The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 26, 2006 1:07 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Our Settings
We tested at two major settings, one we defined as High Quality and the other we called Medium Quality. The settings were as follows:
| Oblivion Performance Settings | High Quality | Medium Quality |
| Resolution | 1280x1024 | 1024x768 |
| Texture Size | Large | Medium |
| Tree Fade | 50% | 25% |
| Actor Fade | 65% | 50% |
| Item Fade | 65% | 50% |
| Object Fade | 65% | 50% |
| Grass Distance | 50% | 25% |
| View Distance | 100% | 100% |
| Distant Land | On | On |
| Distant Buildings | On | On |
| Distant Trees | On | Off |
| Interior Shadows | 50% | 30% |
| Exterior Shadows | 50% | 30% |
| Self Shadows | On | Off |
| Shadows on Grass | On | Off |
| Tree Canopy Shadows | On | Off |
| Shadow Filtering | High | Low |
| Specular Distance | 50% | 50% |
| HDR Lighting | On | On |
| Bloom Lighting | Off | Off |
| Water Detail | High | Normal |
| Water Reflections | On | On |
| Water Ripples | On | On |
| Window Reflections | On | On |
| Blood Decals | High | Low |
| Anti-aliasing | Off | Off |
Note that when we talk about a setting being 65% we mean that the slider is moved 65% of the way to the right. As you can see from the table above, our High Quality settings aren't as extreme as they could be and the Medium Quality settings are more suited for upper mid-range cards. Since we were dealing with such a wide spread of GPUs we had to err on the side of being more stressful in our visual settings, especially in the mid-range, in order to adequately characterize the performance of all of the GPUs. We didn't want to end up with a graph where everything performed the same because we were too lax with our detail settings.
At the end of the day, these two configurations are what we would strive for in order to get good performance while maintaining a good gameplay experience.
High End Settings
Mid Range Settings
Note that the ATI Radeon X850/X800 series of GPUs don't support Shader Model 3.0, which is required for HDR in Oblivion. Thus we had to leave the X850/X800 out of our default tests with HDR enabled and ran a second set of configurations with HDR disabled and Bloom enabled.
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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.