The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Author: bit-tech Staff
Published: 31st March 2006
Comments (66) Stumble

Mid-Range System Setup:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (operating at 2200MHz, 11x200MHz); ABIT AN8 32X (NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16); 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS3200XL Pro (operating in dual channel at 400MHz with 2.0-3-3-7-1T timings); Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 200GB 7,200RPM SATA II hard disk drive; OCZ PowerStream 600W power supply unit; Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2; DirectX 9.0c; NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 platform drivers, version 6.82.

Video Cards:
  • HIS Radeon X850XT IceQ II iTurbo 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 520/1080MHz using Catalyst 6.3 WHQL;
  • BFG Tech GeForce 6800 GT OC 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 370/1000MHz using Forceware 84.25, available from nZone;
  • HIS Radeon X1600XT IceQ iTurbo 256MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 587/1380MHz using Catalyst 6.3 WHQL;
  • BFG Tech GeForce 6600 GT OC 128MB - operating at its default clock speeds of 525/1050MHz using Forceware 84.25, available from nZone.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mid-Range Performance
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mid-Range Performance

The 6800 GT obviously provides the best experience on a mid-range system, allowing you to sneak HDR under the radar. To get HDR working we had to tweak down the view distance slightly, but this is well worth it for the added benefit of HDR. The minimum frame rate was one of the lowest, but we really do feel that HDR is awesome.

The X850XT doesn't support HDR, so we had to settle for Bloom. We increased the view distance back up, and we got the best minimum frame rate of any of the cards on test here. You could possibly push even slightly further if you're happy for a bit of a performance drop, but we feel this is a pretty good gaming experience. Radeon X850XTs are fairly good in terms of price right now, so you could happily game at this level if you're looking for a cheap upgrade for the game.

The X1600XT echoes the X1900XTX by being faster than its NVIDIA competitor, the 6600 GT. Even the BFG-overclocked 6600 GT couldn't keep up, only managing to run at 800x600. When was the last time you had to run a game at 800x600?! As we mentioned before, this game really is crippling, and having a 6600 GT humbled so is slightly odd. We also had to turn off shadow filtering off on the 6600 GT just to get it running a little bit smoother.

Image quality isn't ideal on these mainstream cards, but at 1024x768 with medium detail, that's a pretty decent gaming experience. The game scales really well, but if ever there was a reason to upgrade...!

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