Hello all,
I'm looking to do some upgrading on my 2-or-so year old system. I just bough Oblivion today and i can't even crawl through it. It truly is unplayable even with everything that I could turn off and down put to the minimum. What I've got is:

Athlon XP 2400+ (Effectively 1.99ghz)
on a Mainboard k7s5a Pro (Socket A)
2 Sticks of 512 Ram (So total of 1g... can't remember the speed but its like PC-something not ddr)
BFG Geforce FX 5600 (256mb)
Onboard sound (I think that's causing the screeching when i try to play)

I was looking into maybe buying a 6800 Gt or Ultra because I only have an AGP slot but then it struck me that maybe that might not help me and that i should look into upgrading my CPU and going over to PCIE. My problem is that I've been out of the market for a while and when I look around at like Athlon 64 3200+ they only run at recorded speeds slightly higher than my ~2ghz it seems strange . I've heard that the FX series sucks and is that just why i'm having all these issues or is it time to pretty much start from scratch and build up from the bottom? My pricepoint is also a bit of an issue as i can't sell what i have for very much and new mobo = new ram + new cpu + new power supply + new graphics card = empty wallet + big headache . Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

You're right about the FX series of graphics cards - I had a 5200 and it couldn't even run Morrowind in full detail! That's definitely your bottleneck as far as I can tell. The 3200+ does indeed run only slighty faster, clockspeed-wise, faster than that (mine is at 2.01Ghz basic), but I'm sure its actually a big boost in performance due to better architecture and stuff.

I can't really help you with a full system, although I can tell you what mine is if you want. It was £700 although change the GPU to something more modest and it drops to around £600.

Hi all. I'm running an Asylum card from BFG that is a GeForce FX 5200 I believe, with 256 on the card. I was told when I got it that it wouldn't run Morrowind, it did. I was told it doesn't have pixel 2.0 shaders, when I told the guy it said so on the box he said they were inferior. I wasn't going to argue over it, it played Morrowing great and looked sweet. With the rest of my rig, which is VERY modest, it'll run Oblivion, not at full specs mind you, but it'll run. I have no random lock-ups with this card as I have seen in other online forums. I overclock my memory speed to 465 Mhz and my core clock is 281 Mhz, did I mention this card is PCI, not AGP or PCIE. My CPU is a Celeron 2.6 Ghz, with 512 Mb ddr. I have noticed a frame hit when I use my onboard sound versus my soundcard. Any modding I've done has been to try to increase the frame rate. HowlingOak, are you using "Coolbits" for your GeForce card, & do you have the newest drivers (Beta 84.43)? I think sometimes this card gets a bum wrap, but i'm also no tech. Just my 2 cents.

Puttinhg in another gig of ram would help immensely! And yes, get a decent sound card and disable the on board sound.

Thread necromancy is bad, mmkay?