Oblivion recap..

[LeftEyeBlind]

Before I buy my 8800GT 512MB I want to make sure I'll be able to run oblivion maxed out [at atleast 1280x1024] with these settings...

X2 Brisbane 2.9Ghz
1.5GB Ram [Cas Latency - 4]
8800GT [Would be overclocked]

My new HDD has 16MB of cache, not sure if that matters, I had been running on a hdd from 2004 up untill last week.

Do I need more ram? Is my X2 a bottleneck?

I'm fine with 2xAA aswell, at 1280x1024 nothing above makes a noticable difference.

I'd like it to have a constant 30FPS or more, on my old 8600GT I got lots of stuttering as the scenery loaded.

 

[Oreo]

To give you an idea, i run oblivion at 1650x1080

Max settings, max draw distance, everything ! 8x AA, or HDR.
And its consistently smooth, smooth enough to not check the FPS.

My specs are

E6850 @ 3Ghz
2GB Ram
8800GTS 320Mb

There are several FPS optimizers though

 

[LeftEyeBlind]

So i won't get any pausing like I did with my 8600GT, and my ram and CPU are just dandy for this?

 

[Trotter]

You ought to be fine with your specs. A full 2 gig would be nice, but it shouldn't make a difference (or not much).

 

[Oreo]

So i won't get any pausing like I did with my 8600GT, and my ram and CPU are just dandy for this?

CPU should be fine, 2GB would be nice as trotter says. Your graphics card will play this with ease.

 

[LeftEyeBlind]

Do you think going from my old HDD with 8MB cache to my new one with 16MB cache will help out any?

 

[Oreo]

A bit yes, loading will allways be there because no hard drive can load the data quick enough. I might be wrong, it might be the GPU and CPU that are the problem loading it form the hard drive. But this game was designed to have loading intervals, you will never avoid it. It's only a second or two of a bad framerate anyway.

 

[SinxarKnights]

I run Oblivion on the system in my sig on "Ultra High" at 1280x1024 with HDR disabled (bloom) with 2x AA and my FPS is > 30 in most areas, usually I get 40+ FPS with a dip into the 10s sometimes when I have tons of guards chasing me.

EDIT: I am using Vista Home Premium to game on - Ubuntu is my main desktop.

 

[dhgunit]

Before I buy my 8800GT 512MB I want to make sure I'll be able to run oblivion maxed out [at atleast 1280x1024] with these settings...

X2 Brisbane 2.9Ghz
1.5GB Ram [Cas Latency - 4]
8800GT [Would be overclocked]

My new HDD has 16MB of cache, not sure if that matters, I had been running on a hdd from 2004 up untill last week.

Do I need more ram? Is my X2 a bottleneck?

I'm fine with 2xAA aswell, at 1280x1024 nothing above makes a noticable difference.

I'd like it to have a constant 30FPS or more, on my old 8600GT I got lots of stuttering as the scenery loaded.

Yes. You should be fine. RAM is probably the only concern.