Glad it's working ok for you Aelia [img]smile.gif[/img]

The screenshot I posted wasn't really an indication of how the game would look for you, more what level of performance you could expect. The person who took that screenshot was complaining because even when he found very sparsley detailed areas of the map (which he has gone out of the way to find for the purposes of that screenshot) where there wern't really any objects being rendered at all, his FPS was still low, whereas other games he plays on that 9600 pro like Far Cry look far more detailed and run far faster for him.

How will a 9600 XT do?

Among the more intersting of conflicting data is that ATI itself named the 9500 Pro card as the minimum suggested GPU, and that is a faster card than any of the 9600's are. Then Bethesda came along and is saying that the 9600's are OK after all! If you want an "Old Card" that will run the game at medium quality settings, and still be inexpensive because it's now on the overstocks and surplus market, get a 9800 Pro or 9800 XT.

Rather than trying to make individual personal comparisons, go to a site such as gpureview and let it make two at a time matchups. Avoid "cross- family" and "cross- origin" pairings, because this site offers bare raw numbers that don't tell the whole story when matched up (based on those numbers, the nVidia FX's look a lot better than the Radeon 9xxx's, which is certainly not true).

Here is the ATI suggested "Bottom of the Pile" vs. your 9600 XT:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards....d1=27&card2=82

You'll notice in particular the count of pipelines near the bottom. The 9500 Pro has double what the 9600 XT has, which is where the advantage lies.


:D

[ 03-28-2006, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: The Kiwi ]

In short, the 9600 XT will run Oblivion, but at a bare minimum. As I am short on money, I don't know whether or not I will go out to buy a new card.

bump