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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kmmatney - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
If you look at the Tom Hardware charts, plot the performance of the 256K cache Semprons on a chart, and then extrapolate to higher frequencies, a Sempron at 2.45 GHz will perform better than the Athlon 3500+, and closer to the Athlon 3700+. It does start to fall back a little in the heavy multitasking benchmarks, but for gaming and content creation its very close to an Athlon 3700+.For instance, if you take the Far Cry benchmark at 1280 x 1024 (other benchmarks behave the same):
Sempron 256K 1.4 Ghz = 126.9
Sempron 256K 1.6 Ghz = 140.0
Sempron 256K 1.8 Ghz = 151.6
Sempron 256K 2.0 Ghz = 162.7
This forms a linear curve with very little drop-off with speed increase
Now extrapolate to 2.4 GHz
Sempron 256K 2.4 GHz = 186.95 (predicted)
Sempron 256K 2.45 GHz = 189.95 (predicted)
Sempron 256K 2.5 GHz = 192.9
Athlon 3700+ San Diego: 190.9
Athlon 3500+ Venice : 186.2
Athlon 3200+ Venice : 176.5
For a given amount of money, an overclocked Sempron paired with a high end video card will give you the best bang-for-buck for gaming.
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
I'm not talking about as an overall platform; I'm talking specifically about Oblivion performance. Clearly, looking at the 3500+ vs. 3700+, the jump from 512K to 1024K L2 helps quite a bit. Looking at Celeron D, 256K and a lower FSB kills performance. It's not too much of a stretch to guess that Sempron chips will do proportionately worse in Oblivion than in many other games/applications.kmmatney - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
Also, the low end S939 Athlon 64s have come down in price, with the cheapest now at $109, so right now, I would agree that Socket 939 is the way to go now, even for a low end system.If you look in the area of the game that counts, the outdoor scenes, the extra 512K of cache gives you an extra 2 fps. An educated guess would put a Sempron 3100+ running at stock speeds at 28.5 fps. Overclocked to 2.4 Ghz it would be around 35 fps. Not great, but very playable.
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
True, you won't notice 2 FPS difference. The thing is, a few people are talking about overclocked Sempron versus stock clock speed Athlon 64. If you're going to overclock one, you have to overclock the other. My experience is that socket 939 overclocks far better than socket 754, the so a lot of those Athlon 64 3000+ chips can hit 2.5 to 2.7 GHz on air cooling.JarredWalton - Saturday, April 29, 2006 - link
Oops -- posted too soon.You might be talking about five to 10 frames per second difference at that point, which would definitely be noticeable. Of course, if you're looking at running a Sempron with the typical PCI express or AGP card, you will likely be GPU limited anyway. Even a GeForce 7600 GT is going to struggle with the outdoor scenes.
Powermoloch - Friday, April 28, 2006 - link
Yeah, I was wondering about that too :). My gaming rig is being powered by 3100 sempron paris and I did overclocked it @ 2.069 Ghz. Oblivion went out pretty fine at most times, and I'm really enjoying the game.