Im looking into a number of big mods. Qarls texture pack and raewd. I will have other wel know mods that will use my vram. I have a geforce gtx 470 1.2gb card. Will this card be enough to keep up with all the mods? I was going to add another 470 not just for oblivion but for future games. Maybe a 2gb card would be better? however its a pain as i dont fancy going with ati again and nvidia dont really make 2gb cards.

Would an SSD be a better option in regard to oblivion?

If I recall correctly, Oblivion doesn't make much use of SLI if at all, so the benefits would be from just one card. a 1.2GB card should suffice.

Having a SSD would help with loading cells much faster, and having a faster CPU (>3.0GHz) can help with keeping FPS up. Make sure you have 4GB of RAM.

Well i have a core i7 @ 3.6 6gb DDR3 memory. and a geforce GTX 4701gb.

The issue i have also is im using OBGE V2 and the shaders are reducing my performance to 15 to 20 fps. HBAO is a killer. Turn that off and im back up to around 40 to 45 fps.

So your saying with alot of mods i wont have to worry about my VRAM?

If you start loading up with high res textures, and OBGE, you can most certainly beat the crap out of your framerate. I have slightly older tech than you, and run QTP3R, RAEVWD, some of Bomret's textures, etc, and I am still above 20FPS in IC Waterfront. (I also run FCOM.....) So, depending on what you do, you can get good performance. But, go past that certain tipping point, and you performance will tank.

What do i need to do to stop it from tanking then? Is their nothing i can do with oblivion or is the engine too [censored]e?

How much of a visual drop is it from QARLS TP3 to the redimized?

I have no mods except QARLS TP3 and some shaders. Its the shaders that are killing my performance.

Their is no way i can stomach 20fps. 40 is minimum.

Then you better stay away from OBGE, and texture packs.

Is this the result of the engine? does fallout 3 suffer with these issues as much?

Fallout 3, and New Vegas both use the same engine, so, yep. The problem persists with them. Granted, the engine was updated some for FO3, not sure if there were any changes between FO3, and NV though...... For what it's worth, FO3, and NV, both run better than Oblivion on my machine.

The main problem is the games rendering engine. It renders EVERYTHING in the direction you are looking, whether you can see it or not. So, looking across town, is really gonna thump on your performance. Another issue is AI, if you have a selection of actors loaded, (in your immediate vicinity, doesn't matter if you can see them or not...) that will bog down the cpu..... the game engine is really poorly optimized.