7900GTX is an old card now. If you want another GeForce the 8600GTS will do. You didn't mention your power supply though, so I can only hope that it's adequate enough.

The CPU you have is rather weak. There is the 512MB 8800GT, but that CPU would be a major bottleneck. The 8600GTS is more suitable for it.

Hmm, allright, I got it in 2006 so I guess it has had it's best time.
Well, the power suply is kind of the prob at the moment, playing Oblivion at medium settings has kind of been bad , so I'm going to replace it, bu tI have no idea of what they are going to put into it now.

Weak CPU? Hmm, that's a suprise.
Well, there is a second core slot, so I could make it a double core I gues.
Would that help allot?

The 8600Gts does sound lovely.
I'll look into it some more.

Ok, so I did some price checking on the net and just got back from the largest/cheapest electronics store in town.
Here's what they've got that seamed reasonable on the list:

GeForce 8600GT ?129-Dx10-256MB Gddr3-
Radeon HD2600XT ?109-Ati Chipset-256MB Gddr3-
GeForce 8600GTS ?165 Dx 9-256MB Ddr2 (Available for around 150 on the Internet so that seamed fare)

The 8800Gt would be around 230 euro's on the net.

So, the GF 8600GT would seam to be the best choice from the shop.
I thought it was odd that the GTS didn't have Gddr3 and Direct X 10 compatibility...
But I am wondering, how much will the switch from a 512Mb card to a 256 card be noticeable?
Should I rather look for the 512 version?
In that case a website might offer better service.

The power supply is a power unit box what powers your PC. You have to open up your case to find out what it is. Your statement on it is rather confusing...no one is going to put in anything unless you replace it. Open up your case and find out about your PSU. There's a sticker on it and you need to find out:

-brand name & model #
-amperage for +12V rail...may be more than one, so write them all down.
-wattage...this isn't everything.

The CPU is based on Netburst technology. It's made obsolete by many of today's chips (Core 2 Duo). Even when that chip was new, the technology itself was rather poor compared to the AMD Athlons at the time. You don't have a second core slot and I really am unsure by what you mean by that. This is your motherboard:
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=24&model=632&modelmenu=1
It only supports Pentium 4 CPUs and I feel it to be pointless to upgrade the CPU on this board because it's not worth it and you already have a P4 @ 3.2GHz.



There are no GDDR2 8600GTS as far as I know and they all have DX10 compatibilty. If there is a GDDR2 version, I suggest you avoid it because it will likely be crippled on the memory clockspeed. There are GDDR2 versions of the 8600GT, but that version should be avoided as well. The 2600XT is a decent little card for this game. Sits in between the 8600GT and 8600GTS. In other games, it will wins some and lose some to the 8600GT.

You still need to post specs on your power supply for me to make you a suggestion though, so get to it.

Also what country do you reside in? I can probably find you something cheaper at a reputable site.

JUst got my new notebook up & running. The Blackhawk-XR5 (based off a Clevo d901c)

OB maxed out inc' internal shadows and high shadow filtering, capped at 60fps due to refresh rate at 1920x1200 with the folowing specs:

Intel? Core?2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz/1066MHz/8MB)
4096MB Ultra Speed DDR2 800MHz Extreme Performance Memory + Heat-Spreaders
400GB @ 7200RPM SATA300 Seagate RAID 5 (3 x 200GB 7200RPM)
SLI Dual nVIDIA Geforce 8800M GTX 1GB DDR3 X-TREME GPU (only using 1x 8800M GTX at the moment until Nvidia make the 2nd card and bios available for SLi)
17" HD WUXGA+ 1920x1200 Ultra Resolution GlassVision Wide Screen Cinema Display
8 Channel Advanced SRS WOW Surround Sound System
Windows Vista Ultimate 64Bit

It is so smooth, unbelievable...

Yes, the power supply is getting replaced tomorrow. I'm not doing it myself, since it's one of the few things I don't want to touch.
So I don't have my Oblivion pc right now, I'd love to double check the current PS and Motherboard, 'cause I could swear I saw a second slot...
If I'm right, I might actually be wrong about the listed CPU.
Hmm, I'll let you know when the replacement is done.

Very odd..Than I might have written it down wrongly(that'd be pretty retarded), or they sell some crappy stuff.
I live in The Netherlands.
Thanks for the help so far!

Well, you already listed your board model, so I doubt it will look any different than the picture provided. A "core" is something on the CPU anyways...it's not something you put in a slot. You have a single socket for a processor.

Do find out about the new PSU.

Here are some 8600 series cards (remember, GDDR3 only):
http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/summary/search.html?searchCriteria=8600&cat1=009&cat2=256&cat3=000
http://www.azerty.nl/producten/zoek/160/video-kaarten-pci-e-nvidia-.html

Looks like the 8800GS is available for you Europeans. That card is still not available here. :stare: Comparable to the Radeon 3850, but your CPU would bottleneck this card.

I just wanted to thank you guys for your advice. I finally got the HD 2600XT last week (while I was sick naturally) and played through the sewers last night. I have the game set to 'very high' and the graphics looked better than anything I used to have (but maybe I have low standards). So far the only bottlenecks have been starting and quitting the game. We'll see what happens when I get into a town though. I also played a movie with the card (Ultimate Avengers, if you want to know) and the resolution on the movie was awesome. If anyone wants help upgrading their computer, whether it's to play Oblivion or not, I would recommend they come here. Thanks again.

you should include the ATi 3870x2 in the extreme list now. Has the same if better performance than the ultra.

Yeah, I'd been watching it over the past few weeks, and noticed that there are now some http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/page10.html out for it. More importantly, it's actually http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=radeon+3870+X2; historically, I've not included any card before the day it went on sale. Now that all of that's taken care of, it's now added to the list!

Don't forget the newly released Radeon 3450, 3470, and 3650 cards as well. It seems the Radeon 3650 is just another 2600XT, but with PCI-E 2.0 compliance, DX 10.1 compliance, and slightly lower power consumption.

The 3470 seems slightly better than the 2400XT, which isn't really saying much.

The 3450 seems slightly better than the 2400pro...also isn't saying much.

I'll let you place them since you use your own sources of benches.

Allright then, here are the specs of my new PSU.

Brand: CoolerMaster
Model#: Rs390-PMSP-A3
Amperage at +12V: +12v1=16A - +12V2=18A
Wattage: 216W

Now, there, of course, was allot more on the table, I wrote it all down.
So, if more is needed, I can provide.

I'll be waiting anxiously for your verdict.

wat about the x1950 PRO dual?

8600GT or GTS would be fine with that PSU.

I've got it..
And I love it..
I had no idea what I was missing out on, man!
For the first time it actually runs smooth!

Thank you so much for the help!

This is a helpful thread indeed. Well, I plan on assembling a new PC soon, and while the choices for mainboard, CPU, RAM, HD, etc. are all fairly easy for me to decide, I am really torn on which graphics card to buy. I think of either the Nvidia 8800GT or the ATI 3870.

I think I'll get an Intel E8400 Wolfdale CPU, Gigabyte mainboard, 2 Gigs of DDR2 RAM, only a relatively cheap Creative Audigy soundcard and a HD from either Samsung or Seagate I guess, and a quality PSU with nominal 550 or 600 watt output. I plan to buy a 22" screen with 1600 x 1050 or so resolution, certainly not a 24" screen as this is getting too big for my desk.

I've read several reviews and here I make a short list based on what I've read. But I'd really like to hear from players what their actual "live" experiences are with one or the other.

Pro Ati 3870:
- Lower power consumption in 2D mode
- Under Direct-X 10 only slightly behind the 8800GT in performance
- Sligthly cheaper, but this is not the real issue.

Pro Nv 8800GT:
- Under Direct-X 9.1, about 20% more performance when AA/AF turned on (which I absolutely will do)

Since DX10 is the future, the performance bonus of the 8800GT on a DX9 game like Oblivion becomes meaningless in the longer term. However I read here that a number of players are having performance problems with Oblivion and the 8800GT, albeit I understand that this is under Vista mainly. Well I plan to keep using XP for as long as I can, certainly in 2008 unless some new mega-game will require the jump to DX10 (the upcoming Fallout maybe?). I never looked at Crysis, maybe I should sometimes. I'm not too fond of FPS shooter games.

I guess if there was a tool that would allow the decrease of the gfx speeds and thus power consumption during 2D sessions WITHOUT RESTARTING THE PC, I would buy the 8800GT without further ado. Maybe you can help me decide on the graphics card. Thanks so much!

Well if you look at my sig you can see I run a variety of platforms.

All 3 run Oblivion fine, desktop 1 maxes it everywhere using 15xx drivers, issues on this forum recently have been due to some driver bugs in the Nvidia forceware.

I have Crysis to put on Rig 1 and will use the Dx10 hack to set ultra detail and maybe scraqe 25fps but still a potent combination, I'd expect 40fps+ under Dx9 but I'm having too much fun with MOH on the laptop to bother at the moment.

If the GPU is not working hard it uses less power by default so underclocking a GPU isn't really worthwhile, better to be able to have lot's of applications open when needed tbh.

Prowler, thank you. Please tell me: Do you have XP or Vista installed on your system 1? And so you are using a slightly older version of Nvidia drivers then, right? And do you have a soundcard in your system 1 or just the on-board sound?

XP is installed on all my systems and XPMCE05 on the laptop.

Desktops have dedicated soundcards, a SB Audigy2 in rig 2 and rig 1 has a Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer.

The laptop has integrated audio, the Sigmatel chipset with a driver from 04/2007 and it is not bad for the jitters but I'd always recommend a dedicated soundcard.

Prowler, thanks this helps me.

Now I'm buying my new PC, I actually had to log back in to find this post again

Is this place moderated anyway? Unbelievable: about the most informative post here isn't a sticky yet

Browsing intarwebz forums looking for helpful information isn't my hobby

They'd have to keep replacing it, because the thread keeps going away as it hits the 200 post limit (with a new one taking its place).

But yeah, a directory of such threads should be stickied... but the mods keep saying "no one looks at stickies anyway, so why bother?".

Anyway... where exactly would an 8600M GT fall in the list?

Edit: forgot the GT

It's slightly weaker than the desktop 8600GT, so that should give you an idea...probably around 7800GT performance area

So don't go around slapping "max" on things, but its not going to be ugly either.

Thanks!

If it helps anyone..on a new comp build with a ATI 3850 w/ omega drivers I have all sliders to max...heavy texture mods & outdoors I'm averaging 30/35 fps

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