Can Your Rig Run Oblivion?

High-End Performance: Radeon X1900 XTX And GeForce 7900 GTX

ATI Radeon X1900 XTX 512 MB - Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX

Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX 512 MB

Here's an incredible fact: if you want to play Oblivion on either of the two most powerful current video processors without compromising on in-game image quality, a screen resolution of 1280x1024 is the best you can hope for. While Nvidia's GeForce 7900 GTX solution takes the spoils at lower resolutions in our Elven Ruin and Imperial City benchmarks, the ATI Radeon X1900 XTX has the edge where it really counts in the ultra-demanding Great Forest test.

Moving on, once we ramp up the resolution or apply anti-aliasing (only available in Bloom lighting mode on the GeForce processor) and ATI's finest is as much as 50 percent quicker, in terms of minimum frame rates in the most demanding tests. The conclusion is simple enough: if you're currently running a 23" or larger LCD panel with a native resolution of 1920x1200 or more, ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX delivers the smoothest Oblivion performance by a significant margin.

As for the Crossfire versus SLI multi-GPU story, it's a similar outcome. At higher resolutions in the more demanding Great Forest and Imperial City benchmarks a pair of Radeon X1900s has more muscle. Indeed, if you're lucky enough to own either of the two 30" LCDs on the market (Apple Cinema 30" Display HD and Dell's 3007WFP), only Crossfire can consistently crack the crucial 24 FPS minimum frame rate barrier at the huge 2560x1600 native resolution of those displays.