hi all.

welcome to Oblivion indeed.

I just now left the sewer entrance from the cell and the view is Incredible. of course my fps is about 8 and it is about 40 if I turn off the
distant view.

And I went for the eyecandy, quarls textures, better trees and stuff. better cities and unique landscapes. everything viewable when distant lods too!

I have win 7 dual core with a ati hd 4650 512 meg ram, card. I have 4 gigs of ram on my emachine, a better model than the entry level one.
in the caves in the sewer I get about 35 to 45 fps.

no real complaint except for when I enable the far distance and oh the view looks incredible. at 8 fps!


I see that Amazon has a
Sapphire Radeon HD4670 1 GB DDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card 100296HDMI by Sapphire
Buy new: $96.99 $71.99
12 new from $71.99
and that there are a few more others, a little bit more expensive.

XFX Radeon HD 5750 1GB DDR5 PCIE Graphics Card HD575XZNFC by XFX
Buy new: $139.99 $134.99

---and others with a GIG of ram, either ddr2 or ddr3 or even ddr 5.


looks like I might could use a one gig ram videocard, but for everything else on my computer the 4650 works fine and at the 350 watt power supply to boot and I read that this card was made for such power supplies!

would it be worth the cost of the $71 for the 4670 plus another PSU of about $80?

or would the cpu limit me, really.
i have about over 100 mods big and small, no overhauls though.

could anyone actually RECOMMEND a ati card that is under about $120?

thanks....freestone

Well, um.. no graphics card is that cheep really, I know my graphics card is like 600 dollars, it runs everything great, but if you can ever afford it, get the ATI firepro V9800 professional graphics card, it may be 12 hundred dollars but it'd well worth it, I've used one before, but then again I do computer modeling and graphics and animation in my spare time.. so yeah save some money and buy a decent one that you may have to replace soon, or pay a lot and get one that will last you a LOONNGG time

Freestone - with a 350 Watt PSU your really not going to find much better performance that what you have right now -- so to upgrade would require a new PSU as well -- For a budget buy what I'd recommend right now would be at minimum a 5770 (a 5850 would be a better choixe but is quite a bit over your budget and a 5770 should get you decent performance depending on the resolution of your monitor (if around 1680x1050 or under it should be fine) -- the best deal right now would be :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102873 combined with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817101044 (assuming you have a free 5.25" drive bay to place the PSU into)

The e-power PSU is not the best thing but for the $20 price it will be more than enough to run the 5770 video card (since they only use about 110W under load) and you'd use the existing PSU to run the rest of your system so would be a good low cost alternative in your situation and easier to install than replacing your existing PSU.

THe 5770 would match up well with the rest of your system and for the final cost of $150 after the $15 MIR that combination is about the best you'll find to get you by for awhile.

The Radeon 4670 can be found here for cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102855&cm_re=radeon_4670-_-14-102-855-_-Product

The Radeon 5670 is also a low power consumption option that would probably get away on your 350W power supply:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000048%20600007779&IsNodeId=1&Description=radeon%205670&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

Both of these cards are actually a decent upgrade from your Radeon 4650.

What sort of CPU do you have? 350W...do you have a Dell by chance? What make and model number is your PC?

Didn't anyone want to point out the fallacy of worrying about VRAM amounts larger than 256 MBs with a 128 bit memory system? It's not the big RAM that means anything. Not at all. It's GPU core speed, RAM speed, memory bandwidth, and shader unit count that shows what performance to expect.


LL

The cPU would actually be a good thing to find out. Don't want to get a video card that'll just be held back by a slow processor.

[sorry double post..

Just to add my two cents worth, and tig of bitties is really the person you can rely on. He has helped me numerous times

But I did go with the 9800 GT. But really you need to absolutely update your power supply. It barely handles mine at 520 Watts

Just think about it all.

Nobody's addressed the real problem here and that's you can't have all these super duper graphics mods on budget cards. It's not happening. All those mods at once on even a 5670 is a bloody joke. RAEVWD, QTP3, UL and BC is a combo that will murder all but the best gpus out there. If you strip out everything apart from forts, ruins and towns from RAEVWD and drop your distantgridcount in your ini to about 10, you might get tolerable fps out in the wilderness. Better cities and sometimes UL will shave at least 50% off your average fps in those areas regardless, ESPECIALLY with texture replacers.

Unless you like a slideshow you can't have ultra pretty and ultra cheap at the same time when it comes to Oblivion, no sir-ee.

Have to agree 100% on this one. I have a 5670. I run QTP3 (redimized), UL and RAEVWD. I get great frame rates, even outside thanks to lots and lots of tweaking. BUT throw in BC and it KILLS it...DEAD. Just not going to happen on this card, and for sure nothing below it.