

I have a philosophy that I'm willing to suffer a bit of lag in a game like oblivion to give me eye candy. I played with the settings a bit till I found something I liked. I ended up playing it at the lowest screen resolution or up to 800 by 600 on a 19" monitor and it was fine. Gameplay is what counts. Not technical stats. On the kind of card you are looking at it should be a visually gorgeous experience and I'm jealous.

Turn the grass off! Its stupid. It hides herbs which are utterly essential to find in this game. It hides MOB drops. It Hides MOB bodies. It looks stupid as it generates itself in a circle a few paces around you ingame - you need a lot of graphic power to get grass to go out to infinity while you are moving around. And it not grass - it is waist high dense vegetation.

 

[hans030390]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan
Dang, I'm getting close to jumping on that X1950XT. I've been an nVidia guy for years and years, but it looks like none of the Green team's cards can compete with the 1950XT for what I want to do. One concern I do have is the power hunger that the 1950's are reported to have. I have an Enermax EG425P-VE with 2 12V rails, 18A each. Will this PSU be alright with the 1950XT? I definitely don't want to buy a new PSU just to play Oblivion. Also, will I need an aftermarket cooling solution if I plan to OC the card to XTX speeds?

Keep in mind that while an ATI/AMD card will outperform Nvidia in Oblivion, it might not be the same for other games.

If all you are going to play is Oblivion, then you want ATI. If you want to play a wide variety of games, you'll need to do heavy researching.

Generally though I think the x1950 series is doing very well. That would not be a bad choice at all.