It sounds like either a bad video card or a cheap/crappy power supply. Never go cheap on the power supply. It's a good way to fry your expensive components. But who knows, it could be software related too. It sounds bad enough that you might want to consider formatting and reinstalling XP.
I have 4GB of Corsair XMS DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 @ 2.1V. I bought 2GB for around $190 after rebate when I built my PC back in Februrary. The price of ram has dropped so dramatically recently that I decided to add another 2GB for $95 before the prices go back up again. Vista eats RAM for breakfast, so I feel like it will be totally worth it when I do finally upgrade to Vista.
I'm not sure how you would test the mobo. But as far as the ram, you can download Memtest 86 or Memtest 86+ for free and burn the image to a cd. Your PC will boot off the cd and run some tests on your memory. If it starts generating errors, it's probably bad. As far as CSS, it's a pretty flexible, well optimized game. Should run ok on 512mb RAM.
http://www.memtest.org/
It's an ISO, so make sure you burn an image and not a data CD.
This thread is a disgrace to real gamers everywhere. I recently played Arx Fatalis, a game that was released in 2002, for the very first time, and it turned out to be the best game I've ever played. The graphics were not the greatest, but it featured the one aspect that I value most in games: atmosphere. As an avid RPG gamer, I hated Oblivion for the simple fact that the whole game was doused in screen bleaching HDR which looked like complete trash. If devs were to freeze technological advancements in favor of using game engines from 2004, I would be more than happy.
BTW, I've noticed that FPS fans tend to value graphics over gameplay whereas RPG/RTS fans are usually the exact opposite.
LiLsLashy
Youre acting like HDR in Oblivion wasn't optional. You could turn it off and enable bloom lighting instead. And many people did just that, either for better performance or because they thought the HDR was over-done.
I agree with what's already been said about the sound card. That Audigy SE is junk. Either get a Xi-FI or just use the integrated audio. Integrated audio is usually fairly good these days (certainly better than a crappy sound card), and Vista doesn't really like sound cards. To be honest, it seems to me like sound cards are being phased out.
If you don't give a crap about SLI, I would strongly urge you to get an Intel based motherboard, like a 975X. They're a lot more stable than anything Nvidia produces in my experience. I absolutely love my Intel Bad Axe 2. It's got all of the stablity and support of an Intel motherboard, with the overclocking features of enthusiast boards.
I'd be lying if I said I'm not a sucker for pretty graphics. I wouldn't spend $400 on a new state of the art video card every two years if graphics weren't important to me. I can tolerate ugly graphics in classic games (although I'll probably end up spending a lot of time tweaking them to make them look their best), but when new games have ugly graphics I'm completely turned off. That's one of the big things that completely turned me off with the Nintendo Wii. Great controller, but atrocious graphics. I seriously wanted to choke when I saw how bad Zelda looked on the Wii. But don't get me wrong, I also need good gameplay and a compelling story to keep me interested, which is why games like FEAR and Doom 3 didn't do too much for me. I basically just used those games to show off and benchmark my PC and not much else. When a game comes out that has beautiful graphics and great gameplay like Half-Life 2 or FarCry, I'm in gaming nirvana.
But I completely agree with your original argument. People who say graphics don't matter are deluding themselves. They just don't want to sound shallow.
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