After quietly squirrelling away cash, where possible, over the last year or so I'm finally in the position where I'm able to replace my aged machine. I have run this thing for around 8 years, and while it has been great.. it is time to put it out to pasture. So... within the next few days I am going to be ordering shiny, new, modern components, including a 980 card, an SSD for my OS and 16 GB RAM..... This should be quite the experience.. right now I have a "whopping" 2 GB RAM and a 550 TI on a dual core (actually the 550 extended this computer's lifespan by a good 2 or so years, it's been excellent).

Anyway... please excuse the blather... I'm just kind of excited.
The actual point of this thread is that I plan to do a substantial modding job on Oblivion in terms of visuals; I don't typically focus on eye candy all that much when I play games, but since I will be able to, hey.. why not? So.. I'm hoping people might be able to make some recommendations in terms of texture packs, ENBs and all those tasty items. I have browsed through Nexus to a fair degree, but personal suggestions are always great.

Note, I already do use Unique Landscapes and a reduced version of Qarl's pack, but that is about as much as my poor beast can handle on top of OOO and a large number of other mods. I'm sort of amazed it is as stable as it is... Also, while I wouldn't describe myself as being extremely hardcore about lore, I do generally prefer mods that feel as though they could have been packaged with the vanilla game.

Cheers for any advice!

I'm afraid I can't help too much. I do run a version of Qarl's Texture Pack and find that adequate for me - but you already have that and are looking for a bit more it seems.

I did move this thread to the 'Oblivion Mod Discussion' forum and I'm sure there are folks here who run more ambitious graphics mods and can hopefully help.

Congrats! Sounds like an awesome rig!

Cheers Acadian,
I realised the minute after posting that I'd put the original in the wrong place... d'ooh. It's not as though I haven't been around forums before, either. Oh well, I'm chalking this up to excitement.
And no worries if you don't know of any graphics mods. As I said, I have never really placed a huge emphasis on eye candy, I'm generally more interested in mods that improve game-play, story, and so on. But.. I figure I may as well take advantage. I'm actually speccing this computer for Witcher 3, which has brutal requirements (just glad my upgrading coincides with the game's upcoming release).

@mALX,
Thank you! It is weird... on the one hand, it feels sort of anticlimactic, since it's taken a pretty long time, probably closer to 3 years, now I think of it, yet on the other hand, I'm incredibly excited. In addition to remodding Oblivion, it will be so nice to try out Dragon Age: Inquisition as well... and it will be great to (hopefully) play Skyrim without it continually crashing due to memory issues, or seeing plasticy, pink spiders because of texture rendering problems.

I can recommend FG porter not follow...


Don´t actually use graphics mods in my game so I can´t help too much either. But have fun with yer new toy!

I don't really use many graphics mods for Oblivion. Mainly just Qarl's Texture Pack 3 Full, and HD Faces for Roberts Body. I don't use Robert's Body. I use BAB instead, but Robert's textures work just fine with it. I also use Natural Habitat & Natural Vegetation from Natural Environments.

While not exactly high res, I also use Seamless Heads and Luchaires Neck Seam Concealer.

Congrats, ArtemisNoir2! I play on a laptop so I’m afraid I don’t have any advice, sorry. Just here to celebrate with you and dream of graphics enhancements!

Thanks all

@Subrosa,
I tend to use OCO2 for a face replacer, but if I hadn't already grown accustomed to it, I'd certainly install HD faces, they look really good. The only downside to OCO2 is that, as far as I know, it only really works with Robert's, Exnem and vanilla. I don't mind Robert's, but I'd much prefer being able to use BAB, because, for one, there are a ton of excellent clothing and armour designs for it. If I recall correctly, BAB itself even includes a great shop in the Blackwood area. *sigh*

It all feels pretty weird, to be honest. I typically get an upper mid range machine.. and then run it as long as I possibly can, with the only replacement generally being a new card at some point, since cards can add several years of life to an ageing system. Sooo... as I mentioned in my original post, it has been quite some time since I've fully upgraded, and limping along with a whopping 2 GB of RAM has been rather challenging on occasion. I could have bought more I suppose, but this old system is a 32 bit and uses DDR2, by the time I figured out I needed more RAM DDR3 was already well in place.. so replacing it was actually kind of expensive, and just didn't seem worth it.

I have found some graphics-related mods that look intriguing...
Discovery1's mods
Oblivion Reloaded
Imperial City Reloaded V2
Hi-Res Road Texture

I can vouch for Hi Res Road Textures. I've been using it on my old graphics card without problems. On the current one it is combined with Qarls Redimized Textures and Distant Terrain. The roads look sooo much better with this mod.