We used Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as the ultimate torture test, and the only settings we didn't maximize were HDR and soft shadows. We disable HDR due to the fact that Nvidia cannot render HDR with antialiasing, and ATI cannot either without the "Chuck patch". We disable soft shadows because they don't appear correctly, as shadows from the back of a character's head can cast a shadow that can be seen on their face. This can make the women appear to have beards.

In our outdoor scene there are long lines of sight, day is changing into night, and there is foliage swaying the breeze. This realism has a severe impact on performance, but even so, the system was able to continue to be playable at 1280x1024. Most configurations cannot even play acceptably at the lowest level. This shows that the Quad SLI setup with Intel's latest Extreme Edition processor overclocked can crank out some serious frame rates.

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