Question about Oblivion graphics requirements

[wharris]

I read on another thread that the Radeon 9500 is supported by Oblivion but is likely to have preformance issues, which is making me wary of buying the game. Has anyone tried to run it on this old a graphics card and if so how did it turn out? Was it playable with the graphics settings at their lowest or was the actual game performance itself poor?
The other question I have is about Oldblivion. Any idea if using this with a supported-but-slow card might improve performance? At the end of the day I'm not too bothered about the thing looks, just so long as it plays okay.

Just in case the rest of the system makes a difference, I'm running a Sempron 3000+ with 1Gb of RAM.

Thanks for any advice you might be able to give me on this.

Billy.

 

[Primitivus]

I wouldn't bother if I were you. A friend running an X700 Pro (which, though crappy, is still better than the 9500) had real trouble playing the game. He had to run it at 640x480 with all the settings low and after a while he just gave up since there was no enjoyment whatsoever to be had with those settings. It's possible that he hadn't set up the thing correctly (I haven't been around his place to check out what he did for myself), I'm just reporting what he told me.

 

[Lion]

I've used that card before upgrading to be able to play the game It's really not worth your time to play it with that card, I've now got a 6600GT I works fine, I dont have to graphics up all the way though.

 

[dhlucke]

I personally don't think the game is worth playing unless you can have the settings at a decent level. The environments are so rich and the graphics are unbelievable and if you're playing with a crappy card you're missing half the game.

 

[nottheking]

I read on another thread that the Radeon 9500 is supported by Oblivion but is likely to have preformance issues, which is making me wary of buying the game. Has anyone tried to run it on this old a graphics card and if so how did it turn out? Was it playable with the graphics settings at their lowest or was the actual game performance itself poor?
The other question I have is about Oldblivion. Any idea if using this with a supported-but-slow card might improve performance? At the end of the day I'm not too bothered about the thing looks, just so long as it plays okay.

Just in case the rest of the system makes a difference, I'm running a Sempron 3000+ with 1Gb of RAM.

Thanks for any advice you might be able to give me on this.

Billy.

You're likely referring some of my comments?

Well, personally, I wouldn't worry too much; while I do categorize it as having some performance problems, it's more of a warning that gamers might not be able to enable all the souped-up settings their used to with older, and far less demanding, games. It's not to mean that the game is only playable "in theory," if that's what you had been thinking.

I've actually seen some people use far weaker cards and get it to look decent, and play smooth enough. The worst off you could possibly be is that it would look like Morrowind. But a 9500 is better than even that, I'd think. My main recommendations would be to play at 640x480, and reduce the LOD settings. Most importantly, edit the INI file to reduce the grass density; find the variable, which will default to "80," and set it to something like 120. (yes, high numbers are LOWER, for some reason)

With just some toning down of the settings, the game can still actually look good, and be playable at the same time. The main visual "niceties," such as simply having grass, the forests, the MASSIVE view distance, (~2 miles/3.2km) the water, and many of the surface shader effects, can actually all be kept.