7. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

Outdoor Level scenes

Indoor Level scenes

Analysis Of Results

The prettiest and most demanding shader effects found in any 3D game currently appear in Oblivion. In rendering its Outdoor Levels, even the most capable graphics cards in the test group still have problems. The maximum setting for grass and trees with full details and shadows impose the highest 3D performance penalties. Our benchmark scene includes water in its field of view, which loads down the pixel shaders very heavily. In these circumstances, no devices can play back image sequences without flickering or hesitation.

Because there's no vegetation in view and the horizon is greatly reduced, the Indoor Level in Oblivion is much easier on a card's 3D capabilities. Except for the X1400 in the Aspire 5672WLMi, all our test notebooks achieved fluid image playback in this situation. The best results came from the GeForce Go 7900 GTX in the Alienware notebook.