are video card prices going to stay this low?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


yeah. play this game through two or three times. I can get to, say, Rome Total War in 2010 and to Bioshock in say, 2012.

You don't need to replay the whole game to test out other paths. Just pay ffs.

[pg]

Video cards are dirt cheap lately, and it is a great time to upgrade if you haven't for a few years. There aren't many killer games for PC anymore though. My 8800 GTS is more than enough for anything still and FPS draining effects like AA, etc barely make any image quality difference. I end up running everything at lower resolutions without AA just because I can barely tell a difference and would rather run a silky smooth ~60FPS than a bit better looking choppy at times 30FPS. My monitor supports up to 1920*1200(24" LCD) but the truth is, in newer games like Fallout 3 I use stuff like 1440*900 and it looks stellar.

[El_Cid]

I think i need an upgrade. My Morrowind game still struggles on my 7600GT - it is an uber Morrowind mind you , but i think the silent 9600GT might give me the kind of boost I would like. if it gets me a nice round 20-30 fps on modded Morrowind i would be very happy, note that sounds very low by fps standards but morrowind has a weird engine!!! and looks ok around the 20fps mark(as does Oblivion).

On the 7600GT i get around 12-40ish outside, lower in towns etc and in some places(near peligiad) it can drop to a slideshow 8 fps!!! for a short while!!!! Overall it's ok, but the 9600GT should smooth it out good.

A 'late xmas' present for myself i think.

[DrSpike]

That's just the gaming gods' way of telling you not to play Morrowind.

[Unimatrix11]

Did i not hear Snoopy say once, that Morrowind and Civ4 actually use the same engine (which totally surprised me) ?

[snoopy369]

Both use Gamebryo, yes.

7600GT is more than enough for Morrowind (it's well above the best card available when Morrowind came out, which would have been a 6xxx series card IIRC), so I wouldn't suggest that an upgrade there is your best bet. You probably have some other limitation.

[Unimatrix11]

No, Snoopy, he uses a mod, which probably uses higher quality textures and what now... So the system requirements are not that of the original Morrowind at all for him.

[snoopy369]

Hmmmmm, I guess if it has super-huge textures then it could be a limit, probably more on the memory size than on video processor, though.

[El_Cid]

Amd64 3700(2.2Ghz)
2 GB of 3200 SDRAM(opperates at the fastest bus speed my motherboard can take - 500mhz? i think?)
Gigabyte 7600GT 128MB - i overclock it a little(560 to 565 and 500 to 520 via the gigabyte utility) not too much stress.

My current build of Morrowind runs to 240 addons/mods(esm and esp's). Plus I've used quite a few texture replacers, not the highest overall quality ones, but decent stuff(Quarls XT/nature ones etc). And sound enhancers etc.
The whole build has come from over 4 years of experience, trying stuff, getting rid of stuff etc.
So i run lots of stuff that adds scripts to add realism and life and content(Quests and items etc). It IS a monster build.

I also run the FPS optimizer(1.96 - there is a newer but not so compatible version)) program and have my view distance set to one step back from maximum(maximum being twice what normal Morrowind can manage). So it all looks very sweet, plays awesome but doesnt fly smoothly all of the time, most of the time it's fine, but when it's bad it's pretty bad - worse than i aim for anyway.

Then Oblivion didn't fly unless you had a top of the range(loud!) graphics card to push it. the 7600GT was seen as a middle range card for that game when it came out and i got an average 18fps.

My MW build is stable.....kind of, as soon as you start adding mods to a bethesda game....well they are kind of funky out of the box, so yeah the odd crash does happen, but not much more than 'normal' morrowind

128MB on the graphics card is pretty poor, but that was the only passive cooled 7600GT at the time. And I suspect due to my general acceptable frame rates it's enough for Morrowind.

I know that 128MB for playing Oblivion(shudder! sooo glad i sold it!) with the enhanced textures wasn't enough, but that was Oblivion and i could live wihtout the 256Mb required textures! I dont think Morrowind has any texture packs that require that kind of hardware. but for sure more memmory helps!

But I have a feeling more speed(in the card) might lift it all up to a nice constant +24fps?(in the normaly 'sticky' bits that can bottom out at 8-9 fps!!). That would be very playable in morrowind.

Fps in MW and Oblivion isnt like for a normal quake type game fps where if your not hitting +60fps you die all the time etc! So yeah an upgrade from my silent 7600GT to a silent 9600GT might do the trick.

Just dont ask me to play with less mods!!!!

[lord of the mark]

for anyone curious about my Deus ex playthrough, i finally reached Hong Kong and am almost out of the Majestic helibase.

[El_Cid]

Hey!!! get back to your thread about Dues Ex!!!!! You made one for it, and it's not that far away!!........thread jacker!!!

[DrSpike]

He's scared to post there in case I accuse him of thinking too much and not enjoying the game enough. But I am here too.