Best budget card to give away with Oblivion Game of the Year

[terrencemcg]

Well I have a 12 year old cousin who is just getting into RPG's a la dungeons and dragons style. So I went to the PC gaming store and saw Oblivion GOTY on sale they also have some relatively cheap graphics cards on sale right now. I'm planning to give him the game along with a decent budget GPU so he can play the game right away. I need your suggestions as to what graphics card will perform the best within the price range. I only have 4 choices with my budget.

 

1) Nvidia Geforce GT210

2) ATI Radeon HD3650

3) Nvidia Geforce 9400GT

4) ATI Radeon HD4350

All are 64 bit 512MB ddr3 and almost the same price.

 

His computer's specs are:

 

3.0 Ghz Athlon II X2

Biostar MCP6PB M2+ NForce 6150

2 GB DDR2 ram (its currently only 1.5 GB since 512MB is shared with IGP)

Seagate 160 GB 7200 rpm HDD

600 watt PSU with dual fan cooling system

Generic casing with dual 12mm fans and one front 8mm exhaust with LED

I forgot the screens specs but its 16:9 widescreen LCD capable of either 768 by 480, 848 by 480 and 1366 by 768

 

Thanks :D

[terrencemcg]

and oh the fans are 120mm and 80 mm, my bad.

[bben46]

Oblivion is not a good game for a 12 year old. Look for something a little more age appropriate. I know it is rated for 14 year olds, but even most of them are not mature enough yet.

 

My own experience with a 12 year old trying to play it is they will get frustrated quickly when it doesn't work like Mario. They just don't understand the concept that you actually have to learn how to play it properly, and practice fighting techniques to win consistently.

 

I had one out of 3 grandchildren (Ages 10 to 13) actually finish the tutorial dungeon before quitting and going back to a more age appropriate game. The one that did finish (13) went on a crab killing rampage and was killed by crabs several times. At lowest difficulty I think the crabs actually had an advantage on him. He then ran into the bandits at Vilviren and got slaughtered. He was frustrated because they actually seemed to team up to beat him. (there were 2 of them and they split up) He then declared it wasn't fair and quit.

 

His concept of tactics is to charge straight in and swing whatever weapon he has in hand no matter what the odds

 

He was killed by the blades when he tried to fight them bare handed in the cell, again when he got in the way during a fight with the assassins, by the assassins when he tried to fight them, by the rats several times, by the goblins, by the logs rolling down on him, by the goblin shaman - and I kept lowering the difficulty until it was as low as it would go but he still managed to get killed by a mud crab, then drowned. And he kept forgetting to save so had to go back a lot.

 

I then gave him one of my saves with good armor & weapons located him in the IC market - and he promptly attacked a civilian. Then got mad when he was trashed by the guards. I sent him back to Mario Land.

[terrencemcg]

Uhh, my cousin is not the average kid you think of. He has finished might and magic 7 with minimal tips from me. He finished half life 2 at age 10 in normal settings. But thanks for the heads up anyways.

[Illiad86]

Out of the 4 you have listed there...the 3650 is the best one out of the bunch. The GT210 and 9400GT are pretty much the same cards...the 4350 is pretty much the same as those too. Those cards are more for a home theater PC...they pretty much just fast enough to play HD video.

 

3650 is a nice card...it's a bit old though. You have about $50-60 to spend? If you wanna spend just a tiny bit more..this card would be godly:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102892&cm_re=5550-_-14-102-892-_-Product

 

But...your cousin there has an older Nforce chipset. I have a older Nforce chipset as well with a 5770. It takes forever to POST...and after googling a bit, I've learned that apparently the 5000 series of ATi's cards have some sort of issue with older Nforce chipsets, I'm lucky that my computer even boots. But, I'm not sure if it's with the higher end cards only or if it's the whole series...I've only seen posts on my card and the high end ones.

 

Also you could consider the 4650:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102843&cm_re=4650-_-14-102-843-_-Product

 

about the same price of the 3650...but it's faster and has double the stream processors. The 4650 is just like a 3870 (which plays Oblivion very well btw)...just a tiny bit slower and the 4650 doesn't need an external power source. My boyfriend and I got this card for my grandma's computer stepping up from the onboard 6150 graphics :) She doesn't play Oblivion, but The Sims 3 runs pretty good on it lol.

 

lol bben...sounds like my cousin :P He got Oblivion and gave up...he's more into Gears of War and stuff like that though...but it was just hilarious how angry he got :P

[terrencemcg]

Well he's got an am3 capable processor so prolly he's gonna upgrade the board this christmas and I'm pretty sure all of the components will be compatible with a newer board. Well actually all of the cards I've mentioned are on clearance sale there's about $20 difference on the store from the 3650 and the 4650 with the same ram and color bits. He ain't a hardcore gamer anyways so I guess I'll give him the 3650.

 

Thanks for the replies :biggrin:

[Vindekarr]

Allowing children to play video games like Oblivion may SEEM extremely generous but really it's actualy incredibly selfish.

 

I know you want what's best for them, and to give them fun things to do, but Oblivion really inst a good choice. No matter how advanced a 12 year old may seem, they just aren't ready for the sorts of independance and decision making required in a game like Oblivion.

 

It's just really not a good idea. It requires responsibility, good temper control, and the ability to look with reason at a problem and work out best how to solve it. And those are not qualities 12 year olds possess. It's also really not a good idea to choose a fairly violent game as children's entertainment. Whatever western social norm states, exposing an under 12 to such violence is wrong.

 

I would also state that it's important to keep them offline. Children and teenagers are extremely common sights in online communities. And not a pleasent sight either. Children in games like Halo and Call Of Duty often deliberately try and ruin the game for others. So unless you're going to sit behind them and monitor them, it's just bad parenting, because children follow example, and when the example cusses screams swears and often cheats, thats a bad bad thing. It's also selfish to let such minors into AO games because they usualy like to run about causing mischeif and making it impossible for others to enjoy the game, which they often think is funny, They also swear in a way that my granfather, a scotsman and sailor, found shameful.

 

As for computer parts, I'd suggest you go Radeon. Nvidia have had a spate of major bugs earlier in the year, some of them cataclysmic, such as erasing data, constant CTDs, and the cards themselves melting due to failed cooling systems. So unless you want to spend every third weekend fixing it, I'd recomend a Radeon for a child's pc simply because they are more reliable and a LOT more easy to use. Furthmore, they dont require as frequent driver updates, meaning less work for you and less chance of the little darling deciding to play "lets mix and match the graphics drivers"

[terrencemcg]

That is the difference in the western norms than in eastern norms. We treat children differently that is why they ALWAYS show respect to elders and practically everyone older than them. We teach them to be independent and be rational at such an early age so as they would grow up to be successful in whatever career paths they may take. I am also aware of the things you are trying to tell me and I sincerely want to thank you for that but I am sure that the kid we are talking about in here knows the differences in virtual and real life paradigms so you don't have to worry. Aside from that, I maintain close communications to his parents (acting like a second parent actually cause I am a couple of years older) and am aware of his personality and tendencies that is why I chose this game to help him develop the logic and patience to understand concepts and learn to solve them independently.

 

And talking about GPU's yes I have to agree. Our kitchen computer has the Radeon 9250 in it and is still in very good working condition. It didn't even crash once (even in linux OSes). There were some issues in the drivers yes but once you installed the proprietary drivers, everything just falls into place. Even though the card has passive cooling, and the temperature in here sometimes goes waaaaaayyy up the scale, it still works fine. My mate who has the Geforce FX5500 (well, I should probably say "used to have") was very dissapointed when it literally went on fire after a couple of months of use. Now, I am planning to get a radeon HD 57xx or 58 xx series for christmas. :thumbsup:

[Vindekarr]

Yeah, well my current PC has a single thunking great Radeon 4870. No glitches in a year and a half, and I mean none. It runs a bit hot, it takes up a lot of room in the computer, and it's awefully hard to clean, but it's been so reliable and gives such power for it's price I'd recomend the Radeon models anyday. Specificaly, it's a Gigabyte branded card.

[evilneko]

Ignore the off-topic naysayers saying don't give Oblivion to a twelve year old. They don't know your cousin. You do. You think he can handle it. Go right ahead and give it to him. The worst that could happen is he doesn't like it and you're out some money. It's not like it's going to turn him into a ninja robot pirate that'll board your ship under cover of darkness, steal your booty, and find some way to kill you while still following Asimov's Three Laws! :ninja: :pirate: :devil:

 

That said, if he's going to be upgrading later anyway, what does he have now? It may well be quite sufficient. I first ran Oblivion and Fallout 3 on a HD 2600 XT (at 1440x900). Both also run quite respectably on my laptop with a 9600M GT (at 1280x800).