Hello everybody,

First, sorry for my english, i'll try to be understandable.
So, I want to change some components from my current configuration :

ASUS P5QL Pro
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3,17Ghz (maybe, i'll overclock if it's necessary, according to you)
4GB Kingston
ATI Radeon HD 4890 1GB
Asus Monitor 27" Full HD 1920x1080

What would you recommend to change ? I want to install a bunch of mods, like QTP3, RAEWD, Unique Landscape, OBGE, Better Cities, FCOM, etc...

I thought to buy a new graphic card, ATI Radeon 6970 or GTX 570, what do you think ? Or must I buy a new CPU ? I don't think so, because I see that oblivion doesn't manage very good multi-cores.

Thanks for your opinion !

Invest in more RAM, a modded Oblivion will eat almost 3 Gb by itself.

Really ? Will 6GB be enough ?

others opinions, please ?

QFT..Oblivion modded to the Max is a beast. Here is screen showing Oblivion.exe using http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/Oblivion2_5hours02.jpg Thats just the Oblivion exe!

Using a quad core here and the System splits the load across Multi threads. I know, everyone says Oblivion don't play with multi core . if your system is set up properly it can spread the workload. http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee72/camaro_69_327/2010%20Oblivion/Oblivion2hourscores.jpg.

I can recommend the 560TI cause I love mine.(570 would be that much better)

When I had BIOS set to throttle my CPU the system didn't think Oblivion was enough of a load and would remain low speed..1.8ghz...Had to Lock speed at 3.0 for the CPU.

Edit: this is an FCOM+++(233 mods loading) :wink_smile:

Ok, I'll buy 2GB Ram and the graphic card 570 GTX and i'll overclock my cpu.

No, not unless he adds the Large Address Aware flag to the exe. Oblivion is a 32 bit program, and as such can only use up to 2 gig max by default. So his current RAM is fine. And that flag only works if he's running Oblivion using a 64 bit OS.

There's no need to overclock your CPU, what you have now is fine. So is your RAM, for the reasons I've already mentioned. The only thing you might want to consider is that video card, and even then you may not get any better performance than you are now. Oblivion's engine isn't very well optimized, and throwing more powerful gear at it may not result in improved performance. Many people have noted on the forums that their performance levels peak after a certain point and don't improve with more powerful gear. If you're not already at that point yet, you're close to it.

Yeah, I agree with Belanos. A more powerful videocard may net you a little performance increase, but it won't be substantial. Instead, focus on game resource changes. Specifically, try running PyFFI through all the meshes you install. That will give nice performance boost.
You could also look at not running a lot of high resolution texture replacers. As that videoRAM fills up, performance will decrease. You could try overclocking your videocard to gain some performance without costing any money. Overclock your CPU too. Just some free options to increase performance.

Just keep in mind that overclocking computer components puts more of a strain on them, so you take the risk of burning them out sooner. If you overclock them too much, you'll burn them out very quickly. I personally would never recommend that anyone overclock any part of their system, the extra performance just doesn't justify the risk you take with your equipment IMO. I bought a video card awhile ago that was overclocked by the manufacturer and I was running into numerous instances of it overheating and crashing before I managed to reset it to it's defaults. I've rarely had a problem with over-heating since then.

If you're using a 64 bit OS, investing in the extra RAM will be a godsend and will make the difference between a crash happy mod heavy game and a smooth, stable, mod heavy game. Provided you use the Large Address Aware flag.

If you don't have a 64 bit OS, then frankly there's nothing you could do to boost Oblivion's performance with hardware upgrades. Your hardware is already well past the point of diminishing returns.

Unless you want to invest in a video card with 2GB on board, which will help with your grand plans to use QTP3

Also, I'd personally recommend the 6970 card. It's performance is equal to that of nVidia's highest end card and costs nearly $200 less. You can't go wrong there.

Check this thread for all the details: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1176244-oblivion-and-memory-usage

It shows nothing of the sort. All that shows is that something is using those cores, not necessarily that it's Oblivion. The game was coded to make use of no more than 2 cores at the most, and even then it does so very poorly. If you're seeing activity on 4 cores, it's not because of Oblivion but because of your OS and some other background processes you have running.

It appears as though Camero's CPU is investing two cores into whatever "Distance to TJ Max" is, and several unidentified background processes. Oblivion would have whatever cores it was using pegged near 100% which I don't see indicated. Whatever is above those two TJ Max cores is doing something too but we don't know what.

Also, there's a difference between multi-threading and multi-core which is significant. Single core CPUs are still capable of handling multiple threads. If they weren't, Windows would be non-functional.

I just looked it up on Google and it looks like it might be a utility that monitors his CPU temperatures so he doesn't overheat due to overclocking:

http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/476469-truth-about-temperatures-voltages.html