Just looking for a little help for a problem, now solved, then I happened upon a member's mention of a game he called "ESIV: Oblivion". So I check out the reviews and descriptions of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to find out that it might be one of the best games ever produced. So I order it. No big deal, right?

Not so much.

Turns out my video solution is going to be pretty close to inadequate as this game wrings out a rig better than 3D Mark 6420! Anandtech did an article on how Oblivion just beats the living snot out of some pretty solid cards including mine in SLI! So now I've got my 7800's on eBay and I'm checking out eVGA's overclocked version of the 7900GTX 512MB. Eleven hundred bucks for a pair at Newegg!

THANKS ALOT!!!!!!!

You have SLIed 7800GTX. There's no way upgrading those right now is worth the money.

So you can't play Oblivion at max detail. So be it; it is a game that can bog down even the fastest hardware. Turn some things down, be happy with what a great game it is, and live with it. My 2 cents.

Inadequate...pfft, I play it on a 9800pro 2.8g P4 and it doesnt look too bad (considering).

Lol, must be nice to be able toss cash on the latest and greatest every couple of months (really, I'm jealous).

I'd be happy with just 1 of those 7800's as an upgrade at this point!

Same here. I play on an X800XL and it is fine with some graphics options dialed back. No way upgrading to 7900 from 7800 is worth the performance increase or cost.

you must be kidding. i run it 1280x1040 most everything near maxed, no aa, and a few tweaks, and i get good frame rates, probably mid-high 20s outdoors and 30+ indoors. i have one 7800gs.

Jumping the gun perhaps. I'll check out how the game performs before I get too crazy.

If it didn't require a whole new motherboard and the associated labor, I'd consider a crossfire solution. John Reynold's review of the X1900XTX (do we really need all these X's?) almost tempts me down that path. But it does require a "crossfire ready" motherboard, does it not?

Crossfire is not a good way to go for oblivion. You've been warned.

Yes Crossfire requires a Crossfire-capable motherboard.

Oblivion was developed for the ATI-developed XBox 360 GPU. The ATI X1900XTX (and XT) GPU are to a very similar design. So, the X1900 series makes a lot of sense for Oblivion. Test reports seem to back that up.

On the other hand, Nvidia may be introducing its new design DX10 GPU this summer, it is reported. I imagine it will be closer to the X1900 in architecture -- and better suited to Oblivion and new games.

And, no doubt, ATI will do their DX10 GPU in the same timeframe.

Just stuff to consider when considering a new high-end GPU

Although Oblivion plays pretty well on my current setup, it doesn't play as well as it soon will. $1250 later, a pair of Leadtek 7900 GTX's and OCZ 1GB modules are on the way. Couldn't see spending the extra cash on the overclocked models; $150 bucks for 25MHz?!? Besides, the best of the overclocked versions, the BFG units, were out of stock.

C'mon, go easy on me! I resisted for almost a day!

This forum wouldn't be nearly as much fun if we all thought the same

Tell us how it plays -- so we can be properly envious

BTW, if you like Oblivion, Gothic 3 will be released this fall. Prior to Oblivion, Gothic 2 was my all time favorite game. On that basis G3, is a potential Oblivion killer (or at least equally good) and it too will need the big system. FWIW, G3 has a very different style and will not be "more of the same".

Sorry for the delay; somehow my "favorites" section botched the SimHQ address and I thought the site was down for maintenance or something!

Anyway upgrades in place and I have mixed reviews to report.

The new cards are definately superior. Also, I was completely unprepared for how great looking the cards themselves are! With the heat pipes they look like something from a sci-fi flick!

The new memory is definitely INFERIOR. Noticeably slower at virtually all games, tasks that I perform. Expected lower load times in Oblivion and got noticeably higher ones! Shopping for new 2 x 512mb kit as we speak but would like to avoid spending 3 bills on the Corsair 3200 XL! Thoughts?

The 1Gb DIMM will have slower timings than the 512Mb sticks but are you overclocking at all to make use of the DDR500 rating?
You also want to check if your Cmd rate is 1T or 2T.

Also bear in mind that if you have bumped up the visual settings because of your new gfx cards you are probably loading larger textures than before.

Check this out. No overclock with the old memory that I can remember. This new stuff is running at 480 (FSB 240) and it's still slower! And yes, in each case I made sure of the 1T command rate.

Maybe I can get the multiplier up to 10.5 or 11 and that'll help some. I DREAD the thought of what's next: DFI board with the Corsair sticks and all the work it takes to install same!

OK. Messing with the cpu multipier is helping as well as the hyper-transport multiplier. going to play with it a bit more to see if I can get some more out of it.

Okay, it's settled. Nothing I can do to this motherboard, cpu, memory combination makes it as quick as it was with a pair of 512mb memory sticks. I'm now running 250 MHz X 10.5 for 2625 MHz with a 1:1 DRAM ratio for 500 MHz and it's just slower loading Oblivion (used to load a saved game within 1 helpful hint and now has enough load time to provide me with 2 helpful hints). Then again Lock-On is brilliant with this card and stick combo.

I can almost certainly get enough on eBay for this memory to buy most 1Gb kits on the market (not doing the $300 Corsair thing!), now to figure out which. OCZ Plat Rev 2.