Hello.
Until now i have played Oblivion on DELL GX280 that has following specs:

Pentium4 3.00 GHZ HT
3GB DDR2 533mhz
GeForce 430 GT
Patriot 32GB SSD

Well - the game was set to max details and it suffer from HUGE FPS drop only near NPCs (especially when fighting). I'm sure that FPS drop (under 20 FPS) only occur when NPCs are around. When not - game runs flawless - 60 FPS. I believe that it is caused by CPU bottleneck. Something about NPC's physic i believe.

So i've decided to buy a new PC: (i'll get it after new year)

Motherboard - ASUS M4N68T-M LE
AMD ATHLON II 640 4x3,0 GHZ 2MB CACHE
DDR3 4096MB 1333Mhz (2x2gb)
PATRIOT 32GB SSD (hard drive)
Radeon HD5670 1024MB GDDR5
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

OK so can i expect Oblivion to run at 60 FPS at MAX DETAIL all the time, even if there are many NPCs around?? Has anyone played Oblivion on smillar or maybe the same PC??

What resolution do you play at ?? --- the 5670 is a decent card but not up to running at MAX DETAIL at 60FPS unless you are on a very small monitor with low resolution. -- you should get better performance than you used to esp around NPCs etc. since you have a much better CPU but the video card is slightly better but not enough to run at maximum detail.

1360x768 60HZ
Man c'mon the graphic card will handle the max graphic settings for sure i know it. Why? Because before i played on 8600GT at max and there was no difference - only fps drop near npc's. So it must be a CPU.

Anyone has a smillar CPU?? How oblivion perform at it??

At 1369x768 it should do fine -- but you hadn't mentioned what resolution and at the more common 1680x1050 or 1920x1080 it would definitely struggle (but you still probably will not get a steady 60 FPS with max settings like you asked for !)- It is a good medium performance card and will perform well at lower resolutions but once the monitor size increases would struggle for FPS - so was just going on the info you had provided !

>>CPU<< !! I have asked if anyone has played on smillar CPU than mine. (AMD ATHLON II 640 4x3,0 GHZ)

You'll still get a drop near NPCs. I have a Phenom II X4 955 overclocked a little to 3.4 Ghz (a good bit stronger than your new one in other words). I still drop a bit around copious NPCs. I play @ 1680x1050 with a GTX 460 1GB (overclocked to 800 Mhz) and when I'm in Leyawiin during mid day when all kinds of NPCs are running around in bright HDR lighting I get between 30-50 FPS with max settings in game and 8X AA and AF forced in the Nvidia control panel. This is a freshly installed game with minimal script related mods (two or three) and only QTP3 redimized for texture mods.

You're going to get good performance from your CPU/GPU combo, but its definitely not the beast you think its going to be for gaming. Lower / Mid range is more like it.

OMG this is really crazy! A 5 year old game has smillar system req than latest games! So it looks like the Oblivion engine is totally screwed up.

I'm gona play at 1360x768 (HD READY TV - HDMI), graphic options in game menu - maxed out, AA - forced to 2x by catalyst , HDR ON, V-sync ON. I believe i will got a smillar gaming experience just like You do. I play a completely clean install of GOTY edition - no mods (only 3 unofficial oblivion patches - for oblivion, shivering and kotn).

I really hope that Skyrim will have a correctly optimized engine, so it will be playable even on my old GX280 bottleneck

The engine is indeed screwed up. As I recall, GameBryo was very new when Oblivion was released, this is why Fallout 3 for example is much better optimized. It doesn't really show in Oblivion either on new machines unless you mod it heavily though.

Gamebryo was also used for Morrowind as well so it's not all that new. They just keep making improvements on it as they go along.

Yeah, but, I wonder about their definition of 'improvements' on occasion.

See what the new engine looks like with Skyrim.

I thought it was still called NetImmerse at that time and wasn't yet GameBryo? I could ofcourse be 100% wrong.

Same game engine, just a name change.

Yeah I know it's the "same" engine, but I always believed they did the namechange due to major changes having been made to the engine at that time. Anyway it doesn't matter, Oblivions engine still could use a lot of optimization either way

On that, I wholeheartedly concur... But, as it seems gamebry/netimmerse is no longer a viable company, and all assets are up for sale, and Beth is going with a different engine for Skyrim...... I don't expect to see any updates for the Oblivion/Fallout engine. Unless it is something the fans do, like they are for morrowind....... (multicore capability would be EXTREMELY nice for oblivion.....)

I think 5670 is a good card on its own. My 9800GT handles standard Ultra High graphics config for Oblivion at 1280x1024, which is pretty much the same space the card needs to fill, pretty well, although I have to say I forced only 4x AA and 8x AF (8 is overkill for my res, 2 leaves a bit of jags)

Also, Lower range? Kurappu! Anything with 4 x 3.0 GHz and HD 5670 begs at least upper-middle range for gaming

Even my crappy Core2Duo @2.4 GHz and 9800 GT handles Crysis Warhead at 85% Enthusiast well. (I turned off Motion "Seizure" Blur , mainstream sound and object detail) and doesn't look that different from everything Enthusiast

On the other hand, that 3.0 GHz will definitely help a lot, but I think NPCs will still net you some fps drops

Wonder why people so often confuse the rendering engine with the rest of the game. Gamebryo has absolutely nothing to do with the way NPC AI is processed in the game. The bad performance while NPCs are around is not the fault of the Gamebryo engine, just like most other things people like to blame Gamebryo for. It is the way Bethesda programmed it, the rendering engine itself is ok. I could run the game with 50+ FPS on max settings even with my old 8800GTS as long as no NPCs where around.

Back on topic: On my e8400 CPU I can run my heavily modded game with 40+ FPS in cities with lots of NPCs around. I think without mods it would be something like 50+ FPS. Most of the time it's 60 FPS though (outside cities with less than 5 NPCs on screen at once). Can't say how your processor compares to my e8400 though - just keep in mind that Oblivion doesn't support multiple cores.

Not true, Oblivion does utilize a duo core setup on your system.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:System_Requirements

EDIT:

My Mistake it does support it, but quite horribly it seems..I was going by TWEAK Oblivion's
recommendations.

That's the difference between "support", and "Utilize".

LOL, Yeah, it supports it but doesn't utilize it :facepalm: I sort of leaped before looking.

This is not a good build. In fact very amature. What's the point of getting SSD for an entry level computer? You could have bought yourself a better graphics card with that money. A 5750 or even 5770.
5750 would definitely runs Oblivion fluildy 60+ FPS at 1920x1080p at highest details and 8X Antialising applied.

Look. I've bought a 32 GB SSD to put Windows 7 on it (so it will run fast), for data and games i will have a 1TB WB CAVIAR GREEN 64MB CACHE. Both HDDs comes from my old DELL GX280 bottleneck xD.
About a graphic card - i will be fully satisfied about 1360x768 , HDR , V-SYNC , 4XAA forced by catalyst and FPS never dropping under 30FPS. That is all i want to get.
And about latest games - my whole PC (excluding graphic card) can handle latest games. If i'm gonna buy latest game then i can upgrade a graphic card or play at medium detail.
PS: I'm still waiting for that PC - I've bought it at 29.12.2010 and ill get it probably at monday 10.01.11. How very sad. I cant wait for it.

I think you'd best change that 5400 rpm HDD with a 7200 rpm one. 5400 isn't really suitable for gaming. IMO the SSD isn't a good choice either. You're only going to put windows 7 on it which means the biggest thing you'll notice is a faster boot time. If I could choose between a faster boot or faster games, the choice would be very easy for me..

How much did you pay for it?

5400RPM?? What a nonsense. It is a 7200RPM drive with function that can drop RPM to 5400 when iddle, to save power and the drive itself. Anyway that drive is faster than my old WD Caviar Blue 160GB (WD1600AAJS), maybe because of 64MB cache (160GB has 8MB). And about SSD - yes i like it when all operations on windows 7 are faster and boot time is short (not to mention the TRIM function on win7)

A realistic way of thinking, I like that.

However, vSync IMO is not worth the fps drop. Might as well disable that and enjoy better fps. I mean, I've never encountered one so bad or so often.

Lastly, 30fps should be a realistic target. I can't really measure how powerful can a rig be against Oblivion, many have come to a wrong conclusion

Those IntelliPower drives only do a max of 6000 rpm, not 7200;) Look it up on google, it's there. You would be better off with a WD Caviar BLACk instead of the Green line (Which really isn't made for performance and/or gaming rigs).