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3D Performance with Oblivion: High-end Cards April 04, 2006 |
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Summary: UPDATE 4/6/06: We've just updated the CrossFire vs SLI performance numbers with the proper results after renaming the Oblivion.exe to "AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe". To skip straight to those results, please click here.
When it comes to outdoor visuals, there aren't many games out there today that can match up to Oblivion. But with all that eye candy comes a huge hit on frame rate, and thus, many of you are in the market looking to upgrade. In this article we've rounded up 9 of the latest high-end cards, including the GeForce 6800 GT, to see who comes out on top in performance. We've also got SLI vs CrossFire performance compared as well. You may be surprised by what we found!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
While it has only been out on the market for a few weeks now, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has already captured a huge audience: and we’re not just talking about RPG gamers either, as even diehard Unreal Tournament and Quake fans have been drawn in by the game as well. This is in large part due to Oblivion’s immersive wide-open gameplay, but it also doesn’t hurt that Oblivion is a pretty game to look at.
In fact, that’s putting it mildly, as Oblivion sports some of the fanciest outdoor environments ever to grace the PC. Remember the first time you booted up Far Cry or saw 3DMark 2001’s Nature demo and your jaw dropped to the floor? The outdoor scenery in Oblivion puts both of those to shame once the graphics settings are cranked up. But herein lies the problem, once the visual eye candy settings are bumped up to their maximums, your frame rate can quickly trickle to a crawl with even the latest high-end graphics cards. There are numerous posts in the Oblivion forums from users reporting poor frame rates; when I picked up a copy of the game at my local Gamestop, the sales clerk made sure to ask if my system was capable of handling the game’s hefty system requirements before ringing me up. He was pretty adamant that the game’s minimum requirements were far too conservative, particularly on the graphics side of the equation, only asking for a “128MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver”. There are plenty of GeForce and Radeon cards with 64-bit memory interfaces that meet this requirement!
With this in mind, we’ve rounded up all of the latest high-end graphics cards from both ATI and NVIDIA. We also threw in a GeForce 6800 GT in order to show how high-end hardware of the previous generation compares to today’s latest and greatest. For our testing, we cranked up all visual settings to their maximums. Of course, we also turned on settings such as self shadows, shadows on grass, tree canopy shadows, water ripples etc.
To test the game properly we’ve conducted our tests in three different areas of the game, each area presents a unique challenge to the graphics card. Our testing is pretty similar to what we do in Battlefield 2 and in a few other games we benchmark with: we load up the area and follow the same path through the area with FRAPS running in the background. We then average the results of 10 runs to get our final number for reporting in this article. Fortunately the variability isn’t quite as bad as we initially reported a few weeks ago, but it is a little higher than what we typically see in the other titles we use FRAPS to test with. Our 3 areas are as follows:
Mountains
This area consists of us running through a path in the Jerall Mountains. In our experience, we’ve found that the tops of mountains in valleys can really stress the graphics card, as it has to render a large, vast area. The area that we’re testing isn’t as panoramic as some of the screenshots that are out there, but it’s still a fairly challenging scene for the graphics card to handle.
Foliage
This is the demo where we put the graphics card through the ringer. Testing is conducted in a forest with tress everywhere and very thick, knee-high foliage which sways in different directions based on the wind. There’s a fair amount of shadowing involved but the swaying foliage is what really seems to tax the card. We actually stumbled on this area accidentally while playing the game – our frame rate dropped significantly and we knew we had a great area for benchmarking.
Indoors
Of all the areas we’re testing with, this one is easily the least challenging on the graphics card. At least it’s got a nice little area where rays of sunlight shine down on you, showing off the game’s HDR lighting (keep in mind that based on the way the game is setup, AA is disabled once HDR lighting is turned on with both ATI and NVIDIA hardware,).
Our results are broken down based on these three areas. Feel free to use the table of contents to navigate through the various sections. In terms of a target frame rate to be on the lookout for, we’re recommending 30-35 FPS. As always though, what’s considered ideal is generally going to vary from person-to-person. For instance, I said 35 FPS, while Jakub went with 30 FPS. In any case though it’s generally agreed that Oblivion doesn’t require the blistering FPS of a first-person shooter like Quake or UT.
| Test Systems | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
System Setup
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe (CrossFire Xpress 3200)
MSI K8N Diamond (nForce4 SLI X16)
2GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
ATI Radeon X1900 XT
ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB
All-In-Wonder X1900
Catalyst 6.3
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB
Driver version ForceWare 84.25
250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0c
Benchmarks
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
| Mountains area HDR | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 37 | 69 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 26 | 55 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 27 | 55 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 22 | 44 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 13 | 29 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 42 | 68 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 39 | 66 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 37 | 58 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 29 | 47 |
| ||
| Mountains Area 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 36 | 68 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 28 | 57 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 26 | 56 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 21 | 44 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 13 | 31 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB | 43 | 77 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 42 | 75 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 37 | 64 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 31 | 58 |
| ||
| Foliage Area HDR | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 21 | 27 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 14 | 19 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 15 | 22 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 11 | 15 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 6 | 9 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 29 | 41 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 27 | 39 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 26 | 35 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 21 | 30 |
| ||
| Foliage Area 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 23 | 31 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 21 | 29 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 20 | 27 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 12 | 16 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 7 | 10 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 31 | 39 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 29 | 35 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 27 | 35 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 23 | 28 |
| ||
| Indoors Area w/HDR | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 79 | 138 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 68 | 132 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 66 | 131 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 54 | 105 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 30 | 51 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 89 | 150 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 75 | 116 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 62 | 96 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 65 | 109 |
| ||
| Indoors Area w/4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX | 94 | 178 |
| GeForce 7900 GT | 72 | 139 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB | 70 | 135 |
| GeForce 7800 GT | 55 | 104 |
| GeForce 6800 GT | 37 | 77 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX | 100 | 179 |
| Radeon X1900 XT | 93 | 172 |
| Radeon X1800 XT 512MB | 65 | 107 |
| All-In-Wonder X1900 | 71 | 129 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming: Mountains Area HDR | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 51 | 81 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 40 | 73 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 39 | 73 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 31 | 60 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 19 | 39 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 60 | 86 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 55 | 84 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming: Mountains Area 4xAA 8xAF | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 50 | 81 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 40 | 76 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 38 | 75 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 31 | 64 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 18 | 43 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 60 | 90 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 54 | 84 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming: Foliage Area HDR | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 34 | 45 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 21 | 35 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 20 | 34 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 17 | 25 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 10 | 18 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 40 | 51 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 35 | 45 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming: Foliage Area 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 35 | 47 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 24 | 32 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 24 | 29 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 18 | 23 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 9 | 14 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 48 | 57 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 41 | 50 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming Indoors Area HDR | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 108 | 207 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 88 | 151 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 88 | 148 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 72 | 121 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 40 | 62 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 107 | 197 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 90 | 133 |
| ||
| SLI Gaming Indoors Area 4xAA/8xAF | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D
| Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32 | ||
| Card | Min FPS | Max FPS |
| GeForce 7900 GTX SLI | 103 | 220 |
| GeForce 7900 GT SLI | 93 | 155 |
| GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB SLI | 93 | 155 |
| GeForce 7800 GT SLI | 76 | 120 |
| GeForce 6800 GT SLI | 44 | 75 |
| Radeon X1900 XTX CrossFire | 99 | 231 |
| Radeon X1800 XT CrossFire | 94 | 144 |
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| Conclusion | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
Moving up to the highest end of the market, ATI’s Radeon X1900 XTX takes the performance crown in our testing with Oblivion in single-card configurations. Regardless of the test with threw at the X1900 XTX it came out on top, with the Radeon X1900 XT typically finishing a close second.
UPDATE 4/6/06: In dual-card testing, we initially reported that NVIDIA's GeForce SLI solution delivered better performance than CrossFire, however ATI's Terry Makedon informed us that Oblvivion can be forced to run the X1900 XTX and X1800 XT cards in CrossFire mode by renaming the oblivion.exe executable to "AFR-FriendlyD3D.exe". After making this change, we saw a dramatic boost in performance and now the Radeon cards scale appropriately, with the X1900 XTX CrossFire outrunning the GeForce 7900 GTX SLI in all tests except our indoors area. All isn't perfect with this workarond however, as occasionally we'd notice flashing textures on the screen regardless of which area of the game we were testing. The textures would flash randomly: during one run in the foliage section everything may go perfectly, and then the next may be filled with flashing textures, so we'd still definitely give NVIDIA the nod when it comes to multi-GPU compatibility with Oblivion. We sent ATI a video demonstrating the problem and other info on the issue, so hopefully it can be resolved in a future Catalyst release.
This is one area where NVIDIA really excels in comparison to ATI – their dual GPU infrastructure is more mature than ATI’s at this point. We have no doubt that ATI’s hard at work on getting CrossFire support for Oblivion better integrated into their Catalyst drivers, but NVIDIA’s got SLI up and running with Oblivion beautifully out-of-the-box today. We’ve stated in the past that ATI needs to add customizable game profiles for CrossFire into their driver (similar to what NVIDIA’s done today with their SLI game profiles), the need for this is clearly illustrated by Oblivion. Until ATI does this, CrossFire users are forced to rely on ATI’s driver team to add support directly to games. This is one huge drawback CrossFire has in comparison to SLI.
Now that we’re done testing Oblivion with the latest high-end cards, it’s now time to move on to the mainstream graphics segment. Stay tuned.