Video cards and Morrowind

[-Geoffro-]

hi

i have just recently bought a GF6600GT, 256mb AGP8X. though i am running morrowind very poorly (very bad FPS). and the question i ask, and i think i may some of the answer already though i wish to try to confirm a solid answer.

my computer is a celeron 2.8Ghz (why celeron you ask? b/c i bought it of a friend brand new for a very good price), 1.0G of RAM, though the mainboard has only an AGP4X, with my geforce being AGP8X, is this restricting the performance of playing morrowind? and b/c of the fact that it is a celeron? it has me stumped b/c my system can play games like doom3 and farcry reasonably well (not the best though), it cannot play morrowind as good as it should.

any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated guys.

thanks ppl

- Geoff

[Fang]

How bad FPS? With a GF5500, 2.6GHz Celeron, and 1gig of ram, I can play Morrowind fine, with an average of 10-20 FPS in big cities, like Balmora.

Bad = 1-8 FPS, in my opinion. Maybe your just expecting too much from your equipment.

[-Geoffro-]

hi

as much as we all love morrowind this game must then be very badly coded. being the game is now about three or more years old now, and having a video card that is near the top of the range of todays standards, and morrowind performing as it is now?. i used to play morrowind on my xbox and i feel i had a more consistent FPS then it does on my PC. and i am getting the FPS that you mentioned, maybe a touch more, but is still very poor in the city of Silgrad. oh well i'll have to make do i suppose. ?(

- Geoff

[Razorwing]

I think it's been said that the engine Morrowind uses has limitations that aren't affected by how powerful the hardware is. A good example in Silgrad Tower is the region called Deepen Moor where modders in the old days placed numerous fog statics underground. I think back then they believed the poor frame rate caused by the fog would solve itself in the future, as the average gamer's hardware setup improved. As time wore on it would seem the frame rate problem in that region is due to an internal limitation. When I play I try to avoid going in there at all. Fortunately Bethesda confirmed they are working hard on making Oblivion much more optimized.

I'm not sure, but I think one thing that isn't hindered by the limitations is the exterior cell reference count and so the better setup, the smoother it'll be to walk around in Silgrad city. The sometimes poor frame rate there really put me off the town from the start and I haven't really explored it, preferring the serenity of Reich Parkeep. I sure hope the Oblivion version of the town will be smoother to play from the get-go.

I have Celeron as well (2 Ghz) and 1152mb of RAM. I'm not sure if I need to switch CPU for Oblivion, but I sure hope I don't as I plan to spend as much as I can on the 3D card. Do you guys think 2 Ghz will be enough?

[noremorse]

I think 2Ghz should be enough, but it's possible that you'll need more. I'm running a 3200+ AMD Athalon XP that's operating speed is at 2.8ghz, and I run almost everything just fine with it. I didn't pay too much for it. You can find a good 2.5 - 3.0ghz processor on Newegg.com for fairly cheap if you wind up needing one.

-NR

[Razorwing]

That's good advice, thanks NR.