The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GPU Performance

Setting Expectations

While we've been used to running high end SLI setups at 3MP resolutions and still getting reasonable frame rates in games, the same is not true for Oblivion. In fact, there isn't a single GPU or pair of GPUs today that will run Oblivion at 1600 x 1200 with everything turned on smoothly. Our highest end X1900 XT CrossFire setup can't even run our most stressful real world Oblivion test at 1280 x 1024 with all of the detail settings set to their highest values. That's right, $1200 worth of GPUs will get you less than 50 fps at less than the highest image quality, and we're not talking about having AA enabled either.

With Oblivion, you've got to set your expectations appropriately for what good performance is. If your frame rate never drops below 30 fps, then you've put together a very fast system for Oblivion. The problem with Oblivion is that while performance may be in the 60 - 70 fps range indoors or while taking a stroll around town, as soon as you engage a few enemies or walk near an oblivion gate your frame rate may drop into the teens. A choppy frame rate really impacts your ability to do things like slice the correct opponent and not someone you're trying to protect. If a video card can maintain a minimum of 20 fps in our most strenuous test (the Oblivion Gate benchmark) then it will do you very well, otherwise you may want to start turning down some of the visual quality options.

Oblivion is also one of those rare games where turning down all of the image quality options not only impacts how good the game looks, but it actually can have a pretty serious impact on gameplay as well. Turning down your view distance is a sure fire way to increase performance, however the lower your view distance is the more difficult it is to spot landmarks you're searching for. You can decrease things like the distance which characters, items and other objects will appear, giving you better performance, but also putting you at a disadvantage when you're looking for a particular item or when someone is about to attack you. With Oblivion it's not all about performance and dealing with slightly blurred textures and jagged edges to maintain higher frame rates, the total experience of the game is very dependent on having a powerful system with a fast GPU.

The Test

Given that we're looking at GPU performance we tested all graphics cards with the same, very fast CPU, to minimize any CPU bottlenecks. In future articles we will look at how the CPU impacts performance under Oblivion, but for now the GPU is our focus. All ATI cards were run on a CrossFire 3200 platform while all NVIDIA cards were run on an nForce4 SLI x16 platform.

The latest drivers from ATI and NVIDIA were used, including ATI's Chuck patch for Oblivion that enables CrossFire support and AA+HDR rendering support. Given the low frame rates that we're talking about already, enabling AA simply didn't make any sense as you will see from the performance results on the coming pages. We would much rather increase detail settings than turn on AA in Oblivion.