Morrowind Performance Question

[s0ccermike4]

I have the following system:
-ECS K7S5A
-AXP 1600+
-384mb PC100 SDRAM
-Voodoo3 3000
-onboard audio

I was wondering what would be the maximum graphic levels (at playable fps) I would be able to play Morrowind at if I upgraded my video card to this:
ATI RADEON 8500LE 64MB DDR CRT/DVI/TV for $86.00

Also should I buy this card or is there a better card than this for under $100.00

 

[FishTankX]

Morrowind doesn't allow you to tweak your graphics options very much. I play with a 64MB Radeon8500LE and a P4 1.7GHZ and get somewhere from 25-35FPS, which is completly playable, as long as you have no fear of headaches. Your 1600+ should net you 3 or 4FPS more than my P4, so yeah, it'd be playable.

There's nobetter card than a 64MB 8500LE under 100$ for morrowind..

 

[s0ccermike4]

What resolution do you play it at?

 

[FishTankX]

1152X864

There's almost no performance difference between 800X600 and the above mentioned res, if you're wondering. So I've stuck with 1152X864. The pixel sizes of 2d elements are set, so if you go too high on a low end monitor (Like I tried with 1600X1200) everything will be ulra small.
The key to morrowind is 256 megs+ of RAM in XP, RAM is critical. Videocard is also critical, but not as critical as CPU. So with a Radeon8500LE you'd be pretty balanced for your setup.

 

[Whitedog]

XP 1700+
GF2 GTS 32MB DDR
512 MB PC133

Plays at 1024x768 very smoothly.

I can't give you any FPS as I don't know of any benchmarks to run on that game, but I can say it runs just fine at that res. with all options on. No chop at all.

 

[tart666]

I have an 8500 and it runs fine at 1024x768

There's a tweaker that will dinamically adjust the settings (like quality vs depth) to keep a certain fps. here