37 replies to this topic

[clocknova]

Hopefully someone will soon post some benchmarks or performance reports on Oblivion.  I've got a 1.83 Ghz MacBook Pro and want to know how I can expect it to run.  I'm still working my way through Morrowind (which I'm pretty sure will fly on this machine) so I won't be playing Oblivion for a while, but it will be comforting to know what I can expect.

[Quicksilver]

The nice thing is that performance should be identical to a PC system.  That means that you can Google search some benchmarks and see for yourself!  From what I've been able to piece together, you should be able to play Oblivion at a maximum of 1024x768.  Here's a best settings guide for the X1600XT (256MB version . . . sorry)!  Under those settings, the card displayed a 37.1 fps average.

[clocknova]

My MacBook has the 128MB version of the X1600 Mobility.  I've hear d that the 20" iMac can it at 1300 with all settings at high.  My machine is just a smidge slower on the processor, and has half the VRAM (but the rest of the vid card should be the same.  I figure you're probably right, but I'd like to know for sure.  I'd really like to run it at 1280x1024, the native resolution of my flat panel, even if I have to run without FSAA.  The most important graphical setting to me is draw distance.  I'm willing to tone down the detail settings if it means I can see all the way to the horizon.  I just want to know what will be possible and what to expect.

[Hansi]

A mate tried it on a 20" iMac ran full speed with most setings on high (no AA or AF) at 1360x768 res and he only had 512MB Ram. Another user on MacRumors reported it worked fine at 800x500 with all settings at high and AA at HDR.

[Batcat]

Quicksilver, on April 6th 2006, 07:23 PM, said:

The nice thing is that performance should be identical to a PC system.  That means that you can Google search some benchmarks and see for yourself!  From what I've been able to piece together, you should be able to play Oblivion at a maximum of 1024x768.  Here's a best settings guide for the X1600XT (256MB version . . . sorry)!  Under those settings, the card displayed a 37.1 fps average.

'Identical' is too strong; there are too many variables. 'Similar' or 'ballpark' is as far as I'd go.

Hansi, on April 6th 2006, 07:27 PM, said:

A mate tried it on a 20" iMac ran full speed with most setings on high (no AA or AF) at 1360x768 res and he only had 512MB Ram. Another user on MacRumors reported it worked fine at 800x500 with all settings at high and AA at HDR.

But what is 'full speed?' You'll never see that word in a benchmarking... Full speed on an Xbox is 30 f/s. That may be smooth enough if consistent, but isn't terribly impressive.

[Hansi]

Batcat, on April 7th 2006, 01:19 PM, said:

'Identical' is too strong; there are too many variables. 'Similar' or 'ballpark' is as far as I'd go.
But what is 'full speed?' You'll never see that word in a benchmarking... Full speed on an Xbox is 30 f/s. That may be smooth enough if consistent, but isn't terribly impressive.

Full speed = ~30FPS at least no lag until he hit some outdoor areas but then again the recommended settings are for lower res and lower details and he only had 512mb ram. Another guy I read on another forum that someone tested it on his 20" iMac with 1024, medium details and no aa and he got lowest 26 FPS highest 47 FPS but he didn't specify ram.

[clocknova]

Batcat, on April 7th 2006, 09:19 AM, said:

'Identical' is too strong; there are too many variables. 'Similar' or 'ballpark' is as far as I'd go.
But what is 'full speed?' You'll never see that word in a benchmarking... Full speed on an Xbox is 30 f/s. That may be smooth enough if consistent, but isn't terribly impressive.

I would consider 30 FPS more than adequate (I'd be quite happy with it, actually), particularly if I can achieve that at my native 1280x1024--I'm outputting video to an external LCD-- with draw distance turned all the way to max.  Every other setting is negotiable.  Of course, all of the performance reports I've seen for this game so far have been for the 20" iMac.  My 1.86 Ghz MacBook is going to have slightly lower performance.  I wonder what is going to impact performance more: the slight drop in processor speed, or the 128 MB VRAM as opposed to the 256 MB in the iMac.

[DaveyJJ]

clocknova, on April 7th 2006, 09:25 AM, said:

I would consider 30 FPS more than adequate (I'd be quite happy with it, actually)...

Agree 100% here. I don't care so much that I can get 60fps or 35fps out of, say, Rome Total War or an EA sports title. The fact that I can play them at all is the key here (and what is making me very very happy).

BTW, my coworker with HL2 ran the Lost Coast (mod?) with HDR and very high setting and he says it's fantastic on his 20" iMac.

[Huntn]

Batcat, on April 7th 2006, 08:19 AM, said:

'Identical' is too strong; there are too many variables. 'Similar' or 'ballpark' is as far as I'd go.
But what is 'full speed?' You'll never see that word in a benchmarking... Full speed on an Xbox is 30 f/s. That may be smooth enough if consistent, but isn't terribly impressive.

Are frame rates capped on the xbox 360?

Hansi, on April 7th 2006, 08:24 AM, said:

Full speed = ~30FPS at least no lag until he hit some outdoor areas but then again the recommended settings are for lower res and lower details and he only had 512mb ram. Another guy I read on another forum that someone tested it on his 20" iMac with 1024, medium details and no aa and he got lowest 26 FPS highest 47 FPS but he didn't specify ram.

Someone in the Bethesda's Elder Scroll forums said you needed 2 GB of RAM for Oblivion. Don't know how accurate that is. I bumped my PC up from 1.5 to 2 GB and it seems smoother in some areas, overall I'm getting good performance, but I still notice some hesitation when running outside and loading a new area. The dungeons take you through a cut scene so I'm not sure if your getting better performance because your in a tighter area or it functions exactly as every where else in the game.

Anyone know how to pull up frame rates on the PC version? I need to check that in the linked forums above.

DaveyJJ, on April 7th 2006, 11:07 AM, said:

BTW, my coworker with HL2 ran the Lost Coast (mod?) with HDR and very high setting and he says it's fantastic on his 20" iMac.

There is a feeling of immersion and a fidelity I get in HL2 that I don't get in the other shooters I've played including Far Cry and FEAR.
-Hunt'n

[bookman]

Huntn, on April 7th 2006, 12:54 PM, said:

There is a feeling of immersion and a fidelity, I get in HL2, that I don't get in the other shooters I've played including Far Cry and FEAR.
-Hunt'n

I felt the same about Half Life 1 compared to the shooters of its era.

[Batcat]

DaveyJJ, on April 7th 2006, 11:07 AM, said:

Agree 100% here. I don't care so much that I can get 60fps or 35fps out of, say, Rome Total War or an EA sports title. The fact that I can play them at all is the key here (and what is making me very very happy).

BTW, my coworker with HL2 ran the Lost Coast (mod?) with HDR and very high setting and he says it's fantastic on his 20" iMac.

Depends on the game, of course. Absolutes are just that, and while 60-75 f/s in RTW or a sub sim make for smooth visuals, they aren't life or death as in a shooter, just gravy- albeit tasty. It would make a difference in H-L 2, tho.

The Lost Coast was a free add-on level that came out last Fall. There's also a followup, 'Aftermath,' due out later. It's been delayed and might've had a name change. I understand there's a new SiN game being released episodically thru Steam as well.

Huntn, on April 7th 2006, 12:54 PM, said:

Are frame rates capped on the xbox 360?

Yes. 720p/1080i, 60 f/s is the target and cap. (I don't know, but I've a hunch that multiplayer in older Xbox games is capped at 30 so as not to disadvantage those on original Xboxes, but the older games might only play at 30 anyway, no special cap needed. They are uprezzed to 720p w/4X FSAA, tho).

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Someone in the Bethesda's Elder Scroll forums said you needed 2 GB of RAM for Oblivion. Don't know how accurate that is.

I don't know, but wouldn't be surprised. Top games have pushed beyond the 1GB barrier for awhile now, and are getting more resource-hungry all the time. ES4 is near the top.

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There is a feeling of immersion and a fidelity I get in HL2 that I don't get in the other shooters I've played including Far Cry and FEAR.
-Hunt'n

I have to get to that sometime...

bookman, on April 7th 2006, 02:02 PM, said:

I felt the same about Half Life 1 compared to the shooters of its era.

Yup.

[Maxor127]

HL2 is okay but too linear and arcade-like.  It has excellent physics though.  The load times between areas ruin the immersion.  It's really only good for one play-through.  I prefer Far Cry myself.  It has equally good graphics made even more impressive since it loads in HUGE levels with long draw distances and I like the modern weapons.  Try killing a guy and get his body in the water to see a nice effect.  Oblivion is a beast to run on my PC.  I'll be impressed if it runs no lower than 30 FPS in crowded towns or outside in forests looking out in the distance with water in view and all settings maxed.  A good test is to take a horse and ride from one city to another.  It barely performs adequately with medium settings on my PC so if a Mac runs it 30-40+ outside then I'll be impressed.

[rminkler]

I run it at 1440x900, with the texture slider set to "medium" (because "high" was designed with 256MBs of video ram in mind, and I have the 17" iMac with the 128MB card - if you run it on high, it will be constantly swapping texture data from the system ram to the video ram, and you might notice stuttering when you turn around, etc) and everything else turned up most of the way, and get what I imagine to be something like 20 or 25 frames per second. Mind you, this is with HDR on, and with the video card clocked with ATItool to 440/540. I will install fraps and get some real scores later.

Edit: I have 1.5 GB of ram (so my memory is not running in dual channel mode). Perhaps having your video card thrashing for texture data all the time would be OK with 2GB or ram (in dual channel mode).

[Huntn]

Maxor127, on April 7th 2006, 10:07 PM, said:

HL2 is okay but too linear and arcade-like.  It has excellent physics though.  The load times between areas ruin the immersion.  It's really only good for one play-through.  I prefer Far Cry myself.  It has equally good graphics made even more impressive since it loads in HUGE levels with long draw distances and I like the modern weapons.  Try killing a guy and get his body in the water to see a nice effect.  Oblivion is a beast to run on my PC.  I'll be impressed if it runs no lower than 30 FPS in crowded towns or outside in forests looking out in the distance with water in view and all settings maxed.  A good test is to take a horse and ride from one city to another.  It barely performs adequately with medium settings on my PC so if a Mac runs it 30-40+ outside then I'll be impressed.

Far Cry's  best feature is the out door tropical island locations where you can go anywhere at any time. Jump on a boat and cruise or crawl through the foliage sneaking up on people. But it's indoor underground settings were very ho hum imo. I was very enthusiastic about the game until I got underground. A funny, but not so realistic moment was when I set off the alarm and guards were after me so I hid in a bush. A string of guards instead of just shooting the bush up, came in looking for me one at a time. Well you know what happened.

-Hunt'n

[Huntn]

If you have a Intel iMac or Mac Book Pro and are playing Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, I would like to know what kind of performance you are getting in terms of Frames Per Second. Also I'd appreciate any links your aware of that specifically highlight Oblivion's Intel Mac performance.

There are a ton of video settings for this game. If you'd like to help feel free to post here or send me an email at huntn@charter.net (be prepared to navigate my spam service).

First to display FPS, open the consol using the tilde (~) key and type in "TDT" no quotes, then hit the ~ key again to close the consol. FPS should appear in the upper right corner of your screen.

Here is an Oblivion TweekGuides page with an excellent guide on Oblivion settings.

Specifically I'd like to know what your Mac intel hardware is including video card and RAM. And what FPS you get with settings maxed out or using the default settings (and what those settings are including resolution).

And secondly what it takes to get decent performance on your setup and what FPS your getting at the good settings. To increase performance, my suggestion is to first make adjustments to the View Distance, and Grass Distance. I suggest that it is better to lower the resolution of the game before taking the drastic step of Turning Distant Lands off at a higher resolution.

And finally if your running into any technical problems with the game.

Thanks!
-Hunt'n

[Batcat]

For info and comparison purposes...

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While it has only been out on the market for a few weeks now, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has already captured a huge audience: and we’re not just talking about RPG gamers either, as even diehard Unreal Tournament and Quake fans have been drawn in by the game as well. This is in large part due to Oblivion’s immersive wide-open gameplay, but it also doesn’t hurt that Oblivion is a pretty game to look at.

In fact, that’s putting it mildly, as Oblivion sports some of the fanciest outdoor environments ever to grace the PC. Remember the first time you booted up Far Cry or saw 3DMark 2001’s Nature demo and your jaw dropped to the floor? The outdoor scenery in Oblivion puts both of those to shame once the graphics settings are cranked up. But herein lies the problem, once the visual eye candy settings are bumped up to their maximums, your frame rate can quickly trickle to a crawl with even the latest high-end graphics cards. There are numerous posts in the Oblivion forums from users reporting poor frame rates; when I picked up a copy of the game at my local Gamestop, the sales clerk made sure to ask if my system was capable of handling the game’s hefty system requirements before ringing me up. He was pretty adamant that the game’s minimum requirements were far too conservative, particularly on the graphics side of the equation, only asking for a “128MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver”. There are plenty of GeForce and Radeon cards with 64-bit memory interfaces that meet this requirement!

With this in mind, we’ve rounded up all of the latest high-end graphics cards from both ATI and NVIDIA. We also threw in a GeForce 6800 GT in order to show how high-end hardware of the previous generation compares to today’s latest and greatest. 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.

http://www.firingsqu...nd_performance/

[Tirinal]

Bumping to see if anyone has first-hand experience playing Oblivion and at what framerates. So far there seems to be a fair bit of armchair philosophy.

[Huntn]

Batcat, on April 11th 2006, 07:20 PM, said:

For info and comparison purposes...
http://www.firingsqu...nd_performance/

Batcat, thanks for the link!
-Hunt'n

[Batcat]

Huntn, on April 14th 2006, 06:51 AM, said:

Batcat, thanks for the link!
-Hunt'n

Aww... just for you, a newish one on mainstream card performance.

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3D Performance with Oblivion: Part 2 Mainstream Cards
Last week we took a look at Oblivion's performance with the latest high-end graphics cards and found that ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX delivers the best overall performance. But what if you don't have $500 to spend for a graphics card? That's where today's article comes in! We've rounded up the latest mainstream graphics card offerings from ATI and NVIDIA, as well as including the GeForce 6600 GT and 6800 GT. In addition, we also answer the question if 512MB of graphics memory really makes a difference in performance. Find the answers to all these questions inside!

http://www.firingsqu...am_performance/

[Space_Pirate_Killer]

I got it today, and it runs flawlessly on 1024 x 768 with most settings on a 17" iMac.