The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is a type of uncommon video games I’ll grind out a efficiency and settings function for earlier than persevering with to play it – yee gads, what an idea – for enjoyable. It’s kind of precisely what I’d have requested from a contemporary take, with refreshed visuals and UX enhancements bolted straight onto Oblivion’s authentic, famously bent chassis.
This hybrid engine strategy, much like that of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, arms off the graphical rendering gubbins to an Unreal Engine 5 layer whereas preserving all the sport logic to a modified model of what’s in any other case simply the 2006 backend. Preserving, within the course of, that janky daftness that accounts for a lot of Oblivion’s allure, with certified help for the unique’s mods on the aspect. Nonetheless, the efficiency impression of Oblivion Remastered’s new look is to not be trifled with. Even with DLSS/FSR upscaling help and body technology, this can be a robust one to run easily at its highest settings, particularly in case you deploy the ray tracing results that (for as soon as) actually do improve and enliven the surroundings.
Decrease-end gear isn’t off the desk – even the Steam Deck can handle affordable framerates – although I’ll advocate some tactical high quality reductions within the information additional down. First, and since its, uh, try at shadowdropping meant we skipped the same old pre-release infodumps, let’s get acquainted with Oblivion Remastered’s system necessities and the way they measure as much as efficiency actuality.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered system necessities and PC efficiency
These aren’t the haughtiest necessities I’ve seen from a UE5 manufacturing, to be truthful. Graphics playing cards just like the RX 5700 and GTX 1070 Ti will most likely appear to be extreme minimums to anybody nonetheless enjoying OG Oblivs on their GeForce 7600 GT, however they’re previous themselves by 2025 requirements. I’m extra involved concerning the beneficial checklist’s 32GB of RAM, which ain’t a bit, and the bulging 125GB SSD requirement. That’s fairly the pile of high-def chainmail textures.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered minimal PC specs
- OS: Home windows 10 model 21H1 (10.0.19043)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X / Intel Core i7-6800K
- RAM: 16GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 5700 / Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
- DirectX: Model 12
- Storage: 125GB out there house, SSD required
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered beneficial PC specs
- OS: Home windows 10/11 (with updates)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X / Intel Core i5-10600K
- RAM: 32GB
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6800XT / Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080
- DirectX: Model 12
- Storage: 125GB out there house, SSD required
There’s no getting across the remaster’s appreciable girth, although proof means that no less than the GPU necessities err on the overly cautious. Within the comparatively demanding overworld part I used for benchmarking, the GTX 1070 – that’s the bottom, non-Ti model – averaged a more-than-adequate 43fps at 1080p, merely utilizing the Low preset. The GTX 1070 Ti ought to, due to this fact, be a lot.
Elsewhere within the cheaper neighbourhoods of PC {hardware}, the RTX 4060 might nearly deal with the Extremely preset at 1080p, scoring 33fps. Excessive can be a greater start line, although, producing 53fps, whereas Medium pumped out a nifty 80fps. Steering away from Extremely additionally labored out for the RTX 3070, which on the Excessive preset ended up with 59fps at 1080p, in addition to 55fps at 1440p after including DLSS on High quality mode. Simply to get in some premium illustration, I additionally tried the RTX 5080 at 4K, the place (on the Extremely preset with DLSS on High quality) it averaged 62fps earlier than climbing to 105fps with body technology.
You’ll word that none of those outcomes are particularly horrid, and to be clear, these are averages taken from a extra straining patch of Cyrodiil; castles, caves, and dungeons will run a lot sooner, owing to their easier and tighter interiors. Even so, that lack of consistency is a priority in itself, because you primarily have to tune Oblivion Remastered’s graphics settings for a sort of worst-case state of affairs. What’s extra, all of these outcomes use the default Lumen lighting impact setting of Low-quality, software-based ray tracing, which isn’t very demanding however lacks the depth and the detailing that hardware-based Lumen presents in trade for its increased body tax.
Sadly, the most important efficiency headache appears to flare up no matter how mighty your {hardware} is: our previous good friend, stutter. It is a common incidence when free-roaming, with hitch-fits typically lasting for a number of seconds, and may even happen when performing such mundane duties as exiting the ready display screen or opening the pause menu. Some patching work is unquestionably wanted right here, and in fact, a number of the new visuals might do with touchups whereas Virtuos are at it. I’ve repeatedly seen glimmers of outfitted weapons or close by timber erroneously melded into display screen house reflections, and no matter this girl is doing along with her skirt, ma’am, it isn’t working.
Weirdly, the remaster nonetheless feels prefer it improves the structural integrity of Oblivion in addition to the graphical constancy. Set up the unique recreation immediately with out mods and also you’ll discover no scarcity of unfixed technical bizarreries, from hideous blurring on excessive framerates to a deranged choices menu that disables anti-aliasing on the Extremely preset as a result of the sport thinks AA and HDR lighting are mutually unique. Oblivion Remastered has bugs and stuttering, positive, nevertheless it’s not damaged and/or mad in the identical varieties of the way – you simply have to be sure that when framerates fall, you’ve given your self sufficient headroom to remain out of the crimson.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered finest settings
Truly, correction: Oblivion Remastered could be a tiny bit mad. The relative efficiency of every high quality preset is way, excess of the a few of their elements – after I examined every setting individually, reducing them from Extremely to Medium to see which ate up probably the most frames, solely shadows high quality had a serious impression. This may recommend that every one the others could possibly be left on Extremely with minimal efficiency downside, besides shadows alone couldn’t account for the huge variations between every preset. On the RTX 4060, keep in mind, Extremely averaged 33fps at 1080p whereas Medium averaged 80fps, but setting solely shadow high quality to Medium (and preserving all the things else on Extremely) solely produced 43fps.
I’m due to this fact going to recommend Excessive, relatively than Extremely, as a place to begin from which to make additional tweaks. There’s evidently some method of Voltron impact with a lot of the particular person settings, the place chopping them piecemeal achieves little in comparison with gathering a complete set of reductions collectively, and it’s not like Excessive is ugly anyhow.
However, it’s value dropping shadows one other degree down, and I did get a smaller framerate increase from snipping world illumination high quality, in order that makes the checklist as effectively. Right here’s what I’ve landed on:
- Movement blur: Off
- Display screen house reflections: On
- Shadow high quality: Medium
- International illumination high quality: Medium
- Upscaling approach: DLSS/FSR 3 on High quality
- Lumen {hardware} RT: On
- Lumen {hardware} RT lighting mode: Excessive
- Every little thing else: Excessive
{Hardware}-based RT could be skipped in case you’re on an older GPU that isn’t as much as it, however in any other case, that is the one luxurious it is best to afford your self in case you can. It may not replicate the unique recreation’s blinding bloom nevertheless it does ship extra of a sun-kissed look that fits the leafy Cyrodiil relatively effectively. Reducing shadows and world illumination, whereas including upscaling, additionally supplies the framerate headroom to accommodate ray traced results: on the RTX 4060 at 1080p, these settings scored 63fps, practically double the pace of the Extremely preset simply with software-based RT. By comparability, the identical settings with software program Lumen on Low high quality produced 74fps, so the smoothness hole isn’t some yawning chasm.
Additionally, I wouldn’t take into account it necessary sufficient to incorporate in an inventory of the air-quote “finest” settings, however DLSS body technology additionally works pretty effectively in case you’re already pumping out no less than 60fps or so with out it; this wholesome provide of historically rendered frames helps take up the enter lag improve from sprinkling within the generated frames. I wouldn’t hassle with FSR body gen, although. Even with a robust basis of regular frames, it has much less of a grasp on constant body timings, so the outcomes are noticeably much less easy than DLSS when strolling. And that is nonetheless a Bethesda RPG, so there is a good bit of that.
