Oblivion RAM dependency

[Omastar]

I need a straight answer on this. Does Oblivion care more about having more vRAM at its disposal (ie- 512MB) as opposed to more efficient/powerful GPUs (ie- G80 with 320MB compared to say a 7950GT with 512MB) when turning up settings and/or playing at resolutions 1280x1024 and higher? I've seen people playing this game with 7600GS 512MB and it seems like they can turn up settings without experiencing any noticeable lag due to more vRAM? Is this so? I know G80 outperforms even X1900XTXs in Oblivion, but in instances of maxing settings will I still be hindered by 320MB as opposed to 512MB or more?

[J-Mag]

You won't need more than 512mb unless you are running at 2560x1600 and even then it you may need some mods and/or ini editing in order to get over 512mb of vid mem usage in Oblivion.

I had a heavily modded ini for increase view distance of pretty much everything, I even pushed the grids to load way above normal. Also, I had parallax mods, and Qarl's texture replacement, natural environments, etc... When running all this at 1600x1200 4xAA 16xAF I was around ~400mb of video memory.

[Repoman]

320MB with an 8800GTS will be perfectly fine if you use vanilla Oblivion, as shown by the Anandtech 320MB GTS review. BUT, as soon as you start adding better quality texture mods, you are going to need 512 or 640+MB. According to the guy who helped me out in this thread (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=251512&page=2), at least.

I believed him and went ahead with the 640MB

edit: a 7600GS will NOT play this game smoothly with settings turned up on anything higher than 1024x768. Vram helps when you have high res textures, but the GPU still needs to be really powerful

[Omastar]

320MB with an 8800GTS will be perfectly fine if you use vanilla Oblivion, as shown by the Anandtech 320MB GTS review. BUT, as soon as you start adding better quality texture mods, you are going to need 512 or 640+MB. According to the guy who helped me out in this thread (http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?t=251512&page=2), at least.

I believed him and went ahead with the 640MB

edit: a 7600GS will NOT play this game smoothly with settings turned up on anything higher than 1024x768. Vram helps when you have high res textures, but the GPU still needs to be really powerful

Now see, I'm hearing two conflicting things. J-Mag claims he only was able to utilize ~400MB of vRAM with high settings, mods, and so on. I'm saying if we were to compare a 320MB GTS and a 640MB, would we see significant frame rate loss when raising settings and/or AA/AF with the 320MB as opposed to the 640MB at 1280x1024? I'm just using the 7600GS as an example, that is struck me as odd that this guy could play at what I assume was 1024x768 with high settings and OOO (Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul). Core efficiency and its ability to supply the needed bandwidth is crucial, I know, but at what point does vRAM become a big point of contention when going above and beyond 'vanilla' Oblivion, and how much RAM is needed? I know it's vague, but I have a feeling 320MB won't cut it with texture mods and high settings.

I read that thread, btw, and I'm wondering how I can see how much vRAM is being used by Oblivion, real time?

[J-Mag]

Well just a note I was using Qarl's first texture pack, not the most recent one as mentioned in repoman's link.

[aintz]

the 320mb gs will run oblivion better at that res then 7950 for sure. im ran everything except aa and hdr on x1950pro which has 256mb at 1440*900 which is basically the same as 1280*1024 with acceptable lag. x1950pro is similar to 7950gt in oblivion performance and gts is much faster.

[-Sweeper_]

no its not

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2926&p=5

[aintz]

how is that not similar???

[KoHaN69]

Oblivion will run like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on any system. But besides that, the more ram the better :\

[Repoman]

Oblivion will run like :banana::banana::banana::banana: on any system. But besides that, the more ram the better :\

That is completely untrue

It runs beautifully on my system.. Opty 144@2.55, 2GB@233, 8800GTS 640@621/999. That's at 1280x960, 4xAA, HDR, 8xAF, Qarl's texture pack 3, higher resolution landscape textures, good LOD textures (2048x2048), and the mod that makes everything in distance viewable

The only places that have managed to bring my system down (by down I mean ~20fps) are the imperial waterfront and the arena to a lesser extent. I imagine it would run even better on a C2D with 8800GTX. But it seems that any somewhat recent system with an 8800 card will run this game just fine :stick:

I am actually amazed at how this game runs with this new card. I love it, and with all these graphics options and mods on, there is no question that it's the best looking game I have ever seen.

[Omastar]

I am actually amazed at how this game runs with this new card. I love it, and with all these graphics options and mods on, there is no question that it's the best looking game I have ever seen.

I agree. It's a marked improvement over my 7900GTO at 700/860. I've never been below about 34 fps, and that was during walking around The Gold Coast, off the main path, where there's just acres and acres of tall grass, trees, forts, camps, shrines, etc. Although to me, it really does start to look like utter crap when it drops below about 45 fps; it becomes so sluggish, especially when fighting enemies, it's hard to take it for very long. I was dropping to around 22 fps earlier, but then I realized the recycler on my game drive was filled with about 4.2GB of crap. It is a beautiful game, but I've yet to see a system (aside from the highest end machines) that can pull at least 60 fps at all times at 1280x1024 with details on high, 4xAA, 8xAF, etc. I know it'll always lag every now and then regardless, due to the limiting factor of your hard drive. Oblivion on an SSD would be great, as I assume load times would be pretty much instantaneous instead of causing stuttering while loading an area.

BTW, my GTS is stable in Oblivion at 670/2000.

[Repoman]

I agree. It's a marked improvement over my 7900GTO at 700/860. I've never been below about 34 fps, and that was during walking around The Gold Coast, off the main path, where there's just acres and acres of tall grass, trees, forts, camps, shrines, etc. Although to me, it really does start to look like utter crap when it drops below about 45 fps; it becomes so sluggish, especially when fighting enemies, it's hard to take it for very long. I was dropping to around 22 fps earlier, but then I realized the recycler on my game drive was filled with about 4.2GB of crap. It is a beautiful game, but I've yet to see a system (aside from the highest end machines) that can pull at least 60 fps at all times at 1280x1024 with details on high, 4xAA, 8xAF, etc. I know it'll always lag every now and then regardless, due to the limiting factor of your hard drive. Oblivion on an SSD would be great, as I assume load times would be pretty much instantaneous instead of causing stuttering while loading an area.

BTW, my GTS is stable in Oblivion at 670/2000.

Nice, which one did you end up getting? Mine started getting small artifacts at 648MHz on the core so I had to drop it down to 621 (I hate the huge jumps, it would be fine at 640 :mad: ). I still have yet to test the ram above 999

I am very much looking forward to Barcelona / Penryn / whatever and maybe step up to 8800GTX, then I'll REALLY tear it apart

[Omastar]

Nice, which one did you end up getting? Mine started getting small artifacts at 648MHz on the core so I had to drop it down to 621 (I hate the huge jumps, it would be fine at 640 :mad: ). I still have yet to test the ram above 999

I am very much looking forward to Barcelona / Penryn / whatever and maybe step up to 8800GTX, then I'll REALLY tear it apart

I got the eVGA Superclock version because Newegg had it for $299. I think with some minor voltmods it'd easily do 700 core all day long, if not more. I've tested the RAM all the way up to 1100 and it was bench stable, but I didn't play enough Oblivion to test for true stability.

There are two things that bother me about Oblivion with G80 or higher, and that is it becomes CPU limited. Secondly it bothers me that Oblivion uses so much damn vRAM, especially with mods (I'm only running QTP3 now, I need the distant land texture overhaul/4096 textures). You'd really almost need 8800GTX SLI to max everything and run a few mods comfortably. The thing about this game is it rises to meet your hardware if you're intent on max detail, mods, etc. But I take that as a challenge. ;)

[Modzilla]

I read that thread, btw, and I'm wondering how I can see how much vRAM is being used by Oblivion, real time?

open the console and type "tdt" and then "sdt 13"

[J-Mag]

open the console and type "tdt" and then "sdt 13"

Alternatively there is Vid Mem watch (or Riva Tuner): http://www.nonatainment.de/web/Default.aspx?tabid=62