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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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).