The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 26, 2006 1:07 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Looking at the performance offered by a variety of GPUs in Oblivion makes one thing clear: this game is the most stressful title on the market right now. We've focused primarily on stock performance using commonly available settings, but if you're serious about getting the most out of Oblivion we highly recommend looking at some of the tweak guides to help balance performance with appearance. For now, those of you hoping to run Oblivion at 1920x1200 with all the detail settings at maximum will need to wait for future GPU generations. But how do the current generation of cards fare?
At the high end, there's no better solution than ATI's Radeon X1900 series. While NVIDIA can offer similar performance with the GeForce 7900 GTX, its minimum frame rates aren't anywhere near as high as what ATI can deliver, meaning that the X1900 series will give you a much better overall experience. Oblivion is quite possibly the first game we've ever benchmarked where having multiple GPUs is almost necessary to get good frame rates at relatively common resolutions with most of the impressive visual effects turned on. The performance offered by a pair of X1900 XTs simply can't be matched by any single card, but as good of a game as Oblivion is you'd have to have a pretty serious computer budget to accommodate the $1200 that a pair of X1900 CrossFire GPUs will set you back.
Looking at mid range offerings, our recommendation sticks with ATI as the Radeon X1800 XT continues ATI's trend of offering absolutely stellar performance (relatively speaking) under Oblivion. At $200, the GeForce 7600 GT also proved to be a fairly strong contender in our medium quality tests.
In terms of upgrades, if you've got a CrossFire or SLI motherboard, adding a second GPU can improve performance by 25-50% in our Oblivion Gate test. X1600 CrossFire is probably the cheapest upgrade offering reasonable, assuming you already own an Radeon X1600 XT. At around $150 you really can't go wrong there. Moving from a single 6800 GS or 7600 GT to SLI also provides nearly 50% more performance, but the cost will be a bit higher.
If you own a slightly older card like something in the Radeon X800/X850 series, you honestly don't really need an upgrade to get better performance under Oblivion. Moving to a Shader Model 3.0 card like something in ATI's Radeon X1800 or X1900 series will give you HDR support and you'll be able to turn up some more eye candy, but then you're talking about a fairly significant upgrade investment. Moving to an X1800 XT will set you back more than $300 and still not offer you tremendous performance at higher image quality settings; for that you'll have to turn to a X1900 XT or XTX. Owners of the GeForce 6 series are in a similar situation: lowering your expectations a bit may be better than spending a lot of money on an upgrade.
This is just the tip of the iceberg however; we have a general idea of what GPUs do the best and worst in Oblivion but what about CPUs? And at what point does it stop making sense to spend money on new graphics cards versus just going out and buying the Xbox 360 version instead? We'll be answering those questions and more as our Oblivion coverage continues...
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smitty3268 - Friday, April 28, 2006 - link
Well, all the tests that had the XT ahead of the XTX were obviously CPU bound, so for all intents and purposes you should have read the performance as being equal.I would like to know a bit about the drivers though. Were you using Catalyst AI and does it make a difference?
coldpower27 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Quite a nice post there, well said Jarred.JarredWalton - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
LOL - a Bolivian = Oblivion. Thanks, Dragon! :D (There are probably other typos as well. Sorry.)alpha88 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Opteron 165, 7800GTX 256megI run at 1920x1200 with every ingame setting set to max, HDR, no AA, (16x AF)
The game runs just fine.
I don't know what the framerates are, but whatever they are, it's very playable.
I have a few graphics mods installed (new textures), and the graphics are good enough that I randomly stop and take screenshots, the view looked so awesome.
z3R0C00L - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
The game is a glimpse at the future of gaming. The 7x00 series is old. True, nVIDIA were able to remain competitive with revamped 7800's which they now call 7900's but consumers need to remember that these cards have a smaller die space for a reason... they offer less features, less performance and are not geared towards HDR gaming.Right now nVIDIA and ATi have a complete role reversal from the x800XT PE vs. 6800 Ultra. The 6800 Ultra performed on par or beat the x800XT PE. The kick was that the 6800 Ultra produced more heat (larger die) was louder (larger cooler) but had more features and was more forward looking. Right now we have the same thing.
ATi's x1900 series has a larger die, produces more heat (larger die means more voltage to operate) and comes with a larger cooler. The upside is that it's a better card. The x1900 series totally dominate the 7900 series. Some will argue about OpenGL others will point to inexistant flaws in ATi drivers... the truth is those who make these comments on both sides are hardware fans. Product wise.. the x1900 series should be the card you buy if you're looking for a highend card... if you're looking more towards the middle of the market the x1800XT is better then the 7900GT.
Remember performance, features and technology.. the x1k series has all of them above the 7x00 series. Larger die space.. more heat. Larger die space.. more features.
Heat/Power for features and performance... hmmm fair tradeoff if you ask me.
aguilpa1 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
inefficient game programming is no excuse to go out and spend 1200 on a graphics system. Games like the old Crytek Cryengine have proven they can provide 100% of the oblivion immersion and eye candy without crippling your graphics system and bring your computer to a crawl, ridicoulous game and test,....nuff said.dguy6789 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
The article is of a nice quality, very informative. However, what I ponder more than GPU performance in this game is CPU performance. Please do an indepth cpu performance article that includes Celerons, Pentium 4s, Pentium Ds, Semprons, Athlon 64s, and Athlon 64 X2s. Firing squad did an article, however it only contained four AMD cpus that were of relatively the same speed in the first place. I, as well as many others, would greatly appreciate an indepth article speaking of cpu performance, dual core benefits, as well as anything else you can think of.coldpower27 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
I would really enjoy a CPU scaling article with Intel based processors from the Celeron D's, Pentium 4's, and Pentium D's in this game.frostyrox - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
It's something i already knew but I'm glad Anandtech has brought it into full view. Oblivion is arguably one of the best PC games i've seen in 2006, and could very well turn out to be one of the best we'll see all year. Instead of optimizing the game for the PC, Bethesda (and Microsoft indirectly) bring to the PC a half *ss, amature, embarassing, and insanely bug-ridden 360 Port. I think I have the right to say this because I have a relatively fast PC (a64 3700+, x800 xl, 2gb cosair, sata2 hdds, etc) and I'm roughly 65hrs into Oblivion right now. Next time Bethesda should use the Daikatana game engine - that way gamers with decent PCs might not see framerates of 75 go to 25 everytime an extra character came onto the screen and sneezed. Right now you may be thinking that I'm mad about all this. Not quite. But I will say this much: next time I get the idea of upgrading my pc, I'll have to remember that upgrading the videocard may be pointless if the best games we see this year are 360 ports running at 30 frames. So here's to you Bethesda and Microsoft, for ruining a gaming experience that could've been so much more if you gave a d*mn about pc gamers.trexpesto - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Maybe Oblivion should be $100?