OBLIVION BENCHMARK ARTICLE!

[cleeve]

At Firingsquad:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/oblivion_high-end_performance/page3.asp

Interesting stuff. Radeons definitely the cards of choice, the X1800 XT's really show up well, usually besting the 7900 GT and even the 7900 GTX with some options, like foliage.

The 7900 GTX is no slouch though, but the X1900 XT bests it more often than not.

SLI/Crossfire is a different story, it looks almost completrely useless for both Nvidia and Ati. Two 7900 GTX's get a measly 6 fps gain in some cases, and some dual-card setups actually perform worse than their single counterparts.


On a side note; once again, OpenEXR HDR looks to be a performance killer.

There has been alot of talk here lately discussing wether or not the 7600 GT is powerful enough to handle HDR.

I'm not sure how people were claiming 7600 GTs could do it when you look at the 7900 GT numbers below. Indoors and in towns, the 7600 GT might be able to run HDR, but in the forest? I mean, the 7900 GT is bought to it's knees:


1024x768, Foliage areas with HDR:
7900 GT: 23 fps
X1800 XT: 35 fps

1024x768, Foliage areas, no HDR, 4xAA 8xAF:
7900 GT: 26 fps
X1800 XT: 37 fps


HDR is hurting these cards more than 4xAA 8xAF!
Even in areas will minimal foilage, the 7900 GT is scraping by with 45 fps with HDR enabled:


1024x768, Mountainous areas with HDR:
7900 GT: 45 fps
X1800 XT: 61 fps

1024x768, Mountainous areas, no HDR, 4xAA 8xAF:
7900 GT: 51 fps
X1800 XT: 64 fps

Is the 7600 GT getting better scores than it's 7900 GT brother? hard to believe. Once again though, we should see the midrange cards in a future Firingsquad review. Still very interested in seeing exact numbers for the midrange cards like 7600 GT, X1800 GTO, and X850 XT...

 

[Rugger]

Thanks for the link and the assesment!

 

[Hale73]

well, all I have to say is..... NVIDIA's slogan is very Ironical then on this game. TWIMTBP, how come NVIDIA boasts that ES IV. Oblivion is optimized on NVIDIA cards....


the X1800XT with only 16px pipes vs. the 7900GT with 24

 

[FITCamaro]

Only thing they don't say is how they had the game set up and what mode was Crossfire in for those tests? Did they test all the modes and use the fastest? I know alternate frame rendering is supposedly the fastest but did they check?

SLI is definitely looking good with that game though. Definitely stirs the pot on whether I should get a 7900GT or a X1900XT. I know the X1900XT is faster but if I could get a 512MB version of a GT and OC it maybe it'd even things out and cost less than the XT. Who knows. Of course then theres the question of will I run dual cards. I mean if a current generation game is bringing current gen cards to their knees, waiting till the new cards comes out looks a little better. The question is when will those cards be out. May I could deal waiting until. June, maybe not unless its early June. I really don't care about AM2 since its not going to really make a difference in performance.

 

[cleeve]

For Oblivion players- based on this - the best bang-for-your-buck card to get is the X1800 XT.

1024x768 with HDR in heavy foliage bought every card to it's knees, but the X1800 XT hung in there with the big boys:

SLI 2x7900 GTs: 41 fps
X1900 XTX: 38 fps
X1800 XT: 36 fps
7900 GTX: 34 fps

Those are sobering numbers and probably indicate a CPU bottleneck, but still shows the X1800XT in a very fine light. IN areas with less foliage the X1800 XT still holds it's own, right on the heels of the X1900 XTX:

SLI 2x 7900 GTX: 77 fps
7900 GTX: 71 fps
X1900 XTX: 64 fps
X1800 XT: 61 fps


On closer inspection, SLI and Crossfire look almost completely useless in this game. An extra 7900 GTX in SLI gets you a measly 6 frames per second @ 1024x768? Good lord, what a waste!

 

[kumana1]

On closer inspection, SLI and Crossfire look almost completely useless in this game. An ectra 7900 GTX in SLI gets you a measly 6 frames per second @ 1024x768? Good lord, what a waste!

while a sli/crossfire setup may not bring in any substantial increase over a single card setup in oblivion, consider the gains this setup would have on past or future games.

purchasing a multi-card setup would be a waste, if it were purchased solely for this game, but judging from my experience, people who do make such purchases have a tendency to play more than just one game.

great post though, it was nice to see some numbers on a few of these cards and how they stacked up.

 

[cleeve]

purchasing a multi-card setup would be a waste, if it were purchased solely for this game, but judging from my experience, people who do make such purchases have a tendency to play more than just one game.

That's kind of a given, Kumana - I mean, we're only talking about one game here, and that's the context of the remark. There are certainly alot of other games out there, and SLI/Xfire shows considerable improvement in many of them.

Besides, I said:
"SLI and Crossfire look almost completely useless in this game."

 

[jodo]

well my 3200+AMD(old 754 w/1MB L2) + a 6800GT runs this game at 1280x1024 at 15FPS w/HDR outside...so there is some kinda issue there. That site tells me i shouldn't be higher than 7FPS on a FX-57 w/2GB of ram....I don't have grass shadows on, but i do have full water detail...view distance is max(for trees and buildings) but half way for everything else. Oh and this is 8xAF too. also on a not so fast HDD.

15FPS is only 7FPS off from the 7900GT at a lower res and on a FX-57??? i don't think so.

 

[cleeve]

It says in the mountainous areas, 1600x1200, a 6800 GT will get 15fps.

In rough foliage is where it drops though. Are you saying your framerate doesn't drop when you turn the foliage high? Hell, even my X1800 XL wil slow down with grass on max.

They probably have settings higher than you... grass shadows, etc.

 

[jodo]

im in foliage, yes. no grass shadows though...but seriously there is no difference imo. yes certainly gfx will take a large hit with it, but certainly not useful in image quality. There is NOTHING in the article that states they went in and turned grass shadows on though either. In the test setup, they actually are VERY vague as to what is on and what is off in terms of draw distance, shadows, water effects...blah blah.

All im saying is to someone that hasn't bought the game, and looks at that chart and says well damn, i don't even have a fx-57 and a 6800GT is only running at 7FPS...not gonna buy that one. I have a good CPU still(granted the memory controller isn't even dual-channel, but 1MB cache is good), 1GB of decent ram(2-3-3-6)OCZ, and a 6800GT. And at a higher than recommended res(recommended me at 1024x768 w/HDR) i pushed it to 1280x1024 and still am running with very high settings and getting 15FPS.

I think the only thing that could be different in those tests is foliage draw distance. Like i said mine is set to medium distance for foliage/grass. Tree's however and buildings are on 90%(not max).

oh and indoors im getting like 40-60fps so im good there

 

[FITCamaro]

I'm on High Settings with all sliders at half, no AA or AF, and HDR enabled. Don't have fraps running or anything but it hardly ever graphically lags for more than a sec when I first get into the game. Every now and then I'll see a missed frame.

 

[Bluefinger]

The lowest FPS i got with my system (specs in the sig) was about 19 fps, but It was in a room filled with NPCs, so I guessed the bottleneck was the cpu having to deal with lots of AI interacting with each other, not a graphical hold up. Overall though, my fps generally is high, with AF and HDR on, so I can't complain... actually, I love my card for being able to run Oblivion at all... even on ultra high settings

 

[cleeve]

I'm on High Settings with all sliders at half, no AA or AF, and HDR enabled. Don't have fraps running or anything but it hardly ever graphically lags for more than a sec when I first get into the game. Every now and then I'll see a missed frame.

I found I had unpleasant lag with grass distance on full. once I lowered the grass, the game runs much more smoothly.

Indoors it's smooth as silk, the only place I have problems is in the foliage filled forest when my settings are too high. Even then, it's playable, but it's much nicer and smoother with the grass turned down.

 

[CompGeek]

Good find Cleave.
Nothing new really. A shadder intensive game like Oblivion will run better on a ATI card and in fact most newer games that are not only for nvidia optimised will work slightly better on ATI cards due to high number of pixel shadders.
7600GT cannot handle HDR AND bring a decent(30+ most of the time) framerate in some games and it will certainly have problems in the future with that enabled.
Yet another proof that x1800xt is superior.
I don't care about gfx card brands,i only care about performance. X1800XT is a clearly better card. There is no need for discoussing.
People got lost in all the nvidia hype and got 7900GTs thinking they are the best for the money. Well peeps,they are not.
7900GT is very good now and quite competitive but it has problems in the long term. Changing frequencies and adding pipes is not always the best way. I expect the difference between the two to increase as time goes by.

 

[Heyyou27]

An extra 7900 GTX in SLI gets you a measly 6 frames per second @ 1024x768? Good lord, what a waste!

Most expensive 6 frames per second I've ever seen.

 

[Eviltwin17]

its because the ati cards have a different architecture than the nvidia cards, cant judge performance on pipelines alone anymore. Ati is going for more efficiency per pipe so they stuck with 16.

 

[delanooch]

Great post man! I read the article and I noticed that the SLI and Crossfire indoor frame rates were insane! if you go by the max framerates the SLI was besting the ATI all the time, not that it matters. But over 100 fps is well... GOOD Outside I have to admit my system gets kinda freaky with all options on high w/HDR running 1920x1200 res. 2 x 7800 GTX's

Since this is a single player game is there a command to make a time demo that we can play with?

 

[Jathyr]

I'd just like to put out that this weekend I had a topic up over these two cards x1800 XT or the nVidia counterpart and went with the x1800! Since Oblivion is like my major game I'm definetly happy with the results! I got the 512 MB version and hopefully that helps things a bit too!

thanks everyone for your input in helping me get the right card!

 

[pauldh]

There is NOTHING in the article that states they went in and turned grass shadows on though either. In the test setup, they actually are VERY vague as to what is on and what is off in terms of draw distance, shadows, water effects...blah blah.

All im saying is to someone that hasn't bought the game, and looks at that chart and says well damn, i don't even have a fx-57 and a 6800GT is only running at 7FPS...not gonna buy that one. I have a good CPU still(granted the memory controller isn't even dual-channel, but 1MB cache is good), 1GB of decent ram(2-3-3-6)OCZ, and a 6800GT. And at a higher than recommended res(recommended me at 1024x768 w/HDR) i pushed it to 1280x1024 and still am running with very high settings and getting 15FPS.

I think the only thing that could be different in those tests is foliage draw distance. Like i said mine is set to medium distance for foliage/grass. Tree's however and buildings are on 90%(not max).

oh and indoors im getting like 40-60fps so im good there

They crank everything to the max. - Quote :

"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."

Obviosly turning down a few of these detail levels could double your framerates.

 

[pauldh]

Wow! They test in three areas and average 10 runs. Freaking time consuming to say the least.

Thanks for the link Cleeve.

 

[meyekal]

They mention in the benchmark that the X1800XT is a 512mb version. I have seen mentioned on this forum that with some cards the extra memory is not really useful, however this benchmark hints that the extra memory on the X1800 XT might help. Any thoughts on this? Thanks

 

[delanooch]

Not dual core optimized. Should be

Would like to see more benchmarks using high end widescreen monitors at higher resolutions too.

 

[unsmart]

I think the 7900 is the last on that architecture and if the games keep going ATIs way they will have to release a new gpu before vista[DX10]. I think ATI will just add a x1950 or something before changing to a new architecture[ unified shaders I hope], if it even has to for vista.
Nvidia will be back, with the every other month releases no one can ever be on top that long.
This could be some what of a driver issue since it's a new game.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Besides, I said:
"SLI and Crossfire look almost completely useless in this game."

Ummm, you might want to check your Oblivion ReadMe file and see something the reviewer missed. I'd post the section, but I'm still at work (for anoth 25+ mins).

Xfire is not supposrted until new drivers.

 

[abyssalloris]

Can't turn on AA & HDR in Oblivion (on the PC) at the same time, no matter what card you have. Apparently it is hard coded that way.

You can do so on the Xbox (360). There is a conspiracy theory surrounding that.