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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
100 Comments
View All Comments
Yawgm0th - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
...or Oblivion is playable with an average of 20 FPS. I did a benchmark of my own (at a big Oblivion gate with 6-10 enemies and several allies fighting) with settings completely maxed (everything at it's highest except AA) at 1280x960, and my system pulled framerates slightly better than the 7900GT according to the FRAPS results. More importantly, the game is completely playable in all areas. Framerates are low for about four seconds anytime I enter a new area through a door of some kind, but that's not unusual for most games. After those first couple seconds, things pick up and I see no reason for the game to appear to have such abysmal performance as the article would indicate. My system consists of the following:2x1GB of Patriot 2-3-2 at 205MHz in dual-channel
Venice: 274x9 (about 2.47GHz)
7800GT with a slight overclock
Audigy 2
XP Pro x64 with latest nVidia drivers
Furthermore, that RAM was a recent upgrade. I had the game maxed with 1GB of the same stuff in single-channel.
At this point, I'm convinced that either there's something wrong with FRAPS (and there's certainly something different that caused the low frames in this article, because I shouldn't be outperforming the Anandtech test system when it's better than mine) or that the game is completely playable with mid-20s framerates. I don't think I've ever played a 3D game and found anything less than high-30s to be playable.
ueadian - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Yep you nailed it that's my exact feeling. I played the game with my X800XL and it was very playable on high settings, oblivion gates killed my computer but not enough to drive me insane, other then that i didnt see any lag other then after entering a new area. Benchmarks are overrated I played Counter-Strike : Source at 20-30 fps for a year just fine and when I got a card to do 50+ fps miminum I really didn't notice that much of a difference.TejTrescent - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Crazy.Testing just now, I got 20-30 on my system, no matter where I was, with a bit higher than those medium settings.
The game's ENTIRELY playable at even 18.
Dunno how, but it doesn't feel choppy when it falls, as long as it's above 15. Weird.
dhei - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Laugh, real excitement comes from online play. Might as well pay $15 a month for a game with just as good graphics that is updated constantly. Plus you can play missions and fight monsters yourself just like a single player game if thats your bag or slay other people that are actull people online.Looking at screenshots, i've seen 4 year old MMO games that look better after they got free graphics updates. /shrug
I never understood why people pay for single player games like this. :D
kmmatney - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
You really can't judge the graphics of Oblivion by screenshots. The actual look and feel is much more impressive than the screen shots show.ueadian - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
Agreed. Screenshots do not to ANY game justice. HL2 didnt really impress me visualy with screenshots, but then I played the game all the way through and was blown away by the graphics.poohbear - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
"i've seen 4 year old MMO games that look better after they got free graphics updates. /shrug "name one
bobsmith1492 - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
What's "mmo" ??xsilver - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
when a cow is on crack it cant say "moo" properly :PMassivly Multiplayer Online
as mentioned before its difficult to play a game that has no end and is pressuringly addictive if you join a guild/faction
eg. most deaths that have resulted from gaming have been from players of such games; most recently from WoW i think
dhei - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Dark Age of Camelot.