Oblivion Crossfire Performance

[GetOutOfBox]

I'm considering a video card update, but I'm torn between replacing my current video card with one that has 2GB of VRAM (other than that, they're pretty much the same. Still 2GB of VRAM will allow for much greater room for high-res texture mods). Now, theoretically Crossfire will give a much greater increase in performance here (since I already have 1GB of VRAM, which is sufficient for modded Oblivion). Still, we all remember how terrible Crossfire support was back when the game first came out, due to poor drivers and the lack of a Crossfire profile for Oblivion.

 

Now that was years ago, the Catalyst drivers have gotten much, much better since then, and Oblivion's had a Crossfire profile for a few years now. Still, due to Oblivion's notoriety for poor optimization video card reviewers have long since stopped using it in benchmarks.

 

So before I decide on my purchase, I'd be really grateful to hear the experiences of anyone who has 2 or more ATI video cards Crossfired. In comparison to single card performance, how much of an improvement was there? Please only post if you have a card from the Radeon 4000 series or above, preferably the 5000/6000 series, since I'm deciding between adding another Radeon 6870 or selling my current one and purchasing a Radeon 6950. If you experienced and still experience issues with Oblivion on a Crossfire rig, please post them as well. Detailed reviews containing an approximate average FPS difference and stuttering (or the lack of it) would be highly appreciated.

[ThomasKra]

The trouble is that in order for a game to make good use of SLI/Crossfire, it needs to support those features on the engine level. Oblivion has no SLI/Crossfire support whatsoever, and on my tests, using it actually cause performance to degrade (about 10-15 FPS lost on a global scale).

 

Driver version, video card, GPU developer, etc. None of those matter here, if the game does not support SLI/Crossfire, it doesn't support it. If you're are tailoring your rig specifically for Oblivion, save your money.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Thomas Kaira

[HeyYou]

A few years back, there were a BUNCH of threads of this nature. The results of the various polls and such, were all over the place, seems that performance increase varied DRAMATICALLY just from machine to machine, even with just the vanilla game. Some folks would see a 50% performance improvement (extremely rare) others would see at most 10-15%. (the majority) and the rest, would actually see performance drop off using two cards, and stability go right down the tubes as well. I came to the conclusion that there was NO reliable information on this topic, and the ONLY way to see how well it works on your machine, is simply to try it...... and see what happens.

 

That said, if you decide to sell your 6870, how much ya want for it, and what country ya in. :D

[GetOutOfBox]

The trouble is that in order for a game to make good use of SLI/Crossfire, it needs to support those features on the engine level. Oblivion has no SLI/Crossfire support whatsoever, and on my tests, using it actually cause performance to degrade (about 10-15 FPS lost on a global scale).

 

Driver version, video card, GPU developer, etc. None of those matter here, if the game does not support SLI/Crossfire, it doesn't support it. If you're are tailoring your rig specifically for Oblivion, save your money.

 

Actually, Oblivion does have Crossfire/SLI support, the question is whether it was done efficiently. As we're all are painfully aware of, Oblivion is one of the worst optimized games there is. Computers that easily run Crysis struggle with Oblivion, despite the fact it's a 5 year old game.

 

Also, games do not necessarily need to be explicitly designed to utilize Crossfire, the driver can force multi-GPU processing in Alternate-Frame-Rendering Mode (One GPU renders even frames, the other GPU renders odd frames), though unfortunately that is not as efficient as "Scissors" or "Checkerboard" rendering methods (Scissors splits each frame in half, one GPU renders one half, the other renders the other half. The resulting output is then recombined and outputted to the monitor. Checkerboard is similar, except the scene is split into chunks rather than simply being divided in half).

 

It should also be noted that for those of you that use the "Flip Queue" tweak in ATI Tray Tools described in the Tweakguides article for Oblivion, do not reduce the flip queue below the default when rendering Oblivion in Crossfire mode. Since AFR depends on the Flip Queue to work, if you disable it, you will not see any benefit from crossfire in games that use AFR/driver forced.

[ThomasKra]

Well, in that case, Oblivion's utilization of SLI/Crossfire is very poor at best, given how unpredictable the results have been. As I said, I get noticeable FPS drops when I run AFR 1, and the game freezes after about 5 minutes when I run AFR 2 (nVidia card on my end), so I just use single-GPU rendering now.

 

Multi-GPU rendering came out at about the same time Oblivion was released, so no one really knew how to use it at the time. I still say save your money. If you're using a 6870 Radeon, trying to get extra performance out of Oblivion is going to be pretty difficult for you. If you're heavily modded, I'd say any performance problems you're experiencing now are more due to the (as you said) poorly optimized engine than it is your GPU power.

[GetOutOfBox]

Well, in that case, Oblivion's utilization of SLI/Crossfire is very poor at best, given how unpredictable the results have been. As I said, I get noticeable FPS drops when I run AFR 1, and the game freezes after about 5 minutes when I run AFR 2 (nVidia card on my end), so I just use single-GPU rendering now.

 

Multi-GPU rendering came out at about the same time Oblivion was released, so no one really knew how to use it at the time. I still say save your money. If you're using a 6870 Radeon, trying to get extra performance out of Oblivion is going to be pretty difficult for you. If you're heavily modded, I'd say any performance problems you're experiencing now are more due to the (as you said) poorly optimized engine than it is your GPU power.

 

Do you have any suggestions for what I can do to get the best performance from Oblivion? Lots of people seem to get at least a steady 30FPS city/landscape (for some reason, cities have terrible FPS and landscape has great FPS for me (and that's with RAEVWD, QTP3, etc installed :P)). What hardware should I get to get that kind of performance?

[HeyYou]

NPC AI is what kills framerate. Basically, the meaner your processor, the less of an issue it will be.

[GetOutOfBox]

NPC AI is what kills framerate. Basically, the meaner your processor, the less of an issue it will be.

 

That's one of the things I hate about Oblivion, since Oblivion barely uses multiple cores on processors, it's almost impossible to satisfy it CPU wise. The reccomended spec for vanilla Oblivion is a 3GHZ pentium 4. Todays CPU's are much more powerful, but only if the extra cores are used *pulls hair out in frustration*. That means I can either try overclocking to 4GHZ and hope Oblivion is satiated (which is difficult to do without producing a lot of heat and raising the voltage), or I can:

 

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/7293/heavyx.png

[MotoSxorpio]

NPC AI is what kills framerate. Basically, the meaner your processor, the less of an issue it will be.

 

Agreed, and unclean nifs. I once removed 143 bogus nodes from a mesh I downloaded. Then took a minute or two to Stripify, in nifskope usually don't take all that long to stripify. I was like, wuh!?

 

I take it everyone here is an ATI user? Cuz I would like to know about my 9800 gt, of which I have a matching pair. I have not installed the second, because I could use it in another machine. But I would like to utilize it if I get ANY kind of performance boost.

[HeyYou]

NPC AI is what kills framerate. Basically, the meaner your processor, the less of an issue it will be.

 

Agreed, and unclean nifs. I once removed 143 bogus nodes from a mesh I downloaded. Then took a minute or two to Stripify, in nifskope usually don't take all that long to stripify. I was like, wuh!?

 

I take it everyone here is an ATI user? Cuz I would like to know about my 9800 gt, of which I have a matching pair. I have not installed the second, because I could use it in another machine. But I would like to utilize it if I get ANY kind of performance boost.

 

You will probably see some improvement...... probably 10% or so, maybe better. It is really hit or miss on who gets what gains. In all reality though, I really don't see the improvement as worth the additional headache. For some folks, the game simply will NOT run in crossfire/sli mode. (and that too is really hit or miss.....)