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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blackbrrd - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Using the BTmod myself, it works for me ;)I would like a few more shortcut keys myself, but other than that, it took me about 2 minutes to figure out how to use the interface. The 8 free shortkeys that you can assign to weapons/spells/potions etc works well, you just want more shortkeys :P
I am playing the game on a laptop with a radeon 9600. It obviosly doesn't look as good as in the pictures, but it runs ok, so I would say that the graphics engine scales nicely for any graphics card bought the last 2-3 years*
*A friend of mine has a geforce fx5900 and he gets horrible performance - there should have been a seperate shader 1.x path for those cards.
I do agree that the game is just nearly finished, for instance the textures for 256mb and 512mb graphics cards could be much larger, there are several mods available as it is, but it should have been in the game.
All in all I think it was a good compromise between launching the game as early as possible and performance wise. Personally I haven't had any problems with the game except for multitasking which won't work properly if you don't pull down the console first :P **
**The game has quirks - but its a good game, and there are work arounds. :) Its also the first game that have made me actually consider upgradeing/buying a proper gameing machine.
kmmatney - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
There is a shader 1.X path - look up Oldblivion. it allows the game to run on the 5900 quite well, from what I've heard.Ryan Norton - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
the elderscrolls.com/forums do crack me the fuck up... there is literally no aspect of the game no matter how glaringly mis-implemented that the fanboys will not defend to their last gasp.I don't have a link for it, but the website/guy that does "tweak guides" for 3D games put up a super-lengthy one for Oblivion. I'd already stumbled onto some of the things but it was still good for making the game seem a little smoother outdoors.
I love the line about outdoors performance making users contemplate $1200 on video cards... until I started playing Obliv I'd always thought SLI a waste of money, but now I catch myself thinking "hmm another 7800GTX is 'only' another $450"... must restrain self.
Powermoloch - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
I had been waiting for quite a while for anandtech's take on oblivion. And I'm very surprised that you got alot of GPUs tested out for us. Especially being a x850xt agp owner, I'm very pleased that it has enough juice to play @ 1280x1024 at almost @ med-high settings lol.Kudos for the great job guys, great benchmark results ;).
Frallan - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
I agree!!!Excelent Reveiw!!!
But as an owner of older Hardware Id love to know where my 6800Gt stumbles in on the list. Usually I run it @ 425/1150 which is almost Ultra speeds but....
Please any1 who is in the know???
bob661 - Thursday, April 27, 2006 - link
You can compare it to the 6800GS. They're the same card.michal1980 - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
playing the xbox 360 version.and really, it does not look much better then like hlf2.
I'm sorry but anyone that says (not that anyone here has) that this is a great engine with great graphics needs to take a break.
there can be alot going on sometimes, but the draw distance sucks, loads every 2 mins. controls are a little wishy washy.
its an ok game, but at times seems way to unfocused. with a story line that is weak at best.
Jackyl - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Correct. The graphics are not "next gen" as was hyped. The problem with the performance of the gamebryo engine is that it doesn't support culling, hidden-surface removal. It draws everything, which causes a lot of slow down. If you are outside, standing behind a building, it still calculates whatever is on the other side, even though you can't see it. Bad design IMO for a "next gen" engine.JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Okay, I'm not going to dispute your claims, but how on earth do you know that the engine isn't doing HSR? Damn, that was one of the first things that was discussed in terms of 3D engine optimization in my Graphics class. I'm not sure how you prove what they are or aren't doing without seeing the code, though.I also have to say that I don't think the Gamebryo engine is as bad as you're making it out to be. I see very little in the way of load times (the "loading" screens are mostly there for Xbox360), large outdoor areas, relatively nice effects (HDR, reflections, etc.), and generally interesting gameplay mechanics. You're certainly not going to get all of these things from other engines on the market. Doom3 would choke outdoors, for example.
What we need is an engine that offers:
Doom3 indoor areas
Far Cry outdoors
HL2/FEAR shaders
Dungeon Siege load times
Any UI that doesn't have console roots! UGH! Sell... Are you sure? Buy... Are you sure? Heaven forbid that we actually sell more than one type of item at a time. How about something like Fallout's barter interface, with a few tweaks to bring it into 2006 era? Also, what the hell is the point of "maximum gold" for a shop. "I can only buy $500 worth of stuff at a time, but if you sell things to me one at a time, I can effectively buy out your whole inventory!" Thank you Bethesda for dumbing down the economic system. Maybe they should have more magical weapons readily available, and then allow you to trade equipment to get them recharged? Naw, real bartering would make too much sense....
nts - Wednesday, April 26, 2006 - link
Hidden surface removal is obviously there, every game has it lol :pWhat this game needs and is missing is some sort of Occlusion Culling (not sending down geometry that won't be visible in the final frame, eg terrain/trees/grass behind city walls).