The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 26, 2006 1:07 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
High End GPU Performance w/ HDR Enabled
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
At the very high end, in our most strenuous benchmark, $1200 of graphics cards will buy you less than 50 fps on average. It doesn't actually matter which vendor you go with, both ATI and NVIDIA offer similar performance at the very high end with one very important exception: ATI seems to offer much higher minimum frame rates than NVIDIA at the very high end in this test. We tried adjusting the render ahead setting but couldn't improve the situation any for NVIDIA, so while both ATI and NVIDIA's best performers offer similar average frame rates, the ATI Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire setup is better overall thanks to higher minimum frame rates.
Looking at single card performance, once again ATI takes the crown as the Radeon X1900 XTX has higher average and minimum frame rates than the GeForce 7900 GTX.
What really puts things into perspective though is the performance of the GeForce 7800 GTX, a GPU that was at one point a $500 king of the hill now falls in the lower half of the graph. Unable to average more than 20 fps in this test, the settings we're running at here are too much for the GPU. Given that we haven't turned up every feature and are running at a relatively mainstream 1280 x 1024 resolution, this chart alone gives you good indication of exactly how stressful Oblivion actually is.
GeForce 6 owners should no longer consider their GPUs as high end, because Oblivion certainly doesn't. Even a pair of GeForce 6800 GSes can't break 15 fps in this test and with a minimum frame rate of 10 fps, they make the game far from playable at these settings. No, believe it or not, but the GeForce 6800 GS performs like a mid-range card at best under Oblivion.
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
At our high quality 1280 x 1024 setting, virtually all of the cards offer nearly identical performance when walking around inside a town, even down to the minimum frame rates. The problem with these numbers is that you really can't determine what settings you'll be running Oblivion at based on your in-town or in-dungeon performance, because the moment you step outside you'll find yourself watching a slide show. It's also worth noting that although a lot of these cards have average frame rates in the 50s, their minimums all drop to right around 30 fps. If we crank up any of the detail settings we'll be looking at even worse minimum frame rates, which are just as important.
We see no benefit to SLI or CrossFire here, due to whatever limitation we're running into at these settings. What we will investigate in future articles is exactly what is causing this limitation; we would assume we're CPU limitated even though we're already running an Athlon 64 FX-60. That doesn't bode well for other processors, as there simply isn't much more we can throw at the game.
It isn't until we get below the GeForce 7800 GTX that performance begins to drop off for our contenders here and once you get slower than the X1800 GTO then the minimum frame rates begin to dip below 30fps.
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
Like our Town test, our Dungeon benchmark shows the cream of the crop performing very similarly with performance only really dropping off below the 7800 GTX. Although our Dungeon test also runs into some sort of a performance limiter, it appears to be a different one than what we saw outside walking around the town because our average limited frame rate is now up around 80 fps instead of 50 fps.
What the combination of these three tests show is the full gamut of performance of these GPUs under Oblivion, from the worst conditions to the best conditions. And while everyone is fairly competitive indoors or walking around a town, once you journey beyond the town walls you can really start to appreciate a faster video card.
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cgrecu77 - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
consoles are not great and they're a waste of money - think about Oblivion, the game barely runs on 6 months box (Xbox360). Do you honestly think that in 5 years a top of the line PC game will run on an XBox? I bought my x850XT last year for less than $300 on eBay and I can play this game at my lcd's native resolution (1280x1024). I'm pretty sure that with my current video card I'll be able to play games for 1 year or so and then I can probably buy the X1900XT for ~300 and that will give me another 2 years.Lower the resolution a little and you can extend it even further.
The biggest danger is to avoid buying middle range/ extrem upper range - this way you'd be screwed. If I would've bought a 6600GT last year it would've been a bad decision. If I'd buy a x1800GTO now it would be a poor decision also, because it can barely play the new games, in one year it'll become obsolete. The trick is to buy things that last 2 years at a decent price.
The problem with consoles are that if you buy beyond the first year or two you are actually buying an obsolete piece of hardware (think about the original Xbox, still selling - it's p3 with geforce 2 or 3). In the past consoles had a big advantage by running at low res, but once hdtv becomes mainstream they would have to support pc resolutions. If you have an hdtv you know that low-res content looks like crap with or without upconverting to a higher res (take a picture at 400x300 and enlarge it with Photoshop to 1600x1200 and you'll see what I'm talking about).
pnyffeler - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Is there any way anyone can look at these numbers and not just by an Xbox360? I had a feeling my 6800GT wouldn't cut it, but wow! It's games like this that make the feasibility of upgrading your PC to play the latest game ridiculously stupid. Spend the $470 to get the console and the game.If you really feel the need to spend more money than that, I'd recommend investing in a nice HDTV. Oblivion in hi-def from your couch is about as good as it gets.
Now if I could just get the Mrs. to stop hogging the TV...
mesyn191 - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
In every bench instance shown they're testing at a higher resolution than the X360 will ever display...Also the X360 version only looks good if you've got the HDTV to go with it, otherwise it really does look like crap on a SDTV.
Gameplay wise this game is very very good, not perfect, but better than any other game I've played.
erwos - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
That's flatly untrue. The X360 has a 1280x1024 resolution with the VGA adapter. Also, the PC version would also look like crap on an SDTV, so that's not really a valid point against the 360.-Erwos
mesyn191 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
That is the X360's built in video scalar doing the work though, max that any game renders real time ATM on the X360 is 720p due to the limited amount of EDRAM available. Real and not scaled 1080i may be possible, but only if the developer specifically designs the game for it by cutting out effects, reducing textures, etc. and does not use FSAA.http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/xenos/">http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/xenos/
My point about how the X360 games look on a SDTV is valid as most people don't use thier PC's with a SDTV or any TV at all, they use a CRT or LCD monitor... The opposite is almost never true in the X360's case.
hondaman - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
I would have upgraded my "crappy" 7800gtx had I known how bad my FPS really is.I love this game. Easily the best game I've ever played in my life. Its not perfect, and I wont defend it as being so, but overall, its magnificent. I have over 270 game hours, and still havent done everything there is to do.
mpeavid - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
The engine is extremely inefficient. The quests are not really that interesting.The NPCs are stiffs.
Overall? 8/10.
The game engine needs major tweaking.
FYI - eliminate the grass totally and you can increase your frame count by as much as 50%. There is also a tweak to increase threads (another possible 50% increase).
I went from 20 fps outdoors to near 30 fps with higher visual settings (except the grass part)
Spoonbender - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
You know, it seems they've compiled the game in debug mode... :)That's how much they've bothered tweaking performance. ;)
When the game crashes (which happens to be every time I exit the game, or alt-tab too much), I get an access violation, always on special debug locations, like 0xCDCDCDCD or 0xFEEEFEEE.
So, yay for high performance tweaking.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Lowering grass height and detail is probably the best tweak you can make. I set mine for "60" in terms of density and half as tall (I think?) and performance went WAY up without seriously ruining (IMO) the appearance.As for the game, it depends on what you're after. I really like the game, but the UI has some major issues. I think the quests are relatively well done overall. I love the huge game world (huge in content, not in square miles). Eventually, though, a lot of the game becomes repetitive. I've been doing too many side quests; time to hit the main quest in earnest.... :)
kmmatney - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
I installed a mod for the UI (BTMod) to make the UI windows larger and its a huge improvment. I dont bother with Bloom, and performance is acceptable on my modded X800GTO2 and Sempron @ 2.4 GHz.