New graphics card for Oblivion(!): ATI or nVidia

horvendile

Regular
Yes it's true.
I have a two year old Athlon X2 4400+ system and have recently taken up Oblivion again. I also have a new screen which makes me want to play in 1920x1200. That is possible with my current X1900XT, but I don't use any AA and it's a little on the choppy side when the going gets tough.

The Radeon 3870 seems to do well in Oblivion and it's cheap. But an interesting question is: Is it still only ATI that is able to get AA at the same time as HDR in Oblivion?
 
Yeah the new Nvidia cards can handle HDR+AA but the 3870 is a good choice.

The 9600GT or 8800GT should be around the same performance level too if you want to look at Nvidia stuff. Try to google some reviews and see how they stack up.
 
Thanks.

The 8800GT is a viable alternative.
Another concern is fan noise. Any ideas there?
I have a rather quiet system now (Antec P180 case, passive CPU cooling, very quiet fan on my X1900XT), so I'd feel stupid buying some noisy bugger.
 
Thanks.

The 8800GT is a viable alternative.
Another concern is fan noise. Any ideas there?
I have a rather quiet system now (Antec P180 case, passive CPU cooling, very quiet fan on my X1900XT), so I'd feel stupid buying some noisy bugger.

The one that was just linked at newegg (8800gt w. never winter nights 2) had a special cooling solution that looked pretty quiet to me. You never know though unless you can find a specific review of the card, but generally I have found the semi-exotic cooling solutions with large fans are pretty quiet.
 
Update: I bought the Gigabyte 8800GT with the Zalman cooler. Just installed. Some problems, but I'll find another area for those questions.
 
Update: I bought the Gigabyte 8800GT with the Zalman cooler. Just installed. Some problems, but I'll find another area for those questions.

You have a thread somewhere? I am curious how this card stacks up I need a new one now as my x`1900 died.
 
No, not yet. My first problem was to gett FSAA and HDR simultaneously in Oblivion, but I solved that one, albeit not the way I hoped. (Doing an application specific setting didn't work, but forcing FSAA globally did the trick.)

My other problem is that when I tried to install Gigabyte's overclocking/managing tool the computer crashed hard and had serious trouble restarting. I have the computer running now but haven't got back to the tool yet.

It's too early to say anything about performance, as the only thing I've done is start up Oblivion and see that it works. I didn't really notice any performance increase, but I'll have to get back to that. I may of course be CPU limited.

I don't have that many games to test on, but Supreme Commander will be tested.
 
I was thinking noise level and so forth. I can easily find performance on reviews online as 8800gts are all about the same, but the cooling solutions vary. That one I believe has a Zalman fan that cannot adjust speed so it always runs full bore, however loud that is or isn't.
 
Sorry, I've been away.
On my X1900 I had an Arctic Cooling fan which was close to inaudible. The Zalman cooler is not as quiet by a long shot. In quiet surroundings an airflow sound is noticeable. So don't buy it expecting to get something completely quiet. However, as soon as there are other sounds around it disappears; it's not a leafblower by any means.
 
Oh, another thing. I have a problem with what I guess is a specific shader in Oblivion. I'll put a question about it in some appropriate forum.
 
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