Is Oblivion worth playing with a weaker PC?

I never tried Oblivion and I don't want to dish out $50 for it. But this Sept., the GOTY edition with both expansion packs along with the original will be sold at $50, so I think I'll definitely pick it up then.

But I have a fairly weak PC. I can still handle Oblivion, but it will probably feel like playing Morrowind the Director's re-cut edition, if you know what I mean.

My question is, anybody else play Oblivion on a weaker PC? If so, do you think it's still worth playing even when I'll feel like I'm playing the game with Gamecube graphics?

I never tried Oblivion and I don't want to dish out $50 for it. But this Sept., the GOTY edition with both expansion packs along with the original will be sold at $50, so I think I'll definitely pick it up then.

But I have a fairly weak PC. I can still handle Oblivion, but it will probably feel like playing Morrowind the Director's re-cut edition, if you know what I mean.

My question is, anybody else play Oblivion on a weaker PC? If so, do you think it's still worth playing even when I'll feel like I'm playing the game with Gamecube graphics?

ASK_Story

yep i've played it on low-med graphics - i don't really care of graphics - the game was fun - gameplay good, story is good too - those are the most important things in all games (IMO)

Definitely!! :!

you didnt give yer system specs so let me be the first to tell you, unless you have a fairly good video card along the lines of a 6800 or higher, you gonna be extremely and i mean EXTREMELY dissapointed by the performance you will have to turn down everything, depending on how picky of a player you are you may or may not be able to accept this and play.

When i first got oblivion and tried playing it on my p4 1.6a 9600pro i could not accept this, 5 foot draw distance EVERYTHING at lowest and still....about 8 fps im not **** you the game is demanding.

New rigg maxxs it out and its probly my fav game, just be prepared mate, imo it doesnt scale well to lower end pc's if at all.

It's not worth playing on any PC.

It's not worth playing on any PC.

jens_1

pfft, go play with your wii, princess.

It's not worth playing on any PC.

jens_1

sounds like console fan....or a gamer that hates Oblivion

[QUOTE="jens_1"]

It's not worth playing on any PC.

ChinoJamesKeene

pfft, go play with your wii, princess.

lol :lol: lol

Hello ASK_Story!

Your experience with Oblivion will depend on your personal notion of waht is "enough" for YOU. Note, that it's YOU that matters most, not what someone else says.

See... I played oblivion on my old AMD 3200+, with 6600GT and 1gig ram. It ran horrible on stock settings, but when I OC'd the card, and modiefied the ini files according to online guides to reduce the grass, and some other things, the game ran at an acceptable speed. It was fine, but eventually I convinced myself that once I get a better card someday, my experince will be a lot better.

That day came about 5 months ago, when I got my 8800GTS 640mb. I gotta tell you that the GFX are indeed notably better. Not MUCH better, but you can indeed SEE the difference. Most of the difference comes in the form of eye candy around you. The sky becomes much richer and more realistic... The water is so much better that there's no comparison. The grass at full settings is not essential, but it really adds to the experience. The trees just spring into life and the whole world around you becomes alive all of a sudden.

If you can ignore the world around you and you only care about your character and the actual combat, go for it now. If you want to get the full experience of everything Oblivion has to offer, get a 8800GTS.

I'm dirt poor. I'm a bum who's old enough to have a family of my own, yet I still dont have a job, due to some bad issues in my life. Still I am usually able to save enough $$$ for a brand new rig every 2-3 years. What allows me to do that is the fact that I ALWAYS build my computers and NEVER buy them from companies/people/retailers. I order parts online, and my computers turn out to be a lot cheaper than Dell, Alienware, and the others.

A Dell with a comparible setup to my PC, despite having a larger hard drive and an overall better cosmetic look costs over $2000, when it only cost me about $1200 to build my computer. Learn to build your own rigs, save up some money, and you'll be a much happier man. Good luck!

I'm playing it on this Pc:

Intel 3.0ghz, ATI X200 (built-in with intel 102 motherboard!!)and 896MBof ram (1024 -128 , y'know the gfx card)

so that PC sucks , I play it on the lowest gfx , it lags at fights and with many ppl around and I still have fun with it!!

believe it or not!

One of the few improvements that Oblivion made over Morrowind was the great graphical leap. If you're playing it on the lowest settings, the graphics will still look considerably better than Morrowind, but they won't be outstanding.

Graphics aside, Oblivion does most of the things that Morrowind did, but worse.
If you preferred the 'action' parts of Morrowind (the combat, which is improved in Oblivion - though still not perfect) instead of the customisation/exploration/role-playing side of it, then you'll enjoy TES IV. If you're more of a fan of role-playing games, you'll probably be disappointed with this game.

My PC played horribly with it, so I stop playing. I played on minimum settings, and the game lagged beyond hell.

That was of course before my current upgrade, whereas I can now play on maximum settings (1280x1024 resolution) with absolutely no lag.

what is the minimum video card requirement for Oblivion?pco_rainmaster

should be 6800 - but.....i've played it with my 6600 - on low-med graphics - so i wouldn't say it's the minimum video card requirement - i guess the 6 series are the minimum

I never tried Oblivion and I don't want to dish out $50 for it. But this Sept., the GOTY edition with both expansion packs along with the original will be sold at $50, so I think I'll definitely pick it up then.

But I have a fairly weak PC. I can still handle Oblivion, but it will probably feel like playing Morrowind the Director's re-cut edition, if you know what I mean.

My question is, anybody else play Oblivion on a weaker PC? If so, do you think it's still worth playing even when I'll feel like I'm playing the game with Gamecube graphics?

you didnt give yer system specs so let me be the first to tell you, unless you have a fairly good video card along the lines of a 6800 or higher, you gonna be extremely and i mean EXTREMELY dissapointed by the performance you will have to turn down everything, depending on how picky of a player you are you may or may not be able to accept this and play.ASK_Story

The published minimum requirements are a very bad joke on anyone reading those. The game needs a medium level, or better, video card, the least being a 7600 GS. {Ignore the suggestion that the "6 Series" is a suitable minimum. The Vanilla 6600 at its reference speeds is too slow (BFG was selling an "OC" version that is good enough), and the 6200 is really, truly DEFECTIVE.)

P.S. (Second Edit) This forum is about the game, not the hardware, so this thread belongs in the other forum. If a PC has "only" 512 MBs of RAM, and "only" a 2.5 GHz P4 (or equivalent), but does have at least a BFG 6600 OC, go for it. The game itself is amazing. (Sorry about the CPU speed in "MHz" at first. Fixed in ANOTHER edit round.)

[QUOTE="ASK_Story"]

I never tried Oblivion and I don't want to dish out $50 for it. But this Sept., the GOTY edition with both expansion packs along with the original will be sold at $50, so I think I'll definitely pick it up then.

But I have a fairly weak PC. I can still handle Oblivion, but it will probably feel like playing Morrowind the Director's re-cut edition, if you know what I mean.

My question is, anybody else play Oblivion on a weaker PC? If so, do you think it's still worth playing even when I'll feel like I'm playing the game with Gamecube graphics?

you didnt give yer system specs so let me be the first to tell you, unless you have a fairly good video card along the lines of a 6800 or higher, you gonna be extremely and i mean EXTREMELY dissapointed by the performance you will have to turn down everything, depending on how picky of a player you are you may or may not be able to accept this and play.Kiwi_1

The published minimum requirements are a very bad joke on anyone reading those. The game needs a medium level, or better, video card, the least being a 7600 GS. (Ignore the suggestion that the "6 Series" is a suitable minimum. The Vanilla 6600 is too slow, and the 6200 is DEFECTIVE.

i play the game on med graphics with 30 fps - wierd - isn't it?

[QUOTE="pco_rainmaster"]what is the minimum video card requirement for Oblivion?PredatorRules

should be 6800 - but.....i've played it with my 6600 - on low-med graphics - so i wouldn't say it's the minimum video card requirement - i guess the 6 series are the minimum

[QUOTE="PredatorRules"]no it's FX 5700...as sysytem req lab-Gray_Fox-

I already warned everyone. The official minimums are a bad joke. The FXes, all of them, fail at running Oblivion, MISERABLY. Even with a special Super, Extra Low Quality Setting, the animation is only going to "run" at CRAWL speed out of doors with the FX 5700, and very little better than that with an FX 5900. Trust me on this, folks, I tried both in that game. Nothing doing. They do not show the anomalous behaviors of the Geforce 6200s, but they are a dismal failure with Shader Two. The official Radeon minimum is the goofy "9500 series", which really was only the 9500 and the 9500 Pro, but neither of those is really a good choice for Oblivion, and the 9550 isn't really a 9500, it's a 9600 (and all of that series should carry the number "9400" instead).

That game doesn't begin to work well with anything less than a 6600 GT, and even those have some anomalous things going on when running the game.

You can't trust the SR Labs' results. Those results are at best a general guideline, because game distributors typically lie (exaggerate) when they name minimums.

From my own personal experience, a good rig from 4 years ago runs Oblivion fine on med-high settings. I run it on a P4 2.6 Ghz with 512 mb RAM and a Radeon 9800 pro 128 mb. It's possible to run the game on this rig on 1280x720, high textures, medium draw distances, distant everything, low shadow numbers, low specular distance, and high water details if you're patient with load times. I've found that the main difficulty with my rig is that it either 1) runs low on memory for textures, thus needs to use the harddrive quite often, increasing load times to minutes or 2) the vid card's bus speed is too slow, thus the game bottlenecks loading the higher restextures. As far as I can tell, I don't have any fps problems even on these detail settings, unless there are multiple casters and many particle effects floating around.

My optimal settings after much testing is using the same settings but with medium textures. Load times are substantially improved by doing this. To make things a little better, I'm using a mod that increases the detail of the various bump/paralax mappings on the various surfaces, thus, though I lose the higher res texture details, I still retainimproved bumpy, detailed surfaces.

In conclusion, Oblivion can look outstanding even on old hardware, especially with mods. Hope that gives you an idea as to the settings you can run on.