I'm looking to get a new video card for my computer that'll run Oblivion. My computer doesn't have a PCI-E slot, though, so it has to be PCI. I am willing to spend a little on this, but my budget is pretty limited thanks to real-life issues, so I can't spend more than 100$ (canadian). I found one card that looks pretty nice, http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=39691&vpn=01G-P1-N948-LR&manufacture=eVGA, will this run Oblivion nicely? If not, what things should I be looking out for? And of cource, cheaper is better, but I AM concerned about quality here.

Thanks in advance!

If your board lacks a PCIe slot for video cards, then the graphics card will be the least of your performance concerns. A computer is only as fast as its slowest component.

I have a 2.7 ghz pentium 4 processor, and 1 gig of RAM (which can be upgraded extremely easilly).

the card mentioned is good enough to run Oblivion on medium settings. you should Try Geforce 9500 GT PCI 1GB DDR2, which is faster by a significant margin, only being about $10-15 (Canadian) more. but I suggest you to go with your current choice, you can't squeeze a LOT of power out of PCI.

Thanks for the advice. I can't seem to find the carf you mentioned though, I did a quick google search but all I found were PCI-E cards or sites that simply don't sell the card anymore.

Also, aside from it being PCI, what do I have to look out for in terms of compatability?

Edit: Oh hey, I think I http://www.retrevo.com/s/Jaton-GEFORCE-9500GT-1GB-PCI-Graphic-Cards/id/23414ci277/t/1-2/

Cheaper:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048%20600007853&IsNodeId=1&Description=9500gt%20pci&name=PCI

But as already mentioned, PCI has limited badnwidth. I doubt the 9500GT PCI would perform close to what it would with a PCI-E version. Be cautious with power requirements. I doubt a system this old would have a decent power supply

The Geforce 6200 (original, pre-"A" castration) was the last card that didn't outrun the plain PCI bus's extreme limitations. It was inadequate to run this game at an acceptable frame rate, without the post-patch "Ultra Low" graphics option.

All newer cards that still have a PCI bus interface will be no faster than the old 6200 was. There is no acceleration possible, and 33 MHz is just plain too slow for ordinary graphics purposes, let alone for games. You could have an adapter of some sort to allow an HD 5970 (world's fastest) to plug into plain PCI, and it would be choked down to Geforce 6200 frame rates.

All of the Compaq / Dell / HP / Sony junker PCs sold without any video bus have cheap power supplies, were sold with slow RAM (single data rate, likely), cheap drives, etc. everything about them was low quality.

It's a total wast of time to upgrade such crap these days. Local thrift stores here in the states have better PCs for sale for less than a plain PCI card costs, with keyboard, speakers, and mouse included, that are better able to run this game than anything like this system is could ever do.

Which is a better choice, the sparkle one, or the jaton one? Also, how can I find out about my power supply? (short of physically opening up the computer)

If you do open the case, the power supply will have a sticker on the side of it (should be visible as soon as you open it) the sticker will have the watts on it. I wouldn't imagine it having over 300w. I have a similar computer, and it has a 250w power supply.

Yeah, it's 250w

It'll probably be fine since the 9500GT is a low power consumption card, but the safer route would be to go with the 9400GT instead...newegg.ca got em too. Sparkle is the more known brand although both are not really all that great to begin with.

Here's a review from that one sparkle one:


I can't see myself playing anything more demanding than Oblivion on this PC. The price is right, too, so it looks like the only concern is the power supply. The card's details page says it requires a minimum of 350w.

As already pointed out, anything faster than a 6200 is going to be choked off by the slow bus, so why spend more than what a 6200 costs? It is an eVGA, a good brand, and is only $43.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130289

Vendors will ALWAYS overstate their power requirements for video cards to protect themselves from the tons of crappy PSUs out there. The reality is the card will draw 40-50W for itself at load.

So I should be safe with this card, even though my PSU is only 250w?

Assuming you aren't overclocking or you don't have several hard drives at once, you should be fine.

You should listen to Gorath. He is right.

You are going to waste your money if you think you can buy a PCI gfx card that will run Oblivion.
The PCI technology is simply not fast enough. Which is why we have PCIe now.
You need to upgrade your whole computer.

Save your money and get yourself a new motherboard/whole new tower that supports PCIe x16.

After you've replaced your motherboard/PC, then you can look at getting a good gfx card.

I suppose, if we put quote marks around the word RUN, like this "run", we can make it more clear. In order to play the way it was designed, it should have at least what was a Mainline card the year before it was released. That was the Radeon 9700, but not the Geforce 6600 GT (because with only 128 MBs of VRAM, it could only handle small textures). The Radeon 9600 was not a Mainline card, and should have been named "9400". The actual 9500 was older than a 9600, and the "Pro" was within the usable range. ATI wasn't fully committed to performance number naming yet, and didn't want the 9600s perceived as older than the 9500s, which were being discontinued.

The 9600 cards are where we can see individual personal sensory judgments differing widely. They were in effect "borderline" for their day, and through lowering resolutions and Image Quality, could "run" a reasonably decent frame rate. But the Vanilla 9600 was less useful by a long ways, and that's also where the Geforce 6200 was sitting back then. Some people were willing to accept the poor results theyu would get from from the 6200 and the Vanilla 9600 back then.

If the OP here is so opposed to a broad-ranged upgrade approach, the sensible thing to do would be a USED video card for the plain PCI 33 MHz system bus, something like an 8500 GT or HD 3450, for a cheaper test of how terrible plain PCI really is. I've already tried naming the less costly Geforce 6200, in my last comment to the thread, which has been ignored.

The 8400 GS isn't much of a card, either, although it has far better shader capability than the Geforce 6200, and there are several for about $60 on eBay, such as this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/EVGA-GeForce-8400-GS-PCI-Video-Card-512-P1-N724-LR-512M-/320560906517?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4aa2eb4115

I guarantee that there's NOTHING AT ALL that a 9500 can do across a 33 MHz plain PCI bus that an 8400 GS cannot do with that restrictive interface.


Gorath

Some people have their own interpretation of what "run" means as Gorath said. Some people are quite content with lower settings. So while the OP should just get a modern setup, it's not an absolute need. The 9500GT in PCI will certainly be held back by the PCI bus, but it will still provide a considerable better experience than what a Geforce 6200 would give in my eyes. Of course, I can't agree with the price hike for these PCI cards in light of that PCI bus bandwidth limitation, but sometimes $100 is better and more realistic to people than a few hundred for a better PC.

I can walk into any of a half dozen local thrift shops to find complete PCs with better components than what the OP has now for less than that $100 cost for that outrageously expensive waste of time and resources new PCI card. I looked up an 8400 GS on eBay, and there are some on there for a Buy it Now cost of less than $60, fully capable of matching any 9500, given that BOTH are above the bottleneck point beyond which no speed improvement is possible.

http://cgi.ebay.com/EVGA-GeForce-8400-GS-PCI-Video-Card-512-P1-N724-LR-512M-/320560906517?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4aa2eb4115


Gorath

CandleMaster, if I were you, I would try to find a motherboard that supports all the parts in your current computer, make sure the new motherboard has a PCI-E slot, and integrated graphics, then replace the motherboard you currently have, odds are you would have to buy some new RAM (DDR2 this time). Then later you could get a PCI-E graphics card. And until then, you could rely on the integrated graphics of the new motherboard. This is, all assuming you are willing to learn how to build it, or know somebody who can. Replacing the motherboard is practically building a new computer. This is exactly what I intend to do, this Friday. It sounds like our computers are similar, so here is a link to the motherboard I was looking at. It's not a huge upgrade, but it has a PCI-E slot and DDR2 RAM.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6433514&CatId=1533
I'm not sure if Tiger Direct ships to Canada. But if you CAN get this, then the total would be about $60 for the board, 2 gigs of RAM, and shipping. Then video cards, well, they range from any price lol.

edit: Crap, forgot you would need a new power supply. Well, I mean probably. So I would assume it would take about $90 for everything except a video card. Other than this, I would go with whatever Tig Ol Bitties says, he knows a lot more than I do!

Both AsRock and Biostar made various "in between" mainboards that were designed to bridge the technology changes from AGP to PCIe and DDR to DDR2, as well as from old 478 / 939 sockers to newer CPU sockets. Those changes were all so long ago now that the particular ones offered are no longer available new, but there is still a good supply of lightly used parts of the type.

The OP's machine was produced the way it was, because compared to PCI and even to PCIe, AGP was a very complicated video bus, and was expensive to include.

I recently built a "Loaner" PC up with an AM-2 AMD X2 and DDR2, in an MSI mainboard that still had an AGP video bus in it. When I acquired the mainboard, I wasn't particularly interested in AGP, but for the purpose, I hadn't gotten rid of all those old dinosaurs yet.


Gorath

Okay, so let's say that I get a cheap(ish) motherboard with a pci-e slot, and upgrade the power supply (my friend's got stuff like this lying around all over the place). What's a good pci-e video card that I could get for 100$ or less? Something that'll last me a few months until I can save up for a better one.

Kinda tardy, but what the heck.. :/

Keep in mind that if you want to replace your motherboard
You WILL also need:
1. A new CPU, the one you have now is likely outdated being that your board doesn't support PCIe. It won't fit on the new motherboard.
2. New RAM. Like the CPU, the ram you have now will not be compatible with your new board.

You MAY also need:
1. A new power supply. Generally speaking, you should have at least a 400W anyways. It may be more power than you need, but sometimes the power usage may spike if the computer is doing alot of stuff.
2. A new computer case. Most motherboards are the same form factor these days, but if your board is old, it may be different. It might not fit the mounting screw pattern and/or the ports on the board might not line up with the holes on the back of the case.

As for gfx card.
Let's say for a min that you did get the PCI card.
The best you could probably expect to run oblivion at is 800x600 screen size at the minimum game settings. Even so, you probably would have low framerates like 10 to 20fps.

Now if you got a PCIe gfx card. For about $80 ($50 on sale with rebate at tigerdirect.com at the time of writing this) you can get a GeForce 9800GT w/1GB DDR2 Video RAM.
With that card, you could run oblivion at 1440x900 with max game settings at 30 to 60fps (in an unmodded game).
You could add high-res texture mods and other detail enhancements and it would still do fine at high to max game settings.

I found a card. The main appeal to this card is that I can buy it from my local computer parts store, meaning no shipping fees, I could have it in my hands tomorrow morning, and my computer running with it by tomorrow afternoon. Here it is: http://otvtech.com/catalogue.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_stock.tpl&product_id=4641&category_id=353

Right now, my rl is pretty hectic. If I'm gonna buy a new system, I might as well get a decent mobo so I can upgrade it in the future to a real powerhouse. Even with basic components, that's gonna end up costing me like 500$. I don't have that kind of cash to throw around, I have rent to pay. So here I am, faced with a choice: Save up for 3 or 4 months until I have enough for a new system, (or at least the skeleton for one), or pay the 80$ for an overpriced pci card NOW, which (if it can run oblivion) will tide me over until well into next year.

Will the card I mentioned above run oblivion? Will it run it well? I don't need max setting, I don't mind using low poly grass, I don't need mega high resolution texture mods and "see everything distant" or anythign like that. If I can get a decent (20-30) fps on 1440x900*, I'll be laughing.

*Yes, I have a widescreen monitor, and that's as high as the resolution can go.