Questions I have to ask before I start!

[PurpleOblivion]

I’m new to PC gaming and definitely new to the mods thing, BUT… I played the hell out of Oblivion on the 360 and now miss it so much that I want to experience it on the PC side of things :{D

 

These are my big questions for this particular forum:

 

1.) Based on these specs:

 

Windows 7 Ultimate

AMD Phenom 9150e Quad-Core Processor 1.80 GHz

4 GB Ram

64-bit

NVIDIA GeForce 9300 GE

 

…Will I be able to run Oblivion?

 

…How about on Ultra settings, vanilla?

 

…How about the latest of those high-end graphics update mods?

 

2.) I’ve heard that Oblivion has issues with Windows 7. Now, I’ve heard that the solution is installing Oblivion to the D-disk, not the C-disk. Is this true? Not anymore…?

 

Thank you if you can help out a nooby nooberton such as miself :{D

[DoctorKaizeld]

1) yes, i have slightly lower specs and run the game on high with no difficulty... though ultra i get slower load times but as the game doesnt look all that much different on my PC i didnt care.

 

2) no idea but yeah it has issues with 7. works fine for me on 8.1 though.

[PurpleOblivion]

1) yes, i have slightly lower specs and run the game on high with no difficulty... though ultra i get slower load times but as the game doesnt look all that much different on my PC i didnt care.

 

2) no idea but yeah it has issues with 7. works fine for me on 8.1 though.

Yeah I saw a vid of Ultra and it wasn't that big of a difference, gwaha. Thank you for the answer! I was worried my computer couldn't do jack

 

Well, now just gotta wait for an answer on the Windows 7 thing. I've heard some people getting it to work flawlessly, so maybe they can pop in and comment :{3

[Striker879]

The recommended install location for all Windows versions later than WinXP is C:\Games (or if you have more than one physical disk then similar on that disk ... e.g. D:\Games). What you are looking to do is to keep the game out of any possible protected locations such as C:\Program Files (x86).

 

If you use the Steam version of the game this means installing Steam in C:\Games or similar.

 

- Edit - CPU wise you are at the lower end for the game. It can't use multiple cores like modern games so you'll be limited to a single core and speed is this game's friend. Without things like the 4GB Patch the game won't utilize more than slightly less than 2GB RAM (but with only 4GB total you won't get it to use the full 4GB even with the patch ... Windows and those unavoidable background processes will chew up a good chunk).

Edited June 27, 2016 by Striker879

[PurpleOblivion]

The recommended install location for all Windows versions later than WinXP is C:\Games (or if you have more than one physical disk then similar on that disk ... e.g. D:\Games). What you are looking to do is to keep the game out of any possible protected locations such as C:\Program Files (x86).

 

If you use the Steam version of the game this means installing Steam in C:\Games or similar.

 

- Edit - CPU wise you are at the lower end for the game. It can't use multiple cores like modern games so you'll be limited to a single core and speed is this game's friend. Without things like the 4GB Patch the game won't utilize more than slightly less than 2GB RAM (but with only 4GB total you won't get it to use the full 4GB even with the patch ... Windows and those unavoidable background processes will chew up a good chunk).

 

I do have the steam version, the Deluxe one. The steam summer sale was going on, heh

 

So I should install it to the C drive, not the D. In the Games folder. Gotcha :{o

 

Sorry for not being familiar with these terms, but are you saying that my computer should handle it fine (like the person above said) or it's not fast enough? If so, is there something on amazon I could get to help speed it up?

 

Like I said I'm a huge noober, so thank you for any patience you can give me xD

[Striker879]

The game prefers a fast CPU ... I run on an old Core2 Duo 3.0GHz. Your CPU speed will limit what the game can handle from mods.

 

From what I can see on nVidia's site it looks like your graphics is a chipset intergrated on the motherboard (I'm guessing you are on a laptop). Those sort of graphics solutions always come with compromises (generally they use your RAM rather than dedicated graphics VRAM, stealing available RAM from the CPU for non-grahics use).

 

You'll also more than likely have an on-board sound solution, further robbing RAM for sound processing.

 

My advice is start without mods to get a good feel for your baseline performance and then add mods slowly (i.e. one at a time) and test thoroughly between mods so you have a good idea on how each affects your performance.

 

If you have an second hard drive then by all means install on that hard drive (e.g. D:\Games). It will help a bit with performance as you won't be asking one hard drive (C drive) to do two or more things at the same time (run the operating system, run your background tasks and run the game). If it isn't a second physical drive (i.e. it is only a partition on the same physical drive as C drive) then there will be little or no dfference between C drive and D drive so C:\Games would be the way to go.

[PurpleOblivion]

The game prefers a fast CPU ... I run on an old Core2 Duo 3.0GHz. Your CPU speed will limit what the game can handle from mods.

 

From what I can see on nVidia's site it looks like your graphics is a chipset intergrated on the motherboard (I'm guessing you are on a laptop). Those sort of graphics solutions always come with compromises (generally they use your RAM rather than dedicated graphics VRAM, stealing available RAM from the CPU for non-grahics use).

 

You'll also more than likely have an on-board sound solution, further robbing RAM for sound processing.

 

My advice is start without mods to get a good feel for your baseline performance and then add mods slowly (i.e. one at a time) and test thoroughly between mods so you have a good idea on how each affects your performance.

 

If you have an second hard drive then by all means install on that hard drive (e.g. D:\Games). It will help a bit with performance as you won't be asking one hard drive (C drive) to do two or more things at the same time (run the operating system, run your background tasks and run the game). If it isn't a second physical drive (i.e. it is only a partition on the same physical drive as C drive) then there will be little or no dfference between C drive and D drive so C:\Games would be the way to go.

Do you recommend a place that sells things to upgrade my CPU? owo

 

Mine is actually an HP desktop with speakers and such. I'll definitely take your advice and add one mod at a time. Probably a dumb question (but like I said I'm new), should I have that 'mod manager' or is it not necessary?

 

I see. Thank you for the help :]

[Striker879]

A lot depends on where you live for where you'd go to upgrade your hardware. I live in Canada and I always prefer to go to an actual store (as opposed to dealing over the internet). I've found that Canada Computers offers fairly reasonable prices, but more importantly that their store staff are very knowledgable.

 

If you do look into upgrading you will need to learn more about the specific motherboard that HP has used, and what CPUs it will support. Often machines built by large companies are built to meet a price point, and so sacrifices are made in which components go into the machine to meet that marketing department driven price point (I call that "design by marketing dweebs")

 

Upgrading your machine yourself can be a "learning experience", so be prepared to learn from your mistakes. It will take years of research and mistakes to begin to get focus on a moving target. I know this because upgrading my own machines is how I got started down the road of building my own desktops. Over the years I've spent a lot of money on components that gave me little return on the dollar as I learned (i.e. buying the latest and best often doesn't equate with the expected amount of better performance if all of the other components aren't equally capable of the same level of performance ... in the real world unless you have unlimited dollars to throw at a machine there will always be a bottleneck to performance).

 

Don't let me discourage you, just be aware this isn't a weekend and then you'll be done project but rather the beginning of a journey.

 

When I first started modding the game I had been building my own machines for a couple of decades but I still found myself in the same boat as anybody starting out modding ... I knew diddly squat and every bit of advice I saw was a gibberish gobbly goop of acronyms. I had absolutely no luck installing anything until I started using a mod manager (and of course like most people ... you excepted ... I wanted to see results now, not after weeks of research). I used Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) to get my feet wet.

 

The biggest downside I see to relying on a mod manager for installing mods is this ... after using one for years to install mods you'll still know squat about how to install mods. The best mod manager for Oblivion is Wrye Bash (WB) but a person really needs a good basic understanding of installing mods to use it for mod installation unless the particular mod comes with a BAIN install wizard (BAIN is the acronym for Wrye Bash's mod installer).

 

BAIN wizards walk you through all of the install options for a mod (usually big complicated mods with plenty of options to choose from). A non wizard install would just present you with a bunch of options, often with little or no info about them, and you'd need to know which to select when installing. A basic knowledge of manually installing mods would give you a foundation for interpreting the sometime sparse install instructions.

 

The worst choice for Oblivion is Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) ... which is rather ironic considering that almost all mods have a "Download with Manager" button that will require NMM to work. The reason is that NMM was designed to work with newer games, but when they rolled it out they enabled the "Download with Manager" for all mods without any concern as to whether NMM would actually work on that particular mod or not. Most Oblivion mods haven't been updated in years and predate the earliest version of NMM. Yes NMM will work for many relatively simple Oblivion mods, but generally those mods could be easily installed with a simple extract/copy/paste that takes far longer to describe that to do.

 

Hope you are comfortable with reading ... I do have a "verbose" side at times.

Edited June 28, 2016 by Striker879

[zdswulyx]

Funny, on my side I could never manage to use one of this automatic mod installation tools. It always seem they miss something, so I always install by hand.

[DoctorKaizeld]

 

Funny, on my side I could never manage to use one of this automatic mod installation tools. It always seem they miss something, so I always install by hand.

NMM has a great Dev team and have made a very good tool for modding. even MO is good from what i hear but i have no wish to switch to it as NMM is good enough for me and they both have mostly the same features just different layouts.

 

installing by hand though isnt a bad thing if you want to do it that way but you have to know what you're doing or you could screw up, though i assume you know what you're doing.