The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion CPU Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 28, 2006 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
In many ways, the message this article sends is something we've already known: a fast GPU needs a fast CPU. The difference with Oblivion is that the impact of a slow CPU on a fast GPU is far more noticeable than on many games we've tested in the past. While we can't realistically provide a CPU scaling chart for every GPU we tested in the last review, you can draw some general conclusions based on the four GPUs we focused on in this review. If you're using an older Athlon 64 3000+ or 3200+ with anything around the speed of a Radeon X1800 XT or faster, you'll want to look at upgrading (or overclocking, naturally) your CPU; otherwise, you'll be leaving a decent amount of GPU performance on the table.
As we've continually seen during the past couple of years, AMD's Athlon 64 and X2 processors are the best of the best, but even within the family you'll still want to opt for something faster than an Athlon 64 3500+ in order to make good use of any high end GPU.
It's also important to look at the multi-core optimizations that Oblivion provides. The benefit of a dual core processor is definitely visible in Oblivion, and we welcome more games where there's a tangible real world performance improvement to multi-core processors. The difference isn't quite as large as what we've seen with Quake 4, but we're heading in the right direction.
Those lucky enough to have a high end CrossFire setup, for example with two X1900 XTs, will definitely want to invest in a high end Athlon 64 X2. Oblivion is quite possibly the first game we've tested where we can actually justify (and this is a stretch) an FX-60 and a pair of X1900 XTs, as they enable you to have much more than you get out of them in most games. As we stated in the beginning, you can also try hacking your configuration files and downloading some mods, improving performance in other ways. If you just want to set the detail sliders on Maximum and play the game at high resolutions, though, X1900 XT CF and a fast dual-core CPU will get the job done nicely. (Good luck convincing yourself or your significant other of that "need", though!)
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RyanHirst - Sunday, April 30, 2006 - link
hehe it's ok. Just chompin' at the bit curious, that's all. If anyone on eBay wanted the collectible books I no longer need, I'd have turned them into a magic pair of 275s and I'd know. Alas. Pantone 072 Blue.bob661 - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
I guess this round of testing only applies to ATI video cards. I guess us Nvidia owners are left to guess how CPU performance affects GPU performance. Oh well. :(PrinceGaz - Sunday, April 30, 2006 - link
Just refer to part 1 of the Oblivion article and find out where your nVidia card of choice lies in relation to the four ATI cards tested this time and it is easy to see how it will perform with various CPUs.Bladen - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
My guess as to why CPUs help so much in towns is because the Radiant AI takes a fair amount of power.BitByBit - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
I don't know why, but the benchmark graphs didn't appear at all in that review, nor did they in the previous Oblivion review; I get nothing where the graphs should be.Has anyone else had this problem?
blackbrrd - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
If you have turned off refering you won't see any images.JarredWalton - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
Someone else had a problem with Norton Internet Security blocking images for some reason.Madellga - Monday, May 1, 2006 - link
That was me. Turn off privacy control.RyanHirst - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
This article still left me with the nagging question about multithread performance. The oblivion team made reference to th game being heavily optimized for multithread performance because they knew from the beginning they'd be writing it simultaneously for the XBox360.So the debate about the potential of multithread code in games has been going on for awhile, and here we have the perfect game test, and we happen to know AnandTech had a couple of four-way servers in the shop over the last few weeks.... but the CPU guide leaves that question unanswered.
If it's not unreasonable to heap $1200 in graphics hardware onto a M/B for a game that is GPU bound only half of the time (outdoors), is it too much to ask that a $1200 pair of Opteron 275's be tested to see how multithread the first advertised multithread game really is? Is it not possible that the game can offload a large number of threads to extra cores?
If we can talk about throwing over $1K at a game, isn't anyone the least bit curious how a 4-core opteron rig with 4 gigs of RAM in NUMA might handle this game?
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
P4 EE 955 runs up to four threads, and it doesn't seem to get any help from the extra capability. It could be that further INI tweaks would allow Oblivion to run better on multi-core (more than 2 core) systems, but if going from 1 to 2 cores gives 10 to 20% more performance, there's a very good chance that moving from 2 to 4 cores wouldn't give more than another 5%. Ideally, a CPU-limited game should be able to get as much as 50% or more performance from multi-threading, but rarely can we realize the ideal case.Also, FYI, the servers are at a completely different location than the GPUs for this testing. They also don't support dual X1900 cards in CrossFire - they might not even have X16 PCIe slots, let alone two of them. Servers are, quite simply, not interested in improving gaming performance. There are a few out there targeting the 3D graphics workstation that might support SLI, but not CrossFire. Multi-core will really only become important when we have multi-core CPUs. The desktop/home PC market isn't interested in multiple socket motherboards (other than a few extreme enthusiasts).