Any suggestions? (Oblivion)

[trenchtoaster]

Yeah, I know i shouldnt have, but I bought a Geforce FX 5500, it was only 50 bucks or something cheap, and had 256mb of memory. It looked good in my eyes, and played world of warcraft fine.

Okay, I only have an AMD 2000+ processor, 1280 ram, and the fx 5500. I plan to upgrade when Vanguard launches, but I expected to be able to at least play Oblivion.

Is it worth buying a new video card now? I planned on getting a new motherboard with PCI express, or waiting for Direct X 10 cards to come out. Right now I really don't think I should drop all the money I have on a completely new system, I owe money on loans and I am supposed to be buying a car, but damn I really want to play oblivion.

What card should I get now that will hold me over for another year or so until I can afford a pci express, direct x 10 card when they launch? I really would rather not spend more than 300 dollars on a card that I will replacing soon anyway.

Any opinions are welcome, I suck at making decisions.

 

[cleeve]

Oblivion?

Wait and see the benchmarks. I'd bet the least you'd want is an X800 GTO/6800 GS.

 

[raven_87]

AGP 6800GS. NV40 based and usually a high 16x1 unlock rate.
Oblivion supports SM 3.0, and suprisingly it doesnt exact the large preformance hit I thought it would. I've now personally seen the game
on 2 systems. This latest one was a Winnie 3500+,6800GT 1GB DDR400.

Game looks great, and I cant wait to get my copy.

 

[trenchtoaster]

Okay thanks alot, I really don't know too much about video card selection, although I have been reading alot about the topic lately.

My only real guidelines are-

-AGP card
-Under 300 dollars hopefully
-It will be able to play oblivion with a decent resolution and draw distance (I feel bad playing a new game that looks worse than morrowind did)
-Lasts a decent amount of time, hopefully being able to play some third generation mmorpgs (namely vanguard)

I am still not too clear on the meaning of 3Dmark scores, I realize higher numbers are better but if you could point me out to a specific card then that would be awesome, I am twitching to play as soon as possible haha =)

 

[Ralkthor]

Well, fortunatelly your options sort of top out,more or less, at the $300 range with the 7800GS. There are more options in the 6 serires that offer much more attractive price points. You can get a 6800GS for under $200 and a 6600GT for under $150.

While there are also numerous options from ATI I would make sure to take into consideration their lack of SM3 spport. Many of the newest games are making use of SM3.

 

[trenchtoaster]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150126

How about that? I noticed there were a bunch of versions of the 6800 GS, but that one looked okay to my untrained eye, and had a 20 dollar instant savings. XFX is the brand of my current card, so I figured I might as well stick with it- does anyone have a problem with the brand or does it not matter?

 

[chief5286]

If your only goal is to play Oblivion AND you will be doing a major upgrade soon, you might want to consider a 6600gt. The 6800gs is a good choice, but if you rally want to save $ the 6600gt will work fine for around $100. I've been plaing Oblivion at 10x7 medium with 2aa. There's an occasional slowdown when carrying the torch, but nothing too bad.

BTW, this is the first i've gotten a game on its release date since Mortal Kombat II for the SNES. Last pc copy...yea!

 

[trenchtoaster]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130220
evga geforce 6600gt 128mb 128-bit for 139$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814143045
bfg geforce 6800gs 256mb 256-bit for 219$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102608
sapphire Radeon X800GTO 256MB 256-bit for 175$

Those are what I found so far. The 6600gt is only 128mb with a 128 bit memory interface, so I dont know how much of an upgrade that would be. I would rather be able to keep the card I order for a year+ if possible.