59 replies to this topic

[super squirrel]

hope mine will run it.

just shelled out £500 for a new pc

[aceface]

I was wondering if you guys thought that my PC would be able to run Oblivion well or not. My specs are as follows:

Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor (need to change the clock speed)
GeForce FX 5500 with 256 mb of memory
1.25 Gig of RAM

I know that I will not be lacking in memory but I am concerned that the 5500 will really hold my system back. What do you guys think?

[Switch]

FX series card? Eww. Those things are rubbish. I would suggest getting a GeForce 6 or 7 (if you can afford it) series card. Even a Ti4200 runs better than some FX cards.

[aceface]

Off the top of your head, how much would a 6 or 7 cost?

[Switch]

When I got my 6800 GT 256MB, it cost £280-ish from Ebuyer (and that place has good prices). In dollars that'd be $520-ish. But that was about 6 months or more ago so it might be lower by now. The 7800 GTX is quite a bit more expensive, obviously.

[Marxist ßastard]

A vanilla 6800 is going to cost you maybe $US175. It performs well enough in its own right, but there's an additional 1 in 20 chance that it's magic, which gives it an edge over the similarly-priced 6600GT. A 6800 GT will set you back $US250. An AGP 6800 ultra will be $US410.

If you have the money, I would strongly recommend getting rid of that demon-infested processor and its hellspawn mainboard. Socket 754 processors and mainboards based around the nForce 4-4X are cheap and functional, even if you can't get a dual-core system, and a new higher-bandwidth graphics interface becomes available upon upgrade. The transition to this new interface -- PCI Express -- has already completed for any cards with decent 3D acceleration, with the 6800 ultra being the most powerful AGP card produced to date. As you can see, this status has had an effect on its price, and the PCI Express version, although theoretically more powerful, is less sought-after because of the need for a system upgrade in most cases.

A 6800 Ultra PCI-E is going to be around $US300, which is just below the minimum cost for a 7800 GT (all of which are PCI-E). A 7800 GTX (again, there is no AGP version) is something more along the lines of $US550.

ATi remains an option, albiet not a very good one at the price range we're talking about.

Switching gears for a moment, after a very ill-fated encounter with a program mailed to me from a man in Uganda, who shares a mutual friend (whatever that means), called K72K8.EXE, I finally decided it was time to get an Athlon 64. So, here are my recent upgrades:

• Athlon 64 3000+
• ASUS A8N5X
• GeForce 7800 GT

[loveme4whoiam]

What about the X800 series, in particular the X800 GTO? Its currently priced at about the same price as the 6800GS (as far as I know) and can beat it when overclocked (again, as far as I know). I'm waiting to build my new one and I'm currently leaning towards the GTO, but having seen something about there being a GTO and a GTO2, I'm confuzzled.
Tom's Hardware says that the GTO2 is the only one that can be overclocked, is that right? As an alternative to the 6800, does it stand up?

[Faust_87]

I have no doubt that I'll beable to run it... I don't care how high I have my graphics set... as long as I can run it I'll be happy...its the gameplay I'm looking forward too... not how nice it looks.

I'm sporting a:

Pentium 4 2.4ghz
ATI Radeon X800 Pro 256mb - which cost $768 Canadian
1 Gig of dual channel DDR Ram

They say no game is close to coming out that will test your system as F.E.A.R does... and my computer can run fear on Highest settings and the only time it lags is when it loads a new section, and thats only for about 1 second... so I really don't care... so if you're computer can run F.E.A.R you really need not worry to run Oblivion

Edited by Faust_87, 12 January 2006 - 02:35 AM.

[aceface123]

I too am not as concerned about running Oblivion on the highest settings, but at the same time it loses something when you have to dumb down the graphics and wait 5 to 10 seconds for the game to load when you're in the middle of a battle; it becomes less immersive.

[Latholas]

I'm building a new PC at the end of January with Oblivion in mind (well actually Battlefield 2, but Oblivion sort of nudges into my thoughts every so often, as I'm sure you all know )

I'm on a £500 budget, but I'm hoping that it'll at least be able to do something close to high on Oblivion. I doubt it'll do maximum everything, but it should be able to do enough.

Oh yeah, the specs. What do you think? Good enough or no?

mobo Abit AN8 NForce4 S939 DDR400 PCI-E GbE Lan USB2/1394 5.1ch Audio 4 x SATA Raid
cpu AMD Athlon 64 3000 32/64Bit CPU S939 "Venice" 90nm Retail inc Heat Sink Fan & 3 Years Warranty
gpu 256MB Sapphire PCI-E ATI X800GTO GDDR3 PCI-E VGA TV DVI Retail
ram 1Gb (2x512Mb) Corsair, DDR400/PC3200,non-ECC, 184 DIMM, unbuffered, CL2.5, Lifetime Warranty
case CoolerMaster Centurion 5 Silver Case Black Body (Silver Trimmings) w/o PSU
PSU 480W XClio-SCF aPFC Super Silent (21Db) 12cm Fan 8/20/24 ATX2/2.01 12vEPS + SATA+PCI-E Hi-End
HDD 120Gb SATA300 Western Digital WD1200JS Caviar SE (7200rpm,8Mb) - NCQ

Everything else for a PC I've scrounged, by the way. I may change the RAM, not sure. Other than that, that's what I'm making unless people point out glaring flaws, so I hope it'll be good enough.

EDIT - Cheers for the save Dilvish

HAHAHA no worries for BF2 man u could play it 2 times the full graphics with that machine
i can play it full graphics no problem and i have a medium system bought in september (1400 euro's but i had to buy keyboard mouse and tft screen so 1000 without all of that)

I haven't upgraded my comp in 3 years, the only thing it's good for is surfing the web and word processing. The fact that it run Morrowind suprised even me at the time. I've been shopping around for a gaming system that will be able to play next gen games, well, Oblivion specifically (my girlfriend will hate me I can feel it). Cyberpowerinc makes solid systems and the one I'm looking at is pretty solid for only 500 bucks.

512 DDR RAM (upgraded to 1bg)
3.0 gHz AMD processor
nVidia 6600 256 16x PCI-E graphics
80 gb hard drive
7.1 surround sound
blah blah blah, nothing else matters that much

for 500 bucks I think it's a steal, though I too will be waiting until the requirements come out so I know if it could handle it; plus the price is sure to go down by the release date.

then i hold the record
what about a 6 year old PC with 1.5 ghz cpu and a gforce2 and 512 mb ram that runs morrowind fine, it also runs BF1942 which also surprised me

Edited by Latholas, 14 January 2006 - 11:20 AM.