The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Oblivion is the most graphically intensive game we have for testing the cards in this review. It's also one of the more troublesome games to benchmark because it doesn't have any built-in demo recording/playback features and there is a large variance in performance between the different areas (outside and inside, forests and gates, etc.) of this vast game. In order to resolve this to a degree, we have two separate benchmarks we use for Oblivion: one takes place outside walking towards an Oblivion gate, and the second is in one of the towns (Bruma) walking past several characters in a snowy daylight environment.
Because Oblivion has so much eye candy, having the graphics settings on higher quality (with settings like "distant lands" turned on, and item/actor distances set for longer distances, etc.) can result in a massive performance hit in even high-end graphics cards. Since we are dealing with mid-range and low-end cards in this review, we had to turn many of the quality settings down quite a bit in order to get playable results (and even then some of the cards fall short in the Gate benchmark). Here are the graphical settings we used for Oblivion.
The first benchmark through the town is less demanding on graphics hardware than the second one with an Oblivion gate. With the "distant lands" setting to off as well as the "view distance" set to 50%, the world seems strangely limited, especially for those who have experienced the game with extended view distances. The game is still technically playable at these settings however.
The framerates above show that these cards run this benchmark fairly well, with many cards handling 1600x1200 aside from the obvious issues with 128 MB cards (the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2, Gigabyte 7300 GS, and Gigabyte X1300) and all the ATI cards except the X1600 XT. Not much is going on in this benchmark, however, aside from a few townsfolk walking around and snow falling between the buildings.
For those that have played the game, an Oblivion gate is an impressive visual spectacle to behold, very reminiscent of the "Eye" effect for Sauron in Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings movies. The fact that the second benchmark takes place at night with monsters hurling fireballs at the player makes the effect even more striking, but it also tends to slow the framerate down to a crawl at even the lowest resolutions.
This is one of the only benchmarks we have that could bring the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent down to its knees at the highest resolution. Even at the lower resolution of 1024x768 most of these cards see barely playable average framerates. Because this can be a relatively fast-paced game at times, you really don't want to have to deal with framerate issues while battling some of the creatures and characters in this game. Most of the cards run smoothly at 800x600 with this benchmark, but the game isn't very enjoyable at such a low resolution.
This is all with drastically reduced image quality settings already - none of these cards can handle cranking up the eye candy in Oblivion. Unfortunately, this is one of the games that we would recommend not playing with any of these cards, with the exception of the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent and perhaps the Gigabyte 7600 GT. We feel a higher-end card is really needed to properly appreciate this game, though opinions vary. It is possible to play the game and even enjoy it with the settings turned way down and at the lowest resolutions, but a great deal of graphical elements are lost, and this is one of those games that relies heavily on graphics to be fully enjoyed.
Oblivion is the most graphically intensive game we have for testing the cards in this review. It's also one of the more troublesome games to benchmark because it doesn't have any built-in demo recording/playback features and there is a large variance in performance between the different areas (outside and inside, forests and gates, etc.) of this vast game. In order to resolve this to a degree, we have two separate benchmarks we use for Oblivion: one takes place outside walking towards an Oblivion gate, and the second is in one of the towns (Bruma) walking past several characters in a snowy daylight environment.
Because Oblivion has so much eye candy, having the graphics settings on higher quality (with settings like "distant lands" turned on, and item/actor distances set for longer distances, etc.) can result in a massive performance hit in even high-end graphics cards. Since we are dealing with mid-range and low-end cards in this review, we had to turn many of the quality settings down quite a bit in order to get playable results (and even then some of the cards fall short in the Gate benchmark). Here are the graphical settings we used for Oblivion.
| Oblivion Performance Settings | |
| Texture Size | Medium |
| Tree Fade | 20% |
| Actor Fade | 20% |
| Item Fade | 20% |
| Object Fade | 20% |
| Grass Distance | 0% |
| View Distance | 50% |
| Distant Land | Off |
| Distant Buildings | On |
| Distant Trees | On |
| Interior Shadows | 0% |
| Exterior Shadows | 0% |
| Self Shadows | Off |
| Shadows on Grass | Off |
| Tree Canopy Shadows | Off |
| Shadow Filtering | Off |
| Specular Distance | 20% |
| HDR Lighting | On |
| Bloom Lighting | Off |
| Water Detail | Normal |
| Water Reflections | On |
| Water Ripples | On |
| Window Reflections | On |
| Blood Decals | Off |
| Anti-aliasing | Off |
The first benchmark through the town is less demanding on graphics hardware than the second one with an Oblivion gate. With the "distant lands" setting to off as well as the "view distance" set to 50%, the world seems strangely limited, especially for those who have experienced the game with extended view distances. The game is still technically playable at these settings however.
The framerates above show that these cards run this benchmark fairly well, with many cards handling 1600x1200 aside from the obvious issues with 128 MB cards (the Sparkle 7300 GS Ultra 2, Gigabyte 7300 GS, and Gigabyte X1300) and all the ATI cards except the X1600 XT. Not much is going on in this benchmark, however, aside from a few townsfolk walking around and snow falling between the buildings.
For those that have played the game, an Oblivion gate is an impressive visual spectacle to behold, very reminiscent of the "Eye" effect for Sauron in Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings movies. The fact that the second benchmark takes place at night with monsters hurling fireballs at the player makes the effect even more striking, but it also tends to slow the framerate down to a crawl at even the lowest resolutions.
This is one of the only benchmarks we have that could bring the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent down to its knees at the highest resolution. Even at the lower resolution of 1024x768 most of these cards see barely playable average framerates. Because this can be a relatively fast-paced game at times, you really don't want to have to deal with framerate issues while battling some of the creatures and characters in this game. Most of the cards run smoothly at 800x600 with this benchmark, but the game isn't very enjoyable at such a low resolution.
This is all with drastically reduced image quality settings already - none of these cards can handle cranking up the eye candy in Oblivion. Unfortunately, this is one of the games that we would recommend not playing with any of these cards, with the exception of the ASUS EN7800 GT Top Silent and perhaps the Gigabyte 7600 GT. We feel a higher-end card is really needed to properly appreciate this game, though opinions vary. It is possible to play the game and even enjoy it with the settings turned way down and at the lowest resolutions, but a great deal of graphical elements are lost, and this is one of those games that relies heavily on graphics to be fully enjoyed.
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Leo V - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
...I can buy a high-end 7800GT substantially cheaper, buy a quiet Zalman 80mm low-rpm GPU cooler and run it undervolted at 7V. (In fact, I have done exactly that.) It will be cheaper, run WAY cooler, and be quieter, because I can get rid of a case fan that I would need with a "silent" card anyway.The idea of running a 50-100watt GPU with a silent cooler is dubious -- you still need a fan somewhere in your system, and the best place is closest to the hottest parts. Those parts are naturally the CPU and GPU.
Instead of "silent" (but not really) high-end cards, give us cards with heatpipes + large, slow quiet fans that can be undervolted.
Most importantly, ATI and NVIDIA please stop making 100watt monsters and follow Intel's and AMD's lead in improving power efficiency.
yyrkoon - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Sorry, I cant say I would agree that a fan would be quieter than a passive solution, I dont care if you could run it at 1V, and did :)Leo V - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
e.g. substantially cheaper than the holy grail "silent" version of the 7800GT.
And Kudos to the companies for the inventive products and to Anandtech for covering them.
hkBst - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
I've been waiting for a review of the passively cooled 7900GT from MSI for a while and I was expecting it to be in here. How can it not be?Look here: http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro...">http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro...
DerekWilson - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
We sent multiple requests for cards out to 16 different graphics card manufacturers. I'd say we did pretty well with more than half of those responding.We also requested that each manufacturer send us all their passively cooled cards. If something was left out it was either because the manufacturer decided not to send it, or we weren't able to get ahold of it before our submission deadline. We tested a lot of cards and have been working on this for quite some time, so silent cards that have come out recently or were not widely available until recently will not have been included.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Also, the MSI 7900GT Silent card is only available in Europe, and we did mention this in the review.haris - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Any chance you could retest the cards using a mid range system. It seems kind of silly to test an FX-55 with a $50-100 video card.nullpointerus - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Yet Another Silly Performance Retest Request (YAMPRR)Testing an FX-55 with a $50-100 video card is not silly; testing graphics cards' performance relative to each other requires removing all other factors including the CPU and RAM. Not everyone has a "mid-range" system, and those who do not have a "mid-range" system do not want the results skewed just to make your life easier. If you want specific performance advice for your particular system and games, why do you not join and post in the forums?
ss284 - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Well considering the majority of people who are looking for midrange graphics cards have a midrange system, his request is a perfectly good one. Unless Anandtech enjoys targeting the minority of its readers it should be doing more applicable performance testing. Then again, the FX-55 isnt exactly a cutting edge processor anymore. Just scale everything back 10% and you will have a rough estimate of what performance would be like on a mid range system.nullpointerus - Thursday, August 31, 2006 - link
Yet Another Defense of a YAMPRR (YADY). *yawn*Well considering the majority of people who are looking for midrange graphics cards have a midrange system, his request is a perfectly good one.
No, it's a silly one. The point of the article is to compare graphics cards, not to make life easier for a certain group of people. People who follow this esoteric stuff religiously tend to distill the information into a more practical form. And as I said, the information he wanted is readily available in the forums. A couple of mouse clicks and a bit of typing is better than ignorantly saying the video card article is silly for not providing framerates similar to some mythical ideal of a mid-range system.
Unless Anandtech enjoys targeting the minority of its readers it should be doing more applicable performance testing.
How about you go where the information is normally provided instead of trying to turn all the front page articles into your personal system upgrade newsfeeds?
Could we just skip ahead to where everyone chimes in with their own ideas of what a mid-range system is. Does it use AMD or Intel? Single or multi-core? How much RAM? Which timings? Which system boards? Which components are overclocked?
I'll make a deal with you: get together a mid-range system that everyone will agree on, and then I will agree with you that we should conflate graphics cards testing with mid-range system testing. You see, ridding the comments section of silly YAMPRR and YADY posts will not benefit anyone if we still have to deal with all the senseless bickering about little details such as chipset revisions, features, and all the other inane griping I have seen posted when Anandtech picks out a CPU, overclocking, or RAM configuration as representative of X-range systems.