slu77er Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 Im running Oblivion on an Acer Veriton 5600GT with Intel Pent.4 3MHz CPU and 3GB PC3200/DDR 400 SDRAM. At present I have an ATI Radeon 9600 Graphics card and am looking for the right card to upgrade to, to enhance Oblivion game play in particular.I currently run the game with most settings in the high/full zone (no shadows) and I get pretty good performance. I notice a little lag in densely populated and heavy foliage areas but it is negligible. Q1. I do not know how to tell what my fps rate is, where do I find that?Q2. If my mobo only supports DDR ram, do I need a DDR graphics card or will other (e.g. DDR2) formats work?Q3. How else can I tweak my system (not game settings) other than upgrading hardware to give better gameplay performance in general? * I'm not complaining about my system, for what it has cost me all up I am very pleased BUT I would like to take it to it's performance peak if I can. Thanks for all constructive input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRG Posted April 15, 2008 Share Posted April 15, 2008 1) There are a few different programs that you can use to tell you what your ingame FPS are. One is FRAPS. http://www.fraps.com/ - Simply have it running when you start Oblivion. Another way is to use the console to find out hat your FPS are ingame. To do this type TDT to turn on the counter & then TDT to turn it off. 2) You can use a video card that has DDR2 or DDR3 in your motherboard. The DDR you are talking about is only for your system RAM. 3) Not sure all that you have done, but of course do the common check list first. Such as, A) Update all drivers, B) Defrag your hard drive, C) Remove excess programs on your HDD, as more space=slightly better performance (in some cases), D) Overclock your video card & CPU, but ONLY if you know what you are doing, E) Reinstall WindowsXP or Vista if over 6 months old. Oblivion Tweak Guidehttp://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html -MRG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damstachizz Posted April 16, 2008 Share Posted April 16, 2008 As above, but i would recommend overclocking the CPU a little bit..there are guides on the internet, but if you don't want to risk killing your system too quickly, only increase the CPU to like 3.2ghz.. don't reinstall vista if over 6 months, just delete all the programs you don't use and run CCleaner AND Privacy Mantra. Q1) the easiest way is to type tdt into the console.Q2) almost all graphics cards use DDR, so don't even worry about that.Q3) as above, but as a last minute add-on, when playing oblivion and while NOT connected to the internet, try disabling any Anti-Virus and or Anti-Spyware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu77er Posted April 17, 2008 Author Share Posted April 17, 2008 OK, so now I'm studying up on overclocking, looks like I have a lot to read... At least I don't have to limit myself too much now re. graphics, and the fps via consol is just what I was looking for, thanks. Simple advice is the bset... :thanks: :thumbsup: gone readin'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damstachizz Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 forgot to say,add another gig of ram so it runs in dual channel ;) if you can afford it, get a cheap ASrock (Asus' budget brand ;) ) mobo and upgrade to 2gb of DDR2.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu77er Posted April 17, 2008 Author Share Posted April 17, 2008 I have just added the 3rd G of ddr and will have the 4th and last in a week or two. That takes care of RAM for the mo. Next will be gfx & so on & so on. I plan on maxxxxing this board first and then going up the cost ladder (if necessary) when I'm more sure of exactly what I want and how to go about it. Thanks for the tip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MRG Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 if you can afford it, get a cheap ASrock (Asus' budget brand ;) ) mobo and upgrade to 2gb of DDR2.. I fully support the above quote. Since I am a married man, i'm of course poor. So 2 years ago, I bought an ASRock 775Dual-VSTA motherboard to use with my E6400 OC to 2.41GHz, 2GB DDR2-667, Audigy2 ZS & an old AGP 6800 Ultra. The motherboard was around $54 at the time. While it does not need to be said that the motherboard is obviously a cheap board cost wise, I must mention that it has provided me with excellent performance vs cost & has been dependable, with not a single problem since I bought it on Newegg. It also has very good onboard HD audio for those that are on a budget & so don't have a quality dedicated sound card to use instead. I installed a friends 7900 to see how the performance was with the motherboards 4x PCI-e slot. All in all, not bad. Better than my 6800 Ultra. I recommend ASRock. -MRG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karasuman Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 There's some fairly inexpensive cards out there that will run Oblivion very nicely if you're ever interested in upgrading. I like these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814129101 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814133216 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130318 The 8800GT is in my opinion the finest price-performance card that's ever existed. What that card can do at $200 is ridiculous. It's as good as the 8800GTS 640MB in many tests for a fraction of the cost. WIthout upgrading, overclocking your video card will probably give you the best overall performance boost of anything. There are utilities like ATI Tool and Rivatuner that will advise you on how to overclock your card without frying it. You may try one of those. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slu77er Posted April 18, 2008 Author Share Posted April 18, 2008 Thanks for the links but my mobo don't support PCI-e. I've been searching for the best AGP8X card and was leaning towards ATI X1600/1650 PRO with their 12 pixel pipelines as opposed to others with 4 & 8. That was until MRG stated ^^^ that I am not limited to a DDR GFX card. The search continues... I would be interested to hear any opinions/educated guesses on what difference the ATI 1600's might make to my system... Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkWarrior45 Posted April 18, 2008 Share Posted April 18, 2008 Thanks for the links but my mobo don't support PCI-e. I've been searching for the best AGP8X card and was leaning towards ATI X1600/1650 PRO with their 12 pixel pipelines as opposed to others with 4 & 8. That was until MRG stated ^^^ that I am not limited to a DDR GFX card. The search continues... I would be interested to hear any opinions/educated guesses on what difference the ATI 1600's might make to my system... Thanks again. For an AGP system, ATi is the way to go The Radeon 3850 for a AGP will give you fully up to date, DX10 graphics on your AGP system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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