The Oblivion Hardware Thread...

[Dinner]

Asher, what happened to never going to poly again? Admit it. You can't escape.

[bonscott]

Good power supply. Mine is already 430w so I should be ok there. The biggest concern I have is the x800 is a pretty long card and I may need to relocate a hard drive to get it to fit (have a large case though). We'll see. Might be an excuse to actually clean the inside and get the dust bunnies out of there.

[snoopy369]

Yes, never buy in-store at the above named stores unless you're buying something on a REALLY GOOD sale, and even then check the online prices first

Spaced, I'm sure either card will do very well for you. My x800GTO is very nice I can run Oblivion on highest everything and not break a sweat...

On the other hand, Oblivion is a much nicer looking game in HDR. It looks nicer on the x1300 than on the x800GTO. But for any OTHER game, the x800GTO is better

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by bonscott
Good power supply. Mine is already 430w so I should be ok there. The biggest concern I have is the x800 is a pretty long card and I may need to relocate a hard drive to get it to fit (have a large case though). We'll see. Might be an excuse to actually clean the inside and get the dust bunnies out of there.

If you got the GTO, then I think it's a double wide card as well, so clear out that PCI card slot immediately below the AGP. The Sapphire card isn't TOO long, you still have maybe 3" between it and the edge of a standard ATX motherboard. Even in my fairly small case, there's still room between it and the HDDs ... but i guess that depends on your layout.

[Dinner]

Ugh, my system is now pushing 4 years old so there is no way I can run oblivion. I guess I will have to wait 9 months until Vista comes out then buy a new one.

I must say I'm tempted to buy an X-box 360 especially if I could find a good deal on a plasma HD TV.

[Spaced Cowboy]

My mobo has an SIS chipset and apparently there is an incompatiblity problem with nvidia products, specifically the 7800GS and possibly others. I'd rather stay with the ATI stuff for now, even though my preference would be the 7800GS if I knew it would work

Snoopy,

Yes this card is not only for oblivion, but for other games in the next 12-18 months or so. I not so concerned about look as I am about performance, so you answered my question.

And you are right, I don't think that SM2.0 will be a problem for now.

Yes senior bonscott, I wish to see screenies, but more important, you opinion of the performance boost on Oblivion (and other stuff you might have handy).

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Ugh, my system is now pushing 4 years old so there is no way I can run oblivion. I guess I will have to wait 9 months until Vista comes out then buy a new one.

I must say I'm tempted to buy an X-box 360 especially if I could find a good deal on a plasma HD TV.

You'd be surprised. My GFs was a 2002 build (homebuild) as well, and just adding an x1300 AGP took it from not running oblivion to running it beautifully even on high settings.

P4 2.4ghz (800mhz fsb), 1gb ram (pc2700 or thereabouts) w/a x1300 AGP 256mb card ($100 or so)

[bonscott]

Originally posted by snoopy369


If you got the GTO, then I think it's a double wide card as well, so clear out that PCI card slot immediately below the AGP. The Sapphire card isn't TOO long, you still have maybe 3" between it and the edge of a standard ATX motherboard. Even in my fairly small case, there's still room between it and the HDDs ... but i guess that depends on your layout.

Yea, I don't expect too much trouble. Nice thing is I don't even have any PCI cards in there. Both sound and ethernet are onboard. I was actually a little concerned about that when I first got the mobo but the sound has actually been just fine, at least to my ears.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Ugh, my system is now pushing 4 years old so there is no way I can run oblivion. I guess I will have to wait 9 months until Vista comes out then buy a new one.

No need to wait on Vista in my book. Honestly, Vista will bring nothing more to the OS then is already in XP. Many in the industry are already saying as much. And you can upgrade later if you so choose but I would never get a Windows OS until at least the first service pack anyway which would probably be 2008 at this point.

[El_Cid]

Ref peoples power supplies, i've been told that its often not always the overall Watts rating that will determine if you are going to have enough juice to run all these more powerfull graphics cards etc that oblivion seems to like most.
A poor quality 450W might be less suitable than a better quality 350W for example.

I had to do a bit of digging around for this info but not only do you need to know the overall Watts but you need to take into account the Amps output on each +12v rail(this info can be found on the website of your powersupplier).

I knew nothing about this untill recently when building a new pc and decided to go for an Antec case with a 450W PSU with 15amps on the first +12v rail, and 17amps on the second +12v rail.
You take these two Amp ratings and add them up(32 in this case).
From looking at many forums(both Oblivion and tech related) you idealy want to be above 24-25amps for less problems related to graphics card power usage.

This was all new to me and made me go for the 450W psu over the 350W i had been looking at(also by Antec), as it gave me a bigger buffer zone to the 24-25amp mark people seemed to be recomending.

[yin26]

Glad I went with Antec, then.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Asher, what happened to never going to poly again? Admit it. You can't escape.

I meant the OTF.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Quillan
Spaced, SM3.0 isn't terribly important right now. However, there are already games out there that use it. More games will be coming out within the next couple of years that use it. Oblivion is the first game that I know of that requires SM2.0, so I expect it will still be 3-4 years before any game requires SM3.0. I do expect that over the next 2 years SM3.0 will become much more important, as it has certain performance enhancements over 2.0.

I am curious though, you said your motherboard won't take nVidia. Why is that?

SM3.0 will become popular very shortly, considering that PS3 and Xbox 360 games will use SM3.0 and many of them see PC ports.

[Asher]

Yeah, powersupplies are the part where you don't want to skimp. Brand names are key.

[bonscott]

It's been delivered! According to UPS package tracker anyway. I get out of work in an hour then off to home to take apart my computer. Hopefully I'll have some screenshots and opinion later tonight. But there is a Red Wings game on tonight which may delay that until tomorrow.