How hard can I push video on games like FEAR & Oblivion with these specs?

hey I sold you those

-haze

Before overclocking I remember that I couldn't run either game at completely maximum settings. I mean I could, but they would run around 20fps. For FEAR I had everything to maximum except soft shadows. The thing I did was turn down anti-aliasing a bit and it helped a lot. And at 1920x1200 AA is definitely not a must. Oblivion was a harder one to get running smoothly. I mean everything is pretty great until you get outside. With everything on max, HDR on, AA off I was getting 9 fps outside while fighting three monsters. And I had a 3dmark05 score of 8400 which is average for my specs. Okay I just ran Oblivion and even after I overclocked the crap out of my card I'm still getting an average of 20fps outside. Sometimes it jumps up to 30 and sometimes it goes down to 15. I took off HDR, put on Bloom lighting, and left AA off and now I'm finally averaging 30 fps outside. So there you go. Hope this helps.

Just turn off shadows on grass and self shadows. They don't look that great anyway, and they kill your performance

Yes that and lowering grass density will give you some good performance boost without having to turn off stuff like hdr.

how will oblvion run on mine at 19x12?

2gb
1.66 duo
7900 gs (single pipe but will do a little oc)
5400 rpm 60 gig
uxga

My guess?? It won't.

I couln't really run at max res on my Gen 2 with an OCed 7800GTX. You are gonna need to lower that resolution a bit

i dont need at amx medium would be fine


also doesnt it look awful if you dont run it at native res?

oops re-read - ignore

I've also got the 7900GS (not OC'ed), but less RAM, slightly faster processor...I run Oblivion at 1900x1220 always, albeit with shadows off, grass density down, some other settings at less than max, and it runs fine. Every once in awhile it will stutter some outside, and the FPS probably aren't enough to satisfy everyone here, but I rarely notice any issues. Even with a lot of the settings turned down, the graphics are still really fantastic. You should be fine.

woohoo


you got a 5400 rpm hdd?

also processor doesnt really make differnce. Core duo 1.66 is faster and more efficient that a 4.1 p4

No, 7200rpm (contrary to the 72,000rpm misprint in my signature).

It shouldn't make much of a difference, if any.

can you prove this? I have a 1.83 and I think it is equivalent to around a 3.4ghz p4. I cannot see a 1.66 being 4.1ghz when a 2.16 is around an x2 3800.

no

it was on a table that compared desktop to mobile processors and I dont remember the website

People having problems running oblivion at max rez:

I just discovered this 'tweak'...the 'fade' sliders in Video tab which make the most difference in cities: 'Actor', 'Object', and 'Item'...put 'Actor' on about 40%, and the other two on around 25-30% and this makes a HUGE difference in cities (haven't been outside, yet) without a whole lot of visual 'pop-up'...I mean, you CAN see things coming into existence as you move forward, but it is a very subtle 'shimmering' that you won't really notice unless you're looking for it! I haven't tested this outside, as I just 'discovered' it last night and I'm too busy to play today (the wife thinks I'm writing business emails right now, heh)...you can check it out on yer own, though.

I now run at 1920x1200 w/every other slider maxxed out, AF set at 16x in the driver panel, and HDR turned on in-game...before jerking those sliders down, I was getting 12-25 FPS even at 1440x900 when in cities (I also have a mod loaded that adds tons of random NPCs/Adventurers/Children wandering around)...now, I get 27-50 FPS@native rez...pretty handy stuff.

I was getting really frustrated with the framerate, as you can probably imagine, and I just thought of it as 'a terrible sin' to adjust any in-game settings downward after having spent tons of $$ on this rig and overclocked the piss out of it...I was convinced that ANY loss of image quality was intolerable, and simply didn't consider that the dev team had implemented these tools so well...as soon as I slammed all my settings to 'default' in frustration, I immediately noticed these three sliders had the biggest impact on frames and negligible effects on image quality/immersiveness. I now find it rather insane that I hadn't considered setting those sliders at anything less than 'MAX' before, and instead was constantly changing resolutions, swapping drivers, pushing an overclock even higher, etc. etc. to try and fix the issue! Jeez, I'm a moron....anyhow, the moral is, don't be afraid to use all the tools Bethsoft provided when deciding for/against a given resolution; as Emeril Lagasse is fond of saying 'That's why they put knobs on these things with more than one setting!'