Just Got Oblivion, Been tweaking help would be appreciated:)

[spoleto]

Okay, so I got oblivion today after running a test on some website to see if I can run the game, these were my results.

CPU
Minimum: Pentium 4 or Athlon XP or better
You Have: 2 processors running - Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz
PASS

CPU Speed
Minimum: 2 GHz
You Have: 2.79 GHz Performance Rated at 5.03 GHz
PASS

System RAM
Minimum: 512 MB
You Have: 510.5 MB
PASS

Operating System
Minimum: Windows 2000/XP/XP 64-bit
You Have: Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
PASS

Video Card
Minimum: 128MB Direct3D compatible video card (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700+ / ATI Radeon 9500+)
You Have: RADEON 9550 (ATI display adapter AGP (0x4153))
PASS

Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 128 MB , You have - 256.0 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 2.0 , You have - 2.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 2.0 , You have - 2.0

Video Card Driver Version (DirectX)
Your driver version number is: 6.14.10.6561
FYI: Make sure you have the latest driver for your video card. Click 'Free Driver Update' and we'll direct you to your video card manufacturer.
DirectX Version
Minimum: DirectX 9.0c (included on disk)
You Have: 9.0c
PASS

Sound Card
Minimum: Yes
You Have: Unimodem Full-Duplex Audio Device
PASS
Sound Card Driver Version
Your driver version number is: 5.1.2535.0

Free Disk Space
Minimum: 4.6 GB
You Have: 119.4 GB
PASS

DVD
Minimum: 8X DVD-Rom
You Have: PHILIPS DVDR1660P1


Okay so I passed in everything, albiet only by the tiniest bit in the RAM, and when playing the game with all the .ini settings tweaked for better performance but no recognizable loss of quality texture sizes set to medium, water reflections and ripples on and everything generally set to a low but acceptable level, certain things like view distance are still set to full because I hate the fog that appears if its anything below full.

Im playing in the lowest resolution - the one below 800x600 Ive forgotten what it is and it still looks nice, the draw distances are a bit annoying because I see bushes and grass appear only a small distance away from me, but I can put up with it.

Using the console fps display command I see that I get about 18 to 16 fps outside, normally I would think that this causes the game to be very choppy but it seems to be running bearably with hardly any lag or stuttering and more.. slower movements I suppose, it doesnt feel quite right, im just wondering what in my system is accounting for the low fps, my graphics card is not very good but it passes by a fair bit, and my processer passes by a long way, RAM needs upgrading but im wondering if upgrading my RAM to a Gig or maybe 1.5 Gig would significantly improve frame rate or if a new Graphics Card would be needed? ( not really possible because Ive just upgraded and I use AGP - expensive... )

Any mods or patches that help would be a good suggestion but there are so many im stuck on that front too, oldblivion looks intresting but I have to ask, how much of a graphical quality loss is there, I want to be able to look out over a big hill and see trees in the distance and amazing water effects and if oldblivion disables these then im not sure i will consider that option.

Sorry for the really long post but I need some experienced people to answer this, thanks in advance.

- Liam

 

[NumenorLord]

I'm going to take a stab at it and say both your Ram and GPU. Your GPU is old, and Oblivion is horribly demanding graphically. It's not coded as well as Half-Life 2 for example, so it's more taxing on hardware. You have an old gpu, so I'd suggest getting an ATI X850 or even an NVidia 7800 GS (~$140 and ~$205 respectively) and getting another 512 MB or even 1 GB of Ram, and you will see an amazing increase in performance, guaranteed.