Oblivion Hardware Performance Guide - Page 2

Settings

Oblivion has a long list of tweakable settings, but few yield large performance benefits. The notable exceptions are the view distance and shadow settings. Reducing the view distance and turning off settings like self-shadowing will improve performance considerably. We also found that resolution barely affects frame rates on powerful systems, but lesser systems will take a hit as you increase the resolution. The other graphics settings didn't seem to affect performance very much in our test scenario unless we reduced draw distances.

We highly suggest you keep a setting called "distant lands" enabled to preserve gameplay. The option is available only if you keep view distance at its maximum. We're not kidding when we say that half the game disappears when you disable this setting. You'll get quite a bit of performance if you turn it off, but the trade-off isn't worth it. If you do decide to turn it off, you might as well disable HDR as well to squeeze out even more performance, as disabling distant lands also makes HDR less noticeable.

We only tested settings available in the game's "Video" menu, but there's a whole world of settings available to those brave enough to venture into the game's initialization files. You can find them in the official Oblivion forums and various online tweak guides. Remember to backup your files if you decide to delve deeper.

Slider Performance Tests

(FPS - Longer bars indicate better performance)

Sliders 25%

Sliders 50%

Sliders 75%

Sliders 100%

Sliders 100%, Distant Lands On

Oblivion

Sliders 25%

Sliders 50%

Sliders 75%

Sliders 100%

Sliders 100%, Distant Lands On

Resolution Performance Tests

(FPS - Longer bars indicate better performance)

640x480

1024x768

1600x1200

Oblivion, Max Settings

640x480

1024x768

1600x1200

Shadow Performance Tests

(FPS - Longer bars indicate better performance)

Shadows Off

Shadows 50%

All Shadows On

Self Shadows Off

Oblivion, 1024x768, Max Settings

Shadows Off

Shadows 50%

Shadows On

Self Shadows Off

System Setup:

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU, Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard, 1GB (512MB x 2) Corsair XMS Memory, 160GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional SP2.

Graphics Cards: GeForce 7900 GTX

Graphics Drivers: Nvidia ForceWare 84.25.

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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Role-Playing
Release: Mar 20, 2006 »
ESRB: Mature

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