Oblivion Upgrade

[muddyfox470]

lol i totally forgot about the my system thing :s

the x850 xt/pe was pcie as i stated in the post so obviously of no use.

however as i said, and now it has been highlighted that oblivion uses sm3.0; i would advise the 6800gt

you should prob be able to find some nice cheap 2nd hand deals going on, and as mike_w said it should also overclock to ultra speeds

for best bang for buck from that group the gt should do it for you. especially as it has the sm3.0 support.

as for psu, now thats a hard one as dells do funny things with their systems. check the ratings on the rails (esp the 12v one) and report back.

6800gts can work with the shuttles 200/300w psus, but they are particularly strong psus for their size. you could buy a fully fledged psu now and keep it for when you upgrade; there are loads of great brand psus so just check out for reviews, modular is handy as well. however just check the space situation in the dell and whether it is indeed a standar psu :s

Ian

[sawyen]

6800GTs at stock should work fine with a 250W-300W PSU, once overclocked tho.. They chew up current like a fat kid left out with chocolate cake. A 450MHz GT is enuf to drain my 12V rail all the way down to 11.4V (from 12.2V at 350mhz).. Maybe its a terrible way of measuring power usage.. but thats the only thing I can see without getting into the nitty gritty work..

[Synergy6]

The way I'm seeing it, I can get a PSU, case, motherboard, CPU cooler, extra 1GB RAM and X800GTO2 for about £220. The 7800GS is about the same price.

Would a 3.3GHz+ CPU and a flashed/OCed X800GTO2, with the knowledge I have a PCI-E slot for the future, be better than a 7800GS?

I guess I'm wondering if, come 2007, it will be more useful to have a PCI-E slot to put in a DX10 card, or if I'd have to dump everything to get a next-gen CPU/RAM etc, so the £200 on a skt.478 motherboard etc would be a waste. I know games these days seem to be pretty GPU dependant, but is a P4 2.8 (OCed) likely to be suitable for little more than IE and Word in 2007? I suppose nobody can answer that question, just wondering aloud.

Synergy6

P.S. I don't suppose anyone has heard anything on the grapevine about an X1800XL AGP, or a 7900GS AGP? Not necessarily to buy them, just to pick up a lower card for cheaper. The manufacturers seem to send out some mixed signals about AGP support.

UPDATE : 6800GS is £158 delivered from Amazon. 7800GSs will be £210+ as just about everybody adds £10-£20 for postage to NI. So, unless it's available from Amazon or a very small minority of other stores, remember to add £15 when comparing to £158.

[Barkotron]

To be honest, with what you've got I'd just get the 6800GS and keep the rest for Oblivion. I'd guess it'll run perfectly nicely at 1024x768 on that with most of the sliders fairly far over, as long as you don't mind not having lots of AF or whatever.

Apparently SM3 does make a bit of difference to Oblivion, performance-wise, so it'd be worth getting something that supports it.

The 6800GS should truck along happily until your big system upgrade next year as long as you don't mind playing at slightly lower resolutions with slightly less IQ options activated. Although to be honest, from the sounds of it I don't know if I'm going to be playing anything apart from Oblivion for the next year or so anyway...

[kojak71]

The way I'm seeing it, I can get a PSU, case, motherboard, CPU cooler, extra 1GB RAM and X800GTO2 for about £220. The 7800GS is about the same price.

Your original question was about upgrading your graphics card to play Oblivion. To play Oblivion with all the eye candy, you'll need a card that supports Shader Model 3. I don't know how many more times somebody needs to say it, but absolutely none of the budget ATi cards support shader model 3. So why do think that an X800GTO2 is comparable with a 6800GS or 7800GS?

Would a 3.3GHz+ CPU and a flashed/OCed X800GTO2, with the knowledge I have a PCI-E slot for the future, be better than a 7800GS?

Again in the case of Oblivion, which of the 2 cards you mention support Shader Model 3?

I guess I'm wondering if, come 2007, it will be more useful to have a PCI-E slot to put in a DX10 card, or if I'd have to dump everything to get a next-gen CPU/RAM etc, so the £200 on a skt.478 motherboard etc would be a waste.

It would be a waste. By 2007 new versions of dual-core CPUs will be out (from Intel at least) and as more and more applications (and games) will take advantage of this you'll be pining for that as well. You will probably need to change to another motherboard (again), and by then both AMD/Intel solutions will require you to switch to DDR2 RAM. Vista will also be out, and the dust would have settled as to what it's requirements will be.

P.S. I don't suppose anyone has heard anything on the grapevine about an X1800XL AGP, or a 7900GS AGP? Not necessarily to buy them, just to pick up a lower card for cheaper. The manufacturers seem to send out some mixed signals about AGP support.

Given that the 7800GS was just released a month ago, it might be some time before we hear about any potential replacement (if at all).

[merlin2001]

would add my vote to just getting a 6800GS for time being and holding tight. AMD has AM2 around the corner with support for ddr2 and intel has conroe. updating your m/b and cpu now would be a bit premature, as your upgrade path will require another m/b change in the future. your existing CPU with a GPU upgrade should be fine for oblivion (although no-one really knows until it is released and run on various configurations). maybe hold off for 2-3 weeks and see what sort of performance is reported in the wild for differant set-ups?

[Smokey21]

6800GTs at stock should work fine with a 250W-300W PSU, once overclocked tho.. They chew up current like a fat kid left out with chocolate cake. A 450MHz GT is enuf to drain my 12V rail all the way down to 11.4V (from 12.2V at 350mhz).. Maybe its a terrible way of measuring power usage.. but thats the only thing I can see without getting into the nitty gritty work..

What you using to test rails?

[sawyen]

Its nothing fancy.. Just getting the info from MBM and Everest + my trusty 3rd Eye monitor..

[Synergy6]

Thanks for all the help chaps. I'm keeping a close eye on 6800GS/GT prices, always searching for that elusive deal.
Synergy6

[sawyen]

Yea.. 6800GS or GT if u can find them, if you're still card-less in 3 weeks time let me know ... My 440MHz GT is probably going to Hexus.Classified then at a bargain price..

[Synergy6]

Yea.. 6800GS or GT if u can find them, if you're still card-less in 3 weeks time let me know ... My 440MHz GT is probably going to Hexus.Classified then at a bargain price..

Ohh, good good, I'll keep an eye out for it.
Synergy6

[Smokey21]

Its nothing fancy.. Just getting the info from MBM and Everest + my trusty 3rd Eye monitor..

There you go then. Not accurate at all. Unless you test it with a half decent multimeter, whatever numbers your seeing are worthless.

[sawyen]

Well like I said, its the closest I can get without the need to poke strange screwdriver-like pins into places I dont ever want to finger on.. And I do have a multimeter, just cant be bothered to go all the way up in the attic to get it...

If u got a better way of doing it without those? I'm all ears..

Even if the volts aint accurate, the drop still signifies something u know...

[Synergy6]

I'll be in London for 3 days next week, so I'll have a browse round some places, maybe save me £20 postage
Synergy6

[Smokey21]

Even if the volts aint accurate, the drop still signifies something u know...

It doesn't.

[sawyen]

It doesn't.