Oblivion Performance Testing

by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/17/2006 10:19 AM EST
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  • Turnip - Saturday, July 8, 2006 - link

    Anand has been really suspciously quiet for quite some time now.

    Anyone know what he's up to?
  • creathir - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link

    Well, according to this blog, he is working on the house...
    (Not sure if he is building it himself... or maybe there are issues that need resolving?)

    The sad part is, getting to this blog from the mainsite is now impossible due to a bug in their code. I had to use the RSS feed to get the URL for this posting...

    Next monday will mark the 3 month point at which he last communicated with us here on his blog...

    I would say at that point the blog is "dead".

    June 5th was his last article that he wrote... He does have many other people writing for him, so that helps, but I still prefer his writing better than anyone else here on the site.

    Hopefully soon enough he will make his way back...

    - Creathir
  • Turnip - Monday, July 10, 2006 - link

    Yeah, that's exactly how I got here too.

    I tend to prefer Anand's articles too. No offence to the others, but Anand's are, I guess, more... captivating.

    Wish I could afford to take three months off work! ;)
  • cciesquare - Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - link

    The game wasnt that great for me. I was drawn in by the story line at first but playing it for a few hours I got bored easily.

    I guess to each his own.
  • UlricT - Tuesday, May 16, 2006 - link

    Anand, this site seems dead without updates from you, and seems more impersonal all the time. You seem to be focusing your attention elsewhere, and I hope you at least let us know what is going on. Is anandtech becoming stale for you? I can understand that, since you have been at it since you were, what, 14? Anyways, best of luck with everything. Just felt I had to say this.
  • overclockingoodness - Sunday, May 21, 2006 - link

    Just because he isn't posting on the blog doesn't mean AT is becoming stale for him. He is what he is because of AT.
  • AndrewChang - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link

    When are we gonna hear what you have to say about the Wii? We wanna know!!!! This thing looks like it'll be the consumer electronics phenomenon of the century... Haha, we maybe nopt of the century, but it looks like it could be huge. I'm kinda interested in what's running this thing, let us know!

    Love the site, as always - Peace
  • AndrewChang - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link

    Oops! Meant to say, "Well maybe not the...
  • Crassus - Tuesday, May 9, 2006 - link

    Hi Anand:

    One thing I think I mentioned back in the days when the layout changed the last time: What do you think about expanding the Anand's Blog section to include the other main contributors to your site? Back in the days when you were the main contributer to this site it was great to know what you were after at that time - but some area seemed to have been handed over to your staff almost completely, so I think it would be nice if they had an easily accessible place to share their thoughts if they chose to participate.
    And one other thing: A rather longish time back I think you promised a more in-depth articles about the benefits/drawback of RAIDing HDDs. After the initial article this seems to have died a silent death or did I just miss the follow-up?
    Anyway, keep up the good work and I hope you will find the time to respond
    (sah32 (at) gmx.net).
    Thx.
  • Sahrin - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link

    CAT5e Anand? I thought you were a hardware guy. What happens when 10,000Base TX comes out and you can't run it because all you've got is UTP 5e. Psh. STP Cat 7 forever!
  • theteamaqua - Saturday, April 22, 2006 - link

    i have GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB in SLI, with a P4 660, it runs great on 1280x1024, my LCD, i turn everything on to max, except Item,Acto fade , well, and 4x AA cant be turn on with HDR is another thing, but its slow enough in some area, so with 4xAA, its going to be even slower
  • Evan12345 - Monday, April 24, 2006 - link

    I justn hope that the benchmarks are not all on the same CPU. I.E. Benching a 6200 on a FX-57. Does this mae any logical sense. If one wanted to know how his/her GPU would handle Oblivion then using a CPU liek a FX-60 would scew the results ince people with 6600GTs do not have $1000 cpus and 4gb or ram. I think Anand should Bench on High, mid and low range systems.

    High Range System: Stuff Best avalible 6800+ and higher
    Mid Range: 3500+ Amd 2.2Ghz 1gb ram 7600gt, 7600gs x800gt, x800gto, x800gto2, 6600gt.
    Low Range: 3000+ or 3200+ 512mb ram 6600 and lower + x700 and lower.

    Also he should show the Grphic settings that sould be used to get a Playable framerate (30-35 FPS)
  • Evan12345 - Monday, April 24, 2006 - link

    Damn, I didn't spell check sorry.
  • eman7613 - Friday, April 21, 2006 - link

    Neither ATI nor Nvidia are goign to make their chipsest compatible both ways. This is beacsue one simmple thing, and that is beacsue each one wants to make their chipset the most popular, beacuse its hceaper to produce the onboard cards!
    If it costs $8 to make the board w/ chip, and you sell it to the retailer for 50$ you make 42 dollars, a 4:25 ratio.
    If it costs $140 and it sells to retailer for $330 you make 190 dollars, a 13:33 ratio. Which makes more money? the chips!
  • judmarc - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link

    1. If you were trying to decide between relatively darker and lighter shades for the floor stain, hope you picked the lighter - shows dusty footprints a lot less (as we learned after picking the slightly darker shade :( ).

    2. Do *not* expect work/decisions about the house to slow down much if at all for a year or more after you move in - believe me, there is always something to improve, fix, that somehow slipped through the cracks and needs to be taken care of, or (drum roll) landscaping. What *does* slow down, fortunately, is the cash outflow, from tens of thousands or thousands per week to hundreds, then to the occasional couple or few grand for the next big project.
  • customcoms - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link

    I think this whole chipset/graphics card fiasco is going to be cleared up by the motherboard manufacturers. One of two things will happen:

    A) Drivers and/or bios support for the opposite dual card configuration will be implemented (Like the Uli chipset hack)

    B) The uber high end boards will have TWO chipsets on them: one for driving SLI (nvidia) and one for drving crossfire (ATI); the boards bios will decide which chip to use (or for that fact their could be three bioses; one to boot&one for each chip) with which card.

    At which point, nvidia and ATI will do one of two things:

    A) Realize the futility and adopt a standard

    B) Continue allowing boards to be sold with method B above so both companies reap the profits..not good for the end user (EXPENSIVE)

  • imterry - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link

    Isn't the amount of legwork one has to do to buy/build a house preposterous? When my wife and I signed the paperwork for our 1st house back in 96, we were stunned at the pile of papers that we had to sign, initial, and date. What was really irritating was that withing 6 months, our mortgage had been transferred to a new company and we had more paperwork to fill out for that company.

    Good luck to you and your family as y'all get ready to move in! Keep your builder's info handy so that you can kick them around if/when defects start showing up. ;)
  • tynopik - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link

    it won't just "potentially hurt its chipset sales" it will absolutely destroy them

    if you had a choice between
    a) a chipset that only supported ATI
    b) a chipset that supported BOTH ATI and NVIDIA

    which one are you going to choose?

    the only way for this to be resolved is for them to come to some mutual agreement to support each others boards

    as long as one holds out, the other one HAS TO hold out also
  • nlhowell - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link

    I'm a little disappointed, Anand; I woulda thought you a cat6 kinda guy...gigabit routers are already on the market...
  • creathir - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link

    Cat5e is the EXACT same cable, it just has not bee "rated" for Cat6. The other factor is, over the short distances that are inside a house (almost always < 150') it just does not become a factor. Cat6 cable is nice, and it is good to future proof yourself (any structured media guy will tell you that) sometimes it just does not make sense. Most structured media guys like to put FIBER to every drop. Anand may have Cat5e for the network, but maybe he put fiber in to every drop as well. It could be Anand just does not feel that Cat6 is really that important... honestly, how many home network need more than a gigabit lan? They do not generate that much traffic... even during a LAN party it would be almost impossible for them to max out the network. I suppose if you really wanted to you could... but really, whats the point?
    - Creathir
  • punko - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    quote:

    There's a lot of changes here at AT that are in the process of happening as well


    Guides! Guides!

    I hope we get back to a regular rhythm for system guides. I'm itchin' for a new system, and the landscape sure has changed since the last mid/high guide came out.

    Of course with AM2 just around the corner, I can see an arguement for a delay . . .

    But I'm still awaitin' for my Guides!
  • crimson117 - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    Anand,

    While you're doing games I'd love to see an update to the WoW performance guide - especially WoW on a MacbookPro. Since wow.exe is a universal binary, comparing it under Windows and OS X on exactly the same hardware could be very interesting, and would be something of a first.

    -Jim
  • UlricT - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    When you talk about ATi providing support for CrossFire on Nvidia chipsets, would only the video drivers need to support it? Wouldn't the Nvidia chipset drivers also need to support this?
  • taemun - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    It'd be great if you could compare a 7900GT and 7900GTX (256 and 512mb respectively) at the same clocks, at varying resolutions (upto really high ones)... just to see how much difference there is there.

    Thanks
  • bwmccann - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    Anand,
    How long have you guys been building that house? It seems like years...either it is the size of the White House or you guys are doing the construction. :-)

    Brian
  • SLCentral - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link

    Hey Anand,

    In your Oblivion performance evaluation, are you going to include some kind of comparison to the Xbox 360 version? If it takes SLI/Crossfire to run it at 1600x1200 with eye candy on the PC, I'd much rather invest in a Xbox 360. It's not fun to play at 1024x768 (I don't have SLI) on a 2560x1600 screen, but I'd love to see some 720p action on an Xbox 360 and my DLP.
  • nordicpc - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link

    I highly agree. While there are a few mid-range vs. elite hardware reviews, I'd like to know how much better the PC version can be against the 360. Has the PC already overcome the coveted 360 and how much hardware does it take? I personally have a 32" LCD HDTV I game on with my PC, and although it can be a PITA sometimes, it's usually worth it to have AA and AF at 1280x720.

    Ohh yeah, don't forget the widescreen support for us!
  • smitty3268 - Monday, April 17, 2006 - link

    You might want to check out this article in the meantime: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147028/index.htm...">http://www.gamespot.com/features/6147028/index.htm...

    Short story is that the PC version looks better than the 360, but only if you have really top of the line hardware.
  • nordicpc - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link

    Thanks for the link. I was kinda hoping for a reason to buy the 360, but I guess since my PC would already look better, there's no point.

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