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/ Bloom Enabled
The only Shader Model 2.0 cards we have in this comparison are ATI's Radeon X800 series, the rest of the contenders are SM3.0 capable. While the SM2.0 vs. 3.0 distinction doesn't really exist in Oblivion, there is one feature that requires the later spec: lighting. Oblivion's HDR lighting setting requires a Shader Model 3.0 capable card, otherwise you're left with a less precise lighting solution called Bloom or nothing at all. Bloom naturally runs faster on all GPUs so we couldn't really throw the X800 numbers in with the rest of the HDR capable cards from above, instead we were forced to do a second run of our benchmarks with Bloom enabled on all GPUs to show you X800 owners whether or not it made sense to upgrade just to get a higher frame rate.
We left the multi-GPU solutions out of these graphs to save time and make them easier to digest; you've already seen how having multiple GPUs improves performance in these tests, so the focus here will be on the single card upgrade paths available to X800 and X850 series owners.
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
ATI's X850 and X800 series performs quite well despite its age, with even the X800 GTO outpacing the GeForce 6800 GS. Unfortunately, if you want a good upgrade from your X850/X800 card you're going to have to set your sights (and budget) fairly high. The GeForce 7900 GT and Radeon X1800 GTO are probably your best bets for upgrades, but if you have an X850 XT or X800 XT don't expect the performance difference to be tremendous; instead, you'll have to look towards the Radeon X1900 series.
We continue to see this trend of NVIDIA GPUs posting lower minimum frame rates than ATI GPUs here which, unfortunately for NVIDIA, makes us strongly recommend choosing ATI instead.
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
Performance in our Town benchmarks is pretty much as expected and as we've seen before; the very high end GPUs all hit a performance wall right around 50 fps. The Radeon X800 series starts to pull up the rear but still offers significantly better performance than NVIDIA's GeForce 6800 GS (which is a performance equivalent to the GeForce 6800 GT/Ultra depending on clock speeds).
The white lines within the bars indicate minimum frame rate
While all of the GPUs have similar minimum frame rates in our Dungeon test, there is a pretty clear breakdown of performance once we look at cards slower than the GeForce 7800 GT. The standings however don't really change from what we've already seen, the X850/X800 cards continue to significantly outperform the GeForce 6800 GS while making any upgrade path that yields a reasonable improvement fairly expensive.
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MrCoyote - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
What good does it do to benchmark this game? The engine they licensed for this game is very limited in performance and unoptimized <b>(GameByro)</b>. Please wait until a patch comes out, then benchmark the game. This performance limit can be seen in various reviews across the web. A 7900GT or X1900XT should be getting more than 20-30FPS on this game.munky - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
People are not gonna wait for a patch to buy the game, and the whole premise of improved performance with a patch is uncertain. This review is useful for those who have the game, and would like to know if a certain upgrade would give them a significant improvement, or would just like to see how their performance compares to those with other video cards.Jackyl - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
That's very true that the game is very much in an "unfinished" stage and was released too soon. Any professional developer knows that the Gamebyro engine has it's share of performance problems. It is not in the same league of engines as others. Why they licensed this engine is beyond me.Warning...Don't post anything even remotely negative about the game on the official forums. Fanboys will be waiting to lash back at you. Yet people are complaining left and right on the forums of the performance problems, bugs, and interface problems. The PC game looks nothing but just a console port. Bad inventory screen system and GUI. Hopefully a 3rd party modder can change these things.
poohbear - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
the bad inventory has already been resolved w/ a user mod. look for the Btmod-2.20nts - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
The X1800XT can be had for less than the 7900GT and performs better...Why was it not include it in the Mid Range graphs?
SiliconDoc - Friday, July 17, 2009 - link
Wow, how quickly the complaining masses forget. $1,200.00 for two ati cards - LOLAnd here I've been told by all the disgruntled red fans that nvidia is the greedy scalping horror....
BWHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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It's so nice that anandtech doesn't delete their old reviews.
TWELVE HUNDRED BUCKAROOS FOR 2 ATI CARDS.
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Once again I find out the red fans have been deceiving me all along.
This is great - another myth of the web, exploded thanks to the web.
Spoelie - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
So very truehttp://www.alternate.de/html/productDetails.html?a...">http://www.alternate.de/html/productDetails.html?a...
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For the money, the x1800xt 512mb seems a better deal.
bob661 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Just checked on Newegg and the prices are the same unless you go with the 256MB version of the X1800XT.bob661 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
On Zipzoomfly, the 7900GT is a bit cheaper.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
We inadvertently left it out of the midrange tests; I just updated the graphs and conclusion to reflect its inclusion.Take care,
Anand