which cheaper ati card would improve my Oblivion game

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freestonew

Weaksauce
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hello all.

which "lesser", cheaper ATI video card would improve my Oblivion game, the "more bang for the buck" card. i have the HD 4650, now.

but first...
I have an emachine dual core intel E5400 processor.
win 7 with 4 gigs ram
I have now a Ati HD 4650 card with 512 megs of DDR2 memory.

Oblivion, and most games, play well but I can tell that Oblivion and Second Life need a "bit more" in the processing or video card department.
I have Quarl's textures, all the graphic texture enhancers, and the Lods and "everything viewable with distance", mods, no Overhauls but a lot of mods.
I get about 40 fps outdoors unless i am in a busy area and the I have maybe 10 fps,
BUT!
when I turn on distant land, I get about 10 fps or even less, going down from 40 to 8 is not nice. but that view looks Sooooo incredible!

newegg has a
SAPPHIRE 100296HDMI Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
that is on sale for about $70.
I suspect that the 1 gig of DDR3 ram will help a lot, plus the card is a bit faster.

of course I will buy a 500 watt PSU!

ah...the rub and the catch!!
as long as I have that 500 watt PSU, I wonder if I should even buy an even better card?!

My disability fixed income can only handle just so much $$$ plus I will shortly come up against the ceiling of my motherboard and processor! thus even if I could afford one of the $300 models of ati, my fps would not show much improvements.

ah but there are *so* many number flavors of ati HD cards!!

I get mentally dizzy just reading about them.

At some upper level point, they have DDR5 memory.

like:
SAPPHIRE 100283-3L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card . 74 percent of reviewers give this a 5 of 5 rating.
Only $130 at newegg.
Again: might be overkill for me.

then some of these cards are not quiet either, I read!

On the surface it would appear that if i wanted to upgrade, I should go for that $70 bargain, the 4670.

But please people, help me see if it would be worth it for me to go "higher" in the ati HD card series. should i consider a better card than that 4670?!

thank you....freestone
 
Don't go for the 4670. The 4670 and 4650 are nearly identical excluding memory clocks and core clock. The two use the same exact GPU core. Your 70 dollars will NOT be well spent getting such a minor improvement. I would just go for that 5770 and be happy for a few years. You may not need the power as much now, but it will last you longer down the road. You would likely seen almost a 250%-300% performance boost going from a 4650 to 5770.
 
xBanzai89 said:
Don't go for the 4670. The 4670 and 4650 are nearly identical excluding memory clocks and core clock. The two use the same exact GPU core. Your 70 dollars will NOT be well spent getting such a minor improvement. I would just go for that 5770 and be happy for a few years. You may not need the power as much now, but it will last you longer down the road. You would likely seen almost a 250%-300% performance boost going from a 4650 to 5770.
Click to expand...

^^^
 
5770 is great for the situation you've described, your power supply and cpu is perfect for it.
 
thank you all, so far.

yes at first i thought of getting that 4670 just for the 1 gig memory alone, as i suspected that this was the only issue that I could "fix", cheaply.

I got about 35 to 45 in the sewer tunnel and when I came out into the open air with distant land enabled, the view took my breath away! then I "TDD-ed" to get the fps counter going and then i moved my character. oooops! 8 to 10 fps and even lower in some "busy" areas around the ruins, "jerk...jerk...stutter."
I probably have added every single tecture enhancer that there is, grass, trees, ruins, Quarls, sky too. then the lods and that view distant mod [ RAEVWD ]

but as they say..."for only $20 more", I see now that while the 5770 might see a cpu limiting factor kick in, but for only that $20 more, i get a better card. i was planning anyways to get a 500...600 PSU.

so now I will look at 5770. i see already that the list in newegg has it where some
versions get a 4 star rating, others get a 5 star rating, there are differences between each vender versions!
onwards, so far....freestone
 
hi again.

i see that newegg has a

Radeon HD 5670 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
for $99
whereas the 5770 is about $179 and there are reports of some people having problems such as blue death screens and a short card life!

$80 difference.

so is the 5670's "lesser quality" worth the $80 savings?!

freestone
 
I like the 5770 you linked and the price is just right. However I found this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150497&cm_re=5830-_-14-150-497-_-Product This is a 5830 @ $169.99 after MIR. I think the 5770 you linked would suffice but if you have the extra $$ getting a 5830 would definitely last you until you replace that emachine system. It can overclock pretty well and definitely Pwn Oblivion and even run newer more demanding games pretty well up to 1680x1050 res. 256bit memory and the extra processing power will make it last much longer than the 5770.

I think $175 is the furthest you should go as far as price. I'd get either that 5770 or this card.
 
Nothing well ever get Oblivion to run truly great unless you simply brute force it with a way overspec system. It'll run nicely indoors and generally outdoors, but get 3 or more NPC's on the screen and enjoy the framerate nose dive. Rumor has it Bethesda paid the nearest 6 year old in cupcakes to do the optimization.

As for the question, try the 5770.
 
freestonew said:
hi again.

i see that newegg has a

Radeon HD 5670 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
for $99
whereas the 5770 is about $179 and there are reports of some people having problems such as blue death screens and a short card life!

$80 difference.

so is the 5670's "lesser quality" worth the $80 savings?!

freestone
Click to expand...

I've had a 5770 for 9 months now and no issues.

Don't bother with the 5670. Still will not be a jump you're looking for. I would recommend this XFX (They offer a life time warranty JUST MAKE SURE YOU REGISTER THE CARD WITH IN 30 DAYS OF GETTING IT) 5770 for $125 after mail in rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ickDeals&cm_mmc=AFC-SlickDeals-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA. I wouldn't bother with the 5830 either. Still a joke of a card IMO. For that price range better off looking at cheaper GTX 460 768MB models.
 
The key to Oblivion with mods is RAM, RAM, RAM--you are simply exceeding the frame buffering capacity of your current card. Get whatever you like and can afford, as long as it has 1 GB of memory onboard and at least a slight bump in power over your current card. By the same token, though, since the RAM is the crux, the data path to that memory matters too, so try to find a 256-bit card.
 
that e5400 will bottleneck the 5770 i have a 4870 and an e5200 at 3ghz and its bottlenecked pretty hard in fallout 3 and oblivion
 
what is your PSU and its wattage right now?? if you get the 57XX series, maybe you dont need to upgrade the PSU, they run pretty efficient..
 
I DO belive that this card is the One!

http://gizmodo.com/5467822/ati-rade...rks-reasonable-gaming-dx11-performance-for-80


ATI Radeon HD 5570 Review and Benchmarks: Reasonable Gaming, DX11 Performance For $80?

Aside from gaming results, we can see that the Radeon HD 5570 brings extremely low power usage to this class of gaming card—even lower than the entry-level Radeon HD 4650. There is certainly nothing to complain about here, and this data makes it very easy to recommend the 5570 as an upgrade to folks who don't want to swap power supplies, don't want to add heat to their existing machines, or are looking to integrate the card in a small form factor chassis

.Aside from raw gaming performance, it's important to acknowledge that the features being offered by ATI's Radeon HD 5570 are, in fact, compelling today. Consider that this is a half-height reference card, able to transform even the smallest systems into viable gaming machines. Power usage is extremely low for the performance offered, and no auxiliary power connector is needed. And yet, the Radeon HD 5570 manages playable frame rates in every one of our game tests at 1680x1050 (and sometimes 1920x1200). Triple-monitor Eyefinity gaming could be viable in less-demanding titles, such as World of Warcraft, at a price substantially lower than the Radeon HD 5670. Just make sure the board you buy has a DisplayPort output first.
Click to expand...
 
TWolf79 said:
If your budget is so low look for a used 4850 or 4870.
Click to expand...
I would not put either of those cards in a cramped emachines case. heck I hope the op has put a rear case fan in there because it doesn't even come with one.
 
The 4670 uses 75Watts and the 5750 uses 86 watts. Might get away with it.
 
If you can get a used 4870 for cheap, do that.

Otherwise, 5770 all the way.
 
Cali3350 said:
The 4670 uses 75Watts and the 5750 uses 86 watts. Might get away with it.
Click to expand...
not a good idea on a cheap oem 250watt psu. they have very cheap parts and certainly don't even make their advertised wattage in real world conditions.
 
You know the 4670 doesnt take a external PCI-E power connector, so the OP will HAVE to upgrade his PSU if he upgrades his GPU. Just realized.
 
badboyeee said:
Since you have the 4650 right now, Im assuming you have a 350W-400W PSU max.
If you must buy now this is what i would suggest so you dont have to upgrade the PSU:

$80 AR - XFX 5670 1gb (double lifetime warranty)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150467

$63 AR - Sapphire 5670 512mb
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102871
Click to expand...

The Sapphire won't work. Not enough VRAM. The texture enhancement packs were designed in the days when the 640 MB 8800 GTS and 768 MB 8800 GTX were the preferred cards for playing Oblivion. Any less than that will not carry the data load and it will start swapping to system RAM, thus the drop to 10 FPS.

I had a 512 MB 8800 GT--it had plenty of GPU power for an older game like Oblivion, but even though I installed the optimized Qarl's Texture Pack 3 designed to work better with 512 MB cards, I had plenty of stuttering and slowdown problems, and I had to save often because it could crash at any time. I upgraded to a GTX 260 with 896 MB of RAM, and all of that went away.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
The Sapphire won't work. Not enough VRAM. The texture enhancement packs were designed in the days when the 640 MB 8800 GTS and 768 MB 8800 GTX were the preferred cards for playing Oblivion. Any less than that will not carry the data load and it will start swapping to system RAM, thus the drop to 10 FPS.

I had a 512 MB 8800 GT--it had plenty of GPU power for an older game like Oblivion, but even though I installed the optimized Qarl's Texture Pack 3 designed to work better with 512 MB cards, I had plenty of stuttering and slowdown problems, and I had to save often because it could crash at any time. I upgraded to a GTX 260 with 896 MB of RAM, and all of that went away.
Click to expand...

ok cool nice to know. id like to play oblivion someday, my 5750 1gb should suffice :D
 
If you pick up a 5750, you may not need a new power supply. If you pick up a 5770 or greater, you probably will, and if you buy anything in the Radeon HD 47xx or 48xx you probably will need a new power supply too. The old hd 4000 series uses lots more power. I agree with the other posters in stating that a 5750 should meet your needs for gaming in Oblivion.
 
bore_u2_death said:
If you pick up a 5750, you may not need a new power supply. If you pick up a 5770 or greater, you probably will, and if you buy anything in the Radeon HD 47xx or 48xx you probably will need a new power supply too. The old hd 4000 series uses lots more power. I agree with the other posters in stating that a 5750 should meet your needs for gaming in Oblivion.
Click to expand...
he can not safely run a 5750 with a cheap 250 watt oem psu. his system would easily come close to maxing out the 12v line which is only "rated" for 13-15amps. in real world conditions it would not even provide that many amps.
 
Last edited:
cannondale06 said:
he can not safely run a 5750 with a cheap 250 watt oem psu. his system would easily come close to maxing out the 12v line which is only "rated" for 13-15amps. in real world conditions it would not even provide that many amps.
Click to expand...

i wouldnt think he'd be able to run a 4650 either :confused: i think the specs says that card would require at least a 350watt psu...he must be really on the edge right now
 
badboyeee said:
i wouldnt think he'd be able to run a 4650 either :confused: i think the specs says that card would require at least a 350watt psu...he must be really on the edge right now
Click to expand...
he is probably fine right now as long as he doesn't do anything silly like run Furmak and Intel burn test at the same time. lol. going from the 4650 to the 5750 though would take another 40 watts and that for sure would put him at 85-90% of what his 12v is even rated for. that means he would exceed the psus capabilities because those optimistic psu ratings are not realistic.
 
i have a 4870 1 gig (compares to 5770) and outside i get 20 frames in the forests and town with distand lands (16af 0 AA hdr)(in the awesome newly released english nehrim full conversion mod http://www.moddb.com/mods/nehrim-at-fates-edge ) . So im not to happy about that sinds i have a top notch core i7 at 3.5 gighrz. The game just was not optimized enough to handle that setting im affraid. Doubt a 5870 will do much better.

Inside houses and caves everything is great 100+ but outside just doesnt work well no matter what settings :(
 
My vote would be to save for another month or two till you can afford a 5770 or 5750. Consider also waiting a month or two regardless as supposbily ATI's next generation the 6750 and 6770 are just around the corner. Like october-ish release date to november-ish release date. T

hese cards being priced similarly to the 5770/5750 more than likely while providing better performance will likely drive down the price of the 5770/5750 down to the 80.00 price range or there abouts. They will at least cheaper and where they are now.
 
Back when I used the original Qarl's Texture Pack 3 with some other texture-hungry mods, I saw texture memory usage exceed 1GB (and this was when the 8800GTX 768MB was top dog).

You can help solve the problem the other way and use Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Redimized instead, which uses a lot less texture memory with minimal loss in quality.

The original QTP3 doesn't apply to Shivering Isles, so the same guy who did QTP3 Redimized did the same thing for Shivering Isles: Bomret's Texture Pack - Shivering Isles.
 
evilsofa, where can i see the amount of texture memory used while ingame ? is there a tool for that somehwere ?
 
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