Oblivion

Outdoors + Bloom

Galaxy 8600 GE Oblivion Bloom

  1280x1024 Scene B  1024x768 Scene B  800x600 Scene B  1280x1024 Scene A  1024x768 Scene A  800x600 Scene A 
7600 GT  11  16.5  22.5  25.5  32  40 
8600 GE HQ  12.5  19  26  27  38.5  47.5 
8600 GE  18  26  37.5  40  49  49 

Notes

QTP2 was the only mod we used that should noticeably affect graphics performance. All others were also common. Both scenes were foliage-heavy, as those represent the worst-case scenario in Oblivion, and tends to be what you want to optimise your settings around. Scene A is uphill and doesn't have a large horizon, while Scene B is downhill and does. The Bloom scores were taken by pressing High in the Options dialog, and then selecting Bloom. AA and AF were forced through the driver's control panel.

2xAA/16xAF | HQ:16xAA/16xHQ AF

In all cases across all resolutions, the 8600 GE is faster with high IQ levels than 7600 GT is with the lesser settings applied. At 1280x1024 in Scene B, with the long draw distance, it's over 60% faster at equivalent settings.

Outdoors + HDR

Galaxy 8600 GE Oblivion HDR

  1280x1024 Scene B  1024x768 Scene B  800x600 Scene B  1280x1024 Scene A  1024x768 Scene A  800x600 Scene A 
7600 GT  10.5  16.5  21  20  27  33 
8600 GE HQ  12.5  18.5  24  25  33  43 
8600 GE  16.5  24.5  32  32  44  47 

Notes

See Oblivion Bloom notes. The HDR scores were taken by pressing Ultra High in the Options dialog. AA and AF were forced through the driver's control panel.

0xAA/0xAF | HQ:2xAA/16xHQ AF

When asked to work harder for image quality, turning on HDR which has a higher ROP cost to finish pixels, the gap decreases but still ends up in the 8600 GE's favour (and significantly so at the higher resolutions with equivalent IQ).

Inside an Oblivion Gate

This graph shows the limitations resulting from 256MB of VRAM on this model of the Galaxy 8600 GE. Performance goes down rapidly as more and more of the textures need to be placed in system memory. This may not happen as fast if we were using the vanilla textures instead of those in QTP2. Also, some scenes may not hit this problem until higher resolutions, as they use fewer unique textures at the same time.

Before this happens, the scene is actually CPU limited at about 40-44 FPS. Excluding this factor, non-foliage scenes tend to have more than sufficient performance at all the resolutions tested in the previous two graphs on the Galaxy 8600 GE.