Print Article: 3D Performance with Oblivion: Part 2 Mainstream Cards



		3D Performance with Oblivion: Part 2 Mainstream Cards April 12, 2006 Brandon Sandman Bell

Summary: Last week we took a look at Oblivion's performance with the latest high-end graphics cards and found that ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX delivers the best overall performance. But what if you don't have $500 to spend for a graphics card? That's where today's article comes in! We've rounded up the latest mainstream graphics card offerings from ATI and NVIDIA, as well as including the GeForce 6600 GT and 6800 GT. In addition, we also answer the question if 512MB of graphics memory really makes a difference in performance. Find the answers to all these questions inside!

Introduction Page:: ( 1 / 19 )

While it’s been on the market now for less than a month, Oblivion has generated a huge following. NPD sales data has Oblivion commanding the top two spots in PC game sales (the Collectors Edition is ranked #2) while Bethesda has also announced that Oblivion is the fastest selling game for Xbox 360.

What all these gamers are discovering as soon as they boot up Oblivion is that the game is more demanding than anyone expected, as we showed you in our performance tests with the latest high-end cards last week, even the latest GeForce and Radeon cards can be brought to their knees if you don’t keep the eye candy settings in check. In hindsight we probably cranked the settings up a little too high for that article, we were running the cards with the highest visual settings available and in some ways that really isn’t feasible unless you’re running two graphics cards for SLI or CrossFire. For our second Oblivion performance article we’re running with more affordable graphics cards in the $120-$250 range. These cards don’t have the shading horsepower and memory bandwidth of the high-end cards we tested with last week, so we’re going to be more aggressive in tweaking the settings for optimal performance rather than image quality. We’ve taken a few comparison shots here:

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One of the chief optimizations we’ve made this time around is reducing the view distance. Oblivion is a wide open game filled with huge environments. It puts an enormous strain on the graphics card when you turn up the game’s view distance as the card literally has to render every strand of grass, pebble, and tree. As you can see in the screenshots there’s a huge price you have to pay in image quality by turning down this setting, but it can have a tremendous impact on performance.

Another setting we were tempted to turn down, but ultimately elected not to was the “iMinGrassSize” setting. One popular tweak that a lot of end users are doing is to turn this setting up from its default level of 80 to 100 or more. This can have a profound impact on performance, but it affects the amount of grass that is rendered. As you recall from our “foliage” demo last week, this puts a huge strain on the graphics card. Since we purposely designed this demo to stress the cards as much as possible we didn’t want to make foliage any less effective at stress-testing the graphics cards so we’ve left this setting at 80. We did however run a few quick benchmarks with a GeForce 6600 GT to illustrate the impact this tweak can have on performance as well as take screenshots:

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Our optimizations for this article went much further than just turning down the view distance though, so rather than go point-by-point through the changes we’ve made, we’re instead providing our Oblivion.ini config file that we used for testing the cards.

One other topic that you guys asked us to take a look at is the performance impact (if any) 512MB of video memory can have on performance. With ATI and NVIDIA both selling 512MB graphics cards many of you are curious if the added video memory improves performance. Let’s take a look shall we?

256MB vs 512MB testing Page:: ( 2 / 19 )

In order to properly determine the performance impact the added video memory brings, we decided to split our testing in two. We’re going to run one batch of tests with a mainstream card to see if the added memory makes a difference in a way that’s similar to how most users will actually play the game, as well as a second test that’s designed to stress the graphics card as much as possible. For the mainstream test we used ATI’s Radeon X800 XL GPU, as it was a popular upgrade choice up until it was replaced by more recent Radeon offerings, while on the high-end, we took a GeForce 7900 GTX board and underclocked it to the same speeds as the GeForce 7900 GT. We’re running the X800 XL with the same graphics settings as we outlined on the previous page, while the 7900 GTX is running with the game’s highest settings in order to stress the card as much as possible.

Mountains Area

Foliage Area

Indoors Area

Our results are mixed for the high-end setup with max settings. Running the indoors and foliage areas yielded no performance improvement, yet the large, open region our mountains demo takes place in we did see a noticeable improvement for the GeForce card running with 512MB of memory, up to 13% at 1024x768. When running the Radeon X800 XL under low graphics settings however, we saw no performance improvement. In fact, the added latency the extra memory provides usually hurt performance based on our results.

Based on all this, it looks like you’ll only see improved performance with 512MB cards if you’re running Oblivion with the highest graphics settings, and even then, only under limited conditions.

Test Systems Page:: ( 3 / 19 )

System Setup

AMD Athlon 64 3800+

ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe (CrossFire Xpress 3200)
MSI K8N Diamond (nForce4 SLI X16)

2GB OCZ DDR400 SDRAM

ATI Radeon X1600 XT
ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
PowerColor Radeon X1800 GTO
Catalyst 6.3 Oblivion Hotfix (“Chuck” patch)

EVGA GeForce 7600 GS
GeForce 7600 GT
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 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 0xaa/8xAF Page:: ( 4 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 17 36
GeForce 6800 GT 21 45
GeForce 7600 GS 19 42
GeForce 7600 GT 29 63
Radeon X1800 GTO 38 61
Radeon X1600 XT 21 37
Radeon X1600 Pro 18 30

Mountains Area 2xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 5 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 13 33
GeForce 6800 GT 20 42
GeForce 7600 GS 18 38
GeForce 7600 GT 26 56
Radeon X1800 GTO 35 57
Radeon X1600 XT 21 34
Radeon X1600 Pro 17 28

Mountains Area HDR Page:: ( 6 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 13 26
GeForce 6800 GT 18 38
GeForce 7600 GS 17 33
GeForce 7600 GT 26 49
Radeon X1800 GTO 31 48
Radeon X1600 XT 16 26
Radeon X1600 Pro 13 21

Foliage Area 0xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 7 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1024x768
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 15 19
GeForce 6800 GT 19 25
GeForce 7600 GS 19 24
GeForce 7600 GT 27 33
Radeon X1800 GTO 44 48
Radeon X1600 XT 27 31
Radeon X1600 Pro 21 24

Foliage Area 2xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 8 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1024x768x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 15 19
GeForce 6800 GT 19 22
GeForce 7600 GS 18 22
GeForce 7600 GT 26 31
Radeon X1800 GTO 41 46
Radeon X1600 XT 26 29
Radeon X1600 Pro 20 23

Foliage Area HDR Page:: ( 9 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1024x768x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 11 17
GeForce 6800 GT 16 23
GeForce 7600 GS 15 21
GeForce 7600 GT 22 29
Radeon X1800 GTO 33 41
Radeon X1600 XT 20 25
Radeon X1600 Pro 14 19

Indoors Area 0xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 10 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 28 46
GeForce 6800 GT 38 68
GeForce 7600 GS 33 57
GeForce 7600 GT 50 84
Radeon X1800 GTO 36 52
Radeon X1600 XT 29 43
Radeon X1600 Pro 23 35

Indoors Area w/2xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 11 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 25 43
GeForce 6800 GT 36 63
GeForce 7600 GS 30 50
GeForce 7600 GT 46 76
Radeon X1800 GTO 34 47
Radeon X1600 XT 25 36
Radeon X1600 Pro 19 28

Indoors Area w/HDR Page:: ( 12 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT 17 32
GeForce 6800 GT 30 49
GeForce 7600 GS 23 41
GeForce 7600 GT 35 63
Radeon X1800 GTO 30 42
Radeon X1600 XT 21 29
Radeon X1600 Pro 16 24

SLI Gaming: Mountains Area 2xAA 8xAF Page:: ( 13 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 26 60
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 36 75
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 33 69
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 50 98
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 63 94
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 35 57

SLI Gaming: Mountains Area HDR Page:: ( 14 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1280x1024x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 25 44
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 33 61
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 32 57
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 47 83
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 53 79
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 25 39

SLI Gaming: Foliage Area 2xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 15 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1024x768x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 28 34
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 36 42
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 34 40
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 49 58
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 74 82
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 46 52

SLI Gaming: Foliage Area HDR Page:: ( 16 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1024x768x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 21 28
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 29 38
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 29 38
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 40 50
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 58 71
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 30 38

SLI Gaming Indoors Area 2xAA/8xAF Page:: ( 17 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 47 78
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 65 107
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 55 89
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 84 130
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 62 81
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 43 60

SLI Gaming Indoors Area HDR Page:: ( 18 / 19 )

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Direct3D

Oblivion Performance 1600x1200x32
Card Min FPS Max FPS
GeForce 6600 GT SLI 31 53
GeForce 6800 GT SLI 52 80
GeForce 7600 GS SLI 41 71
GeForce 7600 GT SLI 62 103
Radeon X1800 GTO CrossFire 53 71
Radeon X1600 XT CrossFire 34 45

Conclusion Page:: ( 19 / 19 )

We’re really at a loss to explain why the Radeon cards run so well in foliage and slower than the GeForce boards indoors. It could be a case of a shader that runs really well on ATI’s hardware, or perhaps it could be an inefficiency on NVIDIA’s part, perhaps even something that could be fixed via driver. With so little information from Bethesda on what’s going on inside Oblivion in regards to shader usage there’s no real way to know.

What’s really surprising though is the GeForce 6800 GT’s showing in our performance testing today. At one point we actually loaded up Quake 4 and ran some benchmarks to make sure our card was running correctly. NVIDIA’s GeForce 7600 GT runs circles around the GeForce 6800 GT, and in some cases the 7600 GS is able to give the 6800 GT a run for its money! We didn’t expect the 7600 GT to come close to even matching the GeForce 6800 GT in performance, but in our tests today it not only equaled the 6800 GT in performance, it outperformed it by a double-digit margin. When the GeForce 7 first launched nearly a year ago, NVIDIA was quick to boast about GeForce 7800 GTX’s enhanced pipeline efficiency, claiming that the 7800 GTX was 50% more efficient on a clock-for-clock basis than GeForce 6. Based on our results with Oblivion today, that figure certainly sounds believable.

With all that being said though, ATI’s Radeon X1800 GTO usually came out ahead when it comes to Oblivion performance. If you’ve got $250 to spend on a graphics upgrade for the game, it would be our top choice. If your budget is in the $200 range, NVIDIA’s GeForce 7600 GT is without a doubt, the unquestioned leader. The GeForce 7600 GS would be our pick if you’re looking to spend less than $150. The 7600 GS shares all the same fundamental traits as the 7600 GT, only it ships at slower clock speeds and can often be found with passive cooling.

So there you have it, our performance benchmarks with the latest and greatest cards ranging from about $110 all the way up to $500. Next we’ll be taking a look at CPUs, specifically how much of a performance improvement dual-core brings to the table, if any. We’ve heard some pretty positive reports from dual-core users, so we’ll be eager to see what happens. Stay tuned!

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